I don't update this nearly as often as I had intended when I began it.
Let's try and catch up on what's been going on!
First thing first, since I probably talk about him enough, and not everyone who reads this has met him, feast your eyes on the ridiculous boy whom I call my best friend- Andrew (Ricker)...
[showing off all of his winnings from the arcade, ha]I meant to post that picture last post. It's obvious why I keep him around, isn't it? You got it- the eye patch is really just so endearing.
Anyways, I'm writing this from my hotel room in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where I have been for the majority of the past week. I came here with Ted as well as 2 students whom I know from working in the Center for Multicultural Student Services on campus (Jessica & Aishah), for a conference on this sort of up-and-coming teaching pedagogy called Intergroup Dialogue. It's a curriculum that's being pioneered by a group of professionals across the country, but has it's roots here at the University of Michigan. While the IGR (intergroup relations) program is 20 years old itself, it is finally beginning to be implemented across the country across the collegiate realm- in the form of classes, workshops, co-curricular opportunities...it's really quite amazing.
The idea behind intergroup dialogue is to bring together groups of people based on their differing social and personal identities. For instance, having a dialogue group consisting of 16 students- 8, men & 8 women where half of each group of genders identify themselves as black and the other white (so 4 white males and 4 black males). They are then lead through a 4 staged program that gets them to evaluate and reflect upon their identities as well as the stereotypes that they have for others, and eventually create from their seperateness a community of individuals positioned to take action and make change. It's an incredibly intense, despite its intentionality. It also seems so empowering for those participating and facilitating. We got to simulate the stages througout the 4 day conference and got tons and tons of information to help us in attendance determine how we will bring back these concepts to our home universities. It was overwhelming, but I met some absolutely amazing professionals from all over the country, and made some really solid connections- which will be especially useful when I'm job searching in a few months. I now have contacts at institutions varying from Stanford, University of Michigan, University of Illinois at Chicago, Emory University and Syracuse. I even met some people from Northeastern!
Overall, a fantastic experience. I need to figure out how I will personally take what I learned and apply it to my work at JMU. I do plan to continue working with Aishah and Jessica on their projects, and we'll see where we end up in a few months!
Here's some crappy camera-phone photos that I took to help me document my trip...
[Proof I was in Michigan, ha]
[the State Street theater in downtown Ann Arbor]
[just one of the many murals of downtown. It's an eclectic community]
[my new friend, Jacob, was right- this place made THE best sandwiches ever]
[their coffee was pretty fantastic, too!]This week has got me thinking about how unique each person's experience in their life is, and how much that shapes their respective reality. I was in the company of some really important people this week- including this dynamic 28 year old, "D.A." who happens to be a professor at Princeton. What stuck me most about the uniqueness of every person I met was that regardless of their title, or their role at their university, despite their age or race or gender, I felt a sense of "kinship" with them, an incredibly commonality existing between all of us. It made everything we learned about sort of fall into place. I'll be mulling on the happenings of this week for a long time to come, that's for sure.
We fly out in the morning. I am so happy to be going back to the burg. I will say, however, that I am a little nervous about a couple things- mainly how it's going to be as a returning HD and also how I'm going to pay for anything in the next few weeks. In the whirlwind of me traveling out here and trying to keep my finances on lock, I managed to completely miscalculate what I had. I find myself in the red all over the place, and only further perpetuated by the overdraft fees that are absolutely absurd. I need my loans to come through so badly, it makes me sick in the pit of my stomach thinking about the next few weeks with zero funds. Although, I'm not feeling as bad about this situation as I was feeling this morning- talking with the women in my group at the conference put some of my anxiety at ease. They all shared with me how horrible grad school was for all of them, too. They reminded me that at the end of the tunnel I am stuck in at current shines a light- a light that will outshine all of the dark and dreary moments of financial woes, interpersonal drama and homesickness. I just gotta push through!
On a final note- being able to work with the likes of Aishah and Jessica has been truly...amazing. I find myself every night here being so inspired by them in so many ways- they have this infectious energy and fire in their hearts for making change in the world. I hope to follow their lead all year because working with students- people- like them is what makes this profession, and this life choice- of allowing yourself to be involved, engaged and invested with students- worth everything. I cant wait to see what comes next!
In the meantime, I need to sleep.
Much love!
-Leigh
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