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Personal Growth:

When I signed up for the 360, I did so mostly because the topic was intriguing and I had already had positive experiences in classes with Jody and Anne before.  I was drawn in by the connection to social justice connection, which I enjoy discussing in my classes because I like to have those conversations anyway, but learning about them in class stretches and/or complicates my ideas as well as gives me academic grounding in my belief.  Although it sometimes frustrates me that for my thoughts to be valued, they need to be supported by some academic theory, in the world I live and take part in, it is necessary, especially at this point in my life when I’m applying to jobs fresh out of college and I’m commonly asked in interviews about books or theorists that influence me.  These are codes and even if I choose to reject them, I need to know of their existence.

Both personal and academic growth have been present in my 360 experience.  In the sections below about writing, reading, and class participation, I’ll go into detail about how I see my academic growth.  But first I’ll try to articulate how I have felt I’ve grown personally in this 360.   Let me begin by explaining one of the ways I characterize myself that I am both proud of, while at the same time realize it is problematic.  I see myself as a “cool white person”; in this belief I automatically assume the vast majority of white people are privileged and unaware of this privilege, while I am different.  A lot of white people are different, actually, but I generally assume you aren’t until you demonstrate otherwise.  I also assume a lot of white people are hesitant to take action in countering various forms of oppression because they feel it doesn’t impact them, but in my opinion oppression impacts everyone negatively and we are all connected to it in some way.  There are connections between global climate change, and poor communities having poor air quality, for instance.  There are also connections between Perry House and being a Bryn Mawr student, no matter your race.  Recognizing this, is all part of what I’ve conceptualized as a “cool white person” (not that it’s important, but in case you were curious, I consider all of you professors to be “cool white people” too).

After working on an E-sem last fall with Anne and Jody about socioeconomic class and feeling like I had to educate people abroad in Denmark about race, I think I came into the school year feeling very knowledgeable about issues of oppression and privilege, maybe even a little smug.  So when these classes challenged me to rethink my feelings about incarcerated people, my own privilege, and institutions in place that affect us all, it hit me pretty hard.   I knew these negative assumptions about incarcerated people didn’t seem to fit very well with my image of a “cool white person,” but I felt them.  When Jody read a quote from one of our readings last week, from Meiners I believe, about giving lectures on prison abolition, and her audience reacted with questions like “What about the really bad people though? Like murderers or rapists?” my stomach hurt.  Because these are questions I raised at the beginning of the semester and I still have to make a conscious effort to remind myself that questions completely undermine the movement of prison reform/abolition because “really bad people” are such a small fraction of incarcerated people, and, in addition, by making a person’s primary identity their criminal offense, you are completely ignoring other aspects of that person and also the outside institutions that impacted their lives. I still don’t know all the answers about the best ways to reform prisons (I don’t think anyone knows actually), but I definitely know my ideas about incarcerated people and prisons have changed and become more complex over the course of the semester.

Our 360 as a whole has challenged me to rethink my ideas in a variety of ways.  Anne’s class encouraged me to attempt to be more reflective (and let me tell you, silence is still a struggle for me).  Jody’s class allowed me to connect many of the issues I was already exploring in schools with prisons; by connecting to an issue I already feel strongly about, I was able to see that being incarcerated was only a small fraction of a person’s identity (similar to a bright student who is unable to pass standardized tests).  Barb’s class allowed me to contextualize the prison industrial complex through the lens of slavery and our countries history of racism.  Our time in the Cannery forced me to put faces to formerly “faceless” offenders.  Sometimes the 360 became too intense and I really desired to get away, but with the intensity I also felt routine and support, which facilitated my growth.

