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B.S. in Actuarial Science

Otterbein University Course Catalogs

2013-2014 Undergraduate Catalog 
    
    Mar 28, 2024  
2013-2014 Undergraduate Catalog [Archived Catalog]

SYE 4002 - Inventing the Self and the Future

Hours: 4
The world we experience is the product of our individual perceptions. We invent this world through our emerging sense of self. This development is not created in isolation; rather we incorporate influences of family, gender roles, ethnic heritage, personal surroundings, and culture. We accept and react to those influences; we frame personal myths and rituals; we shape our strengths and dreams; and from these, we devise our self-driven perceptions—our worlds—forming narratives of our individual pasts and our futures. SYE 4002 is an inquiry; we will discover the individual worlds we have created—the individual selves we have invented and will invent—largely through personal narratives which will serve as a means of tracing the development of the selves we inhabit and projecting the selves we will create into the future. Then as part of this process—through a service-learning experience—we will take a group of senior citizens through a similar set of brief narratives through which they will also examine their personal narratives. We will write a series of life stories—memoirs/personal essays—all from the class by class series of brief personal reflections—some of which will be written in class—and a final essay aimed at projecting our individual pasts and our learning at Otterbein into our futures. Self-reflection and insight gained from these explorations will help us to understand our individual places in the Postmodern, Post-9/11 world where truth is not found, but made. The class will be conducted, primarily, as a workshop.