Midterm Participation Statement

Throughout the course of this quarter, I feel as if I have learned so much more about the relationship between race and feminism. Prior to this course I had what now seems like a very basic understanding of these topics, and now have begun to truly develop my competency with them. In particular I feel like I am being pushed to take concepts that I am familiar with and think about them in ways that completely revolutionize my understanding of them. This is initially really difficult for me because I have a hard time wrapping my mind around things and tend to need information to be conveyed in really simple ways, but once I can I am able to change my thinking and engage more fully with concepts. I feel like this showed itself most prominently for me with our recent unit on afrofuturism, which was a topic I was very unfamiliar with, and with taking the concept of a cyborg and considering how it functions as a tool (“what does it do” vs. “what is it”). However, after clarifying the concept as a class, I felt more able to understand the material and how our more theoretical readings tie into everyday life and the modern world.

My goals for this class have not really changed because I still am having a hard time participating while we are in class. I have been struggling a lot with my mental illnesses during this semester, and they tend to keep me from speaking up. It can at times pose a challenge because even when I have a question or something I want to bring up I have a hard time doing it, even when other people encourage me to.  I do think that I have been working towards my goal of informing myself as much as possible and using the information we learn in class to influence my interactions with the world, but I would like to feel more comfortable engaging with other students in class. It is my hope that as we move ahead in the semester that I will be able to speak up more in class, but there are a lot of factors at play that make that harder than it sounds. I feel really passionately about the subjects we are covering and the content we are able to engage with and discuss, and I know that if I were able to overcome this hurdle I would be able to benefit from it greatly.