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Each experience of writing was like standing naked and revealing my imperfection, my “otherness.” And each new assignment was another chance to make myself over in language, reshape myself, make myself “better” in my rapidly changing image of a student in a college composition class.

Barbara Mellix, “Outside In”

“Women are held to unattainable and insurmountable standards by society. In order to be taken seriously, they have to be the best. Unfortunately, even if they are the most qualified person in their field, as Rebecca Solnit explains in “Men Explain Things to Me,” women are still belittled and not taken seriously.”

Kate P., “Male Mediocracy”

“earning some money so that you could stay in this place (Antigua) where the sun always shines and where the climate is deliciously hot and dry for the four to ten days you are going to be staying there; and since you are on your holiday, since you are the tourist, the thought of what it might be like for someone who had to live day in, day out in a place that suffers constantly from drought, and so has to watch carefully every drop of fresh water used”

Jamaica Kincaid, “A Small Place”

“As we step further and further into our adulthood and closer to the practices that elicit opportunity we are understanding that unfortunately the structures that rule the ‘real world’ remain unchanged, they just transpire on a more discrete level. Older generations might mark us as oversensitive yet we see it as a fight that we did not choose to take part in. Within the generation that is currently blossoming are various new identities and ideals that are unconcerned about the feuds and tensions of the past, it is frustrating to have to continue cleaning up when we do not feel associated with these evils.”

Anthony, “The Big Uneasy”

“I grew up in an immediate family of my two brothers and I, and an extended family of majority male cousins, both older and younger than me. I have always been spoken to by family and friends as the “little girl” of the family, even now that I am 21 years old. While I understand that some family members speak to me in this way because I am one of the only girls, I’ve noticed how this can carry over into how they converse with me on educated and opinionated topics. ” -Amanda C. Not So Little.

“I do agree that students need to hear and absorb and deal with ideas that aren’t similar to their own. It’s one of the ways to truly gain intelligence. How can you learn if you stay in a bubble of what you believe if you can’t understand the things you don’t believe? But, I also agree that the students, who pay insurmountable funds to attend college, should have some sort of say in what their campus does. And if they fight back on certain things that they don’t like, does that truly mean they are weak and ignorant—closing their eyes and ears to all things scary?” -Jennifer R. Scared Safe.

“There is beauty in this change, the grace and balance found in asymmetry. In two creatures from different species of vastly different size using three legs to move through life: her lack, my excess, this pairing of three.”

Lambeth, Laurie Clements. 2016. 

What I took from The Achievement of Desire: Personal Reflections on Learning “Basics” was that there is a space in which some children might stumble upon, especially those of working class/minority families, where they must decide, at a relatively young age, what is most important to them considering what they know they are capable of and most importantly what their environment is like.

Anthony’s post on “Abstracting from immediate experience” September 19th,.

The profound mistake of Reverend Wright’s sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It’s that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country – a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old — is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know — what we have seen – is that America can change. That is true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope – the audacity to hope – for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.

Barack Obama, “A More Perfect Union”

If a woman is confident, she is “vain.” If she is assertive, she is “bossy.” If she is a working woman, she is “selfish.” If she is a stay-at-home mother, she is “lazy.” Women are held to unattainable and insurmountable standards by society. In order to be taken seriously, they have to be the best. Unfortunately, even if they are the most qualified person in their field, as Rebecca Solnit explains in “Men Explain Things to Me,” women are still belittled and not taken seriously. 

Kate P., “Male Mediocracy”