Over the course of my college career, I have been instilled with deductive reasoning skills, critical thinking skills, argumentative skills, and research skills. All of these will help me along any professional pathway I decide to take. However, I believe another incredibly valuable skill I have obtained is the ability to understand global perspective, intercultural maturity, and empathy.

There will always be people that disagree with one another. That is something that is unavoidable no matter how educated or uneducated we are as a cumulative culture. Of course, I believe that the more education a person has access to, the more they are able to understand outside perspectives that might perhaps challenge their own. In my own experience as I completed my education, it is valuable to challenge and even question your own political, cultural, and interpersonal world-views as a result of the material taught. History, both in a worldly context and within that of the United States, has shown me that it is often the winner of any conflict that gets to write the history books. In learning history, I saw it as my job to survey all aspects of the country’s development, even the ugly, violent portions. There were atrocities committed by our founding generations. The Trail of Tears, the Indian Removal Act, Slavery, and all actions leading to the Civil War were all arguably questionable actions from a humanitarian point of view.

While we cannot change the past, knowing that these things occurred in our history has instilled in me the hope that we can work to make our country better moving forward in regards to racial equality, gender equality, and cultural awareness. While I don’t think people should be outright ashamed of their history, I think an acute awareness and openness to education is of the utmost importance in order to function as a united society.

Studying criminal justice forced me to think about humanity in a controversial sense. We looked at issues such as genocide, slavery, and questioned what makes something “humane” or “inhumane”. This was where I really developed argumentative skills. We had to write about widely controversial topics from a solid point of view and support our opinions with facts and evidence. This was fun, because there were people who argued either side. Those who agreed with me, and those who did not. Seeing how those with opposite perspectives think, and why they think that way, can genuinely help you understand who they are as people. You don’t necessarily have to agree with the opposite side in order to understand where they are coming from. In a global sense, I believe that it is important to be able to converse, interact, and understand people that do not share your same opinions.