I felt a strong connection with the pieces we read this week. With the Morell reading, the idea of writing as an act of self care really resonated with me. In class today I began reflecting a lot on my life and the development of my love for literature, and I realized that a large part of my love for literature is responsible by the English teachers I had in high school. I wouldn't be intending to declare as an English major in the coming months if it weren't for the teachers I have had, and as I sat in class listening to everyone's stories with in class free-writing or writing as self care, I came to understand that the opportunity and assignment of creative writing projects really influenced my relationship with the language and with literacy.

Recently I've been free writing or writing poetry when I feel particularly stressed or emotional as a release and as a way to organize my feelings. In following with Morrell, "writing becomes a catharsis, a letting out of emotions that become painful or even dangerous if they remain internalized. I am convinced that much of great literature begins this way; even though it can ultimately be shared with others, it began as a strategy to help the authors to successfully cope with otherwise overwhelming emotion" (169). I've never really done this practice consistently before.

Recently, our class conversation has delved a lot into the way that we are taught to read and write. While this is certainly not surprising for a course titled "Unsettling Literacy," I still have found myself surprised at the visceral emotions I have been feeling recently. It is probably due to sitting in a class full of thoughtful and passionate people while talking about how we learned to read, write and be literate.

In class today we talked about writing as self care, and the last time we remember writing freely in a classroom setting. I realized that the feeliings of inhibition that block me from writing "authentically" mainly stem from the knowledge that my work will be graded. This has been true for me since I began getting grades, in middle school. My uninhibited creative piping gets plugged when I remember the looming future of the number value my professor or teacher will assign to my written thoughts. I freeze. I read back over my work and check for coherence, grammar, structural integrity. It feels like the teacher is looking over my shoulder, and I become so self-conscious that my flow is shattered. 

As I write this reflection, I am extremely cognizant of what I am writing, who will be reading it, and all the uncertainty surrounding what exactly this means. I am going to try to write the rest of this piece in the surrealist form that Morell highlighted in his piece. Or rather, a watered down surrealist writing or stream of consciousness. Who are the eyes? Who should be reading this reflective writing? Who is reading this reflective writing? Will I revisit this writing again and when I do, will look at the content or the poor grammar and the awkward spelling. What does it mean to authentically reflect? I want to own this writing, but is it true ownership without my name? A pseudonym creates dishonesty between the reader and writer.

Thought this was interesting in relation to our discussion of autonomy: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/603512/reached-via-a-mind-reading-device-deeply-paralyzed-patients-say-they-want-to-live/

Today in class, we discussed a lot about the systems that make an institution run: more specifically, we discussed the "ought to be" and how the personal "ought to be" differs from what an institution might think. While others seemed to focus on privledge and where they came from, I started to consider how the rules of Bryn Mawr (the requirements which each student is expected to complete) could impact myself and others. It seems that this is part of the liberal arts "ought to be;" a belief that a rounded education, where students must complete many disciplines, is more valuable than study only in one area. While I came to college believing in this, and beliving in the idealistic praising of liberal arts styles, I now believe that this is not totally achievable in real life.

I was interested in Eli Clare's discussion of Ellen Stohl's appearence in playboy, and how it was simultaneouly seen within the disability community as a victory and within the feminist community as a symbol of ongoing objectification.  It was interesting that in order to fight against desexualization on the basis of her disability, Stohl had to play into other potentially damaging expectations placed on her gender. I think there are a lot of instances in which people with disabilities gain traction in the nondisabled world by conforming to other societal norms to a degree that nondisabled people might not have to in the same way.