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In Class/Outclassed is a class that everyone can gain an education experience from. In my case I’m learning how to become a better writer.My ideas overflow every paper that I get confused and start contradicting myself or the claim gets lost in a jumble of words. My main goal for this semester is to get my point across as simply and understanding as possible. Before taking this class I was a quite girl who had many opinions but didn’t feel right sharing them. I believe that everyone uses this class to learn to participate more. The environment of our class is very welcoming to everyone, and I feel like most people think that way. Since the beginning of the semester most students began to come out of their bubble and share their ideas.

http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2011/05/18/what-makes-a-body-obscene/

Andrej Pejic is a young male model whose career is centered around his androgynous look, successfully modeling both male and female clothing lines. Sometimes in the same show. Last winter he was featured on the cover of New York based Dossier Journal (picture above) hair curled and shirt in the process of being removed. Barnes and Noble and Borders bookstores "bagged" the magazine - a practice usually reserved for explicitly pornographic magazines.

In our culture male chests are not viewed as pornographic. We see them all the time as a ubiquitous feature on many men's health magazine covers. Even if we hold off on the greater question of why male torsos are appropriate and female torsos obscene, why would America's two largest booksellers (at the time) force a pornographic blinder on what they knew and accepted to be a male figure? 

I also found “The He Hormone” a frustrating yet intriguing article.  I was surprised by how much the author attributed gender differences to biology instead of culture.  I thought one of the most shocking parts of the article was when Sullivan suggested what would happen to society if parents injected their sons with female hormones while in the womb, eradicating all differences in testosterone.  Sullivan takes a quote from Matt Ridley that states, ''War, rape, boxing, car racing, pornography and hamburgers and beer would soon be distant memories.

As a class, I feel we've made much progress towards getting comfortable with each other and really discussing matters of class and education. It is no longer uncomfortable to talk around each other. I also learned how to analyze non fiction writings for interpretations that could not be taken shallowly. My writing style got much more formal coming from a very casual writing style stemming from my freelancing. This visit to Parkway should be fun because  it'd be different if it were the beginning of the semester but now, we know each other well enough to really get something out of this visit.

Miranda Lambert - "Only Prettier"

There are a few things that I always do when I go home for academic breaks: I spend time with my family, I catch up on sleep, and I swim laps at the local YMCA. Before coming to Bryn Mawr, I was a competitive swimmer for twelve years and swam in both club and Y leagues. When I was in high school, I brought a lot of my academic and pesonal stress to the pool, and my coach and I had to make an agreement: my nightly two-hour practices would be a time when I couldn't think about anything other than the set. The pool was my sanctuary, and I still view it as such.

Last week, I met my dad at the pool one afternoon to swim for a little while. After saying hello to my old coach, I hopped in and did a warmup. While stretching before completing my main set, another swimmer a few lanes over randomly called out to me. Now, when I swim, I'm in my own world and don't appreciate being interrupted; though a little bothered, I answered the gentleman's question about whether I was the new coach (I am not), whether I swam there on the swim team (I did), and where I went to school (Bryn Mawr). When I said the name of my school, I was greeted by a strange yet familiar expression: he had never heard of it. "It's a women's college outside of Philadelphia, one of the original Seven Sisters," I went on to explain, thinking that would be it.

"Oh, so you must be a man-hater," he responded. "You're anti-man, right?"

I'm starting this post from a very strange place.  I have been thinking a lot this break about why Roughgarden's writing bothers me so much, and I would like to share these thoughts with you.  But at the same time, I feel like I am the class whiner, that one kid who always hates everything.  I don't hate everything.  I love readings about gender and sexuality.    And I don't like complaining.  But I am struggling so much with Roughgarden that I'm going to do it anyway.

My misgivings with Roughgarden began early, when she stated in the first chapter that living things are impossible to categorize.  As far as I know, biologists are almost always able to classify living things into one of several groups: Animal, Plant, Fungi, etc.  Second, she states that the science world is torn between a diversity-affirming and a diversity-repressing explanation for sexual reproduction.  The Biology Department at Haverford has never said any such thing.  Instead, the truth (as I have been taught it) lies in the middle.  Sexual selection and the recombinations and mutations it produces both lead to diversity and keep things the same.  So I was very distrustful toward Roughgarden from the start.

In thinking over the past 6 weeks of class, and thinking about where I need to improve, the most important thing I have noticed is that I have a lot to learn from my classmates.  First, I need to be more careful when reading and responding to classmates posts.  Second, I am still amazed by the varied backgrounds and perspectives presented by everyone in the class.  It's kind of wonderful to be able to gain persepective on what other peoples experiences with education and class have been.  Additionally, I need to work on being more concise in my writing, as I tend to be super wordy and leave less room for ideas than I would like.

While I was writing my paper, I reflected on the changes that I've seen in myself and a lot of those changes resulted from many of the topics that we discussed. I didn't think learning about the different types of education that children receive all over the nation would have some sort of affect on me. For example, after writing my paper about access to education, I spent a lot of time outside of class thinking about my thesis. I've never had that type of experience before. After getting a grade on a paper in high school I would just toss it to the side and that would be the last time I thought about my argument. After discovering the huge impact ESL classes had on my learning, I was eager to come home to relearn my native language and interact with my grandparents (who mainly speak Khmer). I wanted to gain back what my childhood education took away from me. I never thought hard ahout how education extends beyond the classroom.

In my evaluation, I focused on how I've grown since being in that class and how far I still have to go. In the beginning I was very intimindated by the structure of our discussions. I didn't talk much because I found it difficult to assert myself into the conversation. I also didn't take advantage of being able to post supplementary thoughts and ideas on Serendip because I felt like no one was reading them. I have since been able to find my place to speak in class, and I think I have become much better at speaking without hesitation about topics that interest me. I have also grown to appreciate Serendip now that the dialogue between us has begun to increase. However, I would like to see more of a conversation online. It's nice to know that others are taking the time to read things that you post and also to respond to them, possibly providing a previously unknown viewpoint. What I personally still need to work on in being to "talky" in essays. I tend to become lost in fluff and cliches, which obscures the point I'm trying to make. In addition, I need to make sure I fully develop a topic rather than just restating ideas. For the class, I hope that we will be able to get the Parkway students involved in some of our conversations on Serendip. I would be very interested to see what point of view they can bring to our discussions. 

After looking over the essays I've written and notes I've taken for this class, I've noticed that my work has become progressively more analytical. At the beginning of term, my writing mostly relied on personal narrative to convey my points, but as I've read more and begun making increasingly broad connections to outside sources, I've relied less on myself and more on my research. I think I've become a better researcher, though I still have much to learn. I also think I've been better able to maintain a cohesive claim in my essays – though I'm also still working on that. I often come away from class discussions that I have a difficult time decide what it is exactly I want to write about. And once I've decided, I often have trouble staying on one train of thought as so many factors can be addressed and focused on with each topic. I do think it's becoming easier for me to stay focused, though, and I plan to continue working on that with the rest of my writing.