1/28/14 Reflective Journal Entry Assignment
After class
on Monday I found myself becoming more and more frustrated as the evening progressed.
Several things added to my frustration and I would like to take this time to
explore why that was. As close friend groups go, mine are a $500 plane ticket
away. In this class, there seems to be a very close connection within the
present cohort. Being one of 4 students on the periphery of that close group, I
find it frustrating to watch things happen. I’m feeling ostracized, and I miss
my people. I’m here to learn the material. I came into the program at a strange
time; I see my position as coming back to school, not continuing my education.
I have been, for the most part, an independent adult for two and a half years,
and I am a returning student. I respect my family, but I don’t see their
opinions as seriously affecting my life choices anymore. I think I broke that
seal when I made my decision to move here without consulting them (there was no
problem, I just didn’t feel that their opinion would seriously influence my
decision either way, so I decided to simplify the process and not ask).
My mother
will not outwardly say that she supports same sex relationships and my first
conversation with my parents about color blindness was when I was thirteen. They
both work in a field dominated by minority races (Head Start programs in Los
Angeles). It is something I have always been cognizant of. I guess in that way
their experiences have shaped me. But as long as she respects people, I think
that my mother is entitled to her opinion. (Maybe this is what Tim Wise was
trying to say.) The conversation about stubborn parents and our attempts to
communicate these things to them frustrated me because (1) it felt like we were
collectively saying “look at these older uneducated people and let’s all talk
about our experiences”, (2) I don’t see why it matters when I know that I have
more important things to talk to my parents about, like our imploding
relationship, and (3) as Peggy commented, the people closest to us are the
hardest people to talk to about new ideas, so why would we want to start there
and have almost a guarantee to be immediately discouraged?
Furthermore, Ageism is
something that is prevalent in every single interaction we have throughout our
day, and here we are isolating one group. What if we had changed the people we
were criticizing to a race? Nobody in the classroom would ever even THINK about
saying those things out loud about Asian folks. "Asian folks just don't
understand what social justice is because it's not something they've had to
deal with," or "Asian folks just didn't get what I was saying about
love is love and how same sex relationships are just more love on this
planet, because it's not how they grew up and they never had to think about it." Why was it acceptable to have the conversation about another
generation when, had it been any other identity, people would have been
fuming? I am here to learn how to relate to others, and race, ethnicity,
religious preference, class, and all the other token identities are important,
I agree. I see myself caring more about Ageism now because as a returning
student trying to work with slightly younger students while being a student, I
think age is something that we need to be seriously aware of, and there has
been almost no acknowledgment of it in a class about social justice,
identities, and diversity, at all. I know it’s early on, but it seemed the
focus of our conversation yesterday, and yet, nobody said it out loud. Was I
the only one thinking about it?
I touched
earlier on being on the outside of the social circle that much of the rest of
the class shares. Everyone seems very nice, and everyone seems to have good
intentions, which is fantastic. That’s where it ends for me. My frustration of
feeling on the outs was solidified when someone turned to Richard and I after
class and apologized for (I don’t remember what) on behalf of her cohort. Talk about alienating
someone. The teenage girl inside me wants to stomp my feet and stick my lower
lip out and cross my arms and sit there and not do anything except stew. The
social justice part of me, however, has already stopped, smiled, and pointed
out several ironies. To begin, I am white, so as long as I avoid large groups
of men, and David’s engineering office with two female graduate students, I can
pretty much guarantee that I will be in the majority in any given situation,
especially here at Penn State. This class has presented me with a situation
where I am now in the minority, and being apologized to and thus I feel as
though I am being treated as a minority group by the majority. This is not to
equate myself with the experiences of minority groups. I walk out the door of
the classroom and I immediately jump back to my cushy privilege life. The other
irony that I see is from the facilitation side. I do feel that I am being
spoken to as though I already know everybody, and that maybe there are other things
that people assume I already know. We did introductions quickly, and I did not
get a chance to see faces, we have gone over names once, and the discussions
are framed as though we are all already close. But I barely know one person in
the class. This frustrates me. Maybe this is a time when I ask for help, and
don’t get it, and learn from it. That would be fine with me.
I need to
wrap my head around the idea that because I am not in this cohort, my experience
in this class will be different from most of the people in the close group of
friends. I didn’t come here to find my bridesmaids, I didn’t come here
expecting to make connections with students in the program- maybe with faculty,
but not students- and \unlike some of my best friends from high school, I have
made many meaningful connections throughout my undergraduate experience. I have
a roommate, and I’m leaving in a year so I don’t want to have to leave more
people behind. When I moved here I always made comments about being in a weird
life-purgatory, just waiting for David to finish his program so that I could
start my life. Now my life is
starting, albeit slowly, but more than it has been.
From here I
guess it’s just all about adjusting.
