Yousef Ihmoud

Univ 201
Reflection paper
For this reflection paper I interviewed my physics professor, Dr. Maria Udo, who has
been a teacher at Loyola for twenty years. Dr. Udo is Brazilian who grew up in a family that
consists of two religions. Her mother is a catholic and her father is Buddhist. As Dr. Udo grew up
she practiced both religions and also practiced to pray in both ways. Dr. Udos father always told
Dr. Udo that there is no religion better than the other, they all have good things and bad things
in each of them and they also have a lot of similarities in one another. He said the main thing is
to believe that there is a God. Dr. Udos mom also gave Dr. Udo a very good statement in my
opinion, she told her if someone goes to church every day and is very religious in church, but
does not behave themselves outside of church, there would be no point of going to church to
begin with. In my opinion that statement does make sense, if someone were to pray every day
and is very religious, but doesnt behave around people outside of church for example not
respecting others or the properties around you, there wouldnt really be a point. I believe that
God would always want us to be respectful and have our best attitudes in church as well as
outside of church.
One of the questions I asked Dr. Udo was what she thought of Loyola as a whole? Why
she thinks its better than all the other universities around us? Dr. Udo told me that in her past
twenty years of teaching, she has met students from many different religions, ethnicities, and
race. One example she gave me was if you go to Northwestern University you would see
majority of people are white and most of them are very rich. Though if you go to an ivy league
university you would notice that most students there got in because of their family background or

because a family member graduated from there. Here at Loyola, most of our students are first
generation college students in their family. Also Dr. Udo sates that she sees a few international
students in her classes which I think is awesome. Their parents work hard to bring them here and
give them a better education. Dr. Udo told me that in every class she had she would always have
a very diverse group and she had never seen any problems between students even when it came
to religion. Dr. Udo also told me that Loyola has always told them to respect all religions even if
Loyola is a catholic school. What really shocked me was that last week Dr. Udo noticed that
there is a holiday for Muslims, such as myself, called Eid and our holiday was on Thursday
which is a lecture day and what she has also noticed is that we have our first exam on that day.
Dr. Udo then came to me and one more Muslim girl and asked us if we would like to take our
exam on a Tuesday. When she asked us to postpone the exam I thought it was just for the two of
us, but she meant for the entire class. When she asked us that question it shocked me because
throughout my learning career I have ran through issues when it came to our holiday and school
and the thing that shocked me more is that I was afraid to ask but she is the one that asked us.
Another thing that has brought to my attention is the connection professors like to have
with their students. Every professor I have had at Loyola thus far always encourages their
students to come to their office hours, even if they didnt have any questions. I transferred from a
community college and one thing that used to bother me is that every time I used to go to a
professors office hour, most of the time that professor would not be there or if they were, they
would always be in a hurry to finish. I remember the first time I went to one of my chemistry
professors to ask a question I felt like she didnt like me asking questions and started to give me
attitude which made me feel very annoyed and startled.

Before transferring to Loyola a hand full of people told me that Loyola does not like
people from different religions other than Catholics and honestly so far my experience has
proven otherwise. I feel that Loyola, and its professors, tend to give their students this type of
connection of always being there for them. Loyola and its professor also have so many resources
for their students to help them. One amazing thing that Loyola also has is the hall of faith which
has a room for every religion to practice their prayers. I have experienced racism in the college I
transferred from but so far I have not seen a single sign of racism in Loyola.