Eco-Literacy 2014

In all honesty, I've been struggling to decide whether to present my full (and real) self to the online world or make up an anonymous symbolic name-- and it seems I've decided to use my real identity. Maybe this is me trying to take ownership over something I don't usually express with such marked intention, my words and ideas. I've never written anything with the explicit purpose to be read (except by a professor or a potential boss). So, here, I'm curious to see how this new ownership of expresssion will develop, and hopefully how it will contribute my growth as a writer and thinker.

Choosing my avatar was also difficult (can one image really represent someone's identity?) and while sifting through old facebook profile pictures, I was surprised to realize how much I have changed over time. None of those images resonate with me strongly anymore, I feel more like an outsider looking into (and judging?) someone else's life. I am no longer in any of those spaces, physically or mentally. So instead, I chose to go back to my roots, my childhood, and maybe all my different identities really are within that same little girl.

As I just realized when checking my account information, two days ago was the anniversery of the day I joined Serendip. Since then, I have fallen in love with the potential I see in this site for creating connections and communication across all kinds of disciplines. The one semester I did not use serendip in those two years, I could feel a piece of richness missing from my academics. I am excited to interact with you all more, not just in class, but here on serendip! This all being said, the reasons why I choose to use my real name today for posting are the same as when I first created my account. The simplest reason is that I couldn't come up with pseudonym that fit me. Nothing that I thought of sounded like me at all. Strangely enough, chosing a psedyonm felt confining, and some how revealing, but in an uncomfortably inadequate way. For example, if someone's name is doglover12, you are going to automatically know, first and foremost, that person is probably a dog lover. This way of naming myself felt like writing my identity into wet concrete, and when in dried all anyone would ever see when they stepped over my name in the sidewalk was just a dog lover and nothing more. My real name felt like the best representation for the very fact that it wasn't really a representation at all. Using sara.gladwin leaves you all the room to percieve me in many differing ways and through your own eyes, past the misleading concreteness I associate with crafting my own moniker. Your own various interpretations will be the best representations of my identity I could as for.

[NOTE: I spent a half an hour trying to resize my desired image so I could change my avatar and, since I'm currently on a windows computer that I don't know how to use, I couldn't figure it out. So I'm posting the image here and I'll work on changing it later tonight.]

For the last 360 I was in, my first interaction with Serendip, this was my avatar picture:

This is a picture of myself being strong and using my voice, and I chose it because I felt it represented myself and my activism and my power. I almost didn't change the picture for this semester, because I like this one so much, but I realized that this no longer represents where I am. I am not the same person I was at the beginning of that semester, because it was such a transformational experience for me. Today in class, with all the discussion about language and reading and words and communication and different understandings, backgrounds and experiences, I was reminded of a metaphor that has stayed with me ever since the end of the Women in Walled Communities 360.

When deciding upon a username to use for this site, I decided that I wanted to fall somewhere between anonymity and publicly claiming my identity.  I have been taught my entire life to keep my identity private online and, to me, anonymity often feels like safety.  But I also believe that we are all responsible for what we say, online or not, and by using my name on my posts I feel like I am publicly claiming responsibility for what I say.  So I decided to fall somewhere in the middle and use only my first name- generic enough that people outside of this course will probably not know who I am, but specific enough that I feel ownership over what I am posting here.  

My thought process for picking an avatar went along similar lines- I immediately rejected using a picture of myself, because it feels more identifying than I am comfortable with.  I also wanted to use a photo I have taken, because I often take pictures of things that interest me and I feel more connected to them than to other people's photos.  

Over the summer, I had the amazing opportunity to live in D.C. for an internship. After living in one place: Bend, Oregon for my entire life, coming across the country to study at Bryn Mawr, studying abroad in Copenhagen, and living for three months in D.C., I've discovered how I can appreciate and thrive in different places. My avatar shows how happy I was living in one place, but how excited I am for traveling, living in and developing a sense of belonging somewhere else. I think that this realization will be helpful in framing concepts that we discuss in this course cluster. The environment is all around us and shapes us in different ways, while we are simultaneously shaping our own environment.