By Sharon Song ’28 (DCI Fellow)
As a Biology and Genomics major, I’ve spent most of my undergraduate training solidifying the idea that discussions are rigid and absolute. Every theorem must balance perfectly, every cellular pathway traced with care, every conclusion verified beyond doubt. Precision is a virtue; ambiguity, a shadow to be chased away.
When I joined the Deliberative Citizenship Initiative, I stepped into a space that felt both unfamiliar and quietly disarming, where answers did not wait at the finish line, and resolution was not the ultimate goal. At first, this deeply unsettled me; my instinct, honed by the drilling of data, proofs, and analysis, is to find certainty where it did not exist previously. But deliberation is not a problem to solve. It is a space to cultivate curiosity and to nurture mutual understanding.
There’s something profoundly human about deliberation. Unlike the structured world of hypotheses and proofs, deliberation breathes through the unique stories, emotions, and the intricate tapestry of lived experiences that deliberators bring to the table. It reminds me that knowledge isn’t built only in laboratories or lecture halls but built in moments of genuine listening and empathy. When people share how their lives have shaped what they believe, they’re offering a kind of truth that no experiment could ever capture or quantify.
DCI has taught me the value of slowing down, of resisting the pull towards immediate conclusions instead of lingering in the complexity and richness of a difficult conversation. I’ve learned that disagreement does not always have a negative connotation; there is an art to sitting with difference and silence, and in hearing another person’s perspective not as a challenge to defend against, but as a gift to receive with care.
What continues to surprise me is how this practice of deliberation has begun to reshape the way I see science itself. I once viewed science as something purely objective, detached from emotion or moral weight. But now I see how curiosity and compassion can coexist in guiding inquiry in ways that make discovery not just a pursuit of knowledge, but an act of empathy. Every scientific question begins with wonder; a quiet desire to understand something larger than oneself. And every discovery, no matter how technical, ultimately tells a human story. Deliberation and science, as I’ve come to realize, are not opposites but parallels. They are two distinct languages that seek the same truth, and both demand humility. Both remind us that learning begins when we acknowledge how little we truly know.
This is what I love most about deliberation: it restores humanity to the act of learning more about those around us. It reminds me that wisdom isn’t measured by how much we know, but by how deeply we listen and effectively engage with one another in fostering a fruitful conversation. In a world that often rewards quick answers, DCI has taught me something gentler, and perhaps more radical: the quiet courage of asking better questions.
