If I have learned anything in the last semester, it is that being human is an astonishing experience.

For my nursing school prerequisites, I took an Intro Psych course along with a year-long Human Anatomy & Physiology course. As a fifth year student taking first year courses, I was pleasantly surprised on how much I got out of these classes; it is an experience I would not have gone through had I taken these courses in my first year. Although on many occasions the lectures were dry and the information based on very basic facts and concepts, taking these courses allowed me to better understand my own body and mind to ultimately appreciate just what it is I have as a human being.

Biology taught me how the cells in my body worked in conjunction with one another to keep my body breathing and moving. Having started training in Capoeira in my spare time, I felt more in tune with my own body as began to not just see improvements in my strength and flexibility but understand how my body worked to allow me to move the way I should move in Capoeira. The human body is extraordinary in its efficiency and beautiful in its intricacy. Opening a door, taking a deep breath, even being sore took on a whole new meaning for me as I learned about human physiology. My body is built with so much potential in what it can do if I only put my mind to it.

Psychology explored the human mind in not just the brain but the human consciousness. I learned a great deal about human memory, learning, and behaviour which I found quite applicable to my own day-to-day life. Much like with biology, I began understand why I did the things I did and how thoughts came to be. More than anything, I finished the course with more questions than answers – more possibilities than conclusions. Through biology, I learned how the human body was adaptable in making slow changes and improvements. Through psychology, the power of human consciousness seemed endless.

As humans, we have been given these wondrous gifts of a body and of consciousness. To be able to utilize both of these things to as far as our hearts will fuel them is something of a grand vision I want to spend my entire life exploring. Just what can my body do next? What can I think up with what I constantly absorb from the endless colourful stimuli of this world? I don’t want to take for granted for what I have by default as a whole human being. The possibilities are numerous as the stars in the sky.