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Danielle Ford
12.19.2012
360 reflection

 Reviewing the posts and papers I wrote at the start of the semester reminded me of the mental state I’d been in. I had just returned to Bryn Mawr after a semester abroad -- at an institution in which students had no voice whatsoever and I hadn’t met a single person who thought gender expression was a social construction (that is probably an unfair way to judge a culture -- but it is very important to me)... then, three months of education work on an urban farm and a month living on an anarchist intentional community in North Carolina. It was strange to feel like I had even a semi-permanent residence. I was re-joining a familiar institution with a new, more radical lens. This is evident in the first papers I wrote for Jody, about unschooling and resisting the words/roles “teacher” and “student.” Also, my first memo for Barb was a frustrated rant containing a lot of what I had learned about the criminal justice system through Occupy and Anarchist info-sessions. Radical energy was radiating out of me. This 360 has been wonderful for me in that it helped me express that energy --- to figure out how to communicate it productively.

Anne’s class, however, was more meditative for me. It felt more like the poetic, contemplative English class environment I had been used to before my extended leave. It also felt like home -- because where I grew up is both a seminar center and a spiritually based intentional community, so exercising silence, mindfulness, and presence is regular. It felt relaxing and rejuvenating to explore silence in this academic space, with people my age.  However, the class was not easy. At points, it had me very uncomfortably wrestling with my identity as a communicator. My paper on silence, air, and paradoxes was written after I felt like my identity had disappeared due to the questions I was confronting about human connection.  I didn’t know how to speak or why I was speaking. I thought I valued transparency, building shared vocabularies with my close friends, and the idea of turning my brain completely inside out (and my companion doing the same) as the most valuable and powerful way of being intimate. But silence complicates that. The nature of words and language -- containment started to frighten and confuse me. I won’t go too far into it because it will turn this reflection into my thesis. I’ll say though that those questions haven’t been settled, but they are not as overpowering at this point.

Regarding my role in the class:

Although I have felt this for a while, I am only able to articulate it now. I felt alert and active in the classroom each day (with maybe a day or two exception when I was not feeling so well or something), but regardless, I was focused more on how to raise important questions for the group to think about than to open up what my own questions were. I think that since our classes in which we focused on Privilege, since Delpit and our subsequent discussions, and since the presentation of Footfalls in Anne’s class, I began to feel some shame about wanting to push my own intellectual boundaries and wrestle with scary, new ideas which might be poorly articulated at first... There were moments when this was not the case (i.e. I did not feel stifled or shameful). Christine Kim’s arrival and Mark Lorde’s presentation had me thinking wild new thoughts (but to most people’s shagrin). Also, Jody’s introduction of the “play” concept put words to something I’d been trying to identify, and I was engrossed in that word/idea for weeks. 

But now, after my video presentation, I realize that, this semester has been one of reflection for me (which is good). I’ve been trying to understand accessibility -- and how to make my speech and ideas as clear and simple as possible. Instead of trying to explore nuance or complexities in my own analysis of institutions, I’ve been thinking of ways to more understandably synthesize those analyses so that I can reiterate them in the future. The film project, which was quite fun and  work intensive, did not push my own learning (except of filmmaking). It was entirely a “consciousness raising” project. And I like the outcome. I’ve shown it to lots of people in different spheres of life. But it isn’t thought provoking for me.

Oh. One thing about my own learning which I figured out and will take with me in the future, is that -- I love the structure of not being graded because it allows me the freedom to express what I’m learning in the ways I feel moved to. That said, having a presentation is an incredible motivator for me. I wanted to put everything I had into the final project because I knew it was going to be shared with the community and live on on the internet! So, I will use that in the future as a tool to push myself and get organized.

I enjoyed the group project dynamics -- and I think to some extent, I led. This was probably because they had art components and I dive into art projects without a moment’s hesitation. Sophia was an incredible partner to work with on both projects because she’s so responsible and receptive. Plus, she has an amazing eye for composition, so I trusted her with the artistic construction of both the zine pages and the film. The film project also gave me the opportunity to meet one-on-one with everyone in the class and the see what they had been feeling about ideas of privilege and their own intersectional identities.

Regarding posts and assignments:

At first, all my posts were stand-alone. But as the semester progressed, I prefered to contribute to discussion than create my own discussions. Although, when I was particularly struck with a text or experience, (i.e. the problematic nature of the mural arts tour, Rosemary Garland Thomson, Christine Kim, our discussion in Anne’s class about vocabulary, etc.), I tried to externalize how I reacted. Sometimes they turned into discussions, other times not.

I think that most of my work could use revision -- but unfortunately, there were too many assignments and projects floating and materializing for me to revisit work I’d already “completed.” I feel that especially with Jody’s first two papers and my first memo for Barb. I think I was unable to turn in polished work because I was motivated by the radical literature I’d be reading in alternative forms, and was unsure as to how to construct a papers (and as a result they became very parable-ish) . That said, I think my work  thrived when I started taking up alternative forms myself -- I really enjoyed Barb’s journal, the zines, and the film -- I will definitely try to continue supplementing my learning and research with artistic embodiments in the future.

Now, to describe my critical, active engagement with the jail portion of the class, I am going to be critical but also understanding of myself. I was very viscerally affected by the space of the jail, especially the jarring sounds, the multitude of bodies in the small space, and the buzzing lights. My introversion took over when I entered the trailer, and by that, I mean that, I was not comfortable engaging groups of larger than one or two, and I really struggled to articulate the complicated things I felt and thought. I shrunk. Of course, I spoke with those sitting next to me -- quietly. And luckily, a few of the women wanted to work with me, and so I was able to interact in a more intimate, one-on-one way. I needed that.

I’m not sure how I prepared for the experience -- besides reading and having conversations -- getting as much sleep as possible the night before. I wrote so much about the experience in my prison journal, that I feel inclined to tell you to look there to understand how I engaged and what I was feeling, as I was writing it as I was feeling it. It was difficult for me to figure out how to discuss injustice or my understanding of institutional oppression with Angela or Theresa. How could I when I wasn’t even sure how to talk about myself?

I enjoyed the first art project the most -- the self portrait. The wonderful thing about it was that Angela and I didn’t have to articulate everything the art meant to us -- we were creating a physical presence for our ideas and emotions.. Angela drew my shape and vice versa and then we used those as the outlines to represent ourselves. It was an awesome project. My portrait was overlapping, blurred blues and yellows -- it depicted all the discomfort and containment I was feeling, and it had red leaking from the forehead. Angela portrait was realistic, shades or brown for her skin, with wild, shaky lines of purples and pinks all around her.

I wish I could say I knew what the art projects meant or what I learned from them, I still don’t know. Experiencing the reality of incarceration impacted me, for sure -- but once again, it’s not clear to me yet how.

The most impactful part of this 360 was the community aspect of it -- because it negates the way my introversion typically manifests itself. I often enter a class and befriend one or two people whose voices I value particularly -- whose ideas I am interested in hearing the most. But in this class, I pursued everyone’s voices. This was valuable, without a doubt, but it was also very difficult and energy consuming for me. I typically avoid groups for any extended amount of time, but that would not have been possible nor productive, and I had access to experiences and ideas I would not have otherwise.