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In the essay I wrote with Amy last week, our lens is the relationship, especially the relationship between women. Amy asked me, “Is there true friendship between women?” and my immediate answer is, yes. The two girls grow up together, experiencing many things. The final result of their relationship is caused not because of the frangibility of the friendship but the change of their class. Then, in the second draft of our paper, I think the lens is ‘change’. Change in class, change in social states, change in economic condition, change in minds.  

Sorry I wasn't in class yesterday y'all, I possibly have strep so it's been a fun couple of days. Anyway, Julie told me that the conversation on Exile and Pride centered around Home and Claire's discussion of it in the text. Home to me was always a fixed definition, I always took it very literally as the place where I lived. I understood when people said you can have a house but you might not have a home, but it never occured to me that home could be anywhere else. I have found home at Bryn Mawr on such a deeper level than I ever imagined. I have found home in the wonderful people I have come to know here and surround myself with. I have found home in myself in realizing who I am and the reassurance that this is the place that I need to be. Home is no longer a fixed address in Massachusetts, it is within myself and all around me here. 

      This is my fourth attempt to at least master some basic skills in the game. I did drown a few times and fell in the cliff several times. I am not giving up. I have learned to be more observant of my surroundings, to stop and look around, and to plan my movements. Anyone knows how to get out from falling into a huge hall? I tried unsuccessfully to use the space bar but the hole is too deep.

    I really liked the interview with Thomas on Tuesday. He assigned the minecraft game such a high level of sophistication.

For my last paper, I used the lens of structure. I looked at how ZS structured sections differently depending on who they were about, and how that person/character experiences time I also wrote about her authorial voice and inputs into the narration. 

For this newer essay, I want to keep that lens, but elaborate more on where she does and doesn't do this. I also want to look more into the absurdity of the world, as presented through the book. 

So I was really struck today by Edward Said’s call for “willed homelessness.” When we went around the circle others seemed to echo Said’s idea, agreeing that there can be complacency in security. However, I can’t help but rebel against this idea of “willed homelessness.” It feels paradoxical. There is nothing desirable or chosen about being homeless. There is nothing romantic about sleeping on park benches, or buses, or trains, or floors, or random couches. There is nothing exciting about sneaking in friends houses long past parents go to bed so you can find something to eat. There is nothing fun about brushing your teeth in library bathrooms, showering in locker rooms, hiding a duffel bag in the bushes before you go to school. This isn’t learning through being unsettled this is surviving in a world that is actively telling you that you don’t belong here. Sure, I believe in travel, adventure, and exploration, as methods to grow but to call that homelessness is to demonstrate the extraordinary privilege of never knowing what it’s like to not have someone to call along the journey, a porch light on somewhere waiting for you to return. 

I plan to narrow my lens of existentialism to just that ideology the Kierkegarrd presents about the fullness of a moment and how it immulinates Kiesha's need for a dramatic event. I will examine this by only looking at a few moments in Kiesha's life that this is present and examining them more deeply.

Struggle: I got stuck in a cave for a little while because I went too far into it and then I couldn't see anything at all and couldn't figure out how to get out because there was no light. Eventually I got out by just randomly moving my cursor, and pressing w and the space bar.

Accomplishment: I accidentally jumped off of a pretty high cliff which placed me at the bottom of the mountain. This was a problem becasue my crafting table and chest were at the top of the mountain. I explored around a little bit but I couldn't see an easy way to get back up to the top because it was more of a cliff than a hill with different levels to jump up onto. So, I realized that I could break the blocks to form a stair type of thing on the side of the mountain so I could reach the top. And I did! And I found my supplies again!

Observation: It started raining while I was playing today! I am not exactly sure what happens when you get wet, but I am assuming that it is probably better to be dry than to be wet so I went into a cave that I knew was nearby for shelter and waited there until the rain passed.

Question: My next step is to figure out how to build a house. So, my question is... how do you build a house?

Today's discussion about home brought up a lot of thoughts and feelings for me that I had not before believed were part of me. The question about our desire for sameness and what do we have to give up for it reminded me of my high school. Nobody talked about differences. Whenever I brought up my two moms there was always an uncomfortable silence. I always wanted to know more about my Indian friend's culture but she never wanted to talk about it. Everybody was considered the same. Yes we had our differences and our strengths and weakness, but I nothing that made a person different. I wanted to find out all of the interesting aspects of people who brought into the conversation all different views and histories. But we never heard their stories. Now at Bryn Mawr, I feel like these conversations are much more open and more people want to discuss our differences. Everybody is different and we need to recognize and celebrate these differences instead of forcing people into silence and not allowing them to open their mouths and say their beliefs and their histories.

I plan to keep my lens of existentialism and deepen it by finding more resources on Kierkegaard and using them to lengthen my paper.

Obviously, this post is late. The minute I walked into class today I realized I hadn't posted and my first thought was, "Oh no I screwed up and forgot!" I gave very little thought to it, other than concluding that I should definitely make a post later that night. However, I was really intrigued when Anne brought up the idea of queer time in relation to people not making posts on time this weekend. Was I living on queer time when I forgot to make a post? I had so much other stuff going on this past weekend, academically and with Lantern Night, so making a post on Serendip was not front and center in my mind. For any ambitious student at any other college, putting a cultish tradition above homework would probably seem irresponsible, but for me I hardly put any thought to it. Lantern Night and Step Sing were higher on my priority list for that day, and that was it. Is that an example of me living on queer time, ordering my priorities in a way that does not necessarily follow what would be normative outside of Bryn Mawr? Our discussion of queer time today also got me thinking about how ingrained normative time is not just in academic institutions, but in individuals (of course I can only speak from my perspective there). When Anne talked about running a class on queer time and simply saying that we'd have to have four papers written by some far off date, Caroline mentioned how she would put herself on a schedule and set her own deadlines.