I held my Kentucky Kitchen Table on March 31th, 2019 at my friend’s apartment right off campus in Bowling Green. There was a total of seven people there: Amelia, Elizabeth, Gina, Kate, Lauren, and Tatum. I know each of these people on different levels and from different places. Amelia and Gina are the people I knew the least but have gotten to know them better through this assignment because of our discussions which have carried on outside of the classroom and kitchen table. Elizabeth is one of my close friends who is in another class of Honors 251 and I always have good conversations with her. She adds different perspectives to things that challenge my views and make me question why I believe what I do, much like this class has done. Kate is deeply rooted in her religious beliefs and had many insightful things to say during our meal. Kate lives in the apartment and is a religious major. Lauren is spunky, but considerate of what she says and also lives in the apartment. She is a biology major with a history minor. Tatum is thoughtful and always thinks of other people before herself. She lives in the apartment as well but will be going to pharmacy school next year in Birmingham, Alabama. Although we are all freshman and sophomores in college, the diversity came from our backgrounds and unique experiences we have all been through. I invited Amelia and Gina, who are in my class, to my Kentucky Kitchen Table in order to help them have a place and because I thought they had a lot to offer and add to the conversation. I think we all did pretty equal work and each gave our best effort to help facilitate the discussion we had. 

We had a variety of food including salad with strawberries, potatoes, and chicken for some people, but eggs for Elizabeth and Amelia since they are vegetarian. Gina led the conversation with the question, “what does citizenship mean to everyone?” and Amelia clarified by saying “other than paying taxes, voting, and obeying laws”. Kate responded first by saying she believed citizenship was being a member of a community and having obligations for that community. She said this can be local or global. This was impactful because she will be traveling to the Philippines for a mission trip this summer and wants to do mission work for her career. We all agreed that all of us that being in a community and being a citizen means being cognizant and caring of the things going on in your community. Lauren also brought up the point that knowing the history of the place you live and observing how that affects your community today. We then got into talking about how our history in America has changed our country today. Now our country is more about embracing where you came from instead of adjusting to American culture. Tatum talked about how it is important to encourage people to embrace their heritage in order to work towards the betterment of our society. Elizabeth chimed in saying the reason she felt the need to be a good citizen was because she is a woman. We were a little confused, but she expanded on this to say that she feels as though being a woman in America is a privilege. She said this because many women in other countries do not have the same freedoms that we do. Therefore, because of the privilege she has from her country, she feels the obligation to be a good citizen. This is a unique way of looking at citizenship, but definitely brought a different perspective to the table. After that, Kate talked about how global citizenship means fighting for the rights of people who are oppressed. From there, Gina asked the question, “what do you think are the best parts of our world today?” Everyone hesitated for a little bit and admitted that all of the worst parts about our world came to our minds first. Some of the positive things we came up with were medical advances and furthering human rights. We also talked about how people are becoming more aware of the problems in our world, such as climate change and global warming. We moved into another topic on immigration and politics. Kate discussed the current political climate, specifically, how politicians use inflammatory language. Adding to that, we talked about how harsh and disrespectful people are to one another in our society, especially if it is something they are passionate about. We agreed that our country could use more civility. We connected this back to practicing citizenship and said that communities and members of communities should encourage listening to differing viewpoints. Overall, the conversation was engaging and I got to learn from other people’s perspectives on citizenship.

I believe our diverse perspectives and opinions added to the depth of conversation over citizenship. I learned that when people are able to separate their opinions on religion and citizenship, we are able to have complex discussions that assess differing sides of a subject. I believe that the added element of talking about our religious views within our dialogue added to the perspectives given. The problems we talked about were all things that we could address by being good citizens. It is up to us as members of a community to fight for change. We all agreed on certain things but felt comfortable enough to share our differing opinions with the group. Something insightful that I took away from the conversation was that even if people have differing views, we can find common ground a lot easier than we think. The questions we were posing while eating was directly related to a lot of our class topics. Honors 251 is all about citizenship and how big of an impact or say we have over wicked problems in our society. As we got to know each other’s opinions more, we were more empathetic towards each other. This reminded me of the “Empathy Readings” we did outside of class and the discussions we had in class. Both times I talked about it, the atmosphere felt comfortable and like I was in a judgement free zone. This is also how it felt when we were having our Kentucky Kitchen Table meal which was calming for me. I feel like I know these six girls on a more personal level after this meal and have a wider view on the topics we discussed.