Stand Outside the Person Standing Outside Yourself and Write What You See

At the beginning of the semester, we developed a list of goals for ourselves, without knowing exactly where this class would take us, based on the goals that had been posted for the class. I admit that this assignment was rather difficult to accomplish without having a clearer understanding of the course of study. Part of me thought that it was a waste of time to write goals based on nothing, but it is important for me to remember that “all of our identities are only relatively real, coming and going as circumstance warrants” (73), and I have come to understand the purpose of these goals in the larger scheme of my life.

Self-awareness is the first step to greater external awareness. I had always focused my attention on self-observation in relation to my interactions with other people in terms of my spiritual growth. For the first time in my life, I have delved into self-awareness in terms of my learning style and how that has affected my academic growth. In understanding myself on broader terms, I have been able to gradually become more aware of things external to myself and to understand the difference between things I have control over and things that are out of my control. It has been interesting to see how I perceive the world around me by being asked to draw what I see. Though I am not the best artist in the world, I get a feel for how I perceive the world differently from how my classmates perceive the world by comparing our drawings and the aspects of Littlefield House that caught each of our attentions.

This is the first semester in my career as a college student that I have had to interact with my classmates. I have quite a few antisocial tendencies that I blame on simply being shy, and “by simply opening to acknowledge a fuller sense of identity, [I]… see that the very inner tranquility that [I] may have cultivated in spiritual practice is precisely what is needed in social action” (72). Part of the reason that I have a hard time interacting with others is my assumption that people will not understand me and therefore judge me unfairly. I have built up my own shyness in protection of myself from this fear because “in our efforts to remain secure and protect the integrity of the separate self, we give greater weight to one aspect of our identity over another” (71). This has been a hard barrier to break down. In social situations, it usually takes me a long time to warm up to people. This has certainly been the case even in this class, but it seems like a step in the right direction that I have made an attempt to get to know my classmates beyond asking them for the notes from a day I missed or something equally unobtrusive. Social interaction is one area of my external awareness that I previously had little understanding of.

Sense of place is something that I have become greatly aware of. In the past, I may have had a notion about sense of place, or perhaps the lack thereof, but couldn’t put my finger on the exact feeling. At first my understanding of sense of place was equated to my sense of feeling at home. And while finding a physical place where I feel at home is important, sense of place applies to a much broader idea than simply where I live. I can find a sense of place in terms of being a student at this university, as a citizen of Austin or of the United States, as member of society as whole. Though I have lived in Austin all my life, there are things about this city that are still a mystery to me, things that make Austin a unique place. I was glad to finally have the opportunity to experience the bats. They add an interesting element to my sense of place here in Austin. My goal was to develop this understanding so that wherever I am, I understand my place there. My sense of place is not limited to a singular locality, but encompasses every aspect of life.

My sense of place has helped me to better understand my sense of self. Making a roadmap of the places that have most influenced me was a very useful tool in beginning the search into understanding sense of place. It was a starting point that got the ball rolling. I discovered that people, as much as places, affect my sense of place. When my best friend, Patrick, left for South America for three months, there was a vital piece of that sense of place missing. It taught me to establish my senses of place and self outside of other people so that they become an enhancement of those senses, rather than the definition of them. Projects 1 and 2 really helped me to understand sense of place because it gave me the opportunity to try and create a sense of place for the reader, without ever having gone to the places I was describing. I feel like it broadened my sense of place and my ability to create my sense of place no matter where I am. Through my exploration into the lives of Matthew Arnold and Arthur Hugh Clough, I feel that I have a better sense of what it was like for them as students at Oxford during the Victorian Era and how their experience differs from my own experiences here at UT. I feel like I have really just experienced the tip of the iceberg with this goal. My understanding is broader than it had been previously, but there is still so much left for me to understand. But I now have the tools that I need to get there.

