When I was eight years old, my brother got punched in the face. He cried, then I cried, not knowing at all why I was crying. This is my first memory of feeling what someone else was feeling, but I didn’t formally learn until I was 20, sitting in a design classroom, how fundamental empathy is to our lives. I’ve seen how empathy becomes actionable; I have sat before educators who believe practicing human-centered design makes the world a more livable, user-friendly, less chaotic place and have, as a result, dedicated their careers to teaching students from all majors how to use design thinking every day. Now, their efforts continue with me.
I hope to be a design educator for college students, but also for students who are still learning to read. I want to implement design thinking into elementary curriculums and build a generation of students who learn how to use empathy to solve problems all while learning how to do long division and diagram sentences. If we start teaching empathy after nap time, we will shape the most valuable part of our system: people. More understanding people create more understanding systems. There is something special within humans that makes us cry when those we love are punched in the face, but if we were taught what that feeling was and how to use it early in our lives, we could sooner begin to understand the circumstances, experiences, and suffering endured by our neighbors and begin solving our world.
For the past 3 and a half years, I have sat, stood, and listened.
I have sat in classrooms learning how stars die, how adrenaline makes for great dates, and how to curse in Danish. After all that sitting, I stood in front of the classroom, pitching artisanal yogurt ads, presenting my research about educational inequality in Peru, and putting up sticky notes about how we might redesign the future. And while I have sat and stood, I have listened to the hum of conversation and footsteps across our campus, in the heart of Austin, a city with a sound of its own. I have listened to my professors, classmates, and friends, and I’ve learned to listen to myself.
In these moments of sitting, standing, and listening, I’ve been shaped. Sitting in classrooms makes me want to one day walk into them as a professor and teach a class about connecting with others to build better systems. Standing in the middle of an empty street in Austin makes me want to shout, “The city is ours!” and pushes me to make this world of ours a great one. Listening to others when they speak makes me want to keep listening forever in hopes that my life’s work can make them feel heard. Because of these past 3 and a half years, I will continue to sit, stand, and listen, but also speak, teach, connect, play, learn, and love for years to come.