Self-Evaluation for Cat

                When I began this class, I did so as a student who had already taken a course with Anne. I was a lot more prepared than I was at the beginning of my first class with her. In addition to being my first course with Anne, the ESEM that I took with her was my first college course. In contrast, I began Critical Feminist Studies after a year at Bryn Mawr, and that shows. I have a better grasp of both “college” (admittedly, mostly in the form of more questions and fewer answers than I began with when I matriculated at Bryn Mawr) and what “Bryn Mawr” is.  Just by comparing the Serendip posts that I wrote last year with the ones that I shared this semester, there’s a noticeable distance. I’ve changed as a person over the last year—not a particularly extraordinary circumstance, but a true one. The ESEM program assumes that students are not quite up to the “Bryn Mawr standard” yet, mostly in terms of writing and classroom discussion, and, upon entering this course, I’m at the very least, a stronger writer and conversationalist than I was when I began that ESEM.

I came into Critical Feminist Studies with a feminism first shaped by my mother, the neoliberal Op-Eds of The New York Times, and watered down feminism (often in the form of end of the chapter paragraphs) in my high school classrooms. After a year at Bryn Mawr, I entered Critical Feminist Studies with a bigger base of feminist knowledge than I had when I was a first-year. I had read eco-feminist literature, learned that bell hooks and Toni Morrison were important, and was exposed to the concept of intersectionality in that doe-eyed year. I had a year of reading *the college news* and getting 3 AM introductions to feminist icons and waves of feminism from its older and wiser editors. Compared to the rest of the class, I think this means I was solidly in the middle, maybe even in the top middle of feminist base knowledge. I also entered the class having taken a class with Anne. That means, first of all, that I knew Anne, that I had a better idea of what a class with her would mean than when I first did. I had already had a class where talking without hand-raising was de rigeur and where missing a writing conference didn’t mean I would get a newly scheduled one, but some reflection on what not showing up when promised means. So, I had a better idea of what I was getting myself into when I signed up for this course than when I got an email a year and a half ago telling me what ESEM I would be in. That doesn’t mean that nothing happened over the course of the class, though.

Entering this class, I knew who bell hooks was, had even checked out some of her books from the library, but hadn’t read her. I also hadn’t really thought about the meaning of feminism—its implications as a movement started and still primarily championed by and for, upper middle class cis white women.  I hadn’t thought of the gendered implications of its name, or really deconstructed the name under “Bryn Mawr”: women’s college. Those are all places I was not at.

Over the course of this class, I think that I really thought a lot , mostly inside my own head, but also with other people. Most of my favorite discussions over the course of the semester were outside of class. One-on-one writing conferences are some of the times that really start to get me thinking and questioning—myself and the things I’m supposed to be learning or already learned (some of them in the syllabus, others not so much).  I tried to come prepared for them—I always had notes scribbled on sheets of paper, but when I started talking, I, even after three of them this semester, quickly realized that they were in adequate. My preparation for those conferences increased each time, as did the thought I put into them, but they were never quite concise enough. The ideas for all of my papers came from comments I made off the cuff in a big rambling mess after talking with Anne.  The effort was usually there, but a constant take away from this course is that I need to be more to the point.

I had three writing conferences with Anne, and we are expected to write three web-events, a final paper, and this, my self-evaluation, over the courses of the semester. For the paper we didn’t talk about in our conferences, I talked to my classmates about. Conversations outside of class, sparked by something we were reading in class, an upcoming paper, or simply because someone was in the class and that made me feel okay starting a conversation with them, were one of my favorite parts of class this semester. First of all, I think they helped me form stronger friendships, something I’m always a fan of. As insignificant and “fluffy” as that might sound, to brush friendships off as so light is stingingly pedantic. The reality of Bryn Mawr (and, I would argue, life) is that friends help you get through it. They’re nice and happy, and sometimes not so much, but they’re strong systems of support, and, at the very least, someone to wave hello to on a bad day. From a more intellectual perspective, those conversations outside of class, mostly with Abby, Julie, Sam, and Christina, helped me, in the short term, figure out what I was going to write in papers and in posts. Within class, critical conversation was hard to come by—any conversation was rare. But, outside of class, talking one-on-one was easier more productive. Sometimes, we danced around the texts, talking about ideas we didn’t understand, like when me and Julie waded through Judith Butler’s idea of mourning and how it relates to conceptions of the body, or someone would recommend something for me to read, like Sam did with a bell hooks essay to use for my final paper. Continuing conversations outside of class and, more often, starting them was one of the most fun effects of this class, and one where I gained a lot.

