Looking back before the destination

Can’t believe it’s all over now. I have to say this the best semester for me ever. For the first time, I wish I could stay longer on this train. The three aspects of this course really echo with each and create the optimal learning dimension for me to have the opportunity to explore something I always want to explore more. The discussion and other component of the courses create this 360 frame to examine the topics evolved around voice, silence and vision.

Voice:

As the firs sequence of these three courses, I think I did best I this course. I think the nature of this course make it easier for every to participate in. It’s voice therefore, everyone can have voice. I think I have fair participation in this course. Especially compared to the beginning of semester, I didn’t know what to say and when to say. It just has been a long time since my last social science and the discussion-based discussion seem to be far from me for a long time. There were many occasions during the discussion that I was just stunned at my peers’ response and thought to myself that why can’t I come up with that answer. After several conference with Jody and the discussion we had in class about listening and participate in the class, I gradually find my way to get involved in the discussion and my spot to stand in the debate. It was very important for me to realize that everyone has her special way of participate in the conversation. For me I am slow thinker and it took me a while to came up with the answer I wanted before I can present my idea in front of a group of people. Later, I also learned to use the assistance by Jody to participate in the discussion. Besides th in-class discussion, I also took an active role in writing on the online. I think my posts are relevant to our discussion and always brought some new perspectives about the topic. However, that’s means that sometimes, I can’t have an on-line conversation with the rest of peers. Still I tried to follow others’ posts and played my role in participate in conversation. For another important proportion of the course is the writing process, as I was trying very hard to improve my writing skills. I took every advantage to work on my writing. Even though I am still not satisfied with what have done so far, I do think I improved a lot in writing. Most importantly, I start to enjoy the writing process. Before, I would never imagined myself spending hours and hours to came up with ideas about writing essays as well as spend more time to revising it. I know writing was an unfinished and ongoing task in many ways. I definitely have much fun in writing process as the semester going on. Also, I have learnt a lot in the Bryn Mawr research project. Not only did learn that part of Bryn Mawr history, but also I learned to compile the information and filter through them and made my own story. The ability to extract from a lot of information definitely improved though the project

Silence

Maybe because the class of this part of course, I usually found it very hard to enter the class room with a peaceful mind set. It’s very hard to make the transition from extremely actively participate in conversations to an environment where you need to grow from the absence of voice. I really like the dynamics of our discussion. It’s a mixture of silence and tension to break te silence pattern. However, I didn’t consider myself participate int eh course fairly and was not selfish to not to share what I think abut certain issues. On the other hand, I did sort of take the advantage of the name of this course. Yes, silence is another way expressing ourselves. Silence is pregnancy rather than emptiness. Silence can be more powerful than you think. Therefore, sometime, I use my agency and expressed my attitude in another way. The liberty involved int eh choice is really complicated but powerfull. As for he on-line conversation, I think I did an fairly good job in articulate myself and brought up anything that I forgot to mention in class. The after-class conversation really worked for me as it game me more time and space to articulate myself better than in person. There were times that I didn’t get chance to express that idea in class and was able to have conversation with others after class. For the writing proportion of class,I think I really improved a lot , maybe not in grammatical or style. I am able to think one prompt in a more thoughtful and deep way along with all the paper we have worked so far. Many of my paper involved wit personal experiences in many aspects. Therefore, I was able to carry my thinking to the final project.

Vision

I always think this as a different proportion of the 30 course. Many topics we talked about in class seem irrelevant to the discussion we had in other two classes. However, as the discussion going on I felt the underlying relationship between these three courses. I think I did a fair participation in the class. Especially during small group discussion, I was able to contribute my thoughts to many aspects of the discussion and was glad that I was able to help my group to come up with many good results after discussion. I think our 360 won’t be as success as it is now if we don’t have the Cannery part in the process. Firstly, the prison experience is the critical turning point that we decided to make our final project an activism project. Our project probably won’t bring as much changes as it is now if we didn’t incorporate our Cannery experience. For me, I really entered the Cannery not knowing what to do what to expect and how much we can really do. After several careful hins about the prompt in the journals, I was able to look at all the actions from a different perspective and really start to actively participate in the process of creating arts and start the process of transforming identity. In the Cannery, I was able to use the right attitude to interact with the women and listen to their stories and tell them mine. All these exchange give me a more direct and concrete understanding about justice system and offenders. Also, I think I worked pretty hard on writing. At the end of semester, I was able to compose fair thorough analysis about concept we discussed in class.

If I have to fins one key word of this semester to conclude all I have learned. I will have to agree with Sophia and Danielle, it has to be privilege. In voice class, we had discussion around Delpt’s writing as well as the Rading is my window. Especially in Raeding is my window, the discussion about the role of rading to escape or to resolve the porbelm is a uncertain for each person. However, some of us have the privileges ot choose while the rest of them were left with few options but ended up in prison.  At the same time, I think in Anne’s reading Women warrior and Eva’s man also have a lot to do with privileges. Even though we read these texts with lenses of culture and gender, they both involved a lot about the uneven distributions of privileges among different people. I was really imporssed by the form of Doing life we read for Barb’s class because the picture of each offender’s face is really shocking and impressive. These face reminded you that they might anyone in real life and they too their lives. In those situation they went though, some privileged were able to escape the punishment and but for them, life ends at the life sentence started.

As much I enjoy the transformation I am experiencing, I am clearly aware of such desire to finding out more might just be temporary and will not exist when I finished the class. However, I am grateful for the amazing opportunity this 360 course has offered for me to explore many aspects that I was not even aware of. I will try my best to keep up such effort to work on my writing and reading and kept my social consciousness.