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Hillary G's picture

Last Week

I found the artist's explanation of her process very interesting. She created a series of visuals that told a story that can be interpreted in several different ways. Her process had been an expression of her own individual evolution, combined with an expression of biological evolution. It reminded me how everything is connected, from meiosis and mitosis to cultural shifts to individual emotional/mental changes. Because it's all just stories, isn't it? 

What I found particularly amusing about Thursday's class, though, was our own E Sem's experiment. We took ourselves out of our comfortable, cozy classroom and temporarily tried to integrate into the other section's class dynamics. We found this to be difficult--we didn't feel nearly as comfortable as we had become in our own little class. Now we were around people we didn't know, most of whom had not yet developed their judgements of us. Julie even raised her hand in the other class, which is something we rarely do in our section. Then we came back to our room and everyone seemed to relax significantly. Our usual, familiar dynamic was back and our attitudes about our environment changed. We suddenly became aware of our appreciation of our own class's particular dynamics. Observing this, I was amused because it demonstrated perfectly how a simple change in environment can bring out change in a group. Perhaps it would not be considered "cultural" change (as I wouldn't necessarily refer to our class as a culture), but it was a noticeable group change in attitude and behavior. And from a psychological and sociological perspective, that's pretty cool. 

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