Self evaluation

Over the course of Play in the City, the role I played in class was generally pretty active. In class, contributed my ideas about the reading when I had them. And when people said something I agreed with, I said so, and said why. I learned something almost every time anyone said something. Hearing what other people said allowed me to refine my own opinion through listening openly. I enjoyed answering the true/false questions posed, and found it particularly exciting when only one or two people were on one side. I tried to bring out my full perspective on what each question covered in order to illuminate as much as the terrain as possible, allowing the class as a whole to come up with a more specific  true/false statement. The points I most often found really exciting were usually brought up by ecohn and Samantha Plate. The writing group experience that I grew the most through was the one before we wrote our papers on NW. I was in a group with Frindle, and because of our exchange of ideas, we wrote a paper together in which I experienced a different way of writing. We were able to compare ideas and build off of each other’s concepts in order to delve deeper into the relationship between Nat, Leah, and existentialism. Online, I commented on the posts I was assigned to, but occasionally also on something interesting one of my classmates posted.

Over the course of play in the city, I’ve grown in my readiness to tackle new ideas and jump into things I don’t really understand or know about. This applies to my learning as both a reader and a writer. Reading through rendering has become an easier, more natural, and more useful process through this course. I think that it will be important in my future as an academic reader to know how and when to “skim,” and how to boil a text down to only one word. As a writer, I’ve learned from the sunday night web events because of their consistency. I got to know myself as a writer by developing a process for writing them, and by doing so moved in being more easily able to relate my thoughts into words. And as I have become more able to articulate my thoughts, I’ve involved them more in my papers instead of “proving something” with concrete examples. I am more confident in my ability to create and play with a structure for my papers. 

The reading was sometimes long and repetitive, but usually by the end I really appreciated the new vocabulary defined by its author. Concepts of deep play, critical play, and simple play are terms that I will be able to use moving forward. I also know that I found reading NW to be a valuable reading experience because it was so different from other novels I’ve read. The style fluctuated even within the 3 points of view. I found the structure perplexing, but I enjoyed reading it nonetheless. Tackling tougher readings was a challenge for me, but I will be able to use my experiences of reading things like George Simmel, "The Metropolis and Mental Life" (1950),   to get through other conceptually or textually challenging.

Moving forward, I will bring with me the toolkit we created over the course of the semester. I will be able to use rendering as a reading tool, and lenses as a writing tool. One thing I think I would’ve been hard to find if not for this class is “playing” with texts. Either writing or reading, playing a “true/false” game, or a “believing” game with words is something I look forward to doing as I continue on my academic journey.