I had a few good English classes in High School. I expected my Emily Balch Seminar to be like them. The professor would lead the class in discussion, we would answer their questions and write a formulated essay. This turned out to not be the case. Anne does start the classes, we do try to answer questions, and we write essays, but all in a new, slightly different configuration.

Anne’s class definitely has a planned structure. She keeps the conversation going in the right direction. She asks a lot of questions, however she tries not to be in the typical powerful professor role. She makes us look at our classmates and speak to them, simplifying the conversation of the classroom. I love that we are in a circle instead of rows; it keeps me from hiding. The way the classroom is set up is an example of playing with structure. The construction of the class is deliberate in creating an unstructured place to play. Scaffolding we can fill with whatever we find most interesting. Anne might provide the questions, but she throws them out to the wind for us to run with.

/*I could have sworn this paper was meant to be six pages. So I trimmed my six-page essay posted earlier to 4 pages, which is slightly better.*/

Phoenix

mlord

Play in the City 028

Sunday, October 20, 2013

Playing Differently

            The purpose of visiting a city is to experience something new, or to experience something familiar in a new way. If our course Play in the City was itself a city, then our hometown must be our everyday experience of academia, in secondary school and in our other Bryn Mawr classes.

First, we played with the concept of a city, with the help of Lewis Mumford, George Simmel, and Sharon Zukin. This is a highly academic version of play, and, though mildly interesting, not different from my hometown of ordinary academia. Second, we played with Robin Henig and Cass Sunstein about serendipity and the science behind play. I preferred these. Despite the familiarity of reading and applying essays, the subjects were interesting and unusual. Serendipity is not an oft-discussed topic in my hometown. Furthermore, the topics were not overly theoretical, the opinions were easily understood, and the explanations were simple.

I turn onto a new street. The busy avenues and squares and plazas and circles have been making me dizzy. Linear, point by point. I walk down.

(Disclaimer: This paper is not a musical.)

-So do you go into Philly all the time?

-Yeah, I’ve gone in most weekends. But it’s for a class. Try to gloss over the description of what an E-Sem is. You’ll lose her attention.

-So where have you been?

Drop names. Things people will know and be able to connect with regardless of whether or not they’ve been to Philly within the last twenty years.

-Oh you know, some museums, some places around South Street, the Italian Market, and a bunch of other places. We wander, mostly.

-Have you been to the art museum? You have to go to the art museum.

-Yeah, I haven’t been in yet this trip, but definitely, yeah. Thank her nicely for the tip. Refrain from telling her it’s one of the most iconic places in Philly and of course you’re going to go soon.

-Good. Eat a cheesesteak for me when you get back!

-Yeah, I will! Thank her again and secretly think that she wouldn’t know where to get a good cheesesteak if she ever made it to Philly.

Learning as a City Player

Yijing Lu

  When I saw the mosaic decoration on the wall of The International Airport of San Francisco, the sentence that“Mosaics celebrated seasonal change and embellished the shrines of the gods of fertility, harvest, and renewal with sensual displays of body and earth” came into my brain; when I saw the fantastic paintings in the libraries of UC Berkeley, I thought of the definition of “critical play”; when I wandered near the Golden Gate Bridge, I felt that I was a “city player”; and, when I experienced all the moments above, I realized that the course “Play in the City” impacted me a lot.

  I still remember that when I first enrolled into this course, I was so curious about how to play in the city and what we can learn from it. Now, at the middle of semester, I have found the answer.

  During the first week we talk about what the city is, and we share our favorite cities and our experience in them. I remember that three of my classmates chose San Francisco as the city they loved most, which not only surprised me, but also becomes one of the reasons why I made a trip there during this fall break.

            At the beginning of the semester, I came into this class not knowing what to expect. I had an idea that it might be different from the other Emily Balch Seminars because the subject itself was set so far apart from the others, but until the first day of classes I had no idea just how different it would be.

            The activity we did on the first day of class, where we looked around the classroom to understand the space we would be spending our time together, can be used to perfectly explain my experience in the class up to this point. We spent the day looking at all the different aspects of the room in detail and placing them in context with everything else we found. The building itself has been around long enough that it has many layers of history that can be seen though observation. People noticed the designs on the fireplace, the shutters on the windows, parts of the walls that did not match up with the rest of the room, and plaques under the windows with names engraved of people that donated to the school. When we sat down and discussed everything that we noticed the class as a whole was better able to understand the space we were in and how every little piece added up to make it what it was.

