reflection

Before we began this 360, I had considered taking this semester off for mental health reasons. My health had gotten progressively worse over the summer and I had a few real conversations about *not going to school* but I also felt a responsibility to be present for this cluster. After having to apply and having been accepted to the program, I felt like there was a reserved seat for me in this cluster and that I should rise to meet expectations. It also felt very necessary for me to spend a substantial time thinking about race, since I spent a good part of my summer trying to explain how it feels to live in my body to white people. I thought this 360 would be an opportunity to do more of that self-exploration, and to guide me towards a better understanding of myself and the conditions that structure my experiences of being raced—which was something I felt deprived of, and something that I hoped would improve my psychological state. Now, I am unsure of how much better off I am. I have been given new ways to look at race through different disciplines, and I’m hoping that I can bring that knowledge with me to my classes next year.

The in-between time has been hard. It was eye-opening to visit museums to analyze and critique their exhibits, and to do that kind of experiential learning felt useful, although I often felt unqualified to be evaluating different approaches to curation. That feeling of being unqualified definitely became a part of this 360 for me, as well. Simply because I am not a student of art history, it was difficult for me to turn to my exhibition work and feel like I had the authority to speak for any of the art pieces—and maybe I don’t. That’s a real possibility. However, I put a lot of myself into that work and I am pleased with the outcome. I was lead to a lot of different places during my research for the exhibit, and I was very comfortable bringing my ideas to group work with Alliyah and Sula, who have been so good to me this whole year. We played with so many ideas and made many more tweaks to our text and plans. I don’t know if audiences will necessarily have the experience that we want them to have. I’m not confident that they will see the intentionality in some of our work, and I’m really not confident that they will be able to appreciate the art as deeply as we came to by the end. We ended up cutting down our text quite a bit, which I think will invite more readership, but I am always interested in saying more. I learned a great deal about the history of putting African art on display and the challenges it raises. The experience of doing curatorial work and seeing other people do it has changed the way I encounter museums and museum-sponsored learning events.

In my other work, I felt like I needed more time. A lot of our writing in Ed. was experience based, and I wished that I had read more books, listened to more conversations, looked at more art, so that I could back up my personal feelings with theories and frameworks, to locate them within something other than my (largely) unarticulated life. I did enjoy a lot of the Ed. readings. I even picked up another book by Steve Conn and read some of the unassigned pieces that are in the protected reading file. Our English class reminded me how much I love books. Last year, I didn’t make enough time to read books of my own choosing, but this semester, I got back into the habit of reading fiction on my own time and I’m glad that Anne encouraged that and helped bring that practice back into my life. This 360 has pushed me as a writer and I think I have written more complicated papers in these classes than I did in previous ones. 

I am walking away from our time together knowing that I have learned quite a lot about the history of displaying African(-American) art, the role of educators and the importance of language in education, and what revision of the Western literary canon means for people of color. I have learned from my classmates that the world is a heck of a lot more anti-black than any version of it my educators were able to/willing to teach me. I think it’s no secret that students are, more often than not, taught white history, white literature, and white value systems, but I’m also surprised by how believable they can be, unless you’re listening to people of color.

Many thanks to everyone here…I am thankful for so many people who made this time in my life that much more livable…I have immense respect and affection for the people in this 360. I feel very privileged to have worked with you. We haven’t been perfect to each other, but imperfection is real and I appreciate the realness. I am reminded of a line of Whitman: “I am large, I contain multitudes.” Your multitudes are complicated, but they are beautiful.

Thank you, thank you, thank you