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I chose the wall with alumni's words (at the campus center) as the best representation of Bryn Mawr. I believe it shows our school spirit that has remained for decades, and the words are still enlightening every Bryn Mawr woman passing by. The natural view outside changes rapidly, and the society fluctuates, but Bryn Mawr kept it's original shape by passing on the spirit that encourages her students to be independent and strong, to challenge the authority and to make a difference in this world.

The place I would like to stay, however, was on an edge of the campus near my dorm in Brecon. It was not so high, but it gives me a clear vision of many important components of the campus: the artificial road and lamps, the stairs that I have to climb everyday, the crowded yet scattered green plants, the play field, the seemingly faraway central campus, and people passing by. The scenary I observe from this spot is like a physical "sample" of the campus, including everything I am interested in, and makes my mind become peaceful. I would like to sit here, wondering, observing, thinking...

The inner space of the campus center was indoors, always warmed by light and fulfilled by the school spirit. It has a relatively stable environment created by human.

So...This is not a homework post...(By the way, professor, could you give us a title format, like adding a few words before title, so that we could distinguish our posts for HW and for spontaneous thoughts? )

After Thursday's class, I've been thinking--why we weren't able to escape from the odd trap of using verbal-noun (gerund)?

Personally speaking, I believe it is because the noun is the source of the motion. I mean, the noun produced the motion, right? The motion itself can be describe by one or a few words, like "running", "flying"...etc. I don't know why this quantum physicist was so into this motion-centered idea, and I think it's really not necessary.

In my junior high physics class, my teacher introduced a concept:"motion is eternal while stability is relative." I may have translated it badly--the meaning of the words could be lost easily during translation--because in Chinese this sentence was a poet-like motto. The main idea was that everyone, everything in this universe is moving, and you can only discribe one thing as stable because it can only be stable relative to sth. else. (This may explain why the physicist focus on motion so much.) But everytime we studied a form of motion, accelerated or not, we draw diagrams, and in the diagrams, the major object is represented by a dot, or a square.

Therefore, even in physics, the major object could be represented, but could not be eliminated. Similarly, in language, the noun denotes the thing we are looking at.

I chose the Owl, Protector of the College, because I have been so struck by how much energy surrounds the owl as well as her (and our) patron goddess Athena, in the college community. In shamanic terms the owl is not just a mascot, but a totem: an animal spirit which lends its special power to our tribe; and both by the length of Owl's association with Bryn Mawr (back at least to 1904 when Rockefeller Arch was built), and by the passion with which Bryn Mawr students seem to identify with her-- as well as the various rituals and superstitions associated with Athena, Owl's mistress-- she strikes me as quite uniquely powerful, compared to college mascots or totems that I have encountered elsewhere. In fact Athena, with all the attributes she carried as patroness of the ancient city of Athens (and still does carry-- myths do not die!), being such an important deity in ancient times, with her Owl, seems to embody just about all of what Bryn Mawr is about, what makes Bryn Mawr special and different; she seems to permeate all we do, and to give us her supervision and her blessings on a day to day basis.

Reading the Kim and Markus article is a lot for me to process.  It affirms and gives insight into a lot of frustrations and opinions I have about myself.  Perhaps the best way to go about this is to speak in small anecdotes and details about myself:

-I often don't think in words.  More in images, colors, movements, movie scenes.  I often have a hard time writing papers because it involves putting words to thoughts.  The writing process is typically a page or less a day.

-I would never deny my Socratic education.  I speak in class.  A lot.  Sometimes, it's because I don't know how to translate thought to words.

-I really dislike how often I use the noun "I".  I worry about being selfishly individualistic.  Growing up, my father and mother would make soft remarks about how I shouldn't try to stand out so much.  "It's better to be just as high as the other trees in the forest." It took me the past couple of years to really understand why this concerned them so much.

-The main purpose I have in class dialogues is to try and get a sense of what everyone is trying to say and articulate it in a way that everyone can gain from it.

-Can't listen to conversations or music for the life of me when I'm trying to write or read.

Foliage

‘Foliage’ from Oxford English Dictionary Online

Etymology: The English word foliage is an altered form foillage, which comes from the French words fueillage and foillage which in turn stem from the French feuille leaf.  It comes from “foil”, meaning “leaf od a plant” and from the suffix “-age”, which forms  “nouns denoting something belonging or functionally related to what is denoted by the first element (and sometimes denoting the whole of a functional apparatus collectively), as leafage n., luggage n., roomage n., signage n., vaultage n., etc.”

It has the following meanings:

Foliage n.

1. The leaves (of a plant or tree) collectively; leafage (1601)

1a. In Art: The representation of leaves, etc. used for decoration or ornament (1598)

1b. A representation of a cluster of leaves, sprays, or branches (1699)

It has several compounds:

C1.

A1. Foliage-border n. (1891)

A2. Foliage-stem n. (1884)

A3. Foliage-trimming n. (1818)

      B1. foliage-bound adj. (1805)

C2.

 ”COUNTRY has two different meanings in modern English:  broadly a native land and the rural or agricultural parts of it.  The word is historically very curious, since it derives from the adjective contrata (L. contra – against, in the phrase contrata terra meaning land lying opposite over against or facing.  Its earliest separate meaning was a tract of land spread out before an observer. (Old English landscipe was a region or tract of land; the word was later passed into English through cuntrée and contrée.  It had the sense of native land and of distinctly rural areas.

 The widespread use of country as opposed to city began with increasing urbanization.

 In its general use, for native land, country has more positive associations than either nation or state.  Country habitually includes the people who live in it, while nation is more  abstract and state carries a sense of the structure of power.  Country can substitute for people in political contexts.  There is also

A specialized metropolitan use, in which all areas outside the city are‘country. ‘ “

 Raymond Williams, Keywords:  A Vocabulary of Culture and Society,

1983.

 COUNTRY . Middle English contre, e, cuntrée.  Late Latin contrata.  That which lies opposite or fronting the view, the landscape spread out before one.  Old Provencal equivalent encontrada, that encountered or met with.

The sight I chose to revisist throughout the semester is the garden beside Perry House and one of the features of that garden also happens to be the photo I chose to be my map of Bryn Mawr.  

Since coming to Bryn Mawr, I've become very aware of the ways in which I've been deprived of having my history taught in classrooms. I smiled as I read "Popular Culture, Pedagogy and Black Youth" because I too remember feeling like I learned the same things every year during black history month: Martin Luther King and "I Have a Dream". That is not to say that I don't think his contribution was unimportant, but it highlights the lack of effort that goes into teaching anything other than euro-centric curriculum to public school students. I still think it's funny that I had a World History class that only focused on Europe. That is without even mentioning that I learned NOTHING, about Latino culture throughout my time in school. I had no teachers that looked or spoke like me to look up or to go to when I felt invisible, silenced.

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