It just hit me that we’re a few weeks away from finishing our first year of University. It has been a year of many new experiences and many changes. I graduated from High School in India and moved across the world to start University in a new city in a new country. I moved out of my parent’s place and started living on my own for the first time in my life and most importantly, met many great people along the way.

It’s safe to say, that it was a year of transition, but CAP classes made it easy to ease into University life and allowed me to get a first taste of University classes. Over the last few weeks, we’ve been talking about the movie “American sniper” in ASTU and I thought, I would dedicate my last blog post to explain how the individual CAP classes connect to each other through the eyes of “American sniper” and how it helped me get into University life.

For my first-year studies in UBC, I was enrolled in the “Global Citizens” CAP stream. The stream includes Geography, Political science, Sociology and Arts studies as first-year courses. I think, that the idea behind CAP streams is good, because it helps you ease into University life as everyone in your stream is a first-year student as well and since you see everyone in your stream on a daily basis, you get to know a majority of the people quickly and easily.

I quickly learned that all the courses in Global Citizens are somehow connected. In ASTU, we examine the scholarly importance of a movie like “American sniper”. In Geography, we talk about the global effect that it has and specifically learn about the geographic region (more developed and less developed countries) and how it has changed and developed over the years. In the first semester, we learned the political aspect of things in Poli science and discussed how global governments should act in order to prevent wars, keep their citizens safe and give their people a voice and lastly, in Sociology, we learn how modern society functions. Even if it isn’t always obvious in the first place, many things that we think about and talk about are connected to each other and function in different fields. In Global Citizens, these fields are separated into their specific courses and through examples like “American sniper”, we learn about globalisation, obligations as citizens and how the modern world functions.

Personally, I thought that it was a good decision that I took a CAP stream in my first University year. Although I wasn’t always interested in all of the topics, it helped me get to know new people and learn in a first-year environment. As a “third culture kid” or rather as a “third culture student”, I enjoyed learning about the world that we live in. So, if that’s something that interests you then Global Citizens is for you. Now, I hope to finish the first-year on a high note and hopefully we’ll all stay in touch!