In Class/OutClassed

Welcome to our first Diablog Poll. Please make your selection and after you do, write a post explaining your selection and write a response to someone else's in which you raise a question to further your and their thinking.  Enjoy!

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Our best universities have forgotten that the reason they exist is to make minds, not careers

By William Deresiewicz

It didn’t dawn on me that there might be a few holes in my education until I was about 35. I’d just bought a house, the pipes needed fixing, and the plumber was standing in my kitchen. There he was, a short, beefy guy with a goatee and a Red Sox cap and a thick Boston accent, and I suddenly learned that I didn’t have the slightest idea what to say to someone like him. So alien was his experience to me, so unguessable his values, so mysterious his very language, that I couldn’t succeed in engaging him in a few minutes of small talk before he got down to work. Fourteen years of higher education and a handful of Ivy League degrees, and there I was, stiff and stupid, struck dumb by my own dumbness. “Ivy retardation,” a friend of mine calls this. I could carry on conversations with people from other countries, in other languages, but I couldn’t talk to the man who was standing in my own house.

We all receive emails about those with wealth donating money and starting charities. Call me a cynic but how many of these actions are motivated by guilt? The wealthy have more money than those below the poverty line obviously and our human empathy makes us want to help. However, to what extent? We all take pride in our possesions and as Adam Sandler's character in Just Go With It said, " Rich people don't stay rich by giving it all away." Again I ask how much of the charity in the world is motivated by guilt?

From 2-3:15 on Friday, Nov 11, we'll be conducting an on-campus workshop in Rhoads Dining Hall. Jomaira, Sarah, Jody and Anne have come up w/ a "script" that involves an opening exercise, "mapping class on this campus," and a closing event, "looking forward." We've imagined opening by asking all participants to get into the spaces where we do our work, then asking them:
* where do you feel most yourself?
* how does this campus make you comfortable?
* what makes you feel that you belong?
* what space would you like to enter, that feels closed to you?

We've imagined closing by thinking forward:
* what space would you like here, that would make you more comfortable?
* what things could we do as individuals and as an institution to move forward w/ these ideas?

We heard in class on Thursday some of your responses to this proposal. Given what we've learned here so far, in our classes together, what (or what else) do you think we should do in this workshop we are hosting for others about  issues of class and education on campus? Please post your further thoughts about the workshop: feel free to put out your own ideas, and/or to respond to others; this is really where conversation happens (reminding ourselves here that we said we want to talk more w/ one another on-line!).

Thanks to all for all our rich discussion, so far (see, below, our discussions from week 1 and week 2, about the surprises of our first visit together, and the need to be "certified" in life). Let's try, this week, writing even more directly about our own experiences. What is something in your life right now that you are passionate about learning or doing -- in or out of school? (If you'd like, find something on Google Image that represents your area of passion, and include the URL to that picture in your post.) In this way we can get to know each other better and also begin to think about how our passions connect with our educations. Enjoy!

For this essay, the space I chose to write about was my dorm room. I spend most of my free time in the room, both studying and socializing. In this way, my space serves a dual purpose to meet both of my needs. The way I have decorated my room and they ways in which I use it indicate my goals for education at Bryn Mawr: to be a well-rounded student and maintain a balance between work and play. By comparing the image of my room to those we were shown by Jen Rajchel, I can see that the use of space, and thus students’ expectations for Bryn Mawr, have changed since M. Carey Thomas's time. In addition, I believe the class hierarchy that was connected with having more space and privacy no longer exists. The social aspect of college plays a pivotal role in my time spent here at Bryn Mawr, and unlike some of my predecessors, I am not ashamed of being labeled as lower class by my peers. 

I chose the nook and specifically the window seat as my location to examine. It is important to me because it has come to be the space where I spend the most of my time and slowly has come to be known as not just a public space for any Pem West 2nd residents, but as "my corner." I felt that this unconcious claiming of space was interesting especially because when thinking about the idea that privacy, even at Bryn Mawr, was a classed thing that had much to do with the amount of money that each student paid. I felt that I was breaking this previous connection between privacy and money, considering I am not the "ideal" student that Bryn Mawr was initially labeled for. At this same time, this spot makes me wonder about this institution at large, and I see here that money does indeed allow for greater intellectual space, as there are certain students who may not be able to afford the price of Bryn Mawr, and are as such, attending other institutions. Because I am here, claiming the space of the window seat, within this same institution, I wonder whether it is okay for me to be doing so, as I am not the white, upper class, rich student that Bryn Mawr College, as a space, was created for. It was this tension that made me want to further examine a place that I feel to be more of a home than my own room.

This is the pond at Rhoads Beach. I chose this image because of the fact that this space simultaniously counts as opened and closed. It is open because there are no walls, no ceilings, no doors. It is natural, bright, and welcoming. This provides room for thought and creativity. It is, however, somewheat secluded. It is set at the bottom of the hill of Rhoads Beach and surrounded by trees. It is also a farily solitary area as not too many people can fit on the small brige-like structure. I go here for reflection and relaxation. It's a very serene place and does offer the comfort of solice. This balance between free and isolated is ideal for me and why this spot on campus is so important to me.

I chose to focus my paper on Pem Arch because it symbolizes the official entrance into Bryn Mawr, where students walk through and feel like true Bryn Mawr women.  But for me, it’s also the place where I feel like I am leaving the real world and entering Bryn Mawr’s own atmosphere, one that intensely focuses on individual academics and not on the world as a whole.  Pem Arch really stood out to me as being a symbolic space on campus because M. Carey Thomas built the campus to be secluded from the outside world, and built it knowing that personality reflects space. In my paper I grappled with the fact that M. Carey seemed to almost manipulate our experience here at Bryn Mawr and whether that manipulation hinders or enhances our educational experience.