Back to I

Overall, I’m happy with the way this class went for me.  In the beginning of the year, I signed up for this class because I needed another 300-level class to get me just one step closer to finishing my English major.  I’m primarily interested in ethnic/cultural literature, but unfortunately, offerings in that area seemed to be pretty slim this semester.  I was already taking one medieval literature class and couldn’t bare the thought of taking another and so I was left with this class.  “I’m not a ‘nature’ girl,” I said to myself, “but I will take this class and tell myself that I am simply taking it to expand my experience of the world and learn something new.  It’s not like I would participate in anything like this otherwise”.  Reaching out of my comfort zone has been something I’ve been trying to do lately.

 I had a difficult first half of the semester in achieving balance in my academic life.  I was going through a lot of changes and in general it was a fairly uncomfortable time.  I started out the semester with high hopes, but those hopes quickly dissipated.  The site-sits were tedious and boring to me and the eco-linguistic readings were not all that much better.  On top of being practically attacked by bees each class, this all made me feel like taking this class had been a mistake.  However, something happened in this class after break where I became a lot more interested in what we were talking about.  I began to get back into doing my sit sits and I started using Serendip and the space it provides for us more often.  My participation increased greatly in class and even outside of it.  I think that change occurred because we entered a unit that was much more interesting to me than our eco-linguistics unit.  I suddenly began to think about this class more as a chance to be creative in the ways that we think about the world and I think I started to play around a bit more with things.

My playful spirit is probably most evident in the writing that I did within the course, which, was never a standard essay.  I always tried to do something more creative, partially because I never get the chance to do things like that in my other English classes and partially because it was easier.  When I say it was easier, I mean several things.  It does take less effort for me to write a short story than to write a 12-page essay, but it was also easier to do more creative writing because I think that was a more accurate reflection of the ideas I was trying to communicate.  Every time I tried to sit down and formulate a linear, academic paper, I became extremely confused and couldn’t figure out where to begin or even what to say.  It was so much easier for me to wrap my thinking into a story.

This last thought connects to some of the readings we did.  The readings I enjoyed most were the Terry Tempest Williams book and the Coetzee book perhaps because they mirror my own writing the most.  Perhaps comparing my experiences between the academic articles and the more creative ones has helped me to flesh out my thinking the most in regards to our language and writing.  Perhaps ecological imaginings cannot be communicated through academic writing that seeks to draw clear divisions, and put things in nice neat little boxes.  Fictive writing also reflects experiential knowledge more than any other type of writing in my mind.   Perhaps this class could be improved upon by adding more creative writing opportunities into it.

I also wish that people could or would use Serendip more often or, perhaps, if this isn’t possible, you could add a weekly conversation hour to the course where students could meet and discuss the readings before class together.  It would have gotten the creative juices flowing and allowed us to cover more material.  We spent a lot of time talking about ourselves and what we could do better in class, which isn’t bad, but it made talking about the readings more difficult. 

I think the way in which I grew the most in this class was by being able to return to parts of myself.  I was able to write short stories, which I haven’t done since high school and reconnected with the joy that I find in that.  It reminded me of the reasons I enjoy writing in the first place.  I explored my fears and I talked about my family history, which is something I often find difficult doing because I don't think many people share a similar feeling of culture-lessness (for lack of better term) that I do because I cannot point to an ancestor that hasn't been born in America.  I was also able to experience my body in a way that is similar to the way I experience it when I dance mostly through the blind exercises we did.  Finally, I was able to experience a class in which one’s experience was valued and considered legitimate.  This never happens in an academic classroom.  For me, these three things combined have brought me back to myself, and I think that when we’re connected to our body we are most connected to the world around us.  It is strange that coming back to "I" gives us a greater sense of the world around us.  The "I" we returned to in this class was a truer version, a less socialized version, shall I say.  I may not have given my best 100% of the time, but I learned a lot and I pushed a lot of boundaries.  I may even be caught outside on a spring day someday soon. I might even pick up a spider one day, but, we shall see.