In Ruth Ozeki’s novel All Over Creation, identity and environment intersect continuously, especially for one character in particular. Yumi Fuller, the daughter of a Japanese woman and a native Idahoan, grows up in an area where she, as an Asian American, looks quite unlike any of her other peers. At age fourteen, she runs away, leaving her home environment behind and focusing on creating a new life, as well as a new identity, for herself. No longer is she the foreigner in Idaho. She is now the self-made woman: A real-estate agent, professor, and single mother.

Anne Dalke writes that slipping is “often unconscious, form of resistance that I’m [Anne Dalke] calling “slipping”: an act of associative mis-speaking” (Anne Dalke, website version). In her work, she cites a few examples, a student hanging the confederate flag out of her window, a student opting out of a learning experience, and the hanging of Christmas lights in a common room. Dalke also quotes a former student, Emily Elstad, “these notions of “slip” posit a new state emerging from the act of slipping, a temporary loss of control that yields both a personal, subjective truth and a changed state that has moved away from “a standard” and into new thought and order.

Two summer’s ago, between eleventh and twelfth grade, I held an internship in a malaria vaccine research lab. The laboratory was testing a self-assembling protein nanoparticle vaccine, and my job for eight weeks, as told to me by the lab’s principal investigator in an email, was to “characterize the protein.” At that point, I knew how to analyze the characterization of Lady Macbeth, Huck Finn, and Nick Carraway but I had no idea what it meant to characterize a protein. Was I to determine its personality? And how did the researchers not know the personality and nature of the protein if they so specifically engineered it?

In class the question was posed: “What is the environment?” A lot of the responses alienated the natural world from human existence by saying in roughly: “I don't eat plants or salad so therefore I have no relation to the environment.” This breakdown of body vs body, we vs it, completely negates the existential threat if sustainable and practical cohabitation is not meet.  The class’s view of the natural world as anything other the human experience removes all responsibility for protection of the earth due to its severance of belonging. The premise being all thing created by human is void of origin when in fact all interactions we, as human have, involve the environment, ie the chair I am sitting on, the wood floor, etc.

Every group's presentation broaden my view. Also one problem stands out that there are not enough participants took surveys so the result cannot be accrate to draw a conclusion. 

Based on Bryn Mawr bubble, i disscused with Eva about whether we can have a Bryn Mawr website displaying different survey-needed projects from each student.

I raised that:

Dear Anne, 

Hello! I apologize for the late posting. This was a challenging but enriching first semester with you! I believe that challenges in life helps one become a better person! My mind has been broadened to a variety of opinions from your selected readings and weekly discussions. Writing essays every single week definitely helped me become a better writer. I am still trying to figure out how to make my paragraphs transition better but I think that skill will come over time. 

Dear Jody,

            Chapter 4 is concerned with living in the country called Prison. The chapter explains how there are four subcultures in prison, which include licensed professionals, inmates, and security personnel. The members of each of these subgroups have learned the culture of their own group through instruction, imitation, observation, and reinforcement. Every group has created their own ideologies, language, principles, relationship patterns, and perceptions of power. Looman and Carl present a strategic proposal to “modify prison environments to promote cooperative behavior and prosocial American values” (126).

I want to start by saying that I'm so glad I had the chance to do this project with Kate, as well as the chance to hear everyone else talk about their projects. Through these, I feel like I've learned so much, and had to do a lot of critical thinking about the formation and impacts of contact zones and comfort zones. While no one reached a neat conclusion, I think everyone walked away from the presentations with ideas of what could be done, as well as the comfort of knowing that others recognize the issues that impact your life. Even though there is still clearly a lot of work to be done to support marginalized students on campus and to expand our contact zones, just seeing these issues addressed in such a thoughtful manner gives me hope for the future.