The topic of my first paper is how the formation of my personality has been affected by the gender of my classmates. When I was in grade 8, my class had 14 students. 12 of them were boys. Frequent interactions with them has created my strong personality. Then, a few years later, I moved to another extreme gender environment - an all girls' dorm. It somehow made me become more gentle and caring. Overall, my personality is a mixture of boys' and girls' characters.

When I first started to write about my education, I automatically knew that I wanted to write about some of my education outside of the classroom and school, partially because I feel that that part of my education has shaped who I am as a person more than my education within the classroom. I also feel like we have the semester to get to know each other within the classroom, but not necessarily as individuals around and off campus. (Even though, I know Anne is only one who is reading our papers as of yet). After thinking about what I chose to write about, I now wish that I had included a few more things that were central to my education growing up so I am definitely looking forward to the rewriting process for this paper.

My name is Katie and I'm a Senior Anthropology major at Haverford with a concentration in Gender and Sexuality studies. Looking back on my college experience, I've found gender and sexuality studies to have guided my course selection and my intellectual trajectory, and my thesis -- which will focus on urban bicycle culture in Philadelphia -- will certainly employ gender and sexuality lenses. I've always wanted to take an interdisciplinary class, and this seems ideal! (click through for more -- sorry this is so long...)

For my educational background paper, I tried to talk about the different stages of my eduational experience and my feelings about it. Apparently, different stages have their different effects on me. I would like to say the whole process is interesting because it contains my thoughts and the reflection of the different ideas of my generation. Maybe I started my cliche about improving educational system at some point in the middle and I ended up with my feelings about my first 100 days experience in United States. I don't know why I talked about the different classes of my primary school but it seems to be a little redundent for me now. OR maybe I should have compare the components of my high school class mates. 

For my educational background paper, I chose to write about my experience as a child who has a parent in the military and how that has affected me both positively and negatively. Initially, I was planning on writing about how I have struggled a bit to accept who I am through my educational experience; I have been to many schools where there hasn’t been much diversity or people who look like me. I have often found myself mixing in/blending with either my caucasian friends or my African-American friends and isolating myself from my race. But once I got to high school and opened my eyes to all the diversity that surrounded me, I then realized the importance of embracing one’s ethnicity and race and not just “mixing in”.

My autobiography focused on the education I recieved through interacting with my peers. It is true that the classroom taught me a lot, but I definitely believe that the lessons from my friends explained in my essay are just as valuable as the bookwork. The writing process was very straight forward for me as I am very passionate about my high school experience and can easily go into detail. It was a small, all-girls school with an academic structure very similar to a university. Our scheduling was more flexible than most high schools and the teachers were very accessible. The type of student at such a high school was also very different which is why I focused my autobiography on my classmates.

When I wrote my educational biography, I chose to write about my experiences as an ESL student and my suspicion that it may have contributed to my loss of my native language. I wasn't planning to write about it initially, in fact, I think I was just frustrated at the moment. I'm convinced I'm having an identity crisis. I reflected on my experiences with assimilation into American culture despite being born as a U.S. citizen. I also ended up talking about the racial makeup of my high school, how it affected my own education, and I'm starting to realize how different it was there from how it is here now. Until this essay I hadn't really realized how many sacrifices my parents have made in order for me to receive a good education.

Hello.  My name is Shannon Yaeger and I am a junior at Bryn Mawr who is majoring in English Literature and considering a minor in gender studies.  In thinking about the 5 P's in the title of this class, three which I most drawn to are play, potential, and performative.  I think these three words are interlocked for me when I consider gender and sexuality, and the ways in which our social conceptions of them are changing.  We all start out with playing at our own genders, both as children modeling what we see in adults, and then as adults who are trying to find their place on the spectrums of gender and sexuality.  Similarly, I think that most expressions of gender are largely performative as our expression of our genders are displayed through action.

Hi.  My name is Ann, and I'm a junior at Haverford.  I'm a Biology major, but I'm minoring in Gen/Sex.  I wasn't really sure what to write about for this post until I delved back into Queer Theory, Gender Theory.  It's an interesting and readable text, but one thing that bothers me is the author's obvious, slanted perspective.  Riki Wilchins frequently makes cynical observations about feminism and the lack of care that the discipline has toward other advocate groups.  Her statements could be true (I suppose I don't know enough about the history of feminism to deny her claims), but her repeated hammering in of the fact that feminists aren't supportive enough of gender rights makes me feel like I'm not reading a very balanced account.