On Monday, Dr. Michael Fowlin, a physiologist, performer, and poet, came to campus to discuss why titles and stereotypes don’t define us, including his own. Through a series of impressions designed to make the students exit their own sense of self, and see things from a different perspective, Dr. Fowlin asked them: what makes a person?
In modern conversations, discussions of unchosen traits such as race and gender define the conversation, but Dr. Fowlin asked us to look past these, to look at the defining stories that we tell ourselves, about ourselves.
In Dr. Fowlin’s own words: “What if our authentic self is all we have, and our pain is the gift that we use to change this world? And imagine, as a foundational premise, we are raised and trained to celebrate differences, as an inclusive process, not just a tolerable one.”
