My Evaluated Self: I Am a Happy Splinter

Imagine you are a splinter, stuck in the hand of a mightier being that you cannot wholly see or comprehend. This is how I feel. I am a splinter in the hand of the humanities. I’ll never completely understand this field, and an argument can be made that no one ever will. The humanities expand, knowledge develops, and opinions are unstable. But what I know right now, at this temporal moment in space and time is… I am one happy splinter!

At the beginning of this course I was convinced that my thesis would be dedicated to the “in-between genre”, genres like historical fiction, or creative non-fiction - genres that blurred the very definition of the word. The description for this course read, “we [will] examine a range of explanations for how and why new genres evolve”, so I was prepared to read literary theories and compare those theories to both works that obeyed and bent the stereotypes of their specified genres. I walked into this class expecting to gain a background for my thesis. By the time I walked out, I had most definitely began a background, but more importantly I was exposed to an environment that thankfully made me realize that no thesis topic should be chosen at the beginning of your sophomore year.

The in-between genre is already being examined. Through reading Folsom, Stallybrass, Vonnegut, the various writers of The Breaking Project, and especially Neil Gaiman, I’ve realized that the in-between genre is just as much of a social construction as genre itself. Social constructions are necessary for effective communication and can even add life to a story, but by analyzing genre throughout this course, genre itself has been deconstructed, taking the in-between genre along with it! I’ve realized now, at the end of this semester, that what I wanted to do for my thesis I no longer care for. I no longer want to explore or analyze the genre of the in-between. Instead,  I want to somehow reconstruct genre to be inclusive of all possibilities, so there is no in-between. This is a huge distance away from where I stood in January.

A huge contributor to this distance was Serendipity. This online space allowed me to write informally. I was able to have conversations with classmates, who became friends, and to write solo postings that acted as therapeutic journal entries where I could compose my thoughts. Looking back there was a definite thread to my postings, even my web papers- they all primarily focused on the relativity of perception. My first few postings focused on the criteria of creativity, what characteristics are required to label something or someone as creative?  My later postings were a little less thematic, ranging from issues of relative truth to how mediums effect reaction. By the end of the semester, my postings and comments had come full circle, back to the issue of creativity. Only this time I used the comments of others, our readings, and class discussions over the entire semester to take my thoughts on creativity a step further, formulating them into a project focusing on the relativity of the creative process during writing, ie. The Literature Lab presentation. The LitLab is a compilation of everything I’ve learned this semester: how relative reading can be; how genre is necessary but is a mere starting point for future exploration and creation; how collaboration is luckily unavoidable; how one creation leads to another in a wonderfully circular and never-ending editing process of self. What is so wonderful about the LitLab is not what it could physically be, but the fact that I was able to form my thoughts into a structure is an amazing achievement in itself!

My thoughts, like my personality, are sporadic. I very often undertake pet projects that never matriculate into anything more than heated conversation. This course, my classmates and my professor, pushed me further, encouraging me to form my ideas fully and collaboratively outside the realm of debate, and actually CREATE something, actually DO something. The fact that I have finally broken the barrier between talking and doing that I often stand between is enough in itself to evaluate this school year as a success!

The last thing I would be amiss to mention is the classroom itself. Never have I had such a working environment where everyone visibly changed over the course of the semester. We grew together. Not only do I know everybody’s name in the class but I feel that I know everybody, and I can only hope that they know me. A classroom where you know and understand those around you is vital, in my opinion. It allows you to be open, and only through an open mind can knowledge enter. It is often difficult to evaluate yourself, but by looking at how symbiotic this classroom was I can only think that my contribution was positive, and I most definitely pushed myself to be so. I spoke in this class more than in most, and being in a classroom with students from such different backgrounds really pushed me to reevaluate my beliefs and opinions. I don’t often converse with science majors, simply because I don’t take many science classes. It was a joy for me to see things from their perspectives- not that all majors in the sciences have the same opinions by any means, but very often English majors speak with one mind and it was great to hear from those not attached to the brain of the English Department.

Overall, I am thankful for the malleability of this course; so many different minds from so many different backgrounds granted this course an amazing amount of malleability and unpredictability-  I never knew for sure where our conversations were going to lead. This allowed me to use this course as a hub, to compile all the information gained from our readings, from each other, and even from my other classes in a way that expanded the boundaries of my own knowledge. It is rare that a course is so enabling. For now, the edges of my knowledge are still expanding and I hope they will never be still. I hope that I will never stop learning, growing, developing. I hope that I will never be removed from the hand of the humanities, I am a happy splinter, and why shouldn't I be- afterall, splinters can be beautiful!