Claire Johnson (or, how I learned to stop worrying about my writing and think ecologically)

Apparently my papers have not been quite up to par. This has been holding me back. However, even now when the course is through, I still do not know what is wrong with them as a whole. Are they uninteresting? Poorly written? These answers do not satisfy. My online posts on the other hand feel lively, free, and each sentence has special importance—none of them are space fillers, none of them are trying to meet a quota. I don’t need three pages to say something interesting, I require a few sentences.

            So then the problem is…what? Why do all my papers suck? I’ve been told that they are messy, which is fair enough; I write my papers how I think. But they are not poorly written aside from being loosely constructed. I do have a particular way of writing, and this has been successful in the past, so what can really be so different now? This has been exceedingly frustrating. I have learned to cope by excessive thinking and ruminating on the development of my ideas in my head. If this course were solely about learning to think ecologically and holistically, I’d say I’ve aced it. Just these pesky papers holding me back…

            Moving on. Class discussions were the highlight of this class, and I think my effort and interest in this arena definitely showed. Especially towards the later half of the course our discussion styles really blended and I noticed that having the bounce back of discussion was an essential part of my development of thought. I would not have been so involved in my thinking had I not been able to discuss my thoughts freely with peers, and in turn have their insights influence me. I was present online, but somehow the online conversation is not as fruitful when it is confined to an internet space. Written dialogue in the form of online posts can be extremely helpful for real-life offline conversation during class. Having a post as a jumping off point helped get my brain moving within the context of the class that day, and I think my contributions in this area were interesting and helpful to others. It was a group effort, which helped me to think more ecologically.

            Solo endeavors, like the site sits, were less helpful to my thinking ecologically than group discussion. I don’t really think very many solid ideas came about while I was in the act of sitting, however they did allow me to express myself more creatively as I sat being slightly bored. Afterwards the real good nuggets came while I was writing my posts, but usually not during the sit. Other than being bored and writing poetry or sketching while I was sitting, my mind jumped quickly around and was easily distracted. I don’t really think I ‘got’ what a site sit was for—I’d think taking a walk in nature and being active would have sparked more inquisitive thinking. Mentally I was very involved in the group field trips, especially the geological survey. The expanse of time that has passed is something we should consider more often in our musings about nature and the ecological world—in our time we are very present and current, and there is something shallow and/or superficial about that kind of thinking—you really don’t get the whole picture.

            The reading of this course was closely linked with the discussion, which means that we never had enough time for all of it. In discussion of the reading, I had this sense that we would be getting somewhere in our discourse only to have it aborted for lack of time or the need to discuss something else. Though I thoroughly enjoyed most of the readings  (I do not include the linguists here), it often felt superficial because we rushed through so much and rarely got to really take full bites out of the material and savor it. Ruminating on readings is important not solely for the sake of understanding, but for memory as well.

            Overall, though my writing was not the best (and this was a writing course), I tremendously developed my thinking and my critical eye. I truly feel that (this will sound very cliché) I am now a fuller and more thoughtful person after all is said and done. 

Now the world will know all of my secrets. As a last note I am still unsure about this whole "public intellectual" thing. The internet is clogged with an excess of this kind of stuff. Does the world really need to know about my experience during freshman English? It is all so trivial.