Concordia has five goals for liberal learning
- Instill a love for learning
- Develop foundational skills and transferable intellectual capacities
- Develop an understanding of disciplinary, interdisciplinary, and intercultural perspectives and their connections
- Cultivate an examined cultural, ethical, physical, and spiritual self-understanding
- Encourage responsible participation in the world
I think even before Concordia, I already had a love for learning and knowledge. Concordia just reaffirms it for me. With all the classes I have to take, I always took it with the mindset of that class look interesting, and I want to do it, not because I have to take it to fulfill my majors or minors.
Whenever I told anyone that I’m studying for my Neurochemistry class, people would look at me and kinda in shock, maybe because you don’t meet someone who studies Neurochemistry that often. I love neuroscience and I used to spend a lot of time back in Vietnam studying chemistry (and also realized that chemistry is not for me, but I still enjoy the subject) so I guess I will enjoy the class. Neurochemistry class was a challenge but a good one, as in the challenge is not horrendous that I want to quit, the challenge actually challenged me enough for me to keep my interest.
Some time along the lines while I was at Concordia, I finally came to terms with the idea that I wanted to pursue and make it my career. People have questioned me about what I will do in life with philosophy studies. This class is one of the first classes in science that I know the disciplinary, interdisciplinary, and intercultural perspectives are important not only in paper but also in real-life discussions about all of the topics.
My favourite part of the class must be sitting and reading the papers. I was terrified at first even though I had read scientific papers before but Neurochemistry papers are not something you can just go through and hope you will understand. I don’t know what exactly I did differently from other readings that I read, but I know that I know how to read a paper now, regardless of the topics.
This class also helped me in one of my other classes, Behavioral Neuroscience in terms of knowledge, of the interdisciplinary between the fields. I would take the class Neurochemistry regardless of whether it is a requirement for me or not. I will not recommend the class to anyone unless they know they like the field and/or want to take it. But I will tell them you will miss out on a lot of unique experience and valuable knowledge (not only in the field but also in fields that they do not seem to be related to) that no other classes (that I took) at Concordia can offer.
