At the beginning of the Spring quarter I didn’t know what the my future had in store for me. I didn’t know what I was going to learn or what kind of topics would be discussed. However, looking back at it now I can say that the Spring quarter has been the best experience in Humcore so far.
The view of the USS Midway from the deck
We started the quarter with a literary journal assignment and through it I was able to learn and retell the experiences of a Vietnam veteran who was a non-combat pilot. Through his experiences I was able to see that not all soldiers have to be on the frontlines to be considered heroes. Sometimes it’s the little things, like delivering mail, that matter. Plus I also got a chance to explore the USS Midway which was pretty awesome.
As the quarter progressed we delved into the the topic of remembrance and the role that memorials played in society. Things got pretty interesting, to say the least, when Kluger brought up a good point in her book “Still Alive”, where she stated that memorials aren’t to remember the event that is being memorialized but rather to provide a medium for the visitor’s to feel their humanity. This implies that for many the attention shifts from the event to oneself. Nonetheless, memorials are an important part of society in order to remember the past and prevent the same things from reoccurring.
The Vietnam Memorial serves to remind us of the steep costs of war
The quarter was about to come to an end our final major task was to write a research paper. This was a rather enjoyable assignment since we had the freedom to pursue our interests and focus on that. I ended up choosing Ultra as my topic and The Imitation Game as my artifact. I watched the film and I thought it was pretty entertaining until I started researching the events and found out that the film was an inaccurate portrayal of Turing. This discovery become the central part of my paper as I explored the reasons why the movie dramatized historical events. As the quarter comes to an end I leave Humanities Core with more knowledge than I came with and I am very satisfied with that. Humanities Core has been a rollercoaster from start to finish but im glad I was able to experience and be part of such an enriching course.
A UCI Student and his Blog 