Philadelphia is a massive city, and one of our tasks this semester is to familiarize ourselves with the unique metropolis that is Philly.  More than that really, we are supposed to become intimately and individually involved in some aspect of the city during each and every sojourn.  The largest hindrance to personal exploration, as I have experienced it, is not unfamiliarity, boredom, or even complete disinterest, because these themselves can reveal something about our experiences in the city.  Rather the size of the group is the greatest obstacle.  The larger a group is, the more self-contained it becomes, directing its focus inwards and glossing over the scenes of the city around us as mere tourists rather than explorers.  Obviously this happened when we first journeyed into Philly with the entire group of twenty-eight people, and it was admittedly necessary for the safety and peace of mind of people unfamiliar with the area.  However, this concept applies readily to the classroom as well: Twenty-eight people having a discussion rarely results in any meaningful conclusions if only because no individual has the time to go into detail about their ideas and experiences.  Furthermore, discussions between the two sections often seem pointless since we take part in very different lectures and discussions in our separate classes.  Even though both Anne and Mark try to coordinate their discussions, they have different expectations of their students and different aspects of any given topic that they focus on.  This has relatively lit

Jessica Bernal

ESEM-Play in The City

Learning to Write for No One

When I crawl out of bed in the morning and start getting dressed to start a new day, it always takes me a while to step out and walk among society. One step in can cause a whole stir of thoughts, ideas, and judgments based on what I think I am. I put into a lot of thought about what the jeans and oversized shirt may say about me on that particular Monday morning. What I wear on a particular day represents who I am that day, how I wish to present myself for people to form their own ideas and perspectives… at least I used to think that way.

I came into this course with the mentality of writing and presenting myself for others to reach a consensus of approval. I surveyed around for the all agreeing and pleasing nods when really it had nothing to do with how smart I tried to appeal in my writing or present my thoughts in class. By taking this course, Play in The City, I’ve come to grasp and embrace my thoughts and express them through writing for no one in particular but myself, for my enjoyment in my choice of critical play in my own voice.

  In the city of our course, I am having a journey that is leading me and helping me to start my brand new college life. I feel my growth throughout these six weeks. I joined this city when I was a genuine "freshman" who had not got used to this whole different life in a new country. But now I'm thrilled to become a part of it. In this unique course, we learn to play and think. We learn to view things critically.

  In the first day of class, we were told by our professor to walk around our classroom and observe the surroundings. My first reaction was that there would be nothing much to see. I thought it was just a regular classroom that lacked of creation. However, in my exploration around the classroom, I found nameplates that dated back to hundreds of years ago on the windowsill. I was bewildered by the use of the long metal bar below the blackboard. I was amazed by the old ancient window shades that were opened by my classmates... Sitting down, I was surprised at the variety of details in this simple room during our exchange of observations. By using lenses and magnifying tiny things, we tried to make sense of them. And we are still trying in every single class and in every trip to the city of Philadelphia.

  We were asked to define ourselves and create an avatar on our website after class. I realized this is necessary for building a city of our own. Every city player needs to have a personality. Although this process was hard at first, but it at least set a starting point for us to continue in the future.

Exploring cities has always been something I love to do. What better way to combine this passion with a college credit than take a class that essentially has you exploring a city week after week? Better yet, a city I know almost nothing about: Philadelphia. Though it has not even been two months, the city has quickly become a part of who I am: a part full of Shake Shack, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, an attractive man playing a guitar, a not so attractive man attempting to hit on me, and so much more. 

I feel very lucky to attend a school near a city. I actually almost applied Early Decision to a school in Maine, aka the Middle of Nowhere. I would have suffered and gotten antsy without a city for me to play in. Though Philadelphia is not as great a city as New York (sorry, but not sorry), I still have a great time exploring. I appreciate the fact that the class is so open and that I have the opportunity to choose where I want to go and how I want to experience it.

My first experience in the city was with the whole group, which I liked, since I was unfamiliar with the city. Even with the smaller groups, I was comfortable. I feel as if it was the most structured trip of the three I’ve been on for the class, and we still had a lot of free time. Perhaps the fact that we were in a big group together and had times we had to be places made it seem more organized. Even though I only did some shopping and had Shake Shack, I felt as if that was a good start for an official first trip into the city of Philadelphia.