During the first two weeks of our Global Citizens program (one of the 4 streams of CAP), we were all sitting in class wondering what a Global Citizen actually is. It was not until we were assigned a 50-word assignment to search for that answer. From studying all these disciplines I have learned that a global citizen is an individual who is not only involved with his or her own concerns in their confined community, but also seeks information to get involved in a global aspect, economically, politically, religiously, and socially in order to be a part of an emerging world community and truly feel like a ‘global’ citizen. So far, I am personally enjoying this program because of how it helps me set a career path (I hope to major in International Relations) by giving me certain frameworks to start from.
In the past, Sociology, Political Science, and English were their own interdisciplinary studies with their own particular perspective and concepts, but I feel the three studies have slowly emerged into one (the “Global Citizen”). We quickly realized this through our joint lecture that I had with my Global Citizens stream. Dr. Luger had always said she would struggle if she had to write a Sociology or Political Science paper, and the reason behind this could be because she is in her own disciplinary study of English. As a Global Citizens student, in comparison to the professors who are focused within their own discipline, we begin to see things differently because we get to study all three. We start to realize that the three start to slowly intertwine with each other and the concepts slowly relate to one another. We even get confused or lost occasionally when we try to see from merely one discipline’s perspective; we simply cannot see from one without the others! From what I have learned in class, Sociology is the science of society whereas the Political Science is mainly concerned with the country and government, yet they are similar because the first is humanities’ well being and the latter is how societies are affected and organized legally. Political Science thus comes from within the field of Sociology.
All in all, I am looking forward to what the rest of the program entails, and I hope by the end I can figure a more specific focus towards International Relations, either being the sociological or political aspect!
– Martin
