How I Play

At the beginning of this course, I was frightened of using public transportation alone. My first essay, though interesting, was disjointed. My essays since have gotten more cohesive. I have just finished an essay that I’m particularly proud of, in flow, argument structure, and word choice. My main struggle in writing this one is not that I don’t have answers to the questions, but that I cannot find a framework in which to answer them. I have also recently completed a trip to the city in which I not only traveled to the city alone by train, but took the bus and trolley system for the first time. In the city, I have learned a lot about how to navigate a city, as well as experienced fascinating works of art that I would not otherwise have been able to enjoy. I got to enjoy some of my favorite food, make a new friend, and have a lot of fun—several things that I don’t ordinarily make enough time for.

 I have learned new ways to look at problems, acquired new tools in my toolbox. Particularly useful was the new method I learned of annotating readings, specifically, what to underline, what to box, and what to circle to allow easy re-reading. I have expanded this method to include highlighting key concepts that can be used as quotes and making notes in the margins. I have gotten better at writing papers based on ideas rather than assignments, and writing decent papers quickly, while I used to only be able to write them with a great deal of notice in which to think about them. I have acquired new lenses with which to color experience, particularly different types of play, and particularly deep play. I got to experience simple play on our first trip in the city, stomping leaves and playing I Spy. I created critical play visiting Isaiah Zagar’s mosaics and photographing them with the help of a pomegranate. Most enjoyably, I experienced deep play while writing my last paper, and on my last trip into the city, when I visited the echidnas in the Philadelphia Zoo. I had been waiting for five years to visit the echidnas, which had been my latest obsession at the age of thirteen. The Philadelphia Zoo is the only zoo on the entire East Coast with echidnas, but when we traveled up to see them, one of them had been removed from the exhibit and the other was in the back, busily building a nest. On my return trip, though, not only were they visible, but one of the keepers put fresh food in the exhibit, so they came right up to the glass, inches away from me. To top off the experience, the first real snowfall of the year happened that day. All of this combined joy created an ecstasy of play for me. I found it more difficult to play while reading the large amount of material. I find it difficult to read assigned material playfully, especially when there is a large amount of work to do. This remains a learning edge for me.

As for my group learning, I have tried to be an active participant and engage with others on interesting concepts. I think I mostly succeeded, but it is hard to tell from this end of the process. I focused a lot on my own work, and not much on helping others, though I tried to provide helpful commentary on their work when asked to. I am still not entirely sure what is helpful and what is not or how to best help. This also remains an edge. Of my classmates, I find that Thea tended to have insightful contributions to full-class discussions and Ellen was a particularly enjoyable writing-group member, as she was both friendly and productive, by which I mean that she helped keep us on track with our discussion and spoke up with her opinions instead of waiting for someone else to speak first.

I will take from this course increased paper-reading and paper-writing skills, a healthy dose of courage, an increased sense of how to play in everyday life, a sense of how to navigate cities in general, a decent working knowledge of much of Philadelphia, and one of my best friends.