Kadijah Webster: Blog #8, Reflecting

Looking back on my first blog, I notice that my point I wanted to make was very straight forward.  I related my opinion of nations being different for everyone to the fact that Nathan Adolfson was adopted and he did claim his birthplace as his nation.  I still feel that everyone has their own separate nation; no one is the same.  While people may be in the same social circle, they still are not 100% the same and have their own views on the world around them.  I would say that I feel I needed to elaborate more, but I think I still have that problem.  I find myself stuck when it comes to trying to convey a message based on what we have learned or seen within the classroom.  It sucks to say it, but I feel that my growing process in this community is slower than others.  I am still adjusting to speaking up whenever something is on my mind.  Maybe if I got what I wanted to share out then, if I got a response, it would get the wheels turning for my blog entry that week.  Saying this here and actually attempting in class is are two completely different things.

Reflecting on our community, I definitely see much more openness than their was before.  Of course there are others that I haven't so much as spoken a word to yet, but I am still familiar with everyone's faces.  Despite the fact that I don't contribute in discussions as much, I never feel out of place.  I still absorb what others are saying and if I don't understand, I try to imagine why they view something a certain way.  We are a community made up of very different people and having a general understanding between all of us is important.  I felt that the acting exercise was very good in building more connections within the group.  The only downside is that not everyone's story was heard.  From the beginning, I knew that my experience in this class would be like no other and til this day I still feel the same.  There are over thirty individuals within our community, but the fact that we are a community sets us apart from a smaller STATS or Sociology class.  I have no negative comments or suggestions for this group because of the fact that there has been visible growth.  I see us growing as a whole, now I just have to continue to try and work on myself.