I'm starting this post from a very strange place.  I have been thinking a lot this break about why Roughgarden's writing bothers me so much, and I would like to share these thoughts with you.  But at the same time, I feel like I am the class whiner, that one kid who always hates everything.  I don't hate everything.  I love readings about gender and sexuality.    And I don't like complaining.  But I am struggling so much with Roughgarden that I'm going to do it anyway.

My misgivings with Roughgarden began early, when she stated in the first chapter that living things are impossible to categorize.  As far as I know, biologists are almost always able to classify living things into one of several groups: Animal, Plant, Fungi, etc.  Second, she states that the science world is torn between a diversity-affirming and a diversity-repressing explanation for sexual reproduction.  The Biology Department at Haverford has never said any such thing.  Instead, the truth (as I have been taught it) lies in the middle.  Sexual selection and the recombinations and mutations it produces both lead to diversity and keep things the same.  So I was very distrustful toward Roughgarden from the start.

In thinking over the past 6 weeks of class, and thinking about where I need to improve, the most important thing I have noticed is that I have a lot to learn from my classmates.  First, I need to be more careful when reading and responding to classmates posts.  Second, I am still amazed by the varied backgrounds and perspectives presented by everyone in the class.  It's kind of wonderful to be able to gain persepective on what other peoples experiences with education and class have been.  Additionally, I need to work on being more concise in my writing, as I tend to be super wordy and leave less room for ideas than I would like.

While I was writing my paper, I reflected on the changes that I've seen in myself and a lot of those changes resulted from many of the topics that we discussed. I didn't think learning about the different types of education that children receive all over the nation would have some sort of affect on me. For example, after writing my paper about access to education, I spent a lot of time outside of class thinking about my thesis. I've never had that type of experience before. After getting a grade on a paper in high school I would just toss it to the side and that would be the last time I thought about my argument. After discovering the huge impact ESL classes had on my learning, I was eager to come home to relearn my native language and interact with my grandparents (who mainly speak Khmer). I wanted to gain back what my childhood education took away from me. I never thought hard ahout how education extends beyond the classroom.

In my evaluation, I focused on how I've grown since being in that class and how far I still have to go. In the beginning I was very intimindated by the structure of our discussions. I didn't talk much because I found it difficult to assert myself into the conversation. I also didn't take advantage of being able to post supplementary thoughts and ideas on Serendip because I felt like no one was reading them. I have since been able to find my place to speak in class, and I think I have become much better at speaking without hesitation about topics that interest me. I have also grown to appreciate Serendip now that the dialogue between us has begun to increase. However, I would like to see more of a conversation online. It's nice to know that others are taking the time to read things that you post and also to respond to them, possibly providing a previously unknown viewpoint. What I personally still need to work on in being to "talky" in essays. I tend to become lost in fluff and cliches, which obscures the point I'm trying to make. In addition, I need to make sure I fully develop a topic rather than just restating ideas. For the class, I hope that we will be able to get the Parkway students involved in some of our conversations on Serendip. I would be very interested to see what point of view they can bring to our discussions. 

After looking over the essays I've written and notes I've taken for this class, I've noticed that my work has become progressively more analytical. At the beginning of term, my writing mostly relied on personal narrative to convey my points, but as I've read more and begun making increasingly broad connections to outside sources, I've relied less on myself and more on my research. I think I've become a better researcher, though I still have much to learn. I also think I've been better able to maintain a cohesive claim in my essays – though I'm also still working on that. I often come away from class discussions that I have a difficult time decide what it is exactly I want to write about. And once I've decided, I often have trouble staying on one train of thought as so many factors can be addressed and focused on with each topic. I do think it's becoming easier for me to stay focused, though, and I plan to continue working on that with the rest of my writing.

            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.