Mid-semester course evals

Going through everything I've written, I've thought about how my favorite kind of writing to do for this class is a conscious stream of thought.  My first web event was written in that style as I couldn't of anything that acurately summed up the experience to me.  Now that I reflect upon it I don't think that any of the styles of writing we've looked at could give an accurate description of the experience I was having or a lot of the experiences I've had since then.  I wrote that first web event in a conscious stream of thought because I thought it best reflected the experience as it was occuring.  Many of the writing we've been looking at takes the "I" out of the picture and I don't see why that is necessary because although everything is interconnected, although pushing is always happening, it has only been experienced by me in that particular way in that particular moment.  I am part of a whole of interconnected beings, but I am also "I" and the things I experience should be written with the "I" emphasized.  Pushing is always occuring but it is experienced differently by each party involved and our language should communicate what we experience as being both an individual being and an interconnected one, but mostly as an individual because that's the only way we experience the world.

As for what is and isn't working, I think we need to work on the way we are talking about being ecological.  Being ecological does not mean that we have to be friends with non-human life, specifically plants and I do find that some of the things we've talked about tend to emphasize that.  Its kind of like we tell our freshmen when they're making roommate contracts, they don't have to be friends but they need to learn to live together even if it means that you cannot be in the room at the same time unless you're sleeping.  For much of the class I've been convincing myself that I need to get over my fear of bugs and we've had multiple conversations about how those of us who are uncomfortable with bugs could help themselves or how the class could help us.  Now, I don't think that I do.  The bugs are the roommate that I don't want to live with. 

I think the outside relfections were working for a time, but now I've lost a significant amount of interest.  I like the idea of including more homework like the Thoreauvian walk and the walk we did to the diferent locations around campus.  Taking a trip into a "less ecological" (for lack of a better term) location like the city might be interesting to kind of compare to what we've seen so far.  Other than that I'm not quite sure how to modify the observations because I know that technically speaking no one place is exactly the same each day, but it is really difficult for me to sit once a week in the same spot.  The differences can often be so tiny.  I think it might be more interesting if I were afraid of the location or were in nature and focused on survival.  My senses might be more acute than they are when I'm sitting there at noon doing a watercolor. 

I'm using the class as a challenge to think about something that I wouldn't normally think about.  A lot of the time all I feel like I'm doing is confusing myself, but I know from personal experience that sometimes it is good to get a little lost and confused.  We talked about this concept in the beginning of class and I think that we are doing a good job in that.

As for how we could make the class more ecological, I really don't know.  I'm still not quite sure what being ecological means. 

So far, I think I have been using this class as a means to try to understand my place in the environment and to try to connect more with the natural world. After being on a break and having an extended absence from class before this, I have noticed that our discussions in class have changed/improved the way I think about and interact with my environment even though I haven't been able to attend all of our meetings, which is a fantastic effect for this class to be having.
However, looking over my writing, I have been writing like the world contains an exclusive club of "nature" that I am trying to gain entry to but keep failing to meet the requirements. I think this stems from the fact that a lot of  our readings and conversation center around ways to interpret the natural world and almost make it sound like it is a foreign or ancient culture that we have to study from afar. When I am at home, I spend a lot of time in parts of the world that humanity does not often touch and, understandably, I feel closer to my goal then than I do when I am participating in these conversations. I know we can't easily access places like this every day as a class (though I wish we could!), but I think we need to spend more time discussing our place in our environment rather than portraying us as occasional visitors that must conform to its standards. I think the course would function more ecologically if we were to include more field trips (a state forest? a garden? somewhere with animals or marine life?) because I think these experiences would give us new perspectives to add to our discussions. Sometimes I feel like we get stuck discussing the ecosystem we are familiar with on campus or during our weekly site visits which could possibly narrow our idea of what we call "the environment."
I personally want to try to stop struggling in my papers and weekly observations to "connect" and start finding more creative ways to approach my interactions. I want to perhaps experiment with writing out of first person or maybe from the perspective of something other than myself or with recording my observations in other means than just prose writing.

In reviewing my postings thus far for our Ecolit class, I see a lot of things that are working. I’m really enjoying our field observations and the opportunity that they provide for me to explore different varieties of nature writing. It is helpful for me to see what others in the class are writing about for these assignments. Often I will read another student’s posting and learn so much about a topic that I wouldn’t have ever thought about. One thing that frustrates me as a learner in this class is our insistence that there has to be a way to view “nature” from a non-anthropocentric perspective. I definitely think that this is a good goal to strive for, but I feel that we harp on it a lot in class. While I believe that an unbiased view of our environment is a noble goal, I also think that we should make peace with the fact that it is probably impossible to achieve. We are humans with a human viewpoint, and as far as we know there is absolutely no way to change that. I think that our time would be better spent finding ways to make our viewpoint slightly less anthropocentric, rather than trying to eliminate this lens entirely.

I am using this class to learn more about the narrative qualities of nature, as well as to discover how much of what we say and write colors how we think (about nature specifically.) I see others using the class in a similar way.

