SOAN262 Paper: Abolishing "Borders"

SOAN262: Global Interdependence was a very interesting and challenging course which I took the Spring of my First Year here at St. Olaf. Much of the class was focused around the discussion of "borders" and how we can define them, if they even exist.  It played an important role in my AS journey as it helped me realize that Asia is not this crazy, exotic land, but rather, it is full of people, just like me. It is also full of a variety of cultures. It helped me break the stereotypes that I knew growing up, and really increased my interest in the field of Asian Studies. For my final paper, I made an argument for the abolishment of "borders" and explained how it could actually be beneficial. While I focused on the US-Mexico border in the paper, that does not make its significance any less. Thanks to this paper, I learned to accept people into our country and I learned how to look beyond stereotypes, thus furthering my love of foreign places and, more relevantly, of Asia.

AS333 Paper: Broken Video Games

AS333: What Is A Hero? was an intensive 300-level writing course, but it was also a hilarious and exciting adventure. We were required to write three papers throughout the semester. As it was a class about heroes, I got to write about my favorite video game franchise: The Legend of Zelda. It is essential to my journey through the field of Asian Studies because, similar to my SOAN paper, it allowed me to see that the Japanese are no different as people, despite having different cultures. The class and my papers in the class were fun but they also played a role in my breaking of Asian stereotypes, although particularly Japanese in this case as this game franchise is from Japan. The button below will bring you to a PDF of all three of my papers. Of course, I am most proud of my final paper, but the other two, despite their flaws, are still works of art to me. I had a blast writing them!