… And What a Journey It Has Been!

This is it, the last blog post for this course, for my undergraduate university career, and probably for this blog. I find myself surprisingly nostalgic, although I’m feeling that way about a lot of things these days. However, when I think about everything that we’ve talked about throughout the semester, I am drawn to consider where we go from here. I know we (or maybe it’s just me), as students, tend to think that we’re paying for a course to learn things, in order to pass the tests and get the course credits, so that we can graduate and move on with our lives. Maybe it’s just that I am graduating now and supposedly ‘moving on with my life,’ but I’d like to think that there is actually some applicability in all of this. Some meaning, some takeaway, some future path forwards. Hence, the staircase picture. Upwards and onwards, my friends.

So what did we learn? Some of the big themes that stand out to me include: people, culture, representation, politics, media, and opinions. We learned about life, we learned about fragments. I now know little tidbits of information about everything from soccer (which I couldn’t care too much about), to music (which I care quite a bit about). So what do I do with all of these little pieces?

Sure, I might’ve liked to dive deeper into a couple of topics, to be able to capture a more complete picture of certain aspects of popular culture in Latin America. Some of the topics felt very specific to one place, one viewpoint, while Latin America is so big. At the same time, however, I think this specificity is also a good thing. It would be easy, though time consuming, to go over more generally, a little bit of each topic related to various or all countries considered part of Latin America. But I believe that it is much more useful to have gone over only certain countries or specific aspects, in a more detailed way.

See, I like being able to relate to people, to be able to understand them as best I can. That’s part of the reason I majored in Behavioural Neuroscience. I like making connections with people, and I think one of the best ways to do that is through the sharing of knowledge. Shared interests, shared specialities, shared moments. Now, by having such specific knowledge about things like folktales, feminism and food, I can potentially improve the way that I relate to people who are also interested in/have experience in these areas. This class has given me some first hand experience with popular culture in Latin America and I hope to bring that with me in how I connect with other people, and the ways that I might understand them.

My question to the class is this: what have you learned from this class that you will carry with you into the rest of your life?