Collision and Sparkle

(I took the banner photo at Eastern State Penitentiary, my favorite place in Philadelphia.)

In order to write this final evaluation and also find one paper to rewrite, I’m looking back at all my previous papers and smiling at myself. 

I see myself writing the first paper, sitting in front of the computer, struggling for some more words to say; I see the unfamiliarity and nervousness when I first went into Philadelphia; I see myself excited at the new form of homework, making the mosaic until midnight. 

I find some papers that I don't recognize at first, because I was experimenting with my writing style—it became fragmented when we were studying mosaic and NW. I discovered the fun of language, which was very much to my surprise, because I have always preferred science to literature.

I’m amused at the naivety of my early papers—how I stopped a sentence too quickly and robbed it of its true meaning. I’m not saying that my writing is no longer naive, but I’m really delighted to see the progress.

I can also see the obvious difference between fluent papers about my favorite topics and awkward ones about ideas that are hard to me. Deep Play and The Believing Game resonate with me the most. These ideas help explain something important in my life. I’m fond of a youth leadership program I’ve participated in, and I now volunteer there as a facilitator. That program basically tells us to love people around us, see the best in everybody, and start a positive chain reaction. It sounds cliche, but I feel the strongest ecstasy of deep play there. My mom alway thought it was a waste of my time and energy, and my “blindly positive” personality would eventually ruin me; and I was frustrated that I couldn’t find a reason convincing enough, and now I have an answer for her and for myself. Some cynical people who know nothing about the program vilify it as brainwashing just because we make people very happy, but I know we are not promoting believing-in-everything which equals ignorance, but are playing the believing game. I always knew I was doing the right thing, but now I feel more assured to have some intellectual basis. The readings for this class are more than dead academics: they are good advice for life.

I like ideas contrary to my own, too. Among my classmates, I find myself agreeing to Tomahawk most of the time, even though I’m not a nihilist; in our Barnes paper, we even chose two paintings of the same painter, displayed near each other. Agatha’s ideas are interesting, due to her life experience in three continents, her passion as a musician, and her unique perspective. Claire is the one I find very different from myself: she likes to criticize and doubt, while I like to believe and appreciate. I disagree to almost everything she says, but still I love to hear her thoughts and respect her as a good thinker. 

As for class participation, I would blush and say that I took more than I gave. I learned a lot from all the brilliant classmates and our lively discussion. Those various ideas were really inspiring. I seldom talked at the beginning because I was shy, but later I became more comfortable with expressing and I learned much more in discussion than merely listening.

Generally, I enjoyed ESem very much. Students with different academic interests studying the same topic, the collision creates sparkles of thoughts. I wish there would be another ESem at the very last semester of the college, when we have more knowledge in our different majors. I imagine there would be more collision and the class would be even more interesting.