EcoLit ESem

The visualization I chose for Bryn Mawr was the Pembroke Hall (http://triptych.brynmawr.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/BMC_postcard/id/367/rec/18). In my essay, I described my experience running through the Arch on the Parade Night. Freshwomen run into the campus, through Pembroke Arch. Four years later, we will on the Senior Step and welcome newcomers. Though it was physically a short distance to travel through, I think it is a condensed epitome of a Bryn Mawr experience as an undergraduate. Before I came to Bryn Mawr this summer, all my visual impression of the college was built up by the digital pictures that I had access to. Pembroke is definitely a widely used visualization of our college. I loved the architecture and the view on the first sight because it looked like an entrance to a community filled with vigor and wisdom to me. Also, my residential life experience in Pem is another reason I chose it. Each dorm has its own culture, but there are characteristics shared by all, such as the self-governance.

I chose this photograph of the Thomas cloisters because this is the first "true" image of Bryn Mawr College I saw. By "true" I mean an image that was not included in a college brochure or a letter to my parents trying to convince them to enroll me at BMC. My roommate Paige Toft, when she found out that I have no idea what the BMC campus really looks like, told me to to look up "bryn mawr cloisters" on Google Images, and this is the image that first caught my eye. Instant thought: the Transfiguration Courtyard in Harry Potter! I felt immediately closer to my chosen college, simply because I knew I had found at least one place where I would feel at home at BMC. Of course, now that I'm here, there are numerous places all around campus where I feel that way, but back in July, when I didn't know what to expect of the College, this photo gave me hope and reassurance. It showed me that the college I picked at least looks like my dream school - Hogwarts. That is why the cloisters in Thomas are the site I've chosen to revisit throughout the year; although I'm allergic and therefore can't comfortably sit on the grass, this is a place where I feel happy and satisfied.

So...This is not a homework post...(By the way, professor, could you give us a title format, like adding a few words before title, so that we could distinguish our posts for HW and for spontaneous thoughts? )

After Thursday's class, I've been thinking--why we weren't able to escape from the odd trap of using verbal-noun (gerund)?

Personally speaking, I believe it is because the noun is the source of the motion. I mean, the noun produced the motion, right? The motion itself can be describe by one or a few words, like "running", "flying"...etc. I don't know why this quantum physicist was so into this motion-centered idea, and I think it's really not necessary.

In my junior high physics class, my teacher introduced a concept:"motion is eternal while stability is relative." I may have translated it badly--the meaning of the words could be lost easily during translation--because in Chinese this sentence was a poet-like motto. The main idea was that everyone, everything in this universe is moving, and you can only discribe one thing as stable because it can only be stable relative to sth. else. (This may explain why the physicist focus on motion so much.) But everytime we studied a form of motion, accelerated or not, we draw diagrams, and in the diagrams, the major object is represented by a dot, or a square.

Therefore, even in physics, the major object could be represented, but could not be eliminated. Similarly, in language, the noun denotes the thing we are looking at.

When I was taking my free walk inside of the campus. I felt safe seeing the familiar faces and settings. Yet When I strayed outside of the campus. I felt lonely and unsafe. I felt really uncomfortable because I don’t feel I belong there. When I thought I find the “boundary” of the campus, a Bryn Mawr woman saw me on the other side of street and waved to me. Suddenly, I got this feeling that I was transported back to school. I felt warm and safe. That is when I begin to think that boundaries of Bryn Mawr College can not be measured geographically. If Bryn Mawr women study abroad to London and still treats their surrounding people like they do in Bryn Mawr – with love. Then, the boundary of Bryn Mawr College can extend to London. If a Bryn Mawr woman sticks to the honor code while traveling in Europe, then the sense of Bryn Mawr community has extended to Europe…

I really don’t know how to reflect my paper, because basically I just wrote the beginning of the paper.

Writing my very first paper was very hard and weird. I have no idea how to reflect. I do wish I can write like Thoreau and make my paper so poetic with rhetoric sententces. Yet it is still hard for me just to describe in English what I am really trying to say.

I had some moments of introspection during my walk which I will touch upon more in this post. Firstly, I questioned my willingness to do "work" at nine in the morning; I am not and have never been a morning person, so it was curious to me that I had the get-up-and-go attitude that early in the morning. As I mentioned in my paper, I attribute that to being in college, where I can take whichever classes I want (most of the time) and do assignments because I want to, not just because I have to. In high school I was pressured by my college counselor to take classes that are "worthwhile," that "colleges would appreciate seeing on a transcript." Instead, I look classes like Environmental Science, Drama, and Geography because I liked them, thus severely perturbing my counselor. Still, I was always scrutinized for taking "the easy classes" and "not trying hard enough" to get into a "good college." But oh how the times have changed - my (former) college counselor now seeks help from me for college application. Yes, that same person that told me I probably won't get accepted anywhere and that "Bryn Mawr is a weird college" is now trying to sweet-talk me into doing his job for him. We'll see how that goes.

First: this campus has some highly strange things in and around it (Moon bench? What?). Second, my version of Thoreauvian walking forced me to notice these weird things that are out and about around me everyday. I didn't have anywhere I was walking to, so my brain and my body began occupying themselves (after about 20 minutes of solid walking) with not what I was going to have for dinner or what I was going to do after I ate, but with the direct stimuli around me. Notable things I found (in a manner of speaking, they weren't lost exactly) were a huge, fat, making-sound-in-the-trees insect in the grass near Brecon (terrifying), a surprising amount of bumperstickers in various parking lots, very few pedestrian sidewalks (sadly..), and a medium-sized, permanent-looking fake boulder plopped down near the entrance to Denbigh. The latter was by far the most provoking thing I had seen all day. Of course, my mind immediately races to the fantastical: hidden pirate treasure from the 18th century colonial days! But really, let's be serious. Why would there be a fake rock anywhere on campus? Question for further thought/action..

As I traveled around campus and tried to imitate a Thoreauvian Walk my brain was unusually peaceful. All my school work seemed to fade away and whatever was plaguing my mind at the time was put on hold. When all these extra thoughts fell away I was much more aware of my inner monologue and the thoughts I contemplated during my walk. Why is everyone always rushing? I know that I do it too, but why must we live in a world of dates and deadlines that cause excess amounts of stress? I was not able to answer this question because ironically I had to be at the gym for a volleyball practice and was almost late.

I also thought about the different perspectives of each individual person and how their normal routes on campus only give them one personal view. My walk consists of leaving Rock, walking to Erdman or Haffner, then to my classes (in Thomas, Taylor, Park), back to lunch, to the gym, dinner, and lastly to my room. This walk is all very centralized and rarely do I walk along the edges of campus to see whats there. During my walk, I did walk behind Goodhart and found a ledge or patio that ran along the side of the building. My initial thoughts we "How beautiful". Then as I thought more deeply it occured to me that someone with classes in Goodhart was most likely fully aware of this picturesque view and had probably seen it on a regular basis. This concept of relative perspective has spurred my want to explore more of Bryn Mawr's campus.