This course really helped me feel like I was maximizing my potential, at least most of the time. As the semester is drawing to a close, I realize that I have begun to slack off a little bit, but I still feel like this goal has been accomplished. I set out to rediscover my creative brain, having spent so much time as a biology student and letting my creative side become out of practice. It is amazing that in all that time on that side of campus I never really stopped to appreciate and be inspired creatively by the beauty around me. However, I didn’t want to simply switch from thinking analytically to thinking creatively; I wanted to find a balance between the two, and I feel like I have, for the most part. In working to accomplish this goal, I had to practice with another of my goals, which was to think for myself. With our writing assignments being more or less wide open, I had every opportunity to assert my own thoughts and use my creativity. In this sense I feel that I have succeeded. This was especially true with the online discussion boards. The broad topics could be interpreted in many different ways, and the readings inspired all of us to write about different aspects within them. I find it very interesting how two people, or 15 for that matter, can read the same article and take completely different messages away from it. And then we can all come together and express our differing ideas without feeling like our own opinion is necessarily wrong. That was one of the most positive aspects of this class and one that made learning the most enjoyable. In another sense, though, I feel that I have failed to think for myself. The structure of this course seems to revolve around competing with my classmates to get a hammer. Because of this my thoughts were often focused on getting points rather than expressing myself. When I was younger, I was in competitive swimming because I loved to swim and I felt so free when I was in the water. Over time, the pressure to win eroded that free feeling and swimming wasn’t fun anymore. I feel that the desire to get the most points has overshadowed some of my more important goals for the class. Similar to my experience on swim team, I stopped thinking for myself, in a sense, and began thinking for more points. That has been the one major downfall of the class for me.

Through the process of increasing my self-awareness, as well as my external awareness, I have become very aware of my strengths and weaknesses. And while there are still areas that I feel hopelessly flawed in, at least I am aware of them. I made progress in my effort not to procrastinate. I feel like it isn’t that important that I am not cured of my procrastination yet, but that I am making progress is a very good start. I have yet to figure out a way to get around my ADD and cultivate my reading and comprehension skills, but I didn’t expect to overcome that one so simply. I do feel that researching on the internet helps me to stay more focused than researching in a book. I do feel though that I have lightened up a little in the area of perfectionism. This is one of those things that I have had to accept as being out of my control. I cannot expect to be perfect all of the time, and to strive for that is a wasted effort. But more importantly I have realized that if I put forth my best effort, then whatever I produce is the best I can offer, and that is something that I can feel proud of. If I don’t give my best effort and then get down on myself for not attaining perfection, then I have altogether missed the mark. I simply have to remember to try, and then “not [feel] attached to a particular outcome” (75). Another aspect of overcoming my weaknesses was to become more comfortable talking in front of other people. I feel like I have become somewhat more comfortable, enough so that I at least appear to be comfortable, even if I’m not, as is evidenced by the presentations given at the beginning and at the end of the semester.

The last of my goals was a passing thought, and though it matters to me that I achieved that goal, it doesn’t warrant further examination. At this point I have already achieved my A and anything else that I turn in only enhances the weight of that A. I already mentioned that I am opposed to the way the point system in this class turns grades into a competition, but I also appreciate that it seems more attainable to get an A in the class. Anyone can achieve an A; it all depends on their motivation to do so. I understand that making a competition out of it makes more people motivated to work harder, but it seems like a negative motivator and it takes some of the fun out of the learning process. I would rather do an assignment for the sake of learning, than doing an assignment for the sake of winning, and that is how the point system makes me feel.

There were times when I didn’t understand the point of the assignments we were doing. Looking back I see their relevance, at least to the larger scheme of things. From day one, we were told to “hammer your thoughts into unity.” Each of these assignments had a place in my greater understanding of sense of place by understanding how these places came to be and the influences that helped to inspire them. In turn, this has better helped me to understand myself because it gave me new ideas to ponder that I hadn’t considered before. Before this class, I had no idea when the Victorian Era was, let alone the central themes that came out of it. The disappearance of God was one of the most relevant themes for me. My mind is ever questioning, but I have come to one solid truth for myself. I haven’t experienced the disappearance of God, but rather a disappearance in the prejudices and beliefs about who or what God is based on a singular religious belief. It isn’t that I question God, but that I question religion. This has been a pivotal point in my spiritual growth because I feel that there is more solid ground beneath me now.

These learning records have been a valuable tool in observing myself. I don’t think that I’ve ever observed myself in this manner before. Figuring out my learning style, based on my personality would never have occurred to me, but it has been so useful in discovering things about myself that I didn’t know before (which was also part of my goals for the course). I feel that the skills I have picked up in this class will help me in the future, in other classes and in my eventual career. There is no reason that I can’t make it to the top every time.

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