Student Yaxin Hu Experiences General Education at Morningside and Abroad

Supported by a grant from CUHK's General Education Foundation, Yaxin Hu recently attended a summer program at Oxford University where she built upon interests and skills she first encountered at Morningside College.

As a computer science major, Yaxin selected "Human vs. Technology" as her daily seminar, a course which investigated how technology has aided—or perhaps compromised—the pursuit of human advancement. It was her weekly tutorial on aesthetics, however, that significantly impacted Yaxin, for it "…opened the door for [her] to explore the world of fine arts," she commented. The course examined art from the last millennium in the context of philosophical, moral, and religious issues. After completing her term at Oxford, Yaxin studied abroad at Dartmouth College in the United States, where she took a sculpting class: "The tutorial at Oxford gave me the courage and confidence to take the course [at Dartmouth]".

Morningside's General Education program acted as a "foundation," as Yaxin explained, for her time at Oxford. In addition to reexamining philosophers like Immanuel Kant, a key theorist in the course "GEMC1001: Current Dilemmas and the Histories", Yaxin had the opportunity to revisit tutorial:

When I was a first year I didn't talk that much…the [GEMC1001] tutorial is very small, so at that time, I felt I didn't adapt to that situation...well. At Oxford, because I've experienced similar things, I had more confidence to share my thinking and also get used to the pace. Every week we read many readings, and we needed to have our own thinking.

Now that Yaxin is back at CUHK, she has continued with a fine arts course in digital imaging, but has yet to determine how this interest will impact her career choice.