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            While reflecting on our class and my engagement with it thus far, I realized how much more I’ve been second-guessing my thoughts and viewpoints about education and class in the U.S. The way I approach this subject has definitely evolved and I suspect I will continue to change my attitudes and opinions of education. This “re-thinking” process really works for me. I tend to always find classes that challenge my viewpoint and push our conversations very engaging and think it’s an important aspect of any class. Something that has not been working very well for me is the weekly papers and my writing and I focused a lot of my paper on my issues with that. I also wrote on my personal participation and engagement with the class.

As we have approximately reached the half way point in the seminar, this weeks assignment of a self evaluation was fitting. My focus in this seminar has been on my writing, so that is where my paper was focused. High school gave me plenty of experience with academic writing, but personalization and opinions was generally secondary to grammar and factual content. In reviewing my essays from this seminar, fortunately the primary growth in my writing does seem to be in the personalization of my papers. The value in including personal annecdotes and opinions in academic writing has become clear to me. Particularly in the process of revising my essay on disability and access to education, personalizing my essays has become more natural. This has created a small problem, however, with the tone of my writing.  In this process of working on the personalization of my papers, I wrote almost too close to the manner in which I speak. This produced rather informal writing and while maintaining a voice is important, a casual tone can lessen the authority of an academic essay. The next step in the process of fine-tuning my writing is now finding the balance between formal and personal. 

At the halfway point, In Class/OutClassed has helped me challenge the way in which I think about and approach education as an institution and experience. Before, I had figured that educational experiences were shaped by the backgrounds of the students and the characteristics of the class cultures alone; however, as classroom discussions unraveled, I began to scrutinize the educational system's structure and look into contesting the handling of its power. As a class, I have found that the opposing stances that we have held in participating in activities such as our classroom barometer has helped us formulate such ideas, forced us to take responsibility of what we think and test the credibility of the information we come across. Moreover, our discussions with writing partners has helped me recognize the faults in my communication and gradually propelled me to strengthen my voice and stance in my arguments within class. Overall, what we have learned in class so far has pushed me to become a more active participant in my own education and recognize that the quality of the educational process is more important in developing my perspective than the quantified measures such as grades and GPA that were once valued in high school.

I’m really enjoying class this semester.  I feel like I’m excited to learn and the readings all seem really informative and interesting.  I feel good about the workload as well even though it can be tricky having to write a paper a week.  Even so, the papers really force me to reflect back on what I’ve learned during the week.  I’m not a big fan of the online forum, but I think we could use the two sections a little more but in different ways than we have been.  I’d also like to use Class Matters more since it’s so relevant to our class. 

I greatly enjoyed the readings for this week; I felt that they all built up on each other and I found myself reading all of the articles with interest, learning something new. What most interested me was the stress put on the environment as a factor in testosterone levels and linked to that, behavior. Not only does our culture stress testosterone as a metaphor for manhood but it is high susceptible to the environment, creating complex correlations and facilitating risk (The He Hormone). Both physical and mental performance depend on testosterone levels in both men and women. I was actually incredibly offended in The He Hormone when, right after we hear about Toys “R” Us trying to make different sections for boys and girls in their stores and Fox Family and their “boyz” and “girlz” channels that Matt Ridley starts drawing lines between male and female behavior and ending with, “…a feminine paradise would have arrived.” By saying that, he draws gender binaries just as strong as those drawn by Toys “R” Us and Fox Family. I was very disappointed that his statement was even included.

Like Jillian, my reflection was based on working on thinking and rethinking my papers. It was difficult for me in the beginning of the semester to think beyond what I already deemed true. Thinking beyond or rethinking my papers got easier as the semester progressed due to my classmates. Hearing all their stories, sharing their thoughts, and opening up to the class, helped me with rethinking because I had more ideas that I never considered. The progress of my work is mainly credited to our class and the conversations we hold. These conversations really opened new windows into thinking about education and not only the academic aspect of it.

To summarize my reflection, our ESEM has taught me a lot about how to mature into a good writer so that I am more confident in my writing and more comfortable in doing so. It also taught me to not only to be actively aware of how education affects people, but the struggles that education currently faces. I feel that my classmates and I both believe this is the main purpose for our ESEM, and that for the most part, the class has been successful in pushing our thoughts and perceptions about education. Moreover, we use the class as a place to test our ideas which we then open for discussion. On the other hand, I also pointed out some things that could be added to the class, such as looking at education from a more global stand point, and trying to make the class more concrete by trying to come up with viable solutions to the problems we have discussed. By doing this I feel like the class would be even richer in content.

In class out classed has put me on my own personal barometer. I am constantly reevaluating my opinions on the effects of class and education. This can be frustrating but, I believe it is a good thing for me because, it means I have kept an open mind throughout the class. This has in turn caused me to reconstruct my writing process. Now before I begin my essays, I look over class notes and the notes I make on the articles and I write down all of my thoughts and ideas. This helps me keep my essays focused because I have found it is easy to start writing and get caught up in several different ideas and topics. My goal at the beginning of this class was to improve my writing skills. This is still one of my goals but now I am more interested in trying to figure out what the correlation between education and class is and how the disparities that this causes can be fixed. I think my classmates are looking to get the same things out of the class, in addition, I believe some of them might also be working on improving their discussion skills. Overall, if I could add anything to the class, I would have everyone come prepared to discuss three different ideas or concepts from the reading that they prepared ahead of time. I think this would help further the discussions because people who are not as comfortable with the discussions would have talking points to start them off. Beside’s this I am still unsure about how I feel with both classes reading each other’s posts.

Like venn diagram, my interest was immediately captured by Andrew Sullivan’s “The He Hormone.” I appreciated the information on hormonal differences between males and females, but was frustrated at times by the ways Sullivan used these biological differences to explain differences in the social roles men and women take on. I understand that testosterone levels have an impact on many elements of our personality and behavior, such as an individual’s self-confidence and energy levels. However, using differences in testosterone levels to explain the fact that more men are in politics or powerful business positions than women do, negates the fact that important social factors are also at play.

Hey Everyone!

This link is just food for thought, but it points out something I think pertains to the article by Edmundson we read earlier in the semester. Justin Fox, a Harvard Business School professor, talks about the value of a college degree and how the supply of college graduates is much greater than the demand, which ultimately allows for a really horrible job market in the United States. He talks about how the cost of a degree is far more expensive than its worth in most cases today, and the possibility that this will create an education bubble that will eventually burst. 

I think this can really help explain Edmundson's point about the mentality of college students today who feel tremendous pressure to perform to perfection rather than taking risks.

-"The Education Bubble, Tenure Envy, and Tuition"

Harvard Business Review

http://blogs.hbr.org/ideacast/2011/06/the-education-bubble-tenure-en.html