Self Evaluation and Reflection

Academically, I am typically resistant to change. I have always had trouble revising my writing, feeling either that it would take too much effort to re-work it or that it simply wasn’t necessary. Rather than reaching towards new subjects and sub-topics within courses, I tend to dig deeper into subjects in which I am already well-versed, confident, and comfortable. Coming from an elementary school and a high school where reflection was a constant process and a large part of how I was evaluated, I learned to reach toward the personal during these reflective exercises, rather than examining how I had grown in the more traditional, academic sense. It was far easier for me to speak to the way studying justice and dissent as an 8^th grader made me feel, and how it helped me better understand my own identity, rather than to reflect on my gained/changed skills or writing process, subjects that never garnered much critique throughout my education.

Meeting with Anne, Jody, and Joel yesterday helped me look at both of these pieces of myself as a student, and I found myself diving into areas of reflection that I typically do not—incorporating the academic with the personal and the social. Thinking about my use of Serendip from an academic perspective (and discussing how independently our posts have been structured this semester) gave me cause to think further into my own motivations for reading other people’s posts or not (something I have gotten better at doing since studying the art of listening through Identity Matters). In discussing the experience of visiting the prison each week, I came to deeper understandings not only about how I find my place as a student in a new academic setting, but also about how I collaborate with my classmates to structure these settings, and about how I personally tend to stand back in initial group interactions, only feeling that I have found my niche once I have connected with individuals to the side of the group. We talk so much about how difficult it is—and how discouraged it can be—to bring our whole selves to the classroom—but I quickly uncovered in the midst of our conversation that with these social dynamics and personal social tendencies constantly at play in academic settings, we bring so much of ourselves that we may not have ever even taken a hard look at before. How we engage with other people translates between social and academic settings so frequently and in so many different ways—and naming these congruencies was very helpful for me yesterday.

More specifically, I recognized how essential bringing in the personal had been to helping me understand and take advantage of my natural writing process—I write quickly and with drive, but only once I have developed an idea that will excite me as I write it. Giving myself the space and time to take extensions this semester for the first time really allowed me to relax into this writing process, and I thought deeply through ideas for paper topics before committing to them. This allowed me to produce writing efficiently, and writing that I was incredibly proud of.

Another big take-away for me came from a discussion about Anne’s class in particular, which allowed me to broaden my definition of “sharing the personal” in any setting, academic or otherwise. I had been thinking about what it meant for me to write silently in a space with other people, pouring similarly personal thoughts and ideas onto paper, and how essential this was for me. Discovering new modes and styles of free-writing as I went, I really did learn so much about myself as a person through these silences—and though I never verbally shared these discoveries with my classmates, it took a high level of trust to be able to sit in that space, feeling comfortable enough to put those feelings out on paper as I knew others were doing to. This is such a unique sort of “bringing ourselves to the classroom” that seemed to work so naturally in The Rhetorics of Silence, particularly because of our shared understanding of silence. I’m grateful that the conference helped bring these realizations to light, and I look forward to utilizing my newfound knowledge of myself as a learner, as a person, as a classmate, and as an educator.