Learning Letter/Plan of Action

I absolutely loved this class because it opened me up to issues going on in the world and I realized how much of a bubble I've been living in. There's a lot of news I hear offhand but I never really stop to think about it or stop to think about the people being affected by it. The books we read in class all put faces to really serious issues and suddenly I felt incredibly burdened with asking myself what I was going to do with this information. The first time I felt this was after reading Sold. I read the whole thing at a coffee shop in downtown Spokane and after I finished it, I took a walk and I felt this heavy weight on my shoulders, realizing how privileged my life is. I think I finally started to absorb how many children are affected by war and trafficking and the sheer amount of all that made me feel sick to my stomach. Long Way Gone also punched me in the gut. I felt a desire to do something. I felt angry and sick and sad.

I don't think I've ever taken a class that has impacted me as much as this one has. Maybe it has something to do with timing -- I'm one class away from graduating so I've been thinking a lot about how I'm going to move forward after college. This class took my ideas and made me think about expanding them. The projects and discussions had a huge impact on me because I tend to have a very narrow focus in my day to day life, going from school to work, spending time with my friends -- I never stop to think about bigger issues going on in the world. It's hard. It's not pleasant. I remember leaving after Sean gave his talk and getting in my car and his words were echoing in my head. Travel. I realized that though I have traveled, it has been to extremely well-off countries. Even my trips to Serbia are centered around the capitol, Belgrade, which is a big European city like any other. I've seen a lot in my travels, but I've never really been exposed to anything that made me uncomfortable. He also asked us about how we were going to impact others. I want to create something. How can my photography or my writing impact people? What message do I have to give to the world? I've been thinking about how to incorporate some real-world issues in my art. What am I trying to say? I'm still finding my voice, so this will be an on-going project for me as I keep exploring.

I'm not a teacher. I admit I felt a little out of place when I realized most of this class was comprised of people going into education. That's not me. But I ended up really loving the class and by taking it with people who are interested in teaching, it made me start thinking about my own influence on others as I move forward. I've been thinking about what I can do in my community once I graduate. My plan of action is this: I'm going to start reading the news more and I'm going to start reading  more books like the ones we read in class. I think the stories people are telling give me more compassion and understanding than just reading the facts in headlining news stories. Since I won't be in school, I'll finally have time to read the books I want, so this is a very achievable goal for me.

What can I do in my community? I'm going to be honest and say I don't really like working with kids. It's not a comfortable thing for me. I think what I'm going to start doing in the community is to start getting involved with nature and trail conservation. I know this doesn't really apply to the topics we've discussed in class, which were more people-oriented, so I hesitated to write this down. But the class really got me thinking about what I want to go out and do in my own community and the environment is something I'm passionate about. I want to stop being so passive and instead, when I hear about a trail cleanup meeting, I want to go help out. I want to do something.

Thank you for this eye-opening class.

Graffiti Wall Project

For my graffiti wall, I wanted to explore how war affects an individual in civilian society, specifically from an American cultural standpoint. On a daily basis, we are inundated with many conflicting ideas from the media, from churches, from schools -- and those ideas all trickle down into society and affect us on a personal level. One conflicting message that I focused on is this: we must love one another, but not love those on the other side of war, because those are our “enemies.” Long Way Gone was definitely on my mind while exploring this message: Ishmael’s “enemies,” the Rebels, were just young boys like himself, all victims of war.

I wanted to display this conflict in human nature, to display the various voices an individual will hear, and to ask how we ourselves can find a voice among all that noise. To depict these conflicting messages, I chose to use raindrops, colored red to symbolize blood, because the messages we hear as a culture are constantly falling on us. I remember we were sitting in class one day and discussing why we often don’t hear about some of these atrocities going on in the world, and we discussed how we don’t want to hear the bad stuff, or we hear it and ignore it, moving on with our day. Our lives of privilege allow us to feel a moment of sympathy and then move on. Maybe I speak for myself, but I know that the bad news is out there, but I get so bogged down with daily life and so overwhelmed with massive amounts of information via the internet, that I start filtering it out. In my graffiti wall, I’m showing that the messages are there all around me, falling on me like rain.

The information that “rains” upon my head is, essentially, about the nature of humanity: that we, as humans, are capable of both love and hate in their purest forms. I want to love my neighbor, but can I love my neighbor if that neighbor has done something to hurt me? What if that neighbor is a terrorist? As humans, we preach love but then turn around and go to war and kill each other. On a smaller scale, we preach love but then talk behind other people’s backs or treat others with disdain. My graffiti wall shows all these messages of love and hate falling on my head.

I often feel voiceless and hopeless when I learn about the atrocities that have happened in history, and that are still happening today. What can I possibly do to make a difference? What can I say that hasn’t been said before? I used a self-portrait for this project for a reason: this is a personal struggle for me, especially after what I’ve learned in this class. What I’ve learned is that I have been standing still, absorbing all this information from my culture, and my mouth is covered. I never do anything with what I’ve heard. I have no reaction other than brief sympathy. Instead, I absorb all this news about the wars and genocides, but I then step outside and go about my day as though nothing has happened. Am I listening? Yes, I am listening. But who am I listening to? Which message do I choose to follow? What if I listened to the humans behind the headlines, like I did in this class? And what if I did that more often? Would I do something then?

I included Elie Wiesel’s quote, “For the dead and the living, we must bear witness.” Wiesel is a survivor of Auschwitz concentration camp in WWII, and this quote comes from his speech in 1993 at the dedication ceremonies for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. We have to listen to the stories of people behind the wars. We have to remember those who have died and those who have suffered.

I am just one girl in a small corner of the world. But I am listening.