I don’t know where to start when it comes to my experience in this course so far. Unfortunately, I do know where to start because I have already finished the assignment, but I have refreshed the page by accident, and now I have to write it all over again with everything like hyperlinks and other stuff. So please don’t judge if my energy is a little lower during this writing. I am currently fighting the urge to use AI, but I feel like ChatGPT would never write anything close to what I said. I want to begin by saying that this class is one of my favourite classes since the beginning of my university experience. I only missed it once, and that is really HARD since this is an 8:30 class. I only ever took an 8:30 class in my first-ever semester; it was English 0210, and I had 12 absences, or at least that’s what I remember. However, I found out that the other class was lame. Because when it comes to this class, I feel excited, like I want to go to class, I want to attend, and know what is going on in the world that I don’t know about, and hear my friends’ thoughts about it, and share my own thoughts and ideas.

I now want to talk about the things that I learned through the classes, in-class activities, and assignments. I want to begin with the concept of othering, and then move on to the concept of bias. Othering is treating a certain group of people a certain way that makes them feel less human. For example, if you watch Chimamanda Adichie’s talk about othering. Chimamanda is a Nigerian writer. She is passionate about writing from the beginning of her days; quite literally, she started writing at 4. However, all she ever wrote about were white British people, because all the books she read didn’t represent her Nigerian culture but British ones. As a result, she decided to talk about her culture in her writings, and people found it very bizarre that black Nigerian people had cars and lived in modern houses. Now, to move on to the bias, bias is thought to be thinking or judging someone based on values that don’t actually represent the person. We watched a video in class, but I can’t seem to find it now. It showed a white American man who talked with a woman who looked asian, and he thought that she didn’t speak English just because of her looks. This judgment is based on a bias that he has. I was also intrigued when I read the article “How African is Northern Africa? “. It was such an experience reading this article, for this is a feeling I had, that I don’t belong to Arica as an idea. To actually have a feeling that you don’t know and then read a whole article about it was such an experience. I also want to share a very vibrant experience, which is empathy. Playing games like Spent, in which you put yourself in the shoes of a broke American citizen, sympathy is not like empathy; empathy is when you actually put yourself in the person’s shoes, not only to feel for them. A narrative choose-your-own-adventure game was a nice way to immerse yourself and feel like you are in the situation. And there was an activity we did outside of the class when everyone of us represented someone with specific characteristics. Different genders, social statuses, religions, etc.

Those were the things that I learned in class and through activities and assignments. I have also learned quite a bit about myself. Because whenever I now any new concept, I start to reminisce and see if I’ve been exposed to it before. Such as bias, I didn;t think that someone treated me based on some bias, but now that I know what types of biases and othering are. I think I have been treated in such a way several times while I was abroad because my mother and my sisters wear hijab, and people treat arab muslims differently. I also learned that I have no sense of belonging. I don’t belong to the African culture nor the Arab culture. I only belong to Islam and Egypt. As a result, my identity didn’t have a huge impact on GCC and Soliya, only facts and traits about myself, such as my hobbies, my siblings, and my studies. But this isn’t necessarily a bad thing; it can be a good thing because I am more flexible with my points of view since they aren’t tied to a specific culture, apart of my religion, of course.

Moving on, of course, I now take care of my interactions, since I don’t want to be acting on an unconscious bias, for sometimes you don’t even know you are biased, and I could use some of the questions I found deeply meaningful while playing the board in class games before the classes. Especially that card game where different moods represented different questions; those questions were clever. I wouldn’t come up with them in a thousand years, specifically that I don’t usually go into such detailed topics if I am talking to someone new. In addition, GCC and Soliya are such great experiences for my personality, since I personally like to talk to people from different cultures and backgrounds. So, I contribute a lot to Soliya, and we also did a WhatsApp group, my group and I. Where we help each other in the Soliya group content. The GCC and Soliya experience for me was practicing something I already love in a more organized way. I am so sad that this chapter of the semester is coming to an end and that we are now starting the AI literacy part. However, I am also glad it happened.

I usually don’t like to meddle with someone in such political arguments, because almost every political debate I’ve had, turned into a pointless argument, in which the other party and I get frustrated and we don’t accept the other point of view. I don’t mean to disrespect anyone, but I can’t help ot not to hate Zionists and everyone who backs what they do. We as muslims, whenever we imagine ourselves and our families in Palestinian’s places, our hearts ache and we feel helpless. For me personally, I am far from ready to enter that discussion, so if it started, I don’t think I would take part in it to avoid any frustrations and bad energy in the group. I would definitely need someone to support my point of view to talk instead of me when I feel like I am drained.