A Final Rap...?

For our final project, we decided to take a popular song ("I'm on a Boat") and rewrite the lyrics to try to encapsulate our freshman year Bryn Mawr (and ESEM) experience. Though, of course, the goal was for it to be funny, we were also trying to show that the discussions we've been doing in class can happen in very different mediums – including song and video. Because I don't have a youtube account, I can't upload the video to youtube. However, the lyrics are below:

Aw shit, get your lanterns ready
Its about to go down
Everybody at Bryn Mawr hit the English House
But stay on your fingers and toes
We running this, lets go 

I’m at Bryn Mawr, I’m at Bryn Mawr
Everybody look at us
Cause we know who we are
I’m at Bryn Mawr, I’m at Bryn Mawr
Take a good hard look
At the place where we are 

I’m at Bryn Mawr, just take a look at us
Walking through campus on the way to the Blue Bus
Thinking about class and education
It seems so easy
But look at us now cus we’re feeling kinda breezy 

Take this picture of M. Carey Thomas
She made a promise
For Bryn Mawr College
She was a very important person,
No doubt about that
But now look at Bryn Mawr cus we got JMAC 

I’m reading John Dewey, take a look at me
Learning from experience at BMC
Bel hooks and Freire—for the oppressed
Doesn’t matter which one was better dressed

 Noguera and Sarah and Little Bee too
They talked about issues
Not just about tying your shoes
Wendy and Jane
Not thinking the same
Both making gains for women in pain

 Cisneros and Rodriguez trying to stay connected
Too bad, cus they wanna be accepted
They were teacher’s pets but still holding regrets
Cus its something they cant forget 

High School students came and went
They saw our school and it gave them more fuel
To post on our blog and get some motivation
So that going to college was their final destination

Anne and Jody running the class
Sarah and Jomaira just helping us pass
In Class/ OutClassed has taught us a lot
So before we leave we’re giving it all we got

I’m at Bryn Mawr, I’m at Bryn Mawr
Everybody look at us
Cause we know who we are
I’m at Bryn Mawr, I’m at Bryn Mawr
Take a good hard look
At the place where we are

For part two of our presentation, we decided to continue the theme of changing mediums of discussion and we borrowed from two popular game shows: Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune. We created a wheel with five parts for five different class areas (though, of course, even within these distinctions there are very large differences!): Lower/Working Class, Lower Middle Class, Middle Class, Upper Middle Class, and Upper Class. As Laura said in our presentation, the colors we picked were based, in part, on the colors the government uses to decide which areas of the nation are safe to give loans to. We asked volunteers to spin the wheel to pick their class because what class you're born to is something you can't choose. Then we tested people's assumptions of wealth and education levels within class to show that there are can be differences between assumed class status and what statistics would say. We also wanted to point out that assumptions of class based on income can very greatly based on where you're from – inflation in urban areas means that often there are different ideas of wealth-based class in cities versus in more rural or small-town areas.

Though we had a few technical difficulties, we were really excited to share our thoughts in different ways!