The Rickety Bridge Is Still Pretty Rickety - 360 Self Eval

I’ve been really anxious about writing these reflections for a while (which is probably why I’ve put them off so late) and I can’t quite figure out why. I think it has to do with the complexity of our learning experience this semester. I know I’m not alone in feeling the intensity of the 360, but I don’t think I’ve reflected on it much on my own before now. Sure, we’ve talked endlessly about our feelings and I even had the prison journal, but neither of those is the same as what I’m trying to do now. I do know we’re all in pretty much the same boat, and I see how most of my classmates have been able to finish their reflections by now. To be honest I think that’s one of the things that’s psyching me out. As comfortable as I have come to be with everyone, and although I feel no judgment whatsoever, I can’t help but feel exactly as I felt months ago when I posted late for Silence class once out of sheer anxiety about the permanence of Serendip.

            Ok so I’m gonna stop complaining and start reflecting: As I mentioned, because of the minimal self reflection/self check-in I’ve done over the semester, I only recently realized the degree to which these three classes were affecting me (and will continue to affect me). I was having my last meeting with my TLI professor, who is a professor of social work and a therapist, and understands people really well. She mentioned to me how crazy my semester must have been, leaving Guatemala where I had been for 2 months to come straight back to school and engage in this intense (emotionally and academically) 360, using my mid-semester break to go see extreme environmental and economic degradation in Appalachia (“Third World America”), then coming right back and having class in a prison for 6 weeks while continuing the learning of our 360. I was shocked hearing her recount my semester for me and I realized (seemingly for the first time) that it did sound incredibly overwhelming. I consider myself a pretty introspective person. I know myself pretty well, but, perhaps because of everything that was going on, I didn’t fully let myself think about everything until now. I suppose the best way to go about this is to give myself some structure.

Participation

This is far and away the aspect of the 360 in which I was most involved, in which I enjoyed myself the most, and in which I learned the most. I know I didn’t miss a single class (which is pretty new for me, I even missed a couple classes in my 360 last semester). I also was fortunate enough to be able to make it to all of the meetings outside of class. In general, class discussion is the area of academics where I thrive. Whether or not I have done the reading (we’ll get to that later), I am able to contribute in some way that (I think) is usually helpful to the class and the discussion. In general, I learn through talking, so I always feel like I learn so much more by being in process with others than by sitting and trying to write my thoughts out by myself. If anything, the 360 just intensified this, because to me all of our classes felt charged with so much depth and emotion. In just the first few weeks, we were talking about privilege and Delpit and the culture of power, and I felt that I was learning more than I have in any other class.

            Sometimes I worried that I was even talking too much, and our discussions on voice and silence and the culture of power helped me a lot in thinking what my role is in the classroom. Towards the beginning of the semester, I think I was particularly concerned about what my participation meant coming from me as a white person, and tried to make sure I wasn’t stepping on anyone’s toes. As a class, however, I think we eventually worked through this tension of who’s talking when, and grew into a flow that, for the most part, we felt comfortable with. I know that I still do have more of a presence in the class discussion than others, and there are times still when I have something that I feel like I need to say, but upon further reflection I realize the desperation I feel comes from various societal conditioning which tells me that I need to participate if I want a good grade, that I need to sound intelligent to my professor and classmates, that, as a white person, everyone wants to hear what I have to say. So I’ve pushed against this and found that I don’t need to have quite as large of a role in class discussion, that I can be an active listener, and that if I and other ‘loud’ voices step back and everyone (including the professor) provides some wait time, the ‘quieter’ voices will step forward to make the discussion more rich and multifaceted.

I suppose I haven’t been quite as vocal in the Serendip discussions, mostly because, as previously stated, it overwhelms me a bet. But I did my best to respond to posts that weren’t just for a posting requirement, especially if I had a particularly relevant perspective. However, similar to those who don’t speak as much in class, I read most of what was posted, especially during times when particularly interesting discussions got going. I listened actively, but perhaps I could have tried to contribute more.

Reading

Reading was and has always been one of my greatest challenges academically. In most classes, I am perfectly content to ignore most or all of the reading, as it doesn’t greatly affect my participation or writing or grade. Of course, I still feel bad about myself, but I get by and do fine. The 360 was similar, but I realized I wasn’t fully content with the degree to which I was engaging with the readings. So this semester, I really pushed myself to read more. I still read far less than was asked of me, and I still feel bad about that, especially when never before have I really admitted it to my professors (or to the entire rest of the class, or to the world wide web). I’ve come to terms with it though, because (A) I have learned so much from the amount of reading and talking and experiential learning I have done, (B) I have so much else in my life beyond my academics, a life that I want to participate fully in, other activism projects that take up a lot of my time, etc. and (C) I am human and therefore a continual work in progress, and I can continue to work on improving my reading skills and focus for the rest of my life.

Writing

Writing is another area of academia where I am less confident, though I’ve been pleased with much of what I’ve produced this semester and I think my writing has improved a lot (thanks to the support and feedback of the professors). As I mentioned before, my Serendip contributions haven’t been all I might have liked them to be. That said, I was a part of some discussions that could not have happened within our limited class time, so I’m glad we had it as a forum. I feel that in all three classes, I had a writing outlet to explore complex thoughts and feelings: the memos for Barb, the web events for Anne, and the first two papers for Jody. I certainly utilized those outlets, and I found them to be helpful in sorting through my thoughts (which at present are far from sorted through).

The Cannery

Despite my critiques of our experience in the Cannery, my overall experience was a very positive one. I really enjoyed being in class with the women in the cannery, and I think I engaged well with our incarcerated classmates. I even became quite close to one of the women, and I don’t think I’ll ever forget some of the discussions we shared. The group discussion was different for me than class discussions I’m used to, and I often didn’t feel that I had room to say what I might have said. However, there were a few times when I stepped forward and said something that I really felt needed to be said, in particular one time during our discussion of  privilege when I came out and said the reason I was in college was because it was an easy option for me, the expected option, and the reason I wasn’t in prison was because I didn’t grow up in a neighborhood where it was expected of me. That was really hard to say in that environment, and I’m really proud of myself for pushing through, whether or not anyone got anything from it.

            I really enjoyed the art projects we did, and feel like I participated in them to the fullest. I didn’t engage with the reflective exercises to the degree that was expected of me, because they felt tedious and unnecessary to me. Perhaps this was an unfair judgment, and I could have gained more from them, but I do think I learned some things about myself from the art projects. I’m honestly not sure what I learned academically from the art except perhaps how one might use art as a teaching tool (which I see as connected to our discussions of play and education in Voice class). More than anything I appreciated the art as an activity through which we could get to know our classmates, and particularly the women in the Cannery. Though we couldn’t share every aspect of our lives with each other, we could share our art, which in general were reflections of ourselves.

            This reflection, like much of my work in this 360, is maybe not quite as amazing as I’d like for it to be. It’s jumbled and slightly disorganized and unfinished. It is trying to make sense of confusing, deep, difficult things, trying to analyze complex issues of life. I haven’t perhaps been able to put everything in to words that I want to, and, as we’ve learned, even if I did, no one would understand it exactly as I understand it. Ellsworth spoke of how no one can ever completely understand another person, and feel that connects to how I will always be walking this “rickety bridge” between self and other, a metaphor, a vision, that I feel perfectly represents my 360 experience. And I want to thank all of you for getting up on that bridge with me so we could walk it together.