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Katie Apelian (K), Adele Mirbey (A), Elana Peck (E)

K: This is our final presentation, we’ll be doing a skit for you…

K: So…what is our project going to be about?

A: I don’t know, we’ve learned a lot of interesting and deep concepts…maybe we should pick one and develop it?

E: Like definitions of science like loopy science, Dennett’s ideas about skyhooks, cranes, algorithms, all of his crazy metaphors, foundationalism and non-foundationalism, “the crack”?

K: Development of literary canons, other canons, the question of free will, divergence and convergence?

A: The functioning of our brains, cultural evolution, literary evolutions, of course biological evolution?

K: Instead of these concepts, maybe we can just talk about the four authors we read, Hustvedt, Dennett, Whitman and Darwin?

E: I really loved Whitman’s ideas. Can we do something like just go outside and experience nature? He would have LOVED that. We can all go out and talk about life, our experiences….it’ll be great!

A: Ehh, I don’t think that will go over so well, plus I have my allergies…What if we compare Hustvedt with Whitman, or maybe apply literal concepts from Darwin to any of the other books we’ve read. Or we can use my paper topic and try to prove that literary writers are actually scientists in their own ways.

K: I feel like it might not be great to use your final paper topic…but I like the idea of comparing some of the authors we’ve read. I really thought Darwin was the most interesting, because I actually knew nothing about evolution before…

A: Oh, I was disappointed in Darwin, because he doesn’t even touch human evolution. He just kept on showing us his observations. It got tedious, and when I was younger, I really thought Darwin was about how humans descended from apes…

K: Yeah well that was probably so he wouldn’t get killed by religious mobs, or ostracized from the scientific world…maybe we can talk about modern evolutionary theory. Even that has evolved and changed with new research, experimentation, and discoveries.

E: So, how do we put all of this into our project? It seems that we have a lot of divergent ideas, which makes sense considering our different backgrounds…

A: Yeah, because I’m French, I have a bit of a barrier in explaining myself in English, a language that is foreign to me. And of course, there’s a big cultural difference, in education for example.

K: Well, I mean I’m an American girl from suburbia. I bring whatever I learned about evolution in my public school.

E: Did you learn anything about evolution?

K: Almost nothing.

E: See, that’s interesting because I also went to public school in suburbia,

A: Oh. Me too…

E: but I learned a lot about evolution. So I guess, even though we think we don’t bring personal knowledge and experience, we all do.

A: Hmm…we could do a project on the differences in education. We all go to a public school, yet our educations have been so different, depending on so many factors…

E: Oh, I don’t know…I like the idea, but I think we should focus more on what we actually talked about and learned in the course.

K: Yeah, these are all great ideas, but how can we relate all of that together and make it into an interesting project that would get us a really good grade?

E: But Katie, we don’t get graded in life…let’s think about this project more along the lines of what was interesting and important to us in this class.

K: That’s true. This class has always been so open-ended…I guess every class changes your way of thinking, but this class has really examined how we think and since we’re so focused on it, our views have been changed a lot.

A: Ok so if we do our project on our own personal evolution and experience throughout this class, I would talk about the way this class has changed me, and my way of analyzing things.

E: You’re a math major, right?

A: Yeah, and for me, I always had just one answer to a problem, and in this class I’ve learned to see that there’s not just a single answer to a problem. Most problems can have several solutions depending on…For example; Whitman’s work has so many meanings. “He creates multitudes”

K: gag

A: No, really…he merges into the world and he makes his readers merge with him. But then divergence is created for each reader, although we’re all reading the same text. Basically, we converge to diverge. This class was such an evolutionary process for me. We were trying stuff and we stopped doing what wasn’t interesting and picked another path, when that stopped being useful, we moved to another path…just like evolution.

K: We spent so much time talking about how evolution was non-foundational, how it didn’t have a strong starting point or end point…and this class was very similar. We all started with different backgrounds, but all in this class…and then we learned all sorts of stuff and analyzed everything form Darwin to Whitman. It didn’t really seem to have a goal because at the end of the day, everyone took different things out of it. Even between the two small groups, the class diverged.

E: So, for our project…it sounds like we want to talk about the evolution of the class or our own evolution…but since we have about ten minutes, we could probably talk about lots of different things – we seem to have a lot to say…how can we narrow it down to just one subject for this project. We all have such different interests. Maybe we can talk about the divergence between us…Katie wrote a paper about the evolution of comics, so you could talk about cultural evolution. Adele, you can talk about the divergence you bring to the class, being from France. And maybe I can talk about the more biological elements, like natural selection among humans. Or, just look at our conversation – it’s so similar to the course.

A: Oh, interesting, I see it too.

K: What do you guys mean?

E: Well Katie, we started all at the same point. Needing to create a project for our class. Then within our one group, we diverged onto different directions relating to what we each found interesting. I find it interesting that this project is evolving just like everything else.

A: It’s basically following the same course of evolution. We start with lots of ideas and divergence. We have a bunch of different paths to take, try each one out and elaborate on it, and then converge again into the project of our own project.

K: Oh, so our project is undergoing evolution in the same way that we are through the class, and the class has throughout the semester? This project is like the descendent to this class…

A: So, what are you suggesting here?

E: Let’s do our project on the evolution of our own project.

K: I feel like if we do a skit about our project, it will be specific and go in a straightforward direction. But the last thing this class is about is a straightforward direction…

E: Oh! That’s good! Let’s put that quote in our skit.

A: Ok, now that we have this idea, how do we start it?

K: I know! I’ll just say: This is our final presentation, we’ll be doing a skit for you…