Tuesday Snoozeday

This morning I had to lay in bed for a half hour before I finally forced myself to get up and get ready for the day. I had my typical oatmeal and fruit breakfast with Tyler and Phoebe before heading to class.

Today in class we opened up the day with a pre-flection on a section of Uwujaren and Utt article that stated, “Intersectionality is a framework that must be applied  to all social justice work, a frame that recognizes the multiple aspects of identity that enrich our lives and experiences and that compound and complicate oppressions and marginalizations.” This statement was really interesting to me because it considered how each of the seven categories of otherness contribute to an individual's identity and the oppression that they face. When you look at the overall picture it is important to realize that white woman do not face the same type of discrimination as women of color so they cannot all be looked at as only women. Instead, as the quote states, it is important to recognize every aspect of an individual when you are attempting social justice work.

Office Hours With Tory

After we had finished this activity we had a group of panelists come to our classroom to help teach us about their experiences working towards social justice. There were four different panelists: Gail Cohee, The Director of the Sarah Doyle Women’s Center and Associate Dean of College; Shane Lloyd, The Assistant Director for First-Year and Sophomore Programs at The Brown Center for Students of Color; Joshua Segui; The Assistant Director for Co-Curricular Initiative at The Brown Center for Students of Color; and Tory Sparks, our TA. Dean Almandrez asked them a series of questions and they all gave their interesting and unique responses.

The question that stood out the most for me was: How do you deal with people who are not critically conscious of social issues? Everybody had a slightly different answer for this but all the panelists agreed that it was important to pick your battles. Furthermore, Shane Lloyd stated that it is important to work with people that afford you the respect that you deserve. Gail Cohee said that her strategy is to ask a lot of questions to get to the root of the problem. I thought that this discussion was very interesting because coming from a very open area I do not typically face a lot of open oppression so I have not had to deal with these issues. With the panel we also talked about what it means to be an ally and how to take care of ourselves.

Dean Almandrez surprised us by giving us the afternoon off to work on our action plans. The idea of having an entire afternoon to myself was kind of daunting. I knew that it wouldn’t be possible to focus all afternoon on my action plan so I decided that I would go to office hours with Tori then relax and take some time for myself.

Cindy and I did some work together before lunch then headed to the V-Dub to get lunch. Then we both headed to Tory’s office hours. I was able to work very productively during office hours and I actually finished my action plan paper. This meant that I had all afternoon to relax and do the other homework. I went to the Main Green with Tyler, Phoebe, and another girl from my class named Sara. I didn’t have any work that I needed to do so I drew for a little bit and just laid in the grass and relaxed.

Since I have been so sleep deprived recently I decided that it would be beneficial for me to take a nap in the afternoon. I typically don’t like taking naps but in this case it seemed like the right thing to do. After I got some rest I decided to get up and go running. I did the loop down by the water. After running I got back to the dorms and relaxed for a little bit before heading out to dinner with Izzy, Tyler, and Phoebe. After dinner I headed back to the dorms for some more relaxation and to finish blogging.