Writing assignments:
One of my major goals is to improve the quality of my writing before I graduate.  I am still striving to bring to my writing the same level of thinking I feel I bring to class discussions.  For all of the 360 classes, I often felt the writing assignments challenging because I thought the prompts were very vague.  I often didn’t know where to start, and usually felt I was figuring it out by the end of the paper.  Although I didn’t revise any of my papers, I felt the feedback from all of you was especially important in understanding the codes necessary in academic writing and really appreciated your detailed comments.  However, sometimes lack of grades made me nervous, particularly for Anne’s class; your comments typically included a compliment and a criticism, but I often was unsure which was stronger and how good of a paper I had written or not.  I do feel as though my writing has improved over the course of the semester, although I don’t think this has happened in a consistent manner.  The papers where I had a good idea of what I was writing going into it always came out the best, and although the papers themselves may have not gotten consistently better, my techniques tfor picking a topic did.  For example, I would pull out quotes that stood out to me in a reading then try to find a common theme, or in terms of time management, I would try to come of with a theme one day, then write the next, then edit the day after.
Silence papers:

My first paper, Silent in Return for a Paycheck, wasn’t especially impactful on my writing skills, but was very useful in directing me to think about what silence means to me as a basis for the class.  My second work, Representing Uninhibited, was the paper felt the most invested in and because issues of representation had been discussed in all the 360 classes, I was thinking  deeply about themes in this paper before I even began writing it.  My third paper about Christine Sun Kim feels the most unfinished to me: when I watched the video of her work I was particularly struck by her words about oppressive rules and trying to fight back against that oppression.  I left her live performance feeling less excited about her work; I wanted to explore these feelings and write about her work, but wasn’t quite sure what my argument was.  My final paper,Close Reading of Eva’s Man through the lens of Wendy Brown, stretched my analytical skills and I was proud of this paper.  I felt well prepared to write this because we had practice close readings in class.  I was also excited to write this because I recognized I had named the theme of paradoxes early on and I think the pride I felt in recognizing this boosted my confidence a little: if I was understanding the reading more, I felt this would improve the quality of my writing as well.

Voice papers:

In my first paper, Can Children Participate in Liberatory Dialogue?, I really liked my topic and was proud of the connections I made between liberatory dialogue, wonderful ideas, and my experience in Denmark, but I think I needed to more clearly understand and define liberatory dialogue.  Reading it over, I can see how some connections that I made weren’t explained explicitly to my audience and this makes the paper less cohesive.  I had a lot of good ideas, but needed to connect them a little more.  In my second paper about believing/doubting the similarities between schools and prisons, I was really happy that I began writing this paper with a set idea in mind and liked my structure, which made use of believing/doubting and stretched me to think about an idea from multiple perspectives.  In thinking about these different perspectives, I began to think about reframing my question altogether.  My conclusion was probably the most compelling aspect of the paper, but looking back, I realize I ended it too abruptly.  I could have kept exploring the question “should prisoners be treated like students?”  The timeline assignment felt much different than the other two, as it was much more research intensive.  The process of finding and compiling a history about students of color on campus was tedious at times, and also frustrating when it was hard to find information we thought was important.  The most exciting part of this project was deciding to take include the history of other Seven Sisters, as a reference point.  It’s easy to look at a single historical event as fact and judge from a modern day perspective, but it’s not an accurate representation of history without context.  

