LJ's blog

For my project I did a prezi called Class for Dummies. I was kind of trying to mimic the series of books “blank” for dummies. I found that explaining class is a difficult endeavor because there are so many elements that determine an individual’s class. I tried to convey in my prezi that class is very complicated and not always based on the things that society tells us their based on. I used the prezi to take the reader on a journey through the concepts I’ve learned about class in ESEM. My target reader is all of society because it is relevant information for people with money and people without and those somewhere in the middle.

http://prezi.com/sr_m-hpllgpp/class-for-dummies/ 

The interview process was really interesting. I did not expect some individuals to be as honest as they were. One interviewee, without being asked, told me some very personal facts I did not expect. In addition, it felt a little odd to be interviewing students when I myself am still a student. Furthermore, when writing the essay I kept thinking about how hard it is to anaylze research I collected myself. When reading an article the author explains what they researched for you. I believe this is why this essay was particularly hard to write because I had to explain what my research meant or even what my purpose was. Overall, it was a learning process that was a little but scary but I learned a lot about how to interview individuals.

I thought Friday's forum brought to light a lot of issues and solutions. When we had to describe an instance of how class mattered on campus I shared about my custom group's trip to Hope's Cookies. During customs week my customs people decided to take us to Hope's Cookie's for a fun activity. When we got there I noticied that a few people didn't get anything to eat. During the forum I realized it was wrong of our entire customs group to assume that everyone could afford to buy over priced cookies and ice cream. Therefore, it's important for class based discussions to happen within the customs group and for it to happen in HA and customs training. I'm glad for me this came to light at the forum and I was able to talk to a bunch of different people about how they saw this experience.

I would hope that the Friday forum would result in a better understanding of how to appreciate class differences on campus and how to be respectful of them. Despite anyone’s background we can still learn from one another and build really strong relationships and I think by understanding where someone comes from helps strengthen that relationship. I would also hope that the participants In addition, just acknowledging the fact that we are all facing life and life can really suck sometimes.

I decided to take my photo in Canaday library because that's where I do most of my studying. In my paper I discussed how comfortable and accepted I feel when I'm in the library. Furthermore, this is exactly what M. Carey Thomas wanted the library space to accomplish. However, do I feel accepted in the space because I would have been somewhat accepted during M. Carey Thomas's time? I am curious if students who do not fit the stereo type that M. Carey Thomas wanted feel as comfortable as I do? In addition, is Bryn Mawr today as diverse as we claim to be? As Sarah pointed out in class, only thirteen percent of the student that attend Bryn Mawr have a family income of $60,000 or less. I hardly think of this as true diversity.

*Picture is attached below.

In class out classed has put me on my own personal barometer. I am constantly reevaluating my opinions on the effects of class and education. This can be frustrating but, I believe it is a good thing for me because, it means I have kept an open mind throughout the class. This has in turn caused me to reconstruct my writing process. Now before I begin my essays, I look over class notes and the notes I make on the articles and I write down all of my thoughts and ideas. This helps me keep my essays focused because I have found it is easy to start writing and get caught up in several different ideas and topics. My goal at the beginning of this class was to improve my writing skills. This is still one of my goals but now I am more interested in trying to figure out what the correlation between education and class is and how the disparities that this causes can be fixed. I think my classmates are looking to get the same things out of the class, in addition, I believe some of them might also be working on improving their discussion skills. Overall, if I could add anything to the class, I would have everyone come prepared to discuss three different ideas or concepts from the reading that they prepared ahead of time. I think this would help further the discussions because people who are not as comfortable with the discussions would have talking points to start them off. Beside’s this I am still unsure about how I feel with both classes reading each other’s posts.

I am very much looking forward to our visit to the high school. I am honestly not sure what to expect because having gone to high school outside of the U.S. the only idea I have of what public school will be like is from movies and TV shows, which is probably not that accurate. I am interested to see if the fact that a test is required for entry will make a difference in the motivation of the students. Also, if there are teachers and students who are burned out I would like to know specifically what causes this. I agree that this trip should be one of equal exchange, but I am not completely sure what I bring to the visit besides a “college outlook”. It will be interesting after my visit to reflect on what I felt they learned from me, because it will most probably not be what I originally expected

The video we watched in class was interesting for me because at my school no one was criticized for being smart. We had a huge amount of diversity with kids from all over the world. Also, I believe it is because it was private schools were everyone was from the same socioeconomic class. Because of this, no one race was seen as less intelligent than the other. Therefore, this video, for me, for me brought to light the fact that no every school is as fortunate. Overall, I thought the video was an excellent way for this young woman to get her point across. I thought it was clever how she mixed very vulgar words with highly eloquent speech; it defiantly helped her to get her point across. Even though I thought it was clever however, one of my classmates stated that “it was just another black person complaining about the situation”, and since I am not black and I have not experienced this within my school, I feel that my opinion is insignificant.

I found this paper particularly difficult to write. The reason for my difficulties was my trouble determining what education is. Everyone has access to some sort of education whether it be education on street politics or Shakespeare. When writing my paper I decided to focus only on academic education because this is the education that is less available for the majority of people. My claim stated that there are two main ways to receive this kind of education. The first is by having the financial stability to afford academic education or second, by having some sort of mentor to guide you there. I used Rodriguez and Luttrell’s pieces to support my claim. Though, there are other factors to whether or not you have access to academic education, such as where you live, the base of it all is money and whether there is someone you trust who values academic education.