In conversations in class, I tried to talk. Being in this class has reminded me of old dilemmas of mine—when to talk and when not to and the age-old argument of the student—what the point of talking in class is, anyway. I tried to contribute to the conversation in an equal way, not dominating it, but not staying outside of it, either. I think I succeeded pretty well there. I think I still have a way to go in the way that I spoke—long, drawn out “um’s”  and rambling that would begin every sentence, not so much “drawn” as sketched, sometimes leading to darker lines of charcoal being put down, and sometimes would just end in faint, hazy marks that didn’t present a clear picture.

Those ramblings might have come out of a distinct lack of preparation for class, but I think that standard is an impossible one for me to fulfill at this point. I came to class every day having read the assigned readings, having looked at the Course Notes on Serendip, and with a few ideas about what I would talk about or what I thought were interesting already set out. I can, of course, work harder before coming to class—of course I can work harder, to say that I’m at my limit would be a lie. But I cannot have every conversation already mapped out—limiting the rambling and facilitating more elucidated speech would have come with more preparation, but, since It is simply the way that I speak, will actually come more fully from practice and with a more consistent awareness of how I speaking and how to rectify it.

When I came to class, I was generally prepared. I would have liked to have done more outside research—coming to class having looked at the writing of Gertrude Stein when we were reading The Book of Salt and understanding what role Wendy Brown played in Second Wave feminism before our class on her mourning of it. But, I came to class having done that research sometimes, and I was generally pretty prepared for class in ways that followed the syllabus—I did not finish a couple of reading exactly on time or having read them to the point I would have liked, but I did so afterward.

When I did not come to class, it was not because of frivolous reasons. I was sick two of the days I missed. The other, last day, I knew I would not have been an active participant in class, nor a particularly helpful one. I have done the Judith Butler reading on mourning, but that day’s activity required participation in small groups, and I needed a class off. Sometimes, I just need a break, and that class would not have benefitted from my presence, and I certainly would not have.

On Serendip, I was not as active as I would have liked to have been. It irritates me to know end that I did not complete the posts far before the deadlines instead of posting them so close—most of the posts were published late on Sunday afternoons. I actually don’t think that this impacted the class that much—I really don’t think members of the class were checking Serendip that regularly. But, had a posted sooner, the reality is that I might have gone back and edited the post to reflect a more thoughtful view or someone might have commented on it, sparking an interesting conversation. I mostly posted my own posts, but I often commented, which I think lends a lot to Serendip—the point of the blog, I think, is nto just to post things that we didn’t get a chance to talk about in class, but to have other people see what has been posted, and to facilitate conversation outside of the classroom. Two of my web events on Serendip were actually passed the deadline, though, and that’s something I could have done better. With the idea of queer time in our minds, especially, I don’t think that the impact of that “lateness” was really one of tardiness. The impact of submitting them past the deadline was not that Anne did not see them—she commented on the web events around the same time that she commented on everyone else’s. There is, of course, a chance that someone could have posted on those web events, could have commented sparked a conversation had they seen them at a certain point had they been submitted sooner. I think that the possibility of that missed opportunity occurring is minute, however. Keeping queer time in the back of my mind, I think that the deadlines that are connected with assignments are done so with wiggle room—that not everyone will submit things exactly on time, so they are assigned before Anne will actually look at them. When taking this into consideration, the fact that the papers were submitted past the deadline means that I contributed to this, perhaps unflattering, view point of us as students. But, in the short term, since we are already operating under these (assumed) policies, the papers did not, in my opinion negatively effect anyone, except myself and my guilt.

I really liked this class. When I compare my performance in class to my ability, I think I did pretty well. I know full well that this self-evaluation is meant to  assist in the grading process, and there, I’m not sure where I would fit in. Grades are a tricky business, and I don’t understand how I’m supposed to see what context they're developed in. If I’m being measured against my peers, a perception of what I’m able to do, a perception of what I should be able to do, or simply how well I fulfilled the requirements of the syllabus or how much I exceeded them, grades can be many things. I don’t think that the purpose of this essay is to argue for or against any of those view points, so I’ll save that conversation for another day. Quite frankly, I hate grades. I think I performed, while not to the best of my ability (a strikingly high mark that gets set as a standard too often, wherein I would have to give up every other aspect of my life to work on this course, something that isn’t healthy and also isn’t feasible, or something, as much as I liked this course, I’m willing to do), at a level at which I was  pushing myself to do better a significant amount of the time. I held a conversation above the standard of silence that prevailed in the class, and often did outside work to supplement what I was learning in class, trying to question not only my perception of things, but also how Anne was teaching it. (That last bit, is, actually, one of the reasons I took the course—the encouragement to question everything, including the professor.) However that turns into a grade depends on the context it is being made, which I can’t really do much about. Good luck deciding that, Anne. I hope it turns out well for me. For, however much I hate grades and to which grades are actually useless measures of anything, they will impact my life. Please keep that in mind.