Vision papers:
My first memo was about welfare and I really spent a good amount of time researching the topic and figuring out a coherent structure.  I felt really good about the amount of time I spent working on this paper and how I tied all my research together into a well structured paper. Your response about explicitly relating this topic back to incarcerate woman flagged something important for me; sometimes as a writer I am unaware that connections I make in my mind aren’t always explicit to the reader, and I tried to be more conscious of this in my next two memos.  In my second memo about Howard Zehr, I really liked my topic, but again agree with your comments that I could have included more critical analysis; I think at that point in the semester, right before Thanksgiving, I was just really drained.  For the third memo, I wanted to respond to a common theme in my journals: the power dynamic between the Bryn Mawr students.  I am proud of this paper because I think I was both critical of things we could have done different, while also recognizing constraints and things that we did well.  I wasn’t usually excited to write the journals, but I worked hard on them because I knew I was hesitant about the art projects and realized if I put more effort into the journals, I would better understand the art projects.  I also wrote an entry after every visit in order to force myself to reflect and also to feel as though I was physically taking these thoughts out of my head and putting them on paper, where I could go back to them if I desired, but where they didn’t have to overwhelm me.
Reading Assignments:
The readings I enjoyed the most are the ones I felt made connections between all three classes, which for me were The New Jim Crow, Offending Women, Right to be Hostile, Reading is my Window, Girl Time, and Brothers and Keepers.  I very rarely missed an entire reading for class, because I really like attending discussion classes feeling prepared to participate.  For particularly challenging readings though, especially in Anne’s class, I found that sometimes I had to make the choice between quality and quantity of reading.  After attempting to complete a few readings, but feeling like I really didn’t understand, I made the decision to read less, but slow down.  I wouldn’t complete the readings, but I had a much better chance of understanding the section I did complete.  This technique was really important because before if I didn’t understand a reading I would just give up.  But if I gave myself a set amount of pages to get through, I felt like that was more manageable and since I wasn’t reading the whole thing, I felt more motivated to do things like look up words I didn’t recognize.  I also think I began to highlight and write notes in my reading more this semester.  For whatever reason, I hate actually writing in books, but I would used index cards to take notes for actual books, and I also read a few books on my kindle this semester, which allowed me to take notes as I read.  In the beginning of the semester, I struggled to keep up with Barb’s readings, but once we were in the Cannery they were much more manageable.
Participation:
I’ve learned in college that I thrive in discussion based classes and seek them out.  Being abroad renewed my appreciation of Bryn Mawr discussion classes.  On top of that, it really is a unique experience to be in a class of 18 intelligent people all coming from different perspectives, working together to discuss particular topic.  While serendip sometimes felt competitive and permanent to me, class discussions felt more freeing and explorative.  I think I came into the 360 with decent discussion skills, but one thing I’m really glad the 360 pushed me to work on was listening.  I admit, I’ve definitely been that person with a thought in my mind that I’m dying to get out, and while I’m so busy concentrating on my own thought, I stop hearing what others are saying.  Throughout the semester I really tried to let go of some of my strong desire to constantly participate; although I think I was still one of the most commonly heard voices in class, I also want to give myself some credit.  For the first time in my academic career I sometimes had the desire to participate at times, but would let it go because I realized the conversation had moved to a different place and my comment would detract from the motion of the conversation.  I felt myself trying to really give space to other peoples’ comments before speaking, which I don’t think I have done in the past.
I had a love/hate relationship with serendip throughout the semester.  Most of my posts on serendip were stand alone, which was partially due to the fact that I was often one of the first people to post, but also occasionally because I felt intimidated by my classmates posts on serendip and felt writing didn’t measure up to theirs and that leaving a comment would make that very apparent.  Toward the end of the semester I started commenting on other people’s posts more, which I think was a result of getting more comfortable with the group and also because we discussed that all comments on serendip were acceptable, even one as simple as “I agree!”.
Cannery Experience
Being in the Cannery was always an overwhelming experience for me.  I usually felt anxious on the ride there, and drained on the ride back.  I really relied on my journal to get my thoughts out after each visit.  I went into every class determined to try to start a conversation with a classmate, but it was always so difficult.  I was nervous about bringing up a touchy subject, but often my attempts to discuss the art or readings ended in choppy conversations that didn’t flow very well.  I really wanted to talk about things like how it felt for them that we got to leave at the end of the day, but most of the conversations I desired to have the most, seemed the most potentially explosive.  One of my biggest concerns was that I would come off as patronizing, like I was a college student who was trying to be impressive with things that I learned in school.  I felt like I used my time outside of the Cannery classes to think about and discuss these issues, especially in the other two 360 classes, but in retrospect this seems really unfair and almost sneaky of me; I didn’t have the courage to bring up certain topics to the Cannery women, but knew I could rely on my other classes to discuss these issues.  I wish I could have spoken more with the Cannery woman, but also give myself some credit; it wasn’t that I didn’t want to or didn’t put in the effort, but being nervous always makes it harder to have a casual conversation.  With the art aspect, I participated and completely each activity, but I definitely didn’t go above and beyond in my level of effort.  I felt really hesitant about how much the art could do for me.  In groups I definitely worked a little harder, because I didn’t want to bring down the group attitude or the overall product of our work.  The groups usually cheered me up too, because when I was working on my art alone, I often felt critical of my work and not talented enough, but being in the group allowed me to chat or listen to others, and there were generally a few really funny comments made in group activities.