It is difficult to only mention a handful of things I learned in this class even though we’re only half way through. Since one of the main topics we covered revolved around identity, I believed all my learning outcomes would be purely about myself and understanding the complexities of my own biases. However, I found that an overwhelming amount of information I gathered over the semester was intellectual and can be easily used throughout my university career and life in general. An example of this was reading Lina Mounzer’s article titled “Finding Truth and Beauty.” I had never considered that translating a text can be a very personal, demanding task that can have ethical implications. It had never occurred to me how much a text can be changed when translating it to another language. This was strange to discover because a very prominent example in my life was how when I read the Quran in Arabic, it is always so much more powerful than its translated version in English.  

I also learned there is a very distinct difference between empathy and compassion. I had often mixed them up or used them interchangeably but I realized that empathy is putting myself in the shoes of someone else while compassion is taking action in response to empathy. An example of this is when October 7 happened, we all immediately felt so much pain and put ourselves in the place of Palestinians. But most people wanted to take action so money and resources were donated as well as aiding Palestinians who came to Egypt. An exercise we did in class that also helped solidify this idea is when we played with the empathy toy. Some people were either blindfolded or hand-tied while trying to build blocks in a certain formation. Although I didn’t try it for myself, I put myself in the place of someone who was blind and immediately felt how difficult it must be not only to describe an object without seeing it but also living in a world where most people are sighted and most people don’t accommodate to that disability. An action I could take would be for example, asking blind students if our campus is lacking a certain service they need and trying to implement it. A question about this topic that I have however is how can I have empathy without feeling pity for someone? As someone who has gone through some struggles, pity is sometimes one of the worst reactions you can get from someone because it makes you feel helpless. I predict, however, that the Soliya experience will help with this because there are all types of people in my group with different cultural backgrounds and upbringings. Talking with them might give me more perspective on how they would like to be treated. 

For one of the make-up classes for this course, I chose to go to a panel discussing AI in different fields and I was surprised by how much I learned. First of all, I was shocked but interested when I found vastly different views across the panel regarding AI. Maybe this is a misconception that I have but I thought most of the professors in AUC would have the same view on how AI should be used and moderated. I found that AI is actually helpful in fields like engineering and architecture because they need it for tasks and it helps with time and efficiency (mostly because the tasks are often systematic and non-personal). However, professors in liberal arts fields and humanities had an opposing view that AI can take from a student’s personal voice and can often give biased or stereotyped outputs. These were very interesting views for me because although I thought about the benefits and dangers of AI before, I had never thought about it in this context, especially from an educator’s point of view. Overall, this panel taught me a lot about AI from different perspectives but I still wonder why some people are not concerned about the future of AI at all. Soliya has enriched my knowledge about this topic because everyone is from different fields and areas around the world so it’s interesting hearing everyone’s take on AI especially from a students perspective because I can relate to them easily. 

In class, we watched a TED talk titled “The danger of a single story” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. When watching this video, it was my first time being introduced to the concept that a marginalized individual can have stereotypes and biases against themselves. I always believed that it can’t be possible for this to happen because that person would know and understand their group the best. However, I learned that it is entirely possible if the person is mostly consuming knowledge from the west. I also learned that when someone stereotypes another, it’s hard to imagine that other person as anything other than that stereotype. For example, the speaker was talking about a house boy that was working for her family. When she visited his village she was very shocked to learn that his brother can make baskets. This example explains the dangers of a single story, because she only ever heard how poor they were, it never occurred to her that anyone in his family will have the capability or skill to make something. The main take-away from this talk was that everyone’s lives and cultures are composed of several stories, and by hearing a single story, we risk critical misunderstandings. 

Because of this course, I realized I have a few internalized biases and stereotypes that I wasn’t aware I had. When I was put in situations where I closely discussed issues with students around the world, whether they were from Soliya or Kenyon College, I realized I kind of alienated them at the beginning because I thought they were very different from me due to our cultural differences. However, I found out that we share a lot more experiences and ideas than I thought. During Soliya, I learned a lot about issues facing everyone specifically in their countries. I was surprised to find that we all mostly shared similar political, social, and economic issues in our countries. Before that, I had a bias where some countries in the west were idealized in my mind, when in reality, they are a lot more similar to us than I anticipated. I think my identity will definitely affect my interactions with people from different cultures because as a Muslim, hijabi, half-Palestinian girl, I usually have my guard up when talking to people from different cultures because I don’t know how they feel about topics I’m very passionate about and I like avoiding conflict. 

I would like to also add that because most of the media I consume is from the west, I have an internalized bias where I believe someone from the west is smarter or more skilled than someone in the Middle East. I’m hoping that with increased interaction with people from the west, I can grow more confident in the Arab world because I am aware of how extremely skilled we can be. A question I still have about myself is what will it take for me to be able to freely express my opinion on a controversial topic because as I stated, I opt for avoiding conflict so I would make decisions based off of that. 

When I was first beginning the class, I was very interested in knowing how I’d interact with people from different cultures because I never really had the opportunity to do so throughout my life. But after the experiences in this class, I learned that it takes me a bit to warm up to someone but when I do, I can be very open and accepting to other’s ideas. My only question would be how can I speed up this process of warming up to someone?

I think to be a good global citizen one of the most important things is to be open-minded. I feel because of my upbringing, I’m kind of close-minded, for example when choosing who to talk to or what topics to discuss when meeting someone new from a different cultural background, I tend to choose someone I think is similar to me rather than someone different from me. I feel like this is something I need to work on and Soliya will definitely help because I end up in situations where I have to talk to someone very different from me only to end up learning a lot more. 

I think if the issue of Palestine came up in Soliya I would expect the majority to share a similar view as me. I believe I would be more confident to speak my opinion specifically because I have a personal connection to it. If I were to direct the discussion I would want to know what people knew about the conflict in Palestine before it became more “mainstream” after October 7 and how much their perception changed if they did any research. I honestly don’t think I would need much support regarding this issue because I’m very passionate about it but if I did, the only support I would need is knowing people share the same opinion as me and will add critical points I may have missed.

In conclusion, I went into this course thinking it’s just another required course that I have to get done but I’m happy to say I was very wrong. I ended up learning things about myself and people around the world that I believe will help me throughout my life, specifically in interacting with people who are different from me and discussing topics where we might have opposing views. 

AI was used to improve grammar. Click here for my conversation with Gemini.