The First Day of Class

Lunch time on the Green 

Today I woke up way before my alarm. I sat in bed for a while before gaining the energy to get dressed and move on with my day.  I met with the rest of my floor to walk to breakfast at 7:30. We had to eat quickly because there was a long line to get into our cafeteria. Once I had finished my yogurt and granola I headed outside to find my TA, Tory, who was going to walk our Woman and Leadership group to class.

I was happy to realize that the class was in a building located right next to the science library. The science library is one of the tallest buildings on campus so this will always make it easy to find my class. As soon as we got into the class we arranged the desks into a horseshoe shape so that we could all see each other and discuss topics.

Our Woman and Leadership
Classroom 

Our teacher's name is Mary Grace and she is fabulous. She is extremely enthusiastic and thoughtful. To get oriented and to try to feel more relaxed as a group we did an icebreaker activity where we shared common interests and how we differed.  Then we did another basic name game. After we all felt a little more comfortable with each other we got into the actual class learning.

First we looked over the syllabus and then the class guidelines. Then we looked in depth at two of the articles that we had read for homework. We went over the seven categories of otherness. These outline different reasons why groups would be discriminated against. We talked over each group and went over the dominant and submissive parts of each group. Then we looked into the cycle of socialization. We examined why the cycle continuously repeats and how to break it. I realized how much our society bombards us with stereotypes and how this basis or perception of the world around us. We spent a long time going into depth on these issues then broke off for lunch.

Afternoon on the Green 

We realized that we hardly had any time between lunch and the time that our class started so I decided against going to the dorms and instead hung out with some friends on the main green.

The second part of class was also a lot of fun. Here we made collages of our own leadership history. We got to shuffle through magazines and cut and paste pictures onto a poster. After we had finished making our posters we broke up into small groups to share our posters and learn a little more about one another. My group all had very unique timelines but we seemed to share some of the same ideologies. We had all learned a lot from our families and our childhood.

View While Laying on the Green 

After class was dismissed we only had an hour before we had to go to a leadership workshop. Here we had a lot of fun characterizing different types of leadership and gaining an understanding of where we each belong. Through this activity I learned that there is no one leadership style that fits me exactly but that I am a mix. We split up into our different groups based on the closest fit of our leadership styles and then made skits all together. This was a lot of fun and gave us a chance to bond.

Lastly we had a special meeting for summer students that were receiving scholarships. Even though I had to miss the Arts and Crafts activity to do this I was still excited and thought that it would be a great opportunity to meet some new people. We did a bunch more ice breaker activities and learned a little bit more about the resources at Brown.

After the scholarship meeting I went back to the dorms to get some work done. I was able to socialize with my roommate for a little and some of the other girls on our floor. There are a lot of them that are super welcoming and nice and I am really glad that I have the next two weeks to get to know them. Now I have to get all of my work done, relax, and hopefully get some sleep.