While I have enjoyed COMM 299 this year, I’m afraid it defers to Organizational Behaviour as my favourite course, by which I mean the course in which I have learned the most about myself and about the society I live in. In OB, one of the concepts we learn about was Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, and that at the pinnacle of that pyramid chart is self-actualization. Since coming to Sauder, I think I have achieved that in some aspect. For those of us who attend university, a question that has often plagued our minds in the middle of exam season, on Friday nights sacrificed in the name of Financial Accounting assessments, or in my case, on a day to day basis, is, “Why am I here?” COMM 299 teaches us that the reason we aspire to a post-secondary education is to attain a job. At the very least, I have learned that I am not here for the next four years for the sole purpose of acquiring a sheet of paper that will certify that I am capable of performing a task, following instructions, and thus, getting a job. Instead, I hope to do what I think a very exceptional few have done with via a business degree: to learn things I want to learn.
In my Arts elective, Philosophy, I learned that there are things that are good for the sake of attaining higher goods, like money, which is used to purchase tangible goods and services, and then there are things that are good for the sake of being good, like intellect and wisdom. I came to university to attain the latter. In fact, this is the most important thing I have learned about myself from COMM 299. I learned that I wouldn’t care to apply for jobs or to employers that would turn me away on the basis of a single formatting error on my resumé when the content of that resumé would realistically render me a successful candidate for that job, which is also why I don’t really care that I received 48% on a project for which I should have received 95%. I learned that I shouldn’t be afraid to write less-than-laudable reviews of a course I don’t personally approve of for the sake of pleasing an administration that doesn’t even bother to read the content of such a review. I learned that there will always be things about the schooling system, about government, about people and about the world that I don’t agree with, but I will always have the option to not squander my time deforming my own values into these twisted conventions, and rather, to learn how to do what I want. So for what it’s worth, I guess even the most pointless course at Sauder teaches you a thing or two about yourself.