Rachel's Paideia Blog

Goals & The Beginning of Senior Year

Though this is the start of my third year in the Paideia program, I continue to struggle with its definition and how it applies to what I am doing at Southwestern and otherwise. According to the Paideia page on Southwestern's website "the program promotes connections between academic courses, offers intercultural and diversity experiences, encourages civic engagement, and supports collaborative or guided research and creative works." I find that this has all been true thusfar, but maybe not in the ways that I expected.
Since my freshman year, I have realized the importance of the connections made between courses. This is, after all, a liberal arts university, so those connections should be very apparent. What I didn't realize was that these connections would not only span my academic courses, but my life as a whole both in and outside of Southwestern.
As I'm sure you know if you read my Paideia blog, I spent January through June of this year at Goldsmiths University in London. I took English-based courses not unlike those I've taken at SU and was able to glean a bigger picture and threads that ran throughout. What I found most interesting was how anything and everything is subject to interpretation--that how information is presented is crucial to how it is viewed by an audience. This got me thinking: throughout my education I have been a good student, but I've been quiet. I am opinionated but am hardly outspoken. However, given the opportunity to be in an entirely new environment where no one has any notion of me as a person whatsoever, I could be whatever the hell I wanted. That's not to say that I lost any of who I am while in London. Hardly. Rather, I was able to present myself in a different fashion: to speak in class, to voice my opinions, to not come off as the pretentious bitch I feel like I seem to be here. So that's what I did. I was entirely myself, but coming from a different angle...perhaps one that is even more true to who I feel I am. Without the veneer of presumption I was able to present myself just how I wanted to, how I felt was exactly appropriate for my fully developed adult self (as opposed to this scared and unsure 18 year old just starting college). It took a different environment, but I was finally able to express myself truly and fully.
I won't lie--coming back from that is a shock and a disappointment. People at Southwestern do feel like they know me in a different way, and it's very difficult to not fall back into place when it seems like nothing else has changed but me. I am struggling with it. So maybe it's not the most academic change, exactly, but I feel as though my experience abroad has made me a much better, happier, fully capable person.
That's not even to mention what I got from the people and the places itself. I mostly learned that I do not belong in America in any way. Before I went I had a very grand idea of Europeans and of Britons. I had assumed that everyone would be hip and fashionable and educated and intellectual and that I would simply fit in. That's not the case. I was still hipper and more interesting than loads of people! In fact, people thought I was the cool one. More than anything, this raised my level of confidence infinitely. No matter where in the world I go, my self-assurance is validated. That's a good feeling. And in a completely foreign country where you don't know a single soul I'd say that's pretty important. The fact that I was able not only to cope but to create an entire life (an amazing one) by myself without much guidance from anyone is more than I expected to say the least. I was terrified to move to London. TERRIFIED! I went to college 45 minutes from my parents house. I'd never been away from my friends for more than a week. But I absorbed every aspect of the culture of London and went away changed. I can't wait to be back where I belong.

My creative work is something I've been stressing over. I have been planning to incorporate my capstone into this, but I'm not taking it until next term. I don't really know what my plan is at this point, but I am meeting with my academic adviser tomorrow so hopefully I'll get some answers and a better feel for what I want to do. Am I allowed to just write a book?

Civic engagement has sort of been tormenting me. I realize now that it's supposed to be an ongoing process throughout the Paideia program, but I honestly had not put much energy into planning it for this term. Reading Katie's blog I really liked her idea of trying to emphasize the connections between courses at SU. If we were to achieve that and take it a step further (say, application for these connections, what it means to individuals and to the world outside of SU) I would be very satisfied. I'm only worried about biting off more than we could chew--this would be a huge undertaking I think, and it also seems to have sort of vague parameters. I think we could work with it for sure though.

Also if anyone is interested in my study abroad blog you can access it through my blogspot profile.

posted by Rachel @ 4:30 PM