All about me

First and foremost, Happy New Years to everyone. My name is Enrique and I am currently a senior at UCF. I am from the Central American country of Panama. I was only born there, but I have been living my whole life in Central Florida. I enjoy maintaining my grades and going out with anyone willing to have a good time. I really love competition in sports, but recently I have been hindered due to major injuries. I have had three knee surgeries, related to the meniscus and the ACL, and I have dislocated my shoulder three times which resulted in surgery. All for the love of sports, mainly track and field.

Time has passed by very fast and hopefully this coming December I will graduate with a Bachelors of Science degree in Interdisciplinary Studies. My areas of study are computational science and humanities. Within Humanities I will focus on womens studies. My minor is math education, because I want to teach and I enjoy helping young students. I am currently a substitute teacher. This is perhaps the best job that I could have because it exposes me to the education field from the best point possible, the teachers. From elementary to high school, I am gaining plenty of experience. Yet, one of the reasons I am very greatful for having this job is the exposure to the administration. From principles to deans, I am networking and making a name for myself and creating a positive image among the people that I could one day be working with.

My story with womens study is somewhat different. Ever since I graduated college I knew that I wanted to major in a couple of things, but I did not want to take on the work load or sacrifice so much time. It was not until last December that I realized that Interdisciplinary Studies was perfect for students like me who wanted to graduate with various backgrounds in multiple fields of study. After choosing my minor and my first area of study, computational science, I did not know what else to do with my life. Yet, after thinking about it and after considering different factors and benefits I chose womens studies for a couple of reasons.

I believe that taking this course and others that follow, will show me more about the "other side." The other side to me is a completely different world. I want to better understand the perspective of women and really get to grasp how they think and why they think in that fashion. As of now I can not specifically say what benefits will come out of this course, but I think that is the beauty of it. I am sure that whatever I recieve from this class, it will enable me to understand things that I could have not even come across. The little bit that I know about women, from an educational standpoint, is from developmental psychology. It has been through developmental psych that I have learned that from the time that children are little, boys play with trucks and girls play with dolls and begin life long relationships through talk and dialogue, that this is where men and women begin to think differently.

To conclude, I know that by the end of this course I will have gained more knowledge about women and the feminist movement than I would have ever though possible. However, one of the things that I am most curious about, and hopefully this course will tell me, is, "why is it that so few males are enrolled in a class like this?" Of course I am only saying this because my current class has a few males, but I believe that even in the large scale there are still very few men taking this course. I have always wondered why is it that men are not inclined to a course like this. To me, this seems like a great opportunity to learn about women and break down barriers or myths to better establish a world of equality.

*I have read and understand and agree to the terms of the course syllabus and the blogging protocols.
-Enrique Irizarry