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Writing essays that were not argumentative and without a traditional format was freeing but challenging. Instead of choosing a binary side and then finding evidence to support it, I was working with ideas and questions that were new to me. Putting these ideas and possible answers to these questions into writing was a venture.

At the beginning of the semester, my writing was playful in terms of its structure. In some papers I wrote about a theme that related to a various ideas, which then occasionally turned into a stream of consciousness. I was unable to zoom out enough from my papers in order to see and state clearly the statement I felt was there, simply because the ideas were so intriguing to me. I became better at attaching a structure and an overall idea and question to my papers when I wrote about NW, Eastern State Penitentiary, and deep play. This improvement was facilitated by having shorter prompts and references to work with from my own experiences in the city and class readings, and the act of ruminating own my writing.

Class readings built up vocabulary tools and facilitated conversations in class about the questions we were addressing. The vocabulary helped me to think about ideas in a more analytical way, that I had previously only encountered fleetingly in live creature situations. I am pleased to have the essays and their terminology to reference in the future. I am also inspired by the ideology of thinking of essays in terms of questions that grow out of questions. This was especially demonstrated when we were asked in class if Sontag would throw away the vocabulary we built up over the semester, questioning the tools’ validity that we had been using to question.

I am excited to go to the Fringe Festival events next fall and think about how they make me doubt and/or believe. I think my edges of learning now lie with Sontag and Andy Goldsworthy. I want to meditate on Sontag’s ideas when I look at art. I also want to think more about Andy Goldsworthy’s art in terms of play and the city. What I am taking away from this class is to question.