of light

Beat Reporter Madalyn Van Eaton

If I were to walk up to you on the corner of the street and ask, “What does it mean to be human?” what would your response be? Even though I have been human for a grand total of 21 years, I still find myself scrambling for the right words to adequately answer such a complex question. I was first asked this question when I studied abroad in Latin America the spring of my sophomore year. Jeremy Daggett, one of the directors and professors of the program, centered his humanities course around the question of what it means to be human. Daggett challenged all of his students to critically contemplate their existence as an individual and to meditate on how their existence affects other people.

No one in my life had ever directly asked me to unpack the various layers of humanity or to explain how I viewed humanity. The semester I spent in Chile and Peru ignited a curiosity within me that still burns today — I want to uncover the mystery of what it means to be human. However, I cannot