December 19, 2014 - 08:09
The first day of classes was a little intimidating, mainly after a year out of school and in a class focused mainly on Humanities, when all my life I’ve been from the Sciences area. As the time went by, I noticed that despite my lack of formal knowledge in Philosophy and Sociology, I could still contribute to a better class environment.
I’ve found more helpful the smaller discussions (Jody’s group), because of the intimacy within the class and how deep the conversations could go since there were less people to talk. I wasn’t someone very active on the online environment, I honestly believe that the best discussions happen in person (or video), because the answers and reactions are spontaneous. I tried to talk every time I thought I had something useful to say, or something I disagreed with. I think my listening improved, I learned a lot by listening my classmates during discussions and most importantly, I learned how to listen the useful part on someone’s speech. I feel like I helped the class by standing for what I believe in, representing my background and country like during Freire’s reading and sharing my knowledge like on Bruno Latour. After finishing a text I couldn’t wait to see the other interpretations and the discussion that was going to come out, I think the class work was shared, since the discussions were my favorite part.
It would be hard to point out just one person as helpful, but I can point out what was more helpful on my writing process. Jody insights were spectacular and I owe her half of my improvements on writing. The other half comes from the times we had to evaluate each others’ introductions or texts on a power point. Even though most of the times it wasn’t my essay, their opinion on how to build a strong text combined helped me to grow a lot writing wise.
The reading, mostly, was a pleasant part for me. During the beginning I had to adapt myself to the American studying rhythm, since back in Brazil I did not had that much reading to do at College. My challenges were June Jordan. I found that text boring and too-intellectual to me. A lot of long words, new concepts and I feared the class would be like that: boring. I was dead wrong. Within a couple weeks I read Bloodchild and I finally figured what the class was about, the mix. That was a very important text to me, and a very pleasant one to read. I also enjoyed All Over Creation and I think it created very insightful discussions and Latour’s text and the amazing way he connected everything that I love with a topic I was learning about: Ontology. I grew to read more “grown-up” texts without thinking it’s boring or too-intellectual I would say, I grew to be a more unbiased reader. And giving the amount of reading I had to do, this class taught me how to properly skim. Texts that you can’t skim and texts you can skim and still fully discuss the text. My other challenge was Kolbert due a mere incompatibility of styles.
I don’t see the webby posts as helpful on my learning process. I thought it was one more assignment, one more load of work. I felt like reading the text, thinking on what would be interesting to discuss with the girls was way more helpful than writing a short post. I liked the Friday events, it gave me the opportunity of not only go deeper inside the texts, but go deep inside my own mind. It made me research topics I had no interest before the ESEM, actually I just thought I knew what some topics were about instead of looking for their applicability. The written work also helped me to be a better writer, find my writing styles and change the order I write texts.
I postponed the work the further I could, then I decided to look for what my group was proponing to do. I ended up finding things that did not affect the way I buy things, so I decided change my topic and I found so much more amusement and connection to the new one that taught me that is never too late to restart from scratch. And to be truthful to yourself.
I’m taking with me the ability of making connections, parallels. Being more tolerant, more insightful thinker and writer. Perhaps a better educator, since you have to find a way to speak to the class, each one from a different background and get their opinion. I learn how to talk without feeling exposed, giving my opinion no matter what.