I think that this course is functioning well ecologically. I am really enjoying having class outside. Initially I was not sure how this would go, but I think that allowing the world outside of English House into our discussions (even if it does include the occasional garbage truck) is a good learning experience. Meeting outside feels less artificial than meeting in a classroom. I also really enjoyed our trip to Harritan House. I think that contextualizing ourselves in the larger environment around us can do nothing but enhance our understanding of the environment that we wish to study.  

Just as a precursor - I went back to the syllabus and re-wrote what I think it means for me:

goal: study methods of representing nature

how:

1. BEING: outside

2. READING: methodologies of language/vocabulary, different modes of literature that represents nature, and ecocriticism 

3. WRITING: and re-writing in the various modes, with the various vocabulary (blog posts = a way of expressing my ecological interests, which may be related to the methods of representing that we study, and thus, may incorporate those methods)

I’m using the class to change the single-story narrative I tend to ascribe to nature-writing, and try to make my own representations more complex and rounded. I’m  becoming more aware of myself when I am outside – whether I am participating, observing, or just sitting. There is something very validating about having permission to situate and re-situate myself in the outdoors.

So what’s working in my papers/posts? The blog posts were working for a while – I was just using the space to be creative and experimental. But recently, I’ve gotten very frustrated trying to do them. I looked back at my Thursday posts, and two of them (the most recent) seem to have become more stream-of-consciousness and less directed. I think that what I did the first time was more useful – I took the raw, loose feelings and expressions and then re-ordered them into more structured forms. I didn’t do this in my post the Thursday before break and because of that, I felt very unresolved. Looking back, I realize I need to give myself more time to interpret and make sense of my own expressions – perhaps by using some of the new forms (rheomode, comic mode, other genres) that we’ve experimented with.

I also want to be more creative in my longer papers. This will mean allocating more time and planning for them, and more time for re-writing.

Another thing that’s working: I really enjoy giving/receiving comments online – I think that I have a stronger incentive to write coherently if I think someone else will be reading it. I’d like to see more continued online discussion.

As a learning community, I’d like to see us be more committed to our actions and less afraid of what other people in the class may thing. For example, I was very hesitant to ask to have class inside a few weeks ago, because I didn’t want to be stigmatized for moving an eco-literature class indoors. But ultimately, I owned my actions. I think if I take on this perspective more, it will change the way I write (less questions, more theories). And if we take on this perspective as a class – while emphasizing respect for differences in the ideas we commit to, our conversations will get much deeper.

Ecological: I think it’s logical that we study ecology outside. That we set up our classroom as outdoors, our sites for writing are outside – because of this, as I said before, the thinking I do in class carries over into my other experiences being outside. For the most part, I am enjoying having class outside. In the next few weeks, it’s going to get colder, but I think that we should challenge ourselves to be uncomfortable – this could be a way of learning. Location has been a huge part of the conversation for me – when I sit down in that circle, I’m ready to look at my peers and start talking. I think we need to re-commit to the values of the class – what our expectations are as individuals, what we will challenge ourselves to do.

I like the idea that we can “act” in ecological ways, but I’m not sure exactly what this means? Could it be us weeding an area of campus? or making nature art (ANDY GOLDSWORTHY!)? 

1. How are you using this class?

I am using this class to think about how I am/interact in places which are important to me.  This is useful to me because it forces me to make decisions about how I will change and also how I won’t change.  

2. How do I see others using it, individually and as a group?

Collectively we’re using this class to think about how to represent the world.  Our conversations about words, grammar, genre, and college illustrated to me that we’re interested in figuring out better ways to represent the world than our forebears have.  It makes sense that we’re having these types of conversations because they follow logically from the problem presented to us in our syllabus (“the environmental crisis is a crisis of the imagination...”)

3. How is this course functioning “ecologically”

I question the utility of our current approach because I do not see how it is “ecological.”  I do not see how our conversations are “characterized by the interdependence of living organisms in an environment.”  Our readings--and subsequently our conversations--are characterized by our desire to divorce ourselves from all of the bad ways to represent of the world.  For example, Bohm says our words aren’t good enough, Goatley says or grammars aren’t good enough, Meeker says some of our genres aren’t good enough, and Berry says that our schools aren’t good enough.  None of our readings seriously deliberate on interdependence.  

4. How might it be more “ecological” in structure and action?

It is so easy to complain...Maybe something that we can try is to not fall prey to the facility of rejecting the so called bad representations of the world like Bohm, Goatley, and Berry have.  Maybe we can start by trying to see good in the things we don’t like.  October is national anti-bullying month, and the students at the school I visit have made anti-bullying posters.  They see this is as an important step in conflict resolution.  I think they’re right.  

5. Are there additional ways you can imagine using the class, to expand our understanding?

I am stubborn and don’t like it when people tell me to see good in the things I don’t like even though I just said that this is what we should try to do.  I can expand my understanding by doing more of what I say everyone else should do.