Okay, I am going to start off by talking about my stupidity! On Tuesday, in Religious Studies, we all brought our reports that we wrote about Nacirema. I am sure that you know where I am going with this, because I know that there were many of us in the same situation with this one! It was funny, because as I was reading the text I immediately thought, ‘wow, there are so many parallels between this tribe and North America life.’ I now understand why I saw these parallels. I skimmed the Wikipedia site, but I obviously did not take enough time to really understand what it was saying. That in itself was a lesson. I need to be more careful and thorough while reading. I also came to the realization that maybe it is not really a matter of stupidity and embarrassment. It proved to me that sometimes I am not ready to make a connection or view my lifestyle through a different lense. However, I now find this very intriguing. I had obviously never heard of Nacirema previous to this, but I unintentionally learned a lot from the activity.

Also, journalism class makes me happy. I know I sound like a little kid, but I love the way Michael Camp makes it so simplistic for us. The work and classes are not ‘simple’ so to speak, but the way he gets us to view writing and understand what great journalism writing looks like is very straightforward, I guess. I have assumed that, to be an effective writer, big words and fancy sentence structures were required. It came as a great relief to me when I found out that, in many cases, the opposite is quite true! I had a really inspiring time as well when I interviewed Stephanie. Her openness and honesty were, to me, a sign that she trusted me with her story. This meant a lot and now I am more motivated to do her turning point story justice. I have learned a lot about her, and in turn I have also learned a lot about myself.

Russ made a point yesterday regarding the repetition of “Doubt” as a part of our learning. I have really tried to keep an open mind to everything we have been doing and, for the most part, I have. I find that with previous ways that I have been taught and encouraged to learn I have never been asked to spend so much time with one piece of writing. Thus, I have been questioning if I will reach a point when I start to shut down to this. This is not my intension, more of a habit and a bad one at that. I am finding it hard to keep gaining new perspective about doubt in life and so on. But be patient, I am working on it.