I would say my philosophy story starts the way any story worth telling starts: with a good google search. Senior year of high school, I knew I was headed to UAB did not know what I was going to study. I was leaning toward majoring in psychology until hearing the intended majors of my other classmates and to my absolute shock, I found others planned to major in psychology. I refused to share such similarly with my classmates and thus went to the interwebs, looking up majors similar to psychology. Okay, majors that started with a p, that’s similar. I found philosophy and was content that none of my graduation classmates shared the major, but I was still uncertain if philosophy was for me. I had never taken a philosophy class before, and it was not till my first class with Dr. Welch I knew I knew I was in the right place. Like many, before I found my heartbeat in the realms of philosophy.

Every UAB philosophy class I have taken has provided me with knowledge I implement into my life, and I believe philosophy is so encompassing of what it means to be a thoughtful human. Most beautifully, I have learned from philosophy is that I could always be wrong. Strange sounding but hear me out. Sometimes we encounter people that are unmoving because they are so certain they are right, but philosophers acknowledge our limited knowledge, that we cannot know anything for certain. So wrongs are okay, and there are no such things as stupid questions. For the girl who would not speak in class for fear of being wrong or asking the nonexistent foolish question, it feels as though philosophy gave me my voice back.