I’ve learned over time that the best moto in life is “Have a plan…Until you don’t”. This I believe has always been the way I functioned in my life, but I’ve only recently truly come to recognize and accept this in the last few years. I always believe you should have a goal, a direction you’re going, something you want to be able to do in the future. From when I was little that goal, in the broadest sense, was to help people. However cheesy this sounds, I’ve stuck with this as my ultimate goal, but that is the only thing that has stayed consistent up till now. Pieces have been added and taken away and then added again along the way. When I was younger, I was sure I wanted to be a doctor. No one could convince me otherwise. I wanted to help people and that was the only way I was going to be able to do that…until I realized it wasn’t. Until I realized I didn’t like biology very much and if I had to spend one more day talking about plants I….
Anyway, I thought I wanted to be a doctor, until I realized I didn’t anymore. Lucky for me I had this existential crisis in high school and was able to figure out my new direction through a bit of dumb luck when a took a competitive congressional debate class and began learning about the Bill of Rights and the supreme court. My plan changed. I wanted to help people by being a lawyer. That’s where the UW came in. Fresh out of my premature life crisis I was starting out on a new path, but I knew that I wanted to approach it differently. I wanted to learn how to incorporate psychology (therefor keeping the part of me that enjoyed science) and political science (this new interest I feel fueled me) into a comprehensive learning experience. In other words, an interdisciplinary experience. What better way to accomplish this – and feed my inner over achiever – than by joining the interdisciplinary honors program. Little did I know that this essentially quick almost last-minute decision to apply would shape my entire college experience. This decision changed the course of my life in two distinct ways. Entering the honors program set me on a career path that would lead me to an amazing job right out of college. The honors college would also greatly influence my academic life, planting the seeds of a theory that would greatly inform my senior thesis. First, the honors college introduced me to my future boss on the first day of classes freshman year. This is a little crazy to think about and to see written on paper but it’s true. The first class I decided to take was a course titled Civic Power. It was a small 2 credit course with about 15 people. I was one of the last to register and seeing as it was one of the only open courses that sounded interesting to me, I decided to take it - despite the total lack of description beyond the title. The professor, a man named Eric Liu, had us writing a short essays every week on a different book, article, or topic. It was definitely more than 2 credits of work, and my friend and I (a friend I would keep through all my years of college) would complain every day about this fact. Still, it was one of my favorite classes, so when the quarter was nearing an end, I decided to approach Mr. Liu about volunteering at his non-profit. He told me to apply for the internship instead. I wasn’t planning on working my first year of college. I told myself I would give myself a chance to settle in and get used to college life, but I applied anyway and was offered the position. I wasn’t going to work…until I was. I had no idea what I was in for. This internship was amazing. It was my first ever job, but the team – made up of only five people including me – trusted me. They basically threw me into the water and hoped I could swim, and I did. I picked up quickly. I learned more about myself and my organization skill through this internship than I had known before, and I grew to love non-profit and event work. This set the tone for future internships. I would go on to pursue non-profit event coordination and programs internships through the next four years. These internships not only solidified my passion for this work but also revealed to me my skill for management and coordination of programs. I had found something I was really good at, something I really loved, and I knew I wanted to continue to pursue this work. When my Junior year came to an end, I was scrambling for an internship. I had a part time unpaid position with the ACLU, so I needed something to provide some sort of income. As I was combing through job sites, a familiar organization showed up; “Citizen University looking for a programs and communication intern”. Despite initial hesitations about returning to familiar grounds, it was impossible to ignore this coincidence. I applied, and returned again for one last internship, which would turn into my first full time job as the Youth Programs Coordinator. I am so excited to be working here for the next two years, mentoring teenagers across the country in grass roots organizing movements and working to up civic participation in young adults. I still want to be a lawyer, and plan to pursue law school after my time with CU is done, but I’m grateful to be where I am now with an amazing organization doing something, I am extremely passionate about. All this began with one class in my first quarter that I took by chance. Secondly, and the most obvious way that the honors would influence my life and has, is academically. There are two distinct experiences, also in my freshman year, that influenced the path I took going forward. In my first spring quarter, I signed up for an honors class called Speculative Fiction. This is a relatively unassuming title, and I decided to take it because I wanted to take an English-type class as I missed reading fiction books, but this class was more than just a fun English class. This class was taught by an anthropology professor, who introduced the idea of socionarratology. This is the idea that the narratives we tell, specifically the fictional narratives we tell, are often a reflection of what we are dealing with as a larger society. This caught my attention. In studying political science, I had begun to develop my own theory that narratives we tell are extremely important to how we perceive our surrounding and our realities, but I was more interested not in fictional books, but speeches and newspaper articles and collective memory. Words are powerful, I knew that to be true, and I was looking to see how this effected everyday political life. I received my chance to do a firsthand study of in the discrepancies between political narrative and realities when I took an opportunity to study abroad with honors in Berlin Germany during the height of the Syrian Refugee Crisis. I knew that the political narrative in Germany was a sort of redemption narrative. Angela Merkel was pushing the narrative of redemption of Germany through the acceptance of refugees, and the imploring of other countries to do the same. This was looked at with great admiration from many in the international community, but I found that on the ground, in my experience woring a refugee camp and speaking with those who ran them, the narrative Angela Merkel was trying to espouse was not as faithfully held by German citizens. The Holocaust was central to the narrative conflict I found. While many held incredibly prejudicial and racists beliefs of refugees, there was a belief that since the holocaust was over and the evil that had corrupted the German people was gone, there was no more racism. There was not even a word for Racism in German. The disruption of truth by narrative in this case fueled my interest further, particularly when it came to Middle Eastern Politics. I had to know more. Upon returning to UW I took every opportunity to learn about political narratvives in the middle east, eventually honing in on conflict narratives. I began to create a theory in my head, a theory that the narratives a people uses to explain their countries action, to explain their beliefs, to explain their history, can lead to dehumanization and radicalization, an eventually to conflict. Narrative and words are powerful, and on the national level can be dangerous if backed by a corrupt ethos. I am now in the process of exploring this idea through my Senior thesis on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict and collective memory. This paper, although extremely challenging and difficult, is something I am incredibly proud of. It is the synthesis of my own experiences as a half-Palestinian half-Lebanese woman in the middle eastern community and the theory I have used to explain the conflicts I have seen as central to this identity, but I believe this theory can be applied to much more. As we say at Citizen University, power and narrative on their own are neutral – they are neither good nor bad – and while I am studying how narratives have been used to justify conflict, in my job I am putting my theory to work to explain how narrative can push forward political causes. In my position, I have the amazing opportunity to train young people in grassroots organizing and program creation. The goal is to give young people the confidence to be active in the political space by teaching them about power, character, and now the power of narrative. Going forward, I still plan to be a lawyer, as I believe this is a true calling for me. I truly believe that my theory on narrative is useful in the legal field, particularly in the field of criminal justice which I intend to pursue, but I have found a job I truly enjoy, and before I commit to school for another three years I feel I owe it to myself to pursue this path, and learn everything I can from my work at Citizen University. I have a plan, but I’m open to it changing, and although I’m more confident in my end goal than I have ever been, it has only helped me to be open to a changing and winding journey. Going forward the plan is to be a lawyer, but the pathway there is open to interpretation. I have a plan, until I don’t, and you'll end up where you are supposed to be.
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