December 9, 2016 - 21:03
Dear Jody,
I just want to start out by saying that I really enjoyed this class and I think it has helped me analyze readings in a new way and helped improve my writing. Before the class started I knew that it had something to do with the environment and people, but it has been so much more. Now when I tell people about this course I say that we explore the connection between identity and the environment. I think that I have naturally begun to see all the connections that people have in the world that in turn shape our identities and I find this really interesting. In general, I also like the way that class is structured. I have found it enlightening to be able to discuss all of these complex ideas with my peers, and they have greatly helped expand my learning. In regard to my contribution to class discussions, I think that it is pretty clear that when I have an opinion about a certain topic, I talk more. Sometimes I was content to just listen to what everyone else had to say and I spoke when I had something to say. But this happened pretty often, so in general I think I talked in class an appropriate amount because it felt very comfortable.
I think that the reading I enjoyed the most was when we were readings real books, not just articles. This enabled us to discuss the book as it progressed and I found that interesting. Also, the books had more characters than the rest of the reading and I liked that because I find it interesting to analyze certain characters. In the last couple of books, we also had more opportunity to argue with the points made by the authors and I always think that questioning authority is fun. Overall, I don’t think that I could pick one book that was my favorite.
I think that the six-week project was a good way of wrapping up the course and I really enjoyed it. After we read the article about contact zones, I found it hard not to see everything as different contact zones. Therefore, it was natural for this to be our final project. I also liked the freedom that we had in picking our topic and it made a lot of sense to relate it to contact zones. I had a lot of fun conducting the interviews for the project because it was with my friends and it was exciting to see the stumped looks on their faces when I pushed them to really think about their friends. The questions were hard to answer and I had trouble answering them even though I came up with them.
I found the writing conferences that we had every other week to be very helpful in pointing out very specific things that I had to work on in my writing. In the beginning of the semester I had trouble with coming up with strong claims, but I think I improved on this a lot. I am now able to come up with a claim and support it in a sophisticated way. I really like that for all of the essays I had the freedom to write about what I wanted because I write a lot better when I’m interested in what I’m saying. I especially think that the essays that we did a draft of one week and a revised version the next helped me the most because it gave me the opportunity to improve on specific aspects of my essay. In the beginning of the semester I found myself writing a lot more casually, but as the semester progressed I think that my formality and overall structure of my essays improved a lot. I also think that the Monday night postings helped me to reflect on the readings for that week and it better prepared me for the class discussion for the next day in class.
I think I’m going to take from this class a better understanding of interactions between different beings. In the beginning of the course especially, I made a lot of connections to interactions with other species. It has always felt very natural for me to do this, and I hope others in the class learned something from hearing me talk about it. Also, I have explored the relationship between environment and identity. I think that the book that helped me do this the most was All Over Creation because environment was seen in many different forms. This encouraged me to evaluate my own definition of environment in order to see its different effects on the characters from the book and eventually relate that back to life in general. I think that my understanding of the relationship between environment and identity has complexified.
So many of the deep and intriguing discussions that we had in class I think have expanded my learning and that is thanks to the rest of the people from my class. Also thank you, Jody, for making all of those discussions happen. I think this class has set me up well for some future classes, and it was fun!
Thanks,
Becca