Wil Franklin just shared with me a rather remarkable New Yorker piece by Jonah Lehrer, The Truth Wears Off: Is there something wrong with the scientific method? (December 13, 2010). I urge you all to read it, and bring your reflections to class, or post them in this space...

I just wanted to share a conversation that I had with my dad (actually through texting in the beginning of class).

Me: VA sad about your pictures "Papa Bacchus is baller yo"

Dad: I have no idea what "baller yo" means. Hope it is good :)

Me: "baller, yo" - baller is a really cool envied (kind of best of best) guy and "yo" provides emphasis

Dad: :)

Me: Baller is kind a synonym for pimp. It's a man who has reached success and wealth, or a thug who has made it to the top (comliments of urbandictionary.com)

Dad: I am so pleased you know this stuff.

Me: Important knowledge . Today's literacy! (As I sit in my literacies and education class)

Dad: I prefer Keats.

recall - - Discourse = “set of values and viewpoints in terms of which one must speak and act, at least while being in the discourse” (Gee)

So Mia and I were talking about going to this country club/Alumni benefit/conference. (we went to an alumnae conference in Santa Monica over the weekend to represent the 360 program - this is a post that we wrote together on the airplane on the way there)

We started talking about clothing. We both realized that we had no idea what would be appropriate to wear in this environment – as neither of us has spent a significant amount of time in a country club (and by that I mean that I have gone to one once, and she has never gone to one). Should we wear skirts? Dresses? what length is appropriate?

So we’re wondering: what kind of discourse are we entering? Are we actually going to have an opportunity to speak frankly and genuinely about our experiences, or will the discourse silence some aspect of our behavior? It’s certainly silencing our creative fashion sense!

Clothing is a perfectly reasonable cause for concern – every time I’ve done any career counseling, I’ve been told that first impressions are essential. So appearance is essential. Uncertain about the kind of discourse you are entering + wearing the wrong thing = making your illiteracy obvious and embarrassing.

So that’s we were so worried about this on our trip to Ghana – we had no idea what our clothing would say about us. Legitimate? Eh, I think so.

Here's a clip of "Defying Gravity" being performed at the Tony Awards--I just shared the song in class, but this gives a little bit more of the feel for the musical.

Today’s discussion on Skloot’s intentions behind sharing a “melodramatic story” inspired me to continue the discussion. Since “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” is mainly composed of Skloot’s findings about HL's cells and family and the process of obtaining them, she might have wanted to appear more relatable. The details she provided may have made some readers transport themselves to that moment in her life. Emphasizing certain things made her story more truthful for her but not necessarily all readers. I wonder if her desire to tell the readers about her investigation was genuine of was it heightened by a marketing scheme… 

This is another video sara.gladwin and I thought about setting the scene with. After choosing the "perfect gender" video to use instead, I saw no reason for also not sharing this one. Enjoy!

sara.gladwin and I felt that this would be a good discussion started for the "perfect gender"

I have mentioned and explained once in class and in one of my web events that I am asexual aromantic, which is one reason why I have mixed feelings about My Gender Workbook. The author in many instances assumes that the audience identifies as a sexual being, and her wording often gives the impression that sexuality and gender while not the same thing, are deeply dependent on each other. And while society's impression of your gender is often connected to their impression of your sexuality, as is the language they use, self-identification of gender does not always hinge on sexuality. I still identify overall as cisfemale, even though because of societal expectations and connotations I do not feel I have access to many of the words describing cisfemales. The word woman is deeply connected to being a sexual and/or reproductive being; menstruation and the construct of losing one's virginity and engaging in sexual or romantic relations is a sign of growing up, of a girl becoming a woman. And while I have the reproductive capacities of a woman, I have no intention of using them, and the idea of being sexually or romantically involved with others bothers me to my very core. As such I will retain my "virginity" (I have no time to explain how upsetting I find that word to be), my innocence, my chastity, which keeps me in the position of a girl, which I still cannot belong to because I am an adult (also because girls are expected to grow up into women). Does that make me an adult girl? I'd rather not be.

Although my group's Ghana Study presentation on language diversity was quite a few weeks ago, I still think often of the role language plays in Ghanaian society and education systems. Connecting to readings we've done in Pim's class on the subject of language in a postcolonial society, I find there are two (broadly speaking) schools of thought: the more idealistic (think Decolonizing the Mind of Ngugi wa Thiong'o) and the more pragmatic (think The Education of a British Protected Child of Chinua Achebe). Ideally, native language should play a huge role in national identity and pride. Speakers could be making concrete efforts to write in the language and to speak it. However, thinking more pragmatically, a unifying language (like English) could serve a purpose of being a place of neutrality and unification. Achebe writes, "The great thing about being human is our ability to face adversity down by refusing to be defined by it, refusing to be no more than its agent or its victim." He writes of a "middle ground...where the human spirit resists an abridgement of its humanity." And I think using English (in the context of Ghanaian education) could be the kind of middle ground about which Achebe writes.

During this past Thursday's class we anonomously put up our thoughts about our trip to Ghana and where to progress from there. One classmates response asked a question along the lines of "What happens when the stereotypes we know about turn out to be more true that we had hoped?" and this particular question impacted me quite significantly and made me begin to think of answers to this question. 

To begin, I had a similar revelation while in Ghana. One day at lunch Alice asked me what my "AHA!" moment in Ghana was and I said that even though I had never been in Ghana or any country in Africa, what I was experiencing was not mind-blowingly different than what I had thought. When I applied to this 360 program and I had mentioned that one of my goals is to disprove some of the pre-conceived notions that I have about Africa as a whole. Through reading and analysis and ultimately through a first hand experience in Ghana I was expecting to come home with stories about how our original pre-conceived notions were all wrong and Ghana is actually like this and this, and so on and so forth. I never really thought of my pre-conceived notions as stereotypes but after one of my classmates brought it up, I realized that the question "What do we do when our stereotypes more true than hoped?" is actually very valid, and the answer does not come easily.