(no subject)
Have volunteered to be the first person to present as part of cohort's "spotlight" project. I wanted to be the first so that I can kind of set the tone... especially after last Friday. Had a good talk with a professor about last Friday, and the kind of impact that I want to make on my cohort. I need to keep in mind that I want to invite my cohort to acknowledge that we are privileged to be here, and that with great (future) power comes great responsibility. Because there's certainly people who were more hard-working or smarter than us who never had the CHANCE to be where we are.
The other thing I want people to think about is that academic discourse is so objective and rational, and people just make the assumption that that's a good thing, that that's how it SHOULD be. But by asking students to be completely rational, you are missing out on a huge piece, which is the moral, ethical, emotional part of the work we are doing. It's ridiculous to me that the higher you move up the intellectual ladder, the less room you have for emotions. Are we not people as well as academics? Who said we had to amputate our hearts for the sake of our minds?
And when you ask someone to "tone down" their emotion, you are asking someone to not bring their full selves to the table. You are asking them to not be as authentic as they want to be. And it shouldn't be that way. I want to put my full authentic self out there, and I want to trust that I can do that with my cohort, because I truly believe that in risking my full authentic self, I will have the biggest opportunity to learn and grow, to change and be changed.
Anyway, yes, spotlight. Time to start writing again. I haven't written in a long, long time...
The other thing I want people to think about is that academic discourse is so objective and rational, and people just make the assumption that that's a good thing, that that's how it SHOULD be. But by asking students to be completely rational, you are missing out on a huge piece, which is the moral, ethical, emotional part of the work we are doing. It's ridiculous to me that the higher you move up the intellectual ladder, the less room you have for emotions. Are we not people as well as academics? Who said we had to amputate our hearts for the sake of our minds?
And when you ask someone to "tone down" their emotion, you are asking someone to not bring their full selves to the table. You are asking them to not be as authentic as they want to be. And it shouldn't be that way. I want to put my full authentic self out there, and I want to trust that I can do that with my cohort, because I truly believe that in risking my full authentic self, I will have the biggest opportunity to learn and grow, to change and be changed.
Anyway, yes, spotlight. Time to start writing again. I haven't written in a long, long time...