Inst 100, International Studies, was a pillar course that I completed in the spring of 2020. This semester was different than I had ever experienced with all of my classes being moved online in the middle of the semester due to Covid-19. This class was also very different because there were five different professors all teaching different topics throughout the course. The structure of this class made things interesting, but at times was hard to follow along with and become adjusted to the ways each professor wanted to run the class. The five topics that were discussed during this international studies course were economics, music, communications, biology, and philosophy. At times I struggled to find the relevance to my life and major depending on which topic we were discussing. I especially loved learning about the communications section. During the three weeks that we were learning about communications and how that relates to international studies I feel I learned a lot about myself and my peers. With nursing especially it is extremely important to know how to effectively communicate with one another. I feel this helped my greatly to realize that sometimes it is best to breath, and think about your response to others before you say it. Also learning about communication with people who may be from a different background than you was very important and helpful.
The artifact shown below is an outline to a presentation that we were to give for the communications section of this course. Although we did not end up getting to present due to being sent home for Covid-19 we still got to share our ideas with our classmates on a discussion board. Here we were to analyze and breakdown how the media portrays certain groups of people on popular media sources today. I loved this assignment and it was different than any assignment I had ever done before. I found it so helpful to be able to think about how certain groups are portrayed in the media and in the future to help break those stereotypes.