"You are immense and interminable as they..."

The title is a quote that is directed to everyone involved in our 360.  It's from Leaves of Grass.

I had a conference with Anne one time asking for feedback:  “Whenever you say something based in more abstract, philosophical thoughts, you place yourself around a ring of apology.”  Apology, guilt, shame are compulsions.  They are glittered on me.  Try to wash it off my skin, but still sticks as the thinnest layer of sheen.

In the most honest of light, I see and know myself as a person who brought depth, challenge, care, and selfish intent.  Brought a more abstract perspective/perceptive-ness to the classroom as the result of my discipline.  Tried my best to act as soundboard to all who had difficulties articulating their thoughts.  Acted as a senior—like some confident mentor in a space that doesn’t necessarily call for me to do so (after all, that’s what you three are there for).  All in an attempt to foster a rich conversation.  All in an attempt to serve my own purpose of getting an education.

To say that assisting others in their education is conversely related to the development of your own is a false dichotomy.  By helping others expand their thoughts, I was able to challenge them, to challenge myself.  My peers provided insight in ways that were unexpected, smart.  Debating with them allowed me to see what aspects of their argument were holes within my own.  To directly address the questions above, I did a mix of stand-alones and conversations online.  I believe I did that same mix within the classroom.  I think I was (/tried) more direct and frank online.

I am uncomfortable saying all of that.  I feel guilty for thinking of myself as someone older, more experienced, more capable.  There are only months in age difference between me and most of my peers, so why do I feel like I am that much better? 

I feel guilty for being confident.  I no longer realize that my reflex is “sorry” or “I could have done that better”.  Perhaps I do it because I believe it to be the only way I can gain entry into the conversation without being offputting: “I’m sorry for being erudite or for not making sense because I’m not very good at talking but I promise I’m just trying to participate and I wouldn’t talk about this with you guys if I didn’t think that this wasn’t really cool and could contribute to the conversation.”

I am by no means a good judge of my own writing.  I cannot help but think that everything I turned in this semester was insufficient, perfunctory.  I turn in papers knowing that I should have pushed more. 

This semester I have worked so hard to just get the words on paper as I believe it is probably the biggest obstacle I face.  I hope my commitment to address this is evident in my converations about my writing and perhaps even in the content itself. I would be lying if I didn’t say that this semester alone has assisted in overcoming this issue.  Asking us to constantly post online pushed me to stop thinking and just go.  I know I grossly underperformed for the Bryn Mawr research paper.  I am still trying to understand and recognize Barbs comments on my writing needing to be “tightened up”.

Jody one time mentioned to me that my writing is not at the level of my thinking.  I still sit with that.  On a good day, I take it for what she meant it to mean—as non-abrasive and an open challenge to engage.  When I’m at my worst, I get frustrated over how awful of an academic this makes me.  I’m working on all of this.

In the Markus and Kim article for our silence class, they discuss how often verbal, analytic discussion is more valued.  In East Asian cultures, however, holistic approaches are move valued.  The nature of holistic thinking does not lend as well to verbal communication, and as such, there is not as much emphasis on talking (Markus and Kim, 193-4).  This was revelatory, forgiving.  For the majority of my life, I thought there was something wrong with me—something wrong with the fact that I had a difficult time articulating, writing, and explaining.  For an article to tell me that I was not necessarily incorrectly functioning in this world alleviated some of the anxiety I harbored towards writing.  I no longer thought of my thought patterns as debilitating when communicating, but instead something merely to just take into consideration.

Throughout the semester, readings have been engaging by ways of both how to better understand the structures of vision, voice, and silence, but perhaps more interestingly for me, on how they directly affected my own perceptions of myself.  I take Sweeney’s notion of self-narration to heart.  This concept discusses how incarcerated women will construct their own narrative and understand their own selves through the books they read.  The Markus and Kim reading along with Reading is my Window are just two examples of how the texts in our class have allowed me to create and understand my own narration.

I think it’s safe to say that I don’t think I’ve ever felt as enriched and engaged with the literature of my classes before.  Most likely, it is a testament to how much I have become a critical reader over the years, and also in the texts chosen across all three disciplines.



It is hard to admit how much my incident affected my ability to be a part of our experience within the Cannery.  It has been hard to swallow how trying my hardest just to say alert and present in the trailer may actually affect my grade.  I put evaluating my time in the Cannery off to till last because I know this will be the most difficult to do. 

My relationship with the women within the Cannery was not based in extroverted, conversation (that sort of colloquialism (dare I say, small talk) is a type of communication that I know how to do and consider myself quite good at); instead, I believe my experience within the Cannery asked me exercise a different way to create bonds—one derived by mere proximity, exposure, subtleness.  As mentioned by Johannah in our final wrap-up meeting, sometimes trying to force closeness and attempting to ignore the differences between groups can exacerbate the gaps between all.  I take the relationship I had with Sherri to be an example.  It was based in being placed randomly together for our first art project.  It was based in not trying to force anything between the two of us.  It was based in shutting up and just doing the work together.  I would like to think that there was a mutual respect between the two of us when I left.  One not based in conversation and affirmation of the need to always talk.

More generally, the Cannery experience was in a ballpark of its own.  I believed I functioned in similar ways within the silence, voice class and in the earlier weeks of the vision class (see the first several paragraphs), but within the Cannery, I took on a remarkably different role.  I was more demure, less willing to engage in an extroverted way, was more concerned with asking for guidance from others than what I could offer them.  I was introverted, needed to be.

I poured myself into the artistic endeavors both as a way to be with the women and with myself without having to verbally communicate.  I was not so much concerned with the final effect of the piece as much as I was on the psychological affect on my being.  I got messy when I did the artwork.  I liked the sense of chaotic mess I was making and how it was a release of my work week.

Unlike in silence and voice, where I attempt to better understand my own sense of self through my writings and the texts, the memo’s in Barbs class were a time when I could escape such inner turmoil.  I used those memos as a time to pour myself into analytic solutions towards the issue of incarceration.  To be sure, the memos wove in journal entries, excerpts of letters, and other personal thoughts, but there was not that same sense of unease about my identity when writing them.  I enjoyed writing each of the memo’s.  It gave me a space to critically analyze incarceration without academizing our time with the women.

In some ways, I can’t help but feel as if “Class, race, privilege, and women in (prisons) walls” would have been a more appropriate title for this 360.  Everything we discussed and seemed to highlight how much women were barred from as the result of walls based in privilege and discrimination (an education, an appropriate social status, recognition from society more generally).  Yet our very being together as a group of women critically examining these issues, who care for one another so deeply, shows what can be created when these walls are installed. Perhaps a lack of explicit focus on what positive things could happen when walls appear is my biggest criticism of my 360 experience (i.e. why did we not explicitly discuss what actions do women do together when they feel secure from others? Why not better define what a women’s community is to begin with?), however, it’s more than apparent that everyone within our 360 experience sees what beautiful things can develop from walls.  I see all the thank you’s, and the declarations of how much was learned.  I could probably do nothing else but agree.