I am still a nerd

By Tamika Whitenack

 

Hi folks. It’s been a grand total of three days since I last blogged, but I promised a blog about classes and I here it is! There will also be a few other notes thrown in because there are some things worth mentioning. Also lots of pictures, hooray! (Apologies for the weird formatting on the pictures, I'm not very good at it)

Todos las días, mi clase primero es Español. La clase de Español comienza  a las nueve y media. La clase es muy divertido. El profesor es gracioso y los otras estudiantes son amable. Hablamos mucho en Español. Porque quiero practicar mi Español, escribo en Español. Si ustedes puede, escribe cartas en Español para mi, por favor!

Apologies for any grammatical errors in that last paragraph. It’s only week three.

My freshman writing seminar is very enjoyable and so far has not been that much work. We haven’t written any long compositions yet, only free-writes, and while this is nice workload-wise, I really want to get a bigger writing assignment in this class because I find it so interesting and have a lot to say, potentially. The class is from the English department and called “The Instruction of Citizenship.” So far, each class has just been discussions on the reading we’ve done. We’ve read short stories about Puerto Rican immigrants in New York, a couple pieces from Sui Sin Far (first Asian-White author to be published in North America, I believe), and a very interesting piece about racial naturalization by Devon Carbado. Many of these readings are PDFs, so if you are interested in any of them, don’t hesitate to contact me! The Sui Sin Far pieces were most interesting for me to read in some ways because I could relate to bits as a mixed Asian-American child. The racial naturalization piece  probably made me think the most, because it explicitly introduced concepts about race and American identity that I hadn’t thought of before. One particularly interesting point that Carbado made was the tendency of to compartmentalize different races, for example racism against African-Americans is rarely talked about in context with the racism situation regarding Chinese immigrants during the time period, and vice versa. I found this interesting. I also thought it was interesting to consider the class discussion we had about this piece (which centered around the racial naturalization of black people in the U.S.) because as far as I can tell (and I may be mistaken, looks may be deceiving) there are no black students in the class. Besides the free-writes, our other assignment has been to find an “artifact” that represents what it means to American in 2017. I interpreted 2017 to mean this general time period, and submitted two songs from In the Heights: “96,000” and “Breathe”.

I want to make a pun about how Cognitive Science makes my mind hurt and how it’s all about minds, but I can’t figure out how. I was not sure how I felt about this class at first, as it is a strange mix of theory/philosophy and science (I suppose one could critique that statement by saying that science is theory...?). I am not used to this grey area between fact and opinion/argument, but I do find the class to be intellectually stimulating and have enjoyed it more as we get further into the subject. We have reading about and discussing various theories of the mind. So far we’ve mainly discussed dualism and type-type materialism, as well as other variations of those two theories. We also talked about commonsense psychology and eliminativism...eliminativism is crazy to wrap your mind around, it basically suggest that the terms we use as mental states are totally false and just a framework we’ve created, which means that we should really be describing our cognition in terms of .....????? If you want to know more specifics about this, let me know, and I can attempt to answer specific questions or just send you the essay I just submitted (first college essay, check!). The essay was actually structured as a dialogue/script between neuroscientists arguing/discussing the various mind theories using examples and cases such as brain-imaging techniques as a method of communication for completely-locked-in syndrome patients.

It’s interesting to be taking Intro to Psychology at the same time as Cog Sci because some of the material is either the exact same or else very complimentary. I’ve decided I appreciate this, because repetition can be boring but also helps me to really learn the material, and because I can connect examples/concepts from one class to the other. I also am grateful for my UChicago Developmental Psychology course because it means that I am at least a little bit familiar with APA format. We will be writing a research paper on a topic of our choice (I’m doing lucid dreaming) that will be in APA and so my brief experience with APA is helpful, as is my brief experience with reading and finding psych papers/studies. Thank you ILC, not only did you introduce me to blogging, you continually enrich my academic prospects! :D I actually had my first Psychology quiz on Tuesday, and it went well! This was in large part due to the overlap in material from CogSci and also AP Bio.

I have yet to receive more graded assignments, but for the most part I am feeling pretty good about the level of my classes and my ability to comprehend the material. I am also just a big nerd, so I think workload isn’t that much of an issue because I’m fine with spending a good chunk of every day in the library or somewhere else reading and studying. And I like my classes, so that helps! Additionally, I haven’t been stressing about grades here (hopefully my Ma isn’t alarmed to hear that) because I feel like the point of this experience is to learn a lot, and work a lot and be engaged and I think that as long as I do those things, I am getting value from my classes. This statement sounds suspiciously like something I read in a certain someone’s letters home from college during freshman year, The apple does not fall from the tree, teeheeehee. (Wow, that’s a good little chant! Rhyming is fun). I can’t really judge yet, but I also feel that grades are not obsessed over too heavily here, for the most part people seem intellectually interested and dedicated but not competitive. But as I said, I cannot really tell.

