Precariously Yours

Dear Anne & Kaye,           

            This class held quite a few firsts for me. It was the first class that I had that met only once a week and at night. The first class that was co-taught by two different professors (and from two different colleges). The first class in which the internet played a role larger than a resource for research. The first class I have taken in gender and sexuality studies. The first class in which we were asked to challenge everything – the way a class should work, how we performed and acted in class, the way a paper should be written, and most often, the gender binary.

            For me, some of these firsts were great and some not so great. I liked meeting once a week. For me, when a class meets more often, I feel less compelled to come to class 100% prepared (there will always be next class). But when you’ve only got two hours a week, there is more of a pressure and more of a desire to be able to be a fully participating, active member of class. I also liked that I felt as though I was carving out time to learn as opposed to simply arriving at class to be lectured at. I also really liked being taught by two professors with two different backgrounds and two different views. I think it really added an extra layer of interest for me. In other classes, I love to hear what the professor has to say, so getting two hear what two professors have to say makes it even more interesting. (That is not to say that I don’t love the student perspective as well, but I find sometimes that professors managed to add a bit more finesse than the students, which only comes with more experience and background in the material.)

            I am still unsure about how I feel about the presence of the internet in this class. I continue to stand by my feeling that papers should be private experiences between the student and the professor(s). That being said, once I made the move towards a “web event” rather than a paper, I really enjoyed sharing my work. I would have liked the comments back to me to come in a more private form, however. I did really like the conversation aspect of Serendip and the posting of the course notes. Both of these aspects, I grew to really enjoy. Because we met only once a week, it was really nice to be able to participate in and read the on-going conversation and see where all of our brains had wandered to in the interim week. I found that I really liked posting each week and enjoyed starting a few conversations and well as adding to other conversations in the online forum. I did notice that my posts began to veer away from the personal once I had a not-so-positive experience with a post of mine being misquoted. I think that if we are going to be asked to post about our personal lives and personal thoughts, rather than just an arms-length reaction to readings, our posts should be reposted, for the class’ sake, in full.

            As this was my first gender and sexuality studies class, I definitely felt a bit intimidated and overwhelmed coming into the class. But my nerves quickly faded once I got to know the class and get a better grasp of the material. I made sure to really participate every class, both in group work and in open class discussion. I really enjoyed learning how to participate in this class. This probably sounds silly, right? I mean, what was I doing in every other class that I have ever taken? But it’s not because this class was different. In a European history class, it doesn’t really matter how you phrase what you say as chances are you will not be offending any one and there is no theory to agree with or disagree with. But in this class, these issues are real. They affect people’s families, daily life, and personal choices. And the theories that we learned about are somewhat of a “grab bag” and you can pick and choose which pieces of them you choose to align yourself with. This means that when speaking in class, I had to learn how to truly, carefully express my opinion in a way that I didn’t have to in other classes. It was a neat challenge which I hope to be able to continue with.

            As for my written work, that two morphed from being a challenge to something that I enjoyed. I enjoyed learning how, in a sense, to un-write a paper. My first paper was most definitely the most challenging. It was my first paper for this class, I was totally overwhelmed by the broadness of the prompt, and I could not for the life of my explain what a web-event was. But I think my work improved with my second web-event. For this event, I was able to break the norm of the standard essay and write in a more creative voice, which I really enjoyed. That was the web event that I probably enjoyed writing the most. For my third web event, I think I finally got it. Through this class, I have realized the limitations that the basic written word can present and have found ways to prove my point in a not-so-rigidly written form and still be academic. My fourth web-event, to me, was my best. I managed to mix creativity with theory with written word with intra-activity with precarity with performativity. For the first time ever in a class, I have physical evidence that I have learned and grown as a student, which feels pretty cool (sorry for the poor word choice, I have been up for a lot of hours with not so much sleep!).

            In terms of readings, the ones that I enjoyed the most were the ones that tied the theory to real life. I am a person who likes relationships with others, and reading personal accounts helped me to form “relationships” with these people to ground the theory. So articles like Living the Good Lie and The Two-Minus-One Pregnancy were my favorite. But, by the end, I was able to enjoy some of the more theoretical readings as well.

            I am coming away from this class as a different student than I was in August. I have learned to question what I am learning in new and better ways. I am willing to be more flexible in how I intra-act and diffract with the material while learning to maintain my boundaries with the material. While I don’t think I will ever agree with Anne in rejecting the gender binary all together, I have really enjoyed learning about her point of view and figuring out how it entangles with my own views and how it totally misses my “slots” in the diffraction grate. I have also learned how to incorporate creativity, which I love, into an academic setting, which is a new skill which I can’t wait to continue to exorcise. Looking back, I have really learned a lot.

Thank you, Anne & Kaye for a wonderful learning experience.

Precariously yours,

Charlie