For this quarter there was much less focus on the blog posts because of all the projects that were there, but I am glad that my blog posts ended up being an extension of the projects that I was already doing, allowing me to use the blog as a jumping board for both my oral history project and research paper. Although I would not say that this has been my favorite assignment throughout the quarter, I will say that overall I am pretty happy to have a place online where I’ve written my thoughts and research on topics that I’m interested in. I didn’t mean for this to happen, but all my blog posts ended up having some kind of relation to gender or race (although I suppose with a humanities blog in general it’s difficult to avoid those subjects). I was already aware that I truly cared about these social justice issues but it definitely is interesting to see that throughout the entire year I was constantly making these type of connections in my mind, and wanted to continue the conversation in this direction.
Truthfully, I came into this year a little cocky. My high school experience was not one that I would call typical. I went to a humanities magnet that, on top of being extremely difficult, prided itself on having a unique curriculum. This years humanities class was actually like a summary of the past four years of my education. Because one of the things my school stressed was critically thinking, I considered myself to be pretty good at that. I didn’t think of myself as the type of person to just accept information at face value, until we learned about the Inca and how they actually did not think the Spanish were gods, which is when I lost some faith in my high school education. I was actually tempted to email my teacher who taught me that with some links and a “Hey!!! This is wrong!!” It helped me realize that I actually had become too confident in my critical thinking skills, and I actually found myself not only thinking more actively in the present, but also looking back on the things I’ve heard in the recent past and wondering if there was anything there I should have questioned. Regardless, I’m glad that I’m now aware of my overconfidence, and I’m hoping that this awareness will help me get back into the habit of questioning things more thoroughly before accepting them, even if it does come from an educational institution.
I’ve always considered myself to be pretty good at the skills that a humanities major requires, but this year, and especially this quarter has helped me realize that even if I can manage decent grades most of the time in these classes, it definitely is not the subject I would like to major in, so I’m grateful to this course for helping me realize this. This quarter has been particularly tough in both the personal sense and the academic sense and it has really tested my resolve, but at the end of the day I do think I have come out of it a slightly better writer, thinker, and organizer.
afrahhumanities 