Journal Entry: Course Reflections

Response: As soon as I got those two e-mails from Aruna and Tracy before my courses had even ended in April, my anxiety went through the roof. How hard was this course going to be if they were already contacting me (us) before our Winter semester was even over? I started panicking when I checked Blackboard and saw there was no syllabus or reading list. Worse still in my opinion was that it was student-led.

I had attempted to take a course with Aruna previously, ENGL 492, but it was the fifth course and I didn't feel I would be able to give it the right amount of attention, so I dropped it. When I saw all this, I realized how right I was, and realized even though I was only taking two courses in Spring, it might still be too much for me.

I started panicking even more when I saw that there was a pre-session assignment, and that we were to start our Learning Logs as soon as possible. Pre-session! Learning log! What the hell was all this? Okay, I took some deep breaths and thought Japanese-Canadian interment during World War II sounded like it was relevant to the course, and it is something I am at least familiar with, so I decided to focus on that. I still worried because I had no professor guidance or rules. Without a syllabus or reading list, how would I be able to gauge how far along I was, what I still had to do, etc? I panicked some more.

Although that feeling was somewhat ameliorated after the first class and subsequent weeks in class, participating there are in the class blog, reading the articles from the Reading Room, taking notes on almost everything I did, I still feel as though I am behind, and what I've done isn't enough. Will it be enough? I'm both looking forward to and feeling threatened by my exit interview with Aruna.

Self-Critique: I'm finding words in here that are very similar to thoughts and feelings I had while writing my previous post on contextualizing my fear. Anxiety is extremely prevalent in my response, and I can safely say has been during my entire academic career. Why do I react like this towards University? I think there is a perpetuated sense of fear and anxiety surrounding what grades I will get and whether or not an assignment is done correctly, on time, etc. I would be very surprised to find I am the only student who reacts this way to University.

Especially telling to me is my use of the word "rules" and the words "professor guidance." If anything, this course has taught me that student-led can be just as productive and enlightening as a lecture-based class; perhaps even more so because students are allowed to voice and weigh their own thoughts without being "told" what the "right" answer is - they are allowed to come to that conclusion themselves. The fear I experienced at the beginning of the course was entirely manufactured not only by myself, but also by what the University has deemed "acceptable" ways to run a classroom environment.

I am most intrigued by my usage of "threatened" in reference to Aruna's exist interview. She has not only provided lots of information about the interview itself in Blackboard, but I have seen her earlier in the class, and nothing about her or her language was threatening in any way.

Cultural Critique: Doing this entry immediately after my entry on Fear is, I think, perhaps the most telling aspect of the culture I inhabit. This dominant culture perpetuates the same fears and anxieties that I and many others encounter on a daily basis as well as the fears and anxieties that can be found in school culture.

School culture is a sub-culture that some people never truly inhabit or understand. (I give the example of my roommates, who believe that because I am not working and only attending University, I belong to some sort of exotic spa. None of them have graduated high school, and they are all older than I am.) This sub-culture not only perpetuates and capitalizes on the fear of receiving bad grades, or having an unpleasant encounter with a professor over grades, but places this fear within a system so students are incapable of complaining about it.

This sub-culture is obvious within the words and phrases I have chosen, such as threatening and professor guidance. They exude a trapped atmosphere within students cannot free themselves; it's institutionalized, almost prison-like atmosphere in many ways. The very same University sub-culture preaches and is preached as the most "liberating" experience a person may experience during their lifetime, and is often discussed as a place where free-thinking and open-mindedness and anti-institution attitudes supposedly roam. This is, of course, a direct contradiction towards what is actually deemed acceptable in assignments - which are often written out by the professor for the students to complete, with preconceived expectations for which sources and the arguments they will employ - and the marks they hand out reflect that.

The University sub-culture is one that preserves, and indeed thrives, on the fears and anxieties of students.