Monday, July 27, 2015

Emerging Emotions

Within partners, we were asked to discuss great leaders that lead with a contemporary leadership style. A contemporary leader is more of a facilitator, considers those she or he leads not as followers but as fellow leaders, and focuses on empowerment instead of power dominance. Our class came up with the leaders on the left. Our instructor Mary Grace remarked that in her three years of doing this exercise, we are the first group to name women and people of color. I was shocked: how have past women and leadership classes excluded the people they are learning about?

We built a list of traits that those leaders had, and wrote them on the right. She went through each word one by one and asked us to raise our hands if we thought we had that skill. I raised my hand for most of the words, as did many of my classmates. We reflected on that, and two thoughts that I resonated with were: it is hard to obtain the other traits without passion, and no leader will have all of these traits. 

After realizing we had similarities with what made the named leaders successful, Mary Grace asked us, "Why didn't any of you name yourselves?" She ingrained in us that we have power in our families and communities. She told us directly that based on our writing and our conversations, she knew that some of us would make history books. I'm having trouble writing about this in a way that communicates how honest that felt, and how thoughtful what she said was.  

We walked around a gallery of screen shots or pictures that Mary Grace took and wrote comments beside them. It was a silent activity, but we were still able to write responses to other's comments. Here are two of the many gallery pictures that I had thought made interesting points.
There is only one level of skirt accepted by society: "proper." This brings up the double-bind 
that women are shamed for being "prudish" but are also shamed for showing skin. 
There were positive and negative gallery items, but I felt the sexist ones more. A Fox News article, for example, "covered" the news story of the assassination attempt of House of Representatives member Gabrielle Giffords in 2011. There was not one single sentence that spoke of only her. The entire article was about her husband. I will summarize: Gabrielle Giffords, wife of  American Astronaut Mark Kelly, was shot. Her husband does this and this and this...

There was no mention about whether she would survive or how she had made an impact on society.
What is obscene is that women don't have the same body rights as men.  
I went to a "Social Classmates" workshop that discussed how we defined our social class, socioeconomic status, etc. Also, how class plays into our education.We were asked on paper: how does your family value keeping up with neighbors? 

I wrote: "We value keeping up with neighbors. I feel that I am often asked about how I am doing, and reciprocate the answer.We try to introduce ourselves to new people on our block, and we care for our neighbor's pets while they are away. We go to block parties, and yell hello across the street daily."

I defined "keeping up with" as staying in touch with my neighbors and their lives.

My discussion partners defined "keeping up with" as trying to keep up with the wealth level of the other neighbors...

Wow. I am glad I don't  have concerns about that. 
Post-workshop reflection dinner with Cindy, my roommate Elizabeth, Sebastian, and Nalu. 
I went and studied with fellow leadership student Alexa and classmate Ashley in a science library after dinner. I was so focused on getting work done that I didn't take any photos or even write down which library I had entered. I spent two hours reading our homework articles and then met my roommate to walk back in the dark to our dorms.

I took a fifteen minute break to check in with my cohort and organize myself before going to office hours. I asked Tory, our TA, many many questions. I learned that I have gotten to the point in my education and life where I will have to start skimming readings, and not beat myself up over it. I learned that Oberlin's dance is very modern in thought and movement, and is somewhat alike to how I dance at school. I decided, with Tory's small nudges, that a documentary of teen's life experiences in our course material would be best for my film project. 

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