Interests in Academia
Being the fourth of five kids, I always felt a lot of pressure to succeed, despite having parents that only ever encouraged me to do what I wanted to do, but do it well. My oldest brother was in the University of Waterloo’s Systems Design engineering program and my other brother was in the University of Waterloo’s first class of Mechatronics engineering, so as I prepared for university I gathered all the necessary classes to begin the journey to becoming an engineer as well. In my senior year of highschool, I discovered that these sorts of things were not my passion and I decided to pursue a degree in the Arts faculty, like my sister.
I soon discovered that, unlike my sister, I did not have an interest in sociology, or many other arts classes. I did, however, become drawn to philosophy. What I found particularly interesting about this subject was the application of highly theoretical thinking to the very subjective topic of us, people. The impossibly difficult task of trying to understand very complicated subjects like ethics and morals through the application of very simple broad ideologies was, to me, impressive and insightful, even when they turn out to be wrong.
Within the field of philosophy, I instantly became drawn to the subject of morals and ethics. From there I became interested in political philosophy, a field that has shaped my way of thinking significantly. In my senior years I was able to explore theories on human rights, international justice, and war. Throughout my undergraduate degree I drifted toward not any specific, often polarized, viewed, but rather a synthesis of both idealism and realism. Perhaps the highest pride of my undergraduate degree was the lengthy paper I wrote devoted to the notion that simple solutions that improve the status of women in the world could mitigate, in vast proportions, the occurrence of violence everywhere.