I am not exaggerating when I say that I walked into this class having absolutely no clue what I was in for. Toward the beginning of the quarter, I made an intuitive decision to switch my concentration within the literature major from creative writing to global lit, and this was my first global lit class. I felt like a blank slate, and to be completely honest, I considered switching out of this class because I felt a bit overwhelmed at the newness of it all, participating in discussions that I had little to no previous exposure to. Growing up in a privileged household with two attorney parents, concepts around the laboring class were not discussed at my dinner table. I grew up surrounded by the ideology that protests were "bad," people needed to "pick themselves up by their bootstraps," yadda yadda yadda. I guess something inside me was telling me that I needed a reality check and a wake-up call, particularly with this class, and I'm glad that I listened.
I have learned so much within the past ten weeks. I leave class every day with the feeling that someone has been slowly chipping away a stone hedge placed before my eyes, broadening my perspective and allowing me to see more clearly. I don't really know where to begin, since everything discussed in this class I had 0% knowledge of before entering. If I had to choose, one particular concept that stuck with me was the idea of cognitive mapping, and becoming conscious of the process it took to create material objects we take for granted. With this perspective, you can see the process as a larger system, and the awareness of each action is sobering and telling about the capitalist system we adhere to; so many must participate in this system on the basis of survival.
I've loved hearing the insights that you all have shared during our quarter together, and I look forward to continuing to have the stone hedge chipped away.
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