Major Decisions

One of the greatest revelations of my time in college so far has been just how many academically-minded, motivated, and unique people there are on a campus like UConn’s. I study both political science and communication because I love both fields, and I enjoy making connections between the two subjects while appreciating them for their differences. Political science can be focused on facts, when you need to gather data or confirm a statement to answer empirical questions of fact. Communication tends to employ interpretations of hypotheses and theories as a method of answering philosophical questions of how and why people communicate with each other. These observations are not rigid, however. Political science absolutely also focuses on questions of interpreting the how and why of political issues, just as communication relies on facts and seeks to make concrete findings backed up by data and information. They have much more in common than you might think.

Just as we tend to make assumptions about the reputation or methods of a scholarly discipline, we do the same things with people. We think that people are different from each other based on outward appearances and our limited experiences, when that is often not the case. Two things that appear to be totally different are in fact more similar than imagined if you look for the things that they have in common or unite them, not what divides them. By taking a more “scholarly” approach to learning about others, not unlike what we do in Humanities House, we can find common ground with others and treasure individuality.