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Six Week Project Reflection: Class in the Bryn Mawr Dining Halls

Sasha M. Foster's picture

thirteenth short posting, reflecting on the implications of your project: how might you carry this forward? With whom else might you share it? What else would you like to know-or-understand about your particular “enlarged contact zone”? Reflect also on what you learned from your peers: how did the range of presentations expand your sense of your contact zone?

I learned a lot over the course of my six week project. Goin in, I had vague impressions and hypotheses about implications of what I knew about the dining halls, but as I learned more I grew incredibly invested in the current systems at BMC, and what they might imply to people both within the college and outside looking in. 

In the future, I would like to explore the past of class at the college both inside and out of the student work system and dining halls. If I had had the time to devote to a highly in-depth research project, I would explore the archives for more information on individual women who suffered class discrimination, and the experiences of first students who came from lower-income backgrounds.

I was touched by many of my classmates presentations, but what struck me the most were the presentatins on Latinx and Muslim student experiences, and the struggles they deal with. I wish that there had been more time to go over their research in a more in-depth way, but even the shortened presentations made me far more aware of the experiences my fellow students are having, both positive and negative, due to their backgrounds. I hope I can keep that awareness with me in the future, because I think it's really necessary for people like me to look out from their bubble of privilege and really see what happens to the students around me without those privileges.