Coming into Bryn Mawr, I was fairly confident in the quality of my writing. I was similarly confident in the soundness of my worldview. I thought I had a pretty good sense of what it meant to advocate for social justice. I felt my arguments about what I thought were some of the biggest issues concerning our society were not only inarguably correct, but also something I needed to talk about no matter the context. This class has taught me a lot about the way I write as well as the way I look at the world.

Self-Evaluation Reflection: Now is the Start

For me, this has been an incredibly difficult and incredibly valuable semester of work. This was by no means a “typical” semester, if such a thing can be said to exist at Bryn Mawr. I feel that I have progressed greatly as not just a scholar, but as a thinking person.

Silvi Shameti

Identity, Access, Innovation

Final Fieldwork Paper

Fall 2014

“Coral Reef” Correctional Facility

Allie Cavallaro

Revision: Paper #4 à#13

September 25, 2014

Having a Hand in Freakdom

In class a couple weeks ago we talked about the word “freak.”  A few of my classmates presented an etymology on the word, explaining that it came from the Latin phrase lusus naturae which they translated to “freak of nature,” but the thing that one must remember about Latin is that it is hardly ever that simple (“freak”).

I still remembered Anne’s comment from my very first essay. My opening was too generalized. The usage of verb tenses was confusing. The writing format was wrong. The claims of my two stories were contradictory to one another. I had lack of data to support thesis. And even if I had enough evidence, my thesis would still be too marginalized. When facing those comments, I questioned, rethought, and carried new ideas to the writing conference.

Anne,

As I said to you in our last conference, I feel like it took me a while to get the hang of this class, not because of the reading difficulty or the workload, but because of understanding what was expected of me. 

            Truthfully, coming into this class, I had no idea what to expect. I had no idea what you expected of us, I had no idea you could just call professors by their first names, and I had no idea what we would be talking about.

            Right off the bat I decided I was interested in the discussions; I remember you telling me to hold back and let other people talk, and I feel like that was one of the strange ways this class helped me grow, and to really get a sense of others opinions and let their voices be heard.