December 15, 2016 - 22:14
a timeline
(part one: before fall break)
how is the 360 going? my friend asks me
i should not be taking this class i respond
i am not educated enough and not aware enough and not eloquent enough to be making good contributions in the class, and i feel when i speak as if i am taking up space and airtime that would be better utilized by someone else. everyone else in this class is So Smart. i take notes, writing down words and phrases that i don’t understand and things i need to remember -- what is the mammy complex? read: bell hooks – because i don’t want to burden other people to educate me. there is so much i still need to learn. i question whether my presence here is good and whether my voice is valid. (note: here, it sounds like i am self-pitying, but that’s not what i mean. i think it was an important thing for me to question.)
i am constantly afraid of making mistakes (and i do, and will, make plenty more in this semester and in this 360 cluster). the room feels so-tense-all-of-the-time-as-if-everything-is-being-squashed-up-together and i feel this tension in my shoulders and in the soles of my feet.
i cry outside of class. i am angry at myself for crying.
shut up, hannah.
(part two: before thanksgiving break)
i say my asian-americanness is influenced by other things than my proximity to whiteness
and someone murmurs by what else? i understand this as be quiet and i shrink smaller in my chair
maybe i am less aware than i thought i was
fear is what is driving me through this class. i am both afraid to stay silent and afraid to speak up. i realize that i, too, benefit from anti-Black racism – i, too, am the oppressor. i am upset and torn because i don’t want this to mean that i am white. (it does not, but i do not fully recognize this, nor do i know what my role as both oppressed and the oppressor means.)
i have spent most of my life trying to assimilate to systems that consistently privilege whiteness and fighting to prove that i belong here and i have not questioned the value of that until now. i am questioning the value of many things now… i feel as if i end everything i say in class with an invisible question mark, like this (?)
after my second breakdown (was this a panic attack? i am not sure) on a friend’s bed, they give me a hug and rub my back and tell me that maybe i should “see someone”. i tell them i’m okay, it’s just been a rough semester, it’s mostly the 360, i’m fine. they say it’s okay to not be fine. i’m not sure if i believe this.
i talk when i am anxious and i am talking too much.
this is not about you, hannah.
(part three: before winter break)
anne cancels class and i feel somehow lost. jody has moved from race in education to museum education and i feel more lost. i say it’s okay because i hope maybe it will be better this way, but i am still not sure.
i make more mistakes. i think i am doing the right thing but i am not. this is a consistent theme in my life this semester and is probably a sign that i need to become more informed about the world in general. i cry more and i am upset that i am crying because i am not the victim here what am i doing what are you doing hannah calm down be quiet listen to other people
sometimes i sit in class and feel like bursting into tears for no reason at all. other times my whole body feels like it is going numb. i think this is maybe a mental health issue but i tell myself that once i am out of class i will feel better. it’s true, i always do.
i meet with anne and jody and they are sympathetic but they do not understand how i do not feel unseen by the class i just feel lost and maybe being lost is good. they ask me how they can make the class better. i don’t know and this makes me feel bad for not knowing.
i meet with monique near the end of the semester and we talk about the 360 and she gives me a hug. i walk out of her office and feel a little bit better, a little bit less lost.
i am sitting here writing this reflection thinking about all the reflecting i’ve done this past semester and it is… good? i think.
i am no longer sure of a lot of things now.
more reflection on this 360 and the exhibition process
I began this 360 thinking that I would learn a lot about race in literature, race in education, race in museums. And I have – I just haven’t learned it the way I thought I would. Race influenced the ways we approached literature, it affected the dynamic of the classroom, it constantly informed the way that we thought. In some ways, this has been good for me; I’ve thought deeply about my race and positionality in the black-white binary (as evidenced by my final paper), I’ve been forced to contemplate the ways in which race affects every aspect of my life. And yet it’s also been exhausting and painful to constantly be describing and reflecting over these things, and I’ve been emotionally drained by class almost every single time.
I’m thankful for the things that I read and learned and thought about – finishing this final project has been almost cathartic for me, in that I’m finally getting to explore and dig into and give voice to a lot of the things I’ve learned this semester. I appreciate the Ed and the English readings, and as problematic as some of the exhibits were, I did really love visiting most of the museums. I like museums. I forget that sometimes.
I learned quite a bit about anti-Black racism (and realized that it’s a lot more present in education and in museums and in society than I thought it was). (Also shout-out to Amaka’s presentation because it was So Good wow.) I also learned about exhibitions and the ways in which history is revised and rewritten by those in power... listening to all those presentations in Monique’s class wasn’t exactly always fun, because learning about racism isn’t exactly fun, but I feel like I understand more about museums now. I made a lot of mistakes in class, and I think that I learned more about how I should/could engage in discussion (particularly during Ed). Oh, and I wrote more complicated papers this semester than I have before – “writing in circles”, I think Anne called it once.
Putting together the exhibit forced me to really look at all the ways I’d critiqued the other museums we visited – curating is a lot of work! I did contribute quite a bit, but I don’t think we ended up using many of the things I wrote/researched… turns out I’m not really that great at writing museum text. I’m grateful to Joni and Amaka and Beatrice for their presence (particularly all the research that Amaka did for the edan Ogboni) and while I’m bummed about the veil and the fact that it won’t be as we originally envisioned, I do think that we did quality work, and it shows.
I’m leaving this 360 questioning myself and the validity of my opinions and my voice. I feel a little betrayed by my starry-eyed, thrilled-for-academia self… the sophomore slump is real, plus this was a pretty awful semester all around, and I’m definitely not as idealistic about college as I was last year. (Although I’m a pretty persistently idealistic person? So we’ll see how long that lasts.) I do think this 360 was A Lot, and I put a lot of work into it; I’m proud of the things I’ve learned and the work I’ve done. I also appreciate the patience that others in this class had with me as I stumbled through the messiness of this cluster, navigating my identity and constantly questioning the things I thought I knew.