Mandy Millington

HUMA 1100, Barton

7th Period

5/16/21

Manifesto Course Reflection

In learning more about humanities and the way humans behave, I surprisingly took quite

a few risks in my personal life in studying. As best I tried to learn and reflect, I had so many

prying eyes of my friends and family who disapproved of what I was learning. If I ever tried to

discuss with anyone about what I was learning, I rarely had people agreeing with the ideas I had

explored in my personal readings. It was surprising how open my eyes had to be when nobody

else managed to open theirs. Often watching videos or reading the homework assignments about

different opinions would lead to disagreements with my family or misunderstandings about the

subject learnings. I found myself not wanting to do my homework at times, because I knew it

would cause problems if someone else read over my shoulder and decided to combat the belief. I

would find other ways to watch videos and read the topics to avoid the contention, doing

homework in private rather than out in the open of my living room, or putting in headphones

while I worked. It was a bit frustrating that I couldn’t align with my own families on some topics

of readings, but I realized that as a part of the younger generation I’ve been much more

accustomed to opening my eyes to new and different perspectives.

Along with the occasional contention, I had often found myself having to get out of my

comfort zone with class learning. Some of the topics I wasn’t super familiar or comfortable with,
and just had to power through to the end. There were definitely points of view in the readings

that I didn’t agree with and still don’t, but the course helped me open up my eyes a lot more to a

lot of things I disagreed with before that I’ve now had the opportunity to rethink. A lot of the

times I would have to read, think, then reread to really understand the message and why I should

be reading it. It helped me understand why my family and friends could get so bent out of shape

about what I had to read. If they didn’t understand it or agree with it, it made them

uncomfortable. Similarly, a lot of the readings made me uncomfortable until I looked into the full

context and began to better understand it. Overall, the readings really helped me think in a

broader perspective and see how other people see different views of humanity.