Reflection: Jess

To be frank, I am not entirely sure where to start. This class really grounded me, despite the class starting at 9:00 am on a Friday I looked forward to it every week. This class provided me with some semblance of normalcy in an otherwise unpredictable and unprecedented time. I struggled with quite a few of the readings and didn’t quite grasp the concepts fully in time for class but despite that, I was eager and excited to talk in the discussion group which says a lot since I have a fear of public speaking. 

The two smaller discussion groups I was apart of throughout the semester have honestly been my favorite part of the course (dare I say semester?). Everyone in the groups is lovely and they have such a passion for the concepts introduced in class that it made it exciting to listen to them each week. We would typically stay on zoom after our discussion time ended in favor of talking with each other. We would discuss anything from the class readings for that week to what was happening in our personal lives and it has been the closest thing to a normal college course I’ve experienced. The concepts from the readings and lectures aside, this class taught me how important it is to maintain social interaction. This time has been so isolating and lonely for many of us and I didn’t quite just how much I craved this kind of classroom interaction until it was gone. 

I took this course as an elective while taking many other liberal arts classes simultaneously and I wish I hadn’t done that. I’m an illustration major and I’m not really used to Lang’s class structures and It takes me a hot minute to get used to doing traditionally academic again. Since this class fell on a Friday and I took it as an elective it the assignments and the reading ended up on the bottom of my chronological list. This class demands a lot of attention and that isn’t a bad thing, I just think I should’ve taken this class when I had the opportunity to make it the only liberal arts class in my schedule. There had definitely been times where I know I hadn’t been fair and I should’ve allotted more time for the course. 

Even though I had a fair amount of challenges in trying to understand the