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            When I walked into this course at the beginning of the semester, I’m not entirely sure what I wanted. The beginning of my sophomore year had begun, and though I definitely felt I had found more of a direction than I had during my first year at Bryn Mawr, I was still floundering. I had spent the summer with an internship I disliked, and was coming to the same realization I had had a thousand times: so, I guess (insert basically any academic major here) isn’t for me. This class was almost a treat for me. I had really loved my ESem, and though I was trying to avoid an English major (nothing wrong with it, since it’s going to be my minor, I just grew up with journalists for parents), I wanted to take a class that was both challenging academically and creatively. This was so much more than I had anticipated.

            At the start of the class, I’ll admit I was a bit cocky. As we brushed over terms, attempting to establish the difference between sex and gender, I thought I was in the clear. Oh, how wrong I was. If this course taught me anything, it is that there are no answers. Questions are never-ending, always changing and expanding. Open-ended questions lead into a cycle of open-ended responses, and the maddening process goes on.

This cycle of asking unanswerable questions was really put to use through our discussions on silence, which we spoke on frequently, but never fully resolved (though, as previously mentioned, resolutions don’t exactly exist in this course). This topic was, in one sense, exhausted in class. We brought many of our conversations around to silence, and it began to feel like a personal call-to-action. At first, when the discussion was pointed in a direction I felt linked to, I rejected it. I wanted to take things we read, like Brown and Sommer, and use them to defend my “decision” to inflict silence. However, I soon had the horrific realization that I did not believe in what I was attempting to defend. I really had a crisis, trying to reconcile patterns so ingrained in my being with the knowledge that I had to grow and move beyond them, especially since they were so stifling.

The main issue with this realization is that it came so late. I’m not saying that I would have immediately been able to take myself out of old patterns, but I was beginning to make a concerted effort. If it counts for anything, I feel like this class really introduced me to how to take charge of my own education. As an aspiring independent Gender and Sexuality major, the skills I learned in this class will unquestionably prove beneficial.

While the personal growth I have experienced would have been more than enough to glean from a class, I also saw an evolution in my writing. I started the year in a very set pattern for writing papers. I knew how to cite sources, I knew how to quote, and I knew how to summarize. I wrote my first paper on my awakening to ecofeminism in a very similar way, approaching it in much more of a research fashion. That, I decided, was not the goal of the class. Instead, I attempted to go beyond those comfortable practices and allow myself to seep into my papers. Basing them more on theory and how I can orient myself within such musings was challenging, but I think it helped me place myself in the readings. Like my group’s Teach-In, I wanted to take the theories we dissected in the course and apply them to my life. I truly think I am on my way to doing so.