Who Are You?

Assignment: Three-Minute Self-Introduction

Due: First discussion section
Grade: 5% of course grade (based on clarity, speaking, and staying within time limits)

For our first discussion section, each of you will give a brief three-minute presentation introducing yourself to the group. The goal is not simply to share basic biographical facts, but to help your classmates begin to understand who you are, what has shaped you, and how you make sense of the world.

You might consider addressing some of the following questions:

  • What experiences, communities, relationships, places, or commitments have shaped how you see the world?

  • What beliefs, values, or questions are especially important to you right now?

  • What kinds of disagreement have you encountered in your own life, and how have they affected you?

  • What do you hope to learn, practice, or better understand in this course?

  • What would help your classmates know you more honestly than a list of surface-level facts?

You do not need to answer all of these questions. They are meant to give you a starting point. You should decide what you are comfortable sharing and what would be most helpful for your classmates to know as we begin the course.

Please avoid giving only a résumé-style introduction or a list of favorites, such as your hometown, major, favorite sport, or favorite food. Those details are welcome if they matter to your story, but the purpose of this assignment is to go a little deeper: to help your classmates understand something about how you have been formed and how you are entering the conversations we will have together this semester.

Your teaching assistant will also participate in this exercise.

We will record and transcribe these presentations. We would then use AI tools to generate short summaries that could be shared with the larger class so that students outside your discussion section can learn some basic background about you.

This assignment is intended to help us begin the semester with greater trust, context, and attentiveness to one another. It will also give us a starting point for reflecting on the goals of the course and on how each of us approaches disagreement, belief, and community.