Hello everyone, my name is Mabon Foo and I am proud to be an Arts One Seeing and Knowing student here at UBC.
Formalities aside, I would like to take the time to reveal some of the things that interest me and the reasons I chose Arts One.
First of all, I have always been keenly interested in the humanities and liberal arts. I was an IB student (which stands for International Baccalaureate) at my high school before I came to UBC, and I remember eagerly awaiting English and History class to learn about and even attending my Theory of Knowledge class at 7:00 am fueled not by coffee, but by an insatiable desire to discover the ways in which we attain knowledge. Perhaps I am exaggerating slightly with my enthusiasm, but I do see myself in the future pursuing something in this vein.
I also have a passion for music, both performing and writing. I have completed Grade 10 Royal Conservatory Piano along with playing clarinet in my high school concert band and written a variety of songs and classical pieces. I may get to sharing some of these once I start polishing and recording them.
Moving on to Arts One, in my opinion, one aspect that intrigued me was the sheer variety of disciplines that it encompasses. Not only does it include classic literature such as Shakespeare, but also works of philosophy, poetry, films and even graphic novels. What’s more, these texts span across over 2000 years of human history. This sheer breadth, I believe, presents an opportunity for us to look at these works through an open-minded approach, not through the lens of any particular subject area.
This aforementioned variety not withstanding, the other attractive feature of the Arts One program definitely has to be the writing and the discussion components. Most of the time spent in my high school English class involved reading the texts and conversations that quoted Sparknotes and Wikipedia in lieu of actual opinion (I may be exaggerating here again, but you get the point). I am truly glad to enter an atmosphere where people are both interested and willing to share their thoughts, be it insightful, dramatic or just plain off-topic.
I also see this course as an opportunity to refine my writing skills. Considering that I have to submit approximately 1600 word paper every two weeks, I don’t think that this is a course you can slack off on either reading or essay writing and still manage to scrape through with a passing grade. The sheer number of essays that you have to submit will probably ensure that I pay close attention to improving my writing style and hopefully eliminate mistakes that beginning academic writers make. If everything goes to plan, I will be up to the challenge of 2nd year writing assignments and beyond. If it doesn’t, well, I’ll probably figure something out.
I guess this is the end of my first post, so I hope you enjoyed reading through all this rambling. Have a nice day.