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I have to admit that the permanent nature of our posts do seem more scary now especially when I look at my own writings after two weeks. Three weeks of in-depth discussion of silence with different kind of silence practice make my first analysis of silence so unconvincing and simple. I guess that’s why people always say writing is an endless process. I will not try to overthrow my reactions about silence but try to organize my thoughts in a more logic and connected way.

At this point, I am still not sure about whether I get the essence of silence. Last time, I try to visualize my perception of silence from two extremes. However, silence is too hard to be categorized by any standard. It can become so complicated or so simple depending on the situations. 

To visualize the silence, I chose the picture of deep sea. I do have a reason to put my picture in front of my words. For readers, I believe a picture will give them more direct answer which represents my perception of silence. However, for me, I think my rambling words actually can reveal my understanding of silence better. The way of expressing silence has to change for different purposes, doesn’t it?

I will stick my visualization image of silence, the deep sea. The serene but mysterious deep sea still can always remind me of my visual construction of silence in mind. The state of relief and being able to be completely isolated from the outside to focused on internal self.

Today after visiting my location on campus, the wall under the trees that overlook the sunken garden, I found myself in a very thoughtful mood. At first it was a peaceful thoughtful mood and I was very relaxed and enjoyed myself in this cozy place in the trees. I looked at the sunlight shining through the leaves and listened to the rustling of them as the wind blew through them. I thought about how in my paper I had dissected the word “space” and I tried to become fully present and aware of the space I was in and noticed the feel of the air around me.  When the wind came the air blew on me colder, and when I moved into sunlight and the wind stopped, the air sat on my warmly, heated by the sun’s rays. When I got back to my room, I was compelled to draw a picture (which I didn’t have time to upload now but will try to do so next post). 

I thought yesterday's field trip was a lot of fun. I was reluctant at first to go because we had to leave so early in the morning on a Saturday, but it was beautiful out! I think my favorite part of the trip was the Mural Arts Tour. When I visited Bryn Mawr for the first time, we took a walking tour and I learned about Philly and how big it was on murals. I've been taking the Market-Frankford Line into West Philly for work for the past year and I always noticed these funny, lovey-dovey messages in mural form on the top of the buildings we pass. My friend told me that they were love letters but I didn't believe her. But in the Mural Arts bookstore, as I flipped though a little booklet detailing how these love letters came about, I couldn't stop smiling. I'd totally take a mural over flowers any day!

I think this idea of creating murals to prevent tagging and beautifying the city is a brilliant idea. It's so cool to hear about how people in the city take pride in the murals and how the people respect the artwork and take ownership of it.

I want to write a little about the postings and how I think they could work better. Today, I found myself really wanting to read what my classmates posted about in relation to the past week and to our field trip yesterday. I quickly realized how much of their voices I was missing out on because I hadn't had the time to read them all. I think by this point we've all felt drained with all of the information and emotion we've experienced. The readings and the classes have been as Michaela said "heavy." Today, I found that a lot of what I've been feeling has some interesting connections with other people in the classroom and I would love the opportunity to explore them all. I want to respond to, read and connect to everyone's stories but I feel like I have a lack of time.

So, I think is post is really asking the question of how can we use serendip postings more effectively to truly encourage dialogue? Are we doing the same thing we've talked about before of just writing our posts (for the grade) but not for the learning? I do think that a lot of it has to do with how much we're required to post a week for each class. I would like the opportunity to silence my own voice more often if it means I get the time to really pay attention to what my peers write about. 

Any thoughts?

Sometimes people talk all the time in class, while still staying silent. 

            Class discussion is about sharing thoughts and ideas, but sometimes it is also about sharing yourself.  Now that we are already three weeks into the 360 experience, it is becoming incredibly clear that more than one kind of dialogue occurs in our classrooms.  This is true of many discussion-based class settings, but the intimacy and intensity of our cluster of courses makes these different kinds of sharing even more apparent.  What I am still not sure of – but am very interested in exploring – is to what extent these two modes of discussion are intertwined, and whether one is even possible to do one without the other.  Dissecting and analyzing readings or books on their own is important (and is what I am usually referring to when I talk about class discussion). But telling personal anecdotes, and relating readings, theory, and overarching concepts to our own lived experiences gives a window into how we relate the subject matter to who we are. 

