WINTER QUARTER

Winter Quarter, I signed up for my first Honors Core Class: Gender, Diplomacy, and Human Rights with Dr. Elise Carlson Rainer. ​​Dr. Rainer is a former diplomat, who has extensive experience in foreign policy and was even a Fulbright fellow in Sweden. Her class was difficult, and I felt challenged by it at first, but it forced me to work harder in a class than I had had to in quite a while. Her course made me realize an angle I had most loved in my prior LSJ courses: comparative politics and analyzing diplomatic relations. I knew this was something I wanted to continue to pursue, which I attribute to the reason I chose to pursue a Global Studies major rather than an LSJ one. That being said, this began a kind of back and forth internal debate about whether to pursue LSJ or International Studies. Spoiler alert, I ended up doing both. Dr. Rainer’s course concluded in a final presentation where we simulated being a representative of an NGO advocating for a country to adopt a Feminist Foreign Policy. This was a daunting assignment, not only because of the public speaking aspect but also because we had to dress professionally, and really adopt the mindset and attitude of someone addressing a foreign government. I learned so much in that class, and am grateful it pushed me out of  my comfort zone to pursue a major that at first was alien to me.