My education class! Still love this class so much. We’ve been talking about social identity and made social identity flowers to describe ourselves. We talk about how this can lead to power dynamics in a community and how an intentional community should address this. A thought that I have been thinking about related to power: We often talk about power dynamics in class as being negative. I feel that an important part of high school for me was becoming empowered with who I was. I think empowerment is important, and I think that can encompass drawing strength from both your dominant and target group identities. I am unsure what the balance between empowerment and not creating harmful power dynamics is, but I feel like awareness of the interaction between these two issues is important?

We also talked about conflict resolution at our last class, and our new assignment is to develop a collective purpose and really start modeling intentional community in our small learning communities! I’m excited for this. Also, we watched a TedTalk (https://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_on_vulnerability) about shame and belonging and the key take-away was that vulnerability is necessary in order to achieve belonging and closeness. I think this was particularly interesting to me because sometimes I feel like I come from a postion/have created an identity for myself that is centered on being put together and not showing weakness.

About community: last time I talked about community service within Poughkeepsie. I have been thinking about that a lot more, or just the college’s interactions with Poughkeepsie in general. Similar to our Global Glimpse mindset, I think I want to be mindful of the possibility for this institution to engage in service that is not totally informed or deeply beneficial to others and mainly for the purpose of making those providing service feel that they are doing good in the world. This thought relates a little bit to some of the conversations I have heard or engaged in at the ALANA center, and the various ways that Vassar still has a long way to go.

Which brings me to another point I have been thinking about. I think in this time of starting a new adventure and sharing it with others through this blog/in other ways, it can be easy to feel that I/we need to prove that the experience and the life and the school that we are living in is great and perfect. I think a subconscious part of me wants it to be perfect, as a way to defend my decision to go here. But that is not true, no place is perfect, and I chose to go here knowing that it is not a perfect place. I am having a wonderful time, but I am trying to stay aware and not let my perceptions or portrayals of my experiences be influenced by the wishes I may have to make my experience seem fantastic.  I think that the “look at me and my awesome life” is a syndrome that is perpetuated by social media a little bit too much, and I am going to try not to fall into it.

Another thought and then I’ll give you some activity updates. This relates a little bit to mindfulness and a little to the two points about awareness and critical thinking that I just described. I like to think that I try to really think about things in my life, and I think that this is maybe a blessing and a curse. It is a curse because it forces me to reject blissful ignorance and face critical issues and problems that are complicated and difficult to fix. But it is also a blessing because it allows me to realize how amazing simple things are and how grateful I am just to be living my life and the privileges I have in life. I still have a lot of critical thinking to do, but I think being here is good for getting to hear new perspectives from my peers and just to think about stuff, because the new-ness of this experience makes me think a lot. For me, thinking can be depressing, but it is more often rewarding because it makes me feel like a fuller person and I think it might relate to my tendency to be a happy child.

plum crisp in a bowl

plum crisp :)

Other things that make me a happy child....baking! This weekends project was Plum Crisp (vegan), featuring coconut oil, oats, lots of cinnamon, and some almonds thrown in for texture. It was a solo baking endeavor, but definitely a success!

a functional oven

What else have I been up to this weekend? Friday was the ALANA-fest, which was an event to celebrate the ALANA center and the various student groups it supports. There was food, student group performances, and tabling my student groups.

On Friday there was also an action by the Student Labor Dialogue at the Deece. The new dining system may have improved the quality of our food, but the management apparently has been poor at treating the workers well and they are not happy. The leaders of the student labor dialogue have spoken with the workers and at the action a large group of students marched into the Deece and then one of the Deece workers spoke about the changes they want to see from the management and the college. I hope that Bon Appetit and Vassar will be responsive.

Talia and I also went to a judo class on Friday, which was fun but also kind of crazy. We learned to fall and roll (I'm not very good), and then did some throwing and holding of each other. 

fireeeeeeee

Today I actually got in 10 miles of running! I went on a run with the running club, and then went on a run with the outing club to the watering hole and took a quick swim. I spent most of today doing work, and also had a nice practice session at Skinner. I’ve also been taking lots of pictures today! In the evening, the Barefoot Monkeys ,Vassar’s student circus(?) group, had a show with fire performing and it was cool! I watched for a bit.

My new creation: oatmeal with carrots, sunflower seeds, and raisins (it's carrot cake in a bowl!

Asian stir-fry

An old favorite: sweet potato, almond butter, Greek yogurt

an old favorite, feat. coconutmilk yogurt

an artistic view of Skinner

an artistic view from Skinner

the door of Skinner

a practice room

an artful piano(it's a Steinway, they are everywhere here)

A cool mural in the Raymond basement

The rest of the basement: super creepy

A view of the Bridge

idk why i took this pic

the womp-womp lives here, but was hiding

That’s all for now, and I do apologize for all the space I take up on this blog.