I am sitting on the outdoor bench, feeling the cool, autumn wind. I can see my shadow changes with the varying position of the sun and the cloud. For once in my life, I would like to forget about the physics model of earth orbiting around the sun, and believe that the sun is, miraculously, orbiting the world I am living in. This idea warms my heart, as I felt there id always something, someone surrounding me, protecting me, comforting me.

Many students are practicing sports on the playing ground—they are so passionately, enthusiastically in love with what they are doing, and I could not even describe how ridiculous mechanism seems to me. People are doing sports, not because they are programmed to do so. Their instinct is not a CPU, and they are not emotionless robots that mechanically do everything they are told to do. They have soul. They are a part of my sight, my world. They made the playfield full of happiness—they changed, rather than adapted to the surroundings.

They remind me of a girl in my junior middle school. She was a good friend of mine, and I always encouraged her when she got depressed. She was so easy to get depressed, because of her lpw grades, not-so-good appearance, unsatisfying popularity, and so on. She was so easy to be affected by the weather, or other people’s words. Then, when she got depressed, she spread her negative emotions to other people. At first she was sympathized, but after she created a trap of depress for herself, she was more and more isolated.

I have been thinking a lot about how I can incorporate silence into my daily routine.  I think if I can be more comfortable in silence I will be able to experience more fully, rather than distancing myself from an experience by constantly reflecting, interpreting and assigning it language.

Saturday was a very long exhausting day for me. I loved the mural tour; even though I found myself paying more attention to the people I saw rather than the murals itself. My favorite part of the day though, was the Eastern State Pen tour. As the tour continued I kept getting more and more frustrated, not with the tour, not with the tour guide – but with society. Walking around hearing the stories reminded me of how someway somehow society finds a way to turn good into bad.

I kept imagining these prisoners in those cells and kept connecting it to modern day incarceration and how inhumane it has become. The numbers of incarcerated people still shocks me no matter how many times I hear them. It also made me think about how prisoners first started being all White, and then there was a complete 180-degree turn that flipped the population in prisons from White to those of color. It makes me wonder if there will ever be a way of stopping this without giving birth to another type of modern day slavery.

The one key term that I kept coming back to when re-reading the beginning of my web-paper was “anthropocentric.” I freely admit in my first paragraph that I am the lens that I use to observe the campus on my walk. I use the words “I” and “my” fourteen times in the first paragraph alone.

In order to re-focus my thoughts, I chose three entirely new words through which to view this experience. These words are: “interaction”, “resilience”, and “community.”

I've always thought a lot about "what gets left at the door" when entering (or leaving) a classroom that fosters growth, enrichment, education.  To frame question in a different way, a way that reveals how I believe this topic is pertinent to our class theme, I’ve thought a lot about what topics and at what times we should remain silent in the classroom.  This post is to express my thoughts on this in relation to our experience together this past week.

As I think we all know, a type of objectivity, lack of emotion and personal investment, and reason is valued in the classroom.  The reasons are easy to point out: doing so allows us to remain concentrated on the subject matter at hand.  What’s more, this allows the classroom a freedom to discuss and debate without the worry that sentimental opinions and feelings will hinder the intellectual pursuit.  Phrases and thoughts like “Leave your baggage at the door, otherwise, you won’t contribute to the classroom appropriately” or  “Don’t speak about how you’re sad or about your personal life, that has nothing to do with our readings”, to the  “Well, shit, now I definitely can’t say anything; I’m just going to hurt your feelings” all hopefully elucidate what I mean.  Academia believes that emotions and our personal self get in the way of intellectual pursuit.