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Play in the City helped me grow as a city navigator and as a writer. I initially chose the course as one of my top three classes because I love going into cities, exploring, wandering, and discovering. After several weeks, I have gone to places I probably would never have gone to without this course – that probably sounds really corny. I appreciated the structured freedom, in that I almost always able to go where I wanted but had to look for certain things along the way. I had to ask myself questions that I never usually asked myself when I went into cities. Constantly, I had the questions such as “Is this play?” or “How can I write about this” or “What can I compare to this experience” in my head. I didn’t mind them, though; it helped me experience the city in a deeper way.

I enjoyed the discussions in our class, probably because I got along well with my classmates and I liked hearing what they had to say. Even though I wasn’t always the most talkative or most vocal in class, I like to say that I contributed to the discussion by listening. The reason why I wasn’t as talkative or vocal as some of the others is because I don’t really like to say anything unless I’ve completely thought it through or unless I think that my statement is important to what we’re discussing. In a way, I would have liked to speak more during class, because I had thoughts in my head that I should have said out loud.

With my writing, I think I have managed to go deeper each time. With the first few posts, I feel as if most of my posts were simply narratives, rather than looking deep into what I was doing and what the significance of this was. This was due to the experience that I garnered through trips into the city and through our discussions and readings. At first I think I mostly just touched upon the surface of what I was writing about, in addition to attempting to write a structured five-paragraph essay. In class, Kate described the act of writing what you think without as much structure as “organic writing,” a term I like to use. Even though I still think that it’s important have introductions and conclusions, they aren’t as crucial, as it’s more important to have a point and explain correctly.

I thought my strongest piece was my essay about the Eastern State Penitentiary. The topic was personal and related heavily to my generation, as it discussed the dependency on technology. I found it easy to write because I had so much to say about the kind of world we are becoming with all of the technological advancements we are going through. My weakest paper was probably the one about deep play and how we experienced it. This is probably because I am still not sure what the definition of deep play is. There is no one concrete definition of deep play, and this is why I felt a little lost when attempting to think of a moment of deep play and writing about it. Play is different from deep play, and in that sense, I was definitely lost when it came to the latter.

I’m glad that I sort of learned how to go into the city with this course. I felt as if I would have been scared to go into the city, and would have been confused. This course helped me realize that Philadelphia is a beautiful city. It’s a little bit like New York City for beginners. It has the city feel, but not too much of a city feel that it’s overwhelming. Academically, going into the city has given me a chance to get away from school and the pressures of being a first-year student. The city is exhausting, but so is writing an 8-10 page research paper about Neolithic Turkish art.

I learned a lot from this class; I learned about Philadelphia, writing organically, deeper writing, and the ambiguity of play. During the semester, I had a lot of fun getting to know the people in the class and getting to know myself as a city player.