About

An Essay to Situate You Into the Context of this Project:

Over the course of the past semester, the last in my undergraduate career, I was tasked with creating a implementing a capstone project for my final writing class. I don’t think I had ever been given that much freedom in an assignment before, so needless to say, it scared me shitless at first thinking about an abstract project with no discernible timeline or starting point. The professor assured us that everyone starts off feeling that way and there was “no reason to be scared, by the end of the semester you will have come to value the freedom you had over this project.” I am happy to report that he was right! I don’t think I’ve ever had a better time working on something for school. Maybe that says something about my school or my program or just university in general, but that’s a reflection for a completely different essay.

During the early phases of the class, we were tasked with coming up with four main ideas for the project. To be honest, I really liked all of the ideas for one reason or another, but I kept coming back to the idea of the individual and the collective and how that shapes so many of our experiences and how place factors into what we value about these ideas. Eventually, I sort of scrapped the idea of place in favor of focusing more heavily on the other concepts, though I am sure place factors into all of them somehow. Armed with the knowledge that I wanted to focus on the experiences of individualism and collectivism, I quickly scoured the internet for all kinds of insights into these phenomena. I looked at peer-reviewed academic articles, news sites, blog posts – whatever I could get my hands on – to find out more about other people and their experiences with these things. I also made a Google Form and sent it out to friends, family, and peers to see what they thought. I then reflected deeper on my own thoughts and experiences with these things.

In the end, I came to two main conclusions: 1. It seems like some experiences are just universal in a way that’s hard to imagine until you find yourself relating to the most personal, one-of-a-kind experience someone else is explaining, and 2. Individualism and collectivism are more closely linked than I previously thought. Using a few different personal stories, as well as the stories I received from those who submitted to my Google Form, I used this project to try to explore and sum up this link as best as I could. I am not claiming this is the be-all-end-all of musings about individualism and collectivism, but I would like to think it adds something to the body of work that exists about these ideas. At the very least, it was a really fulfilling experience to come up with a project idea, lay out a deadline, determine how exactly to go about it and what exactly the criteria are, and just do the damn thing.

Kailyn Simmons is a public policy major and writing minor at the University of Michigan. She enjoys listening to music, hanging out with her friends, and pretty much anything that can get her out of doing her French homework. She hopes you enjoy the little journey she went on over the course of making this capstone project.