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I enrolled in this class because after a history-based women’s studies class in high school, I became very interested in feminist issues and looking past the gender binary. When I started in this class, I didn’t have a lot of confidence in myself as a humanities student. I never spoke much in English and history classes in high school, because I had trouble with two things: getting invested in the subject matter, and believing that others would want to hear something that I had to say. I also found myself unable to really care about essay prompts I was given, except for one paper senior year where I chose my own topic.

I was pretty freaked out for the first month of class, because I was in this circle of people who seemed to know more than me and were able to voice their opinions well. The questions Anne asked in class were so different from anything I’d been asked before, and I felt inadequate to answer them. But I realized after we discussed the actual classroom and people’s silences that I was not an outsider in the classroom, that others felt the same way I did. After that, I put in a large effort to speak when there was a silence but I had something running through my head, shelving the concern that my idea was not going to fully answer the question of the class.

I realized during this semester that I was viewing the classroom setting in a way that hindered my ability to get whatever I could from a class. I very much viewed it as a teacher talking at a class. But our classroom was a community helping each other battle through these tough ideas, and I truly appreciated my classmates. I got to know myself as a learner, which I never bothered to do before. I found that I need to take the risk of being wrong way more often in a classroom if I am going to learn as much as I want to here, and I am going to take that with me to future classes.

I was pleasantly surprised by the books we read this semester. I definitely did not expect to be reading a graphic novel and personal stories, but I thoroughly enjoyed reading the books. I had trouble with the theory we read, and looking back, I should have tried to reread parts of it after discussing it in class, or spent more time on it before class, but I didn’t prioritize the theory. Connecting the books to the ideas in class was a challenge, and I think I improved at that way of thinking through the semester.

I think my willingness to question and take risks in answering questions showed through my writing in this class. I started to enjoy reading others’ posts on Serendip and commenting, posing or trying to answer questions. If I didn’t have a pressing topic to bring up in a post, then I waited until after 5 to read others’ posts, and commented instead. I consider my comments to be on-time because I still commented on Sundays, so I think people who read Serendip before class would still be able to find my comments.

My first web event was an analysis of children’s book illustrations, and although I brought up my anti-self-portrait, I did not really look into self-representation. I stayed on the surface of the issue of visual representation. For my second web event, I looked into a topic I new next to nothing about: healthcare and the gender binary. I enjoyed the process of writing this web event, discovering new things and being okay with not knowing exactly how the paper would turn out.

Moving into the third web event, when I started, I had two articles suggested by Anne and the word “unbinding,” and I just worked on getting a topic for an evening. This process was very rewarding, which I did not expect given the stress that accompanied it. I was excited by what my web event turned into, and how “into” the writing I got. I followed this same route for my final web event, and I surprised myself again with what I ended up writing.

The ideas about unbinding and thinking outside of the gender binary really hooked into my mind. For each web event after the first one, I found myself realizing every time I wrote a binary into my paper, regardless of whether it was the gender binary specifically. I had a moment each time when I wanted to either try to rewrite the paper without the binary, or put a disclaimer somewhere saying “yes I’m sorry I used a binary, I know.” I realized that what I was saying couldn’t be unbound from the binary I was using, similar to how Heidi Hartmann doesn’t bother with “what is a woman” and just gets on with her work. I am just content that I now have a mental “binary alert,” as well as awareness of how the patriarchy functions in day-to-day life, and I think that is a very important thing I gained from this class.