Everybody:
What an amazing experience it has been working with all of you! There is no doubt in my mind that between Ben's talent for getting students excited about class and the energy all of you brought, I will always remember you. Each one of you contributed to the class with your energy and your intelligence and I am proud to say I was one of the group. Thanks to every one of you.
Sean:
I'm going to direct my last written assignment toward you for a number of reasons, most of which are about reading and writing, but one of which is the very human tendency to try to file people into neat categories for the sake of convenience. I believe that the tendency is called stereotyping. Let's start there.
During our first class sessions, being my first time in a classroom in (many) years, I went through the same exercise I did during high school, plugging each person in the room into some category or another. By week two I thought I had it all figured out; by this week I know that I was wrong about basically everyone. But I was most wrong about you. High school and several more attempts at college taught me (I thought) which place to file the jocks - I'm sure I don't need to be overly explicit here. You and everyone else know what I mean. You dispelled my preconceived notions very quickly.
While I am unable to quote specific things you said during our class sessions, I can say that every time you spoke I was reminded of how wrong I was to pigeonhole an athlete into a less than dazzling intellectual classification. You said and wrote some really inspired things and I am really quite impressed by your depth in this class.
In particular, your blog posting of 11/29/2009 was inspiring for me. It was that posting that led me to select Wrinkle for my final paper, and your portrayal of evil had a direct impact on the arguments I made the: evil analogous to unquestioning conformity. You wrote "The evil of this story is made up of the people opposing the acceptance of differences which includes IT and to a lesser degree of evil the principal" [I specifically referenced the principal in my paper]. But, coincidentally, it is this text that ties most closely to the point I am trying to make: categorizing based on unfounded assumptions isconformity without questioning.
Prison requires and reinforces a host of negative ideological changes in its inhabitants, one of which includes a LOT of stereotyping. This habit became overly ingrained in me over time, reading your writing and listening to your participation in our class reminded me that I used to be less likely to generalize and that I ought to return to that perspective. Thanks dude.
Jim,
ReplyDeleteI completely agree that any stereotypes I had about people in this class were broken. I feel like I am continuously meeting people that break my sterotypes for them yet, I am still surprised. I would have never imagined some of thoughts that came out of the people around me in class. I feel like comfort zones were left and everyone really started to connect.
I will always remember this class and the way that it interacted---especially when we did group activites that forced us to interact in a physical way. I just remembered one of the first interpretation presentation--I think it was Michelle's and I am not sure who else, where we had to get in line by our numbers. I was in the group that had the most limitations and just remembering thinking it was so funny and awkward when we were bumping into each other with our eyes closed and trying to feel fingers or some people would squeeze shoulders. It was amazing to me how the longer we worked together with those confinements we actually got closer to our mark by the end.
What a fun semester!
Jim,
ReplyDeleteI truly appreciate this posting. It means a lot to me to hear it. I know that we entered this class as strangers and to a large degree we will still leave as strangers but for 16 Wednesdays Ben helped create an atmosphere in which we could we get together and say how we felt. This was the most prolific experience I have ever had in actually seeing how different (and the same) people really are.
I truly mean it when I say that without doubt some of the insights that you and John brought to class will stay with me for a long time. I'm sure as time passes I will forget exact quotes and arguments (Shit, I pretty much have already forgotten most of the quotes) but this class was really special and I believe that when I look back on college later in life I will talk about a lit class where this "German kid" and this "older guy" used to blow me away with their insights. There were times in this clss that someone would make a comment and I would just sit back and say "Holy shit, that's brilliant!" Thanks to you, Ben, John, and the whole entire class really, I am really trying to consider what I am going to end up majoring in and working at later in life. I'm not sure that after Reading, Writing, Telling, and Feeling that I want to sit in a cubicle and not utilize any of those things. Well, before I ramble farther, I wish you the best of luck Jim and I am touched by the kindness of your post.
-Sean
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ReplyDeletehey Jim, you really ended up liking this class, didn't you. You seemed very skeptical at first especially in light of the readings, none of which spoke to you but it looks like you got over it. Pouring over all the blogs I think we might have made Ben cry though. On the bright side, he mentioned that some of his department colleagues are following the blog and what's been said in this final assignment is quite the glowing review of his work. As for myself, I only missed one class. That is absolutely unheard of in my entire college career.
ReplyDeleteI think to sum up what we've all been saying, we learned that it is a terrible idea to judge a book by its cover. We all had different ways of saying it.
And apparently we will go down in history as the german kid and the older guy.
Worse things have happened
Ja, doch!
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