December 16, 2015 - 20:29
I chose “Changing Our Story” not for its description because I could not figure out any “defined” topic it concerned but for the recommendations from upper classpeople who had taken classes with Anne Dalke before. I felt it was more important to have an engaging, interesting and constructively critical professor than a topic that was the most interesting to me. Well, those sage words of advice were accurate; being taught by Anne Dalke for my first semester was definitely worth it but also being taught by all of you was equally as wonderful. Thank you Anne and thank you all.
I felt like I came into college with only knowing how to write very formulaic papers- introduction, three body paragraphs, and a conclusion. While I wrote vignettes in freshman English and some personal papers for senior year Art of the Essay, there was not much creativity of structures. I had never written papers with questions in them, with question marks. I had never explored so many abstract topics about identity, environmental issues, and in general, the conditions that make us up and surround us as human beings. As both Anne and I noticed in all my essays, at the beginning of the semester I took more risks with ideas except did not organize them well. However, during the second half of the semester, I wrote essays that went back to a more formulaic structure where I made sure my claim was tied up well at the end, which was not interesting to read. I am still working on combining more risky claims/ideas with clear, concise writing.
The readings I enjoyed most were All Over Creation, The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas and Take Back the Market. I am definitely more of a fiction reader than an academic/philosophical texts reader (as in what I like to read in my free time). I like escaping into what I read and the use of fictional characters to explore ideas or personal and shared issues that are prominent in real life. I was definitely challenged by reading texts by authors such as Oreskes/Conway, Bowers, and Pratt. I took a Humanities (actually Philosophy though) class last year where I struggled to understand the readings (Socrates, Nietzche, Sartre, Descartes, etc). I think it was good to stretch myself in this class, as in my senior year I had only begun scratch at the surface of the larger and harder questions. Now, I am still working out some of the concepts we read about, such as ecological intelligence. Next semester, I am taking “Romance to Bromance,” with Professor Taylor, in which works of fiction will be read/watched. However, after looking at identity and one of the contact zone projects, gender, and sexuality at Bryn Mawr, I will be ready to consider more complex factors that make up humans’ relationships to each other.
In class discussions, I liked to participate but I also liked to listen. As the weeks passed by, I felt I was more interested to hear what the international students had to say than those of us who live here in the US. They were ones who really made our classroom a “contact zone.” Though quiet at the beginning of the semester, they started to share their observations of the differences between their own countries’ cultures. I thought that was really powerful, especially when we were in the Taft Garden and Abby realized how isolated she felt from the rest of world (especially the conflicts) when at home in South Korea but was overwhelmed with the
I really enjoyed reading others’ posts on Serendip, especially since some people readily embraced breaking away from the mold of traditional essays, such as Beatrice, Maryam, and Amaka in our class and Hannah Chinn in Jody’s class. I think using more creative techniques in essays could help me express what I want to say and
“Changing Our Story” was a great “intro” class to Bryn Mawr. Not in the fact that it was an intro writing-intensive course, but that it was an introduction to the school itself. As I said about our six-week projects helping us get involved in the college community, I think this class really presented the type of learning that does (and should) go on here. During the first few classes, I had no idea what I was doing in this class, since I wasn’t sure what the “purpose” was supposed to be. This class was a microcosm of Bryn Mawr; a wide fair representation of the different students on this campus and an exploration into the ideas that pervade the school.
Over the past semester, I’ve learned so much about Bryn Mawr and its people, both the beautiful and ugly aspects and history of this college. Like with anything, BMC is not black and white; we are constantly changing its story.