As part of the Honors Program, I am required to take a few core classes of the program and this semester’s is Honors: The Global Community. Taught by Francisco Javier Sanchez, the course explore various global and history themes via a collection of photojournalistic pieces from a book titled, What Matters and literature of both poetry and prose to illustrate themes such as poverty, genocide, and race in society.

This class is driven by group discussion of articles and readings and ultimately encourages everyone to get involved. My favorite thing about the course, is its applicability to history. Because we are discussing themes and trends, many issues resurface throughout time. For example, while we read one piece about the conquistadors, a classmate made various parallels to the fascist movement in the nineteenth century. As an avid lover of history, I enjoy tracking these trends throughout the earth’s timeline to better understand their impact on the “global community.”

I can’t wait for the final project and presentation because I already have an idea of how I want to connect Transcendentalism to the unity of nature to display how perceptions of environment come into play in this same “global community” that we spend the semester discussing.