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Intellectual Space and Privacy

snatarajan's picture

I chose the nook and specifically the window seat as my location to examine. It is important to me because it has come to be the space where I spend the most of my time and slowly has come to be known as not just a public space for any Pem West 2nd residents, but as "my corner." I felt that this unconcious claiming of space was interesting especially because when thinking about the idea that privacy, even at Bryn Mawr, was a classed thing that had much to do with the amount of money that each student paid. I felt that I was breaking this previous connection between privacy and money, considering I am not the "ideal" student that Bryn Mawr was initially labeled for. At this same time, this spot makes me wonder about this institution at large, and I see here that money does indeed allow for greater intellectual space, as there are certain students who may not be able to afford the price of Bryn Mawr, and are as such, attending other institutions. Because I am here, claiming the space of the window seat, within this same institution, I wonder whether it is okay for me to be doing so, as I am not the white, upper class, rich student that Bryn Mawr College, as a space, was created for. It was this tension that made me want to further examine a place that I feel to be more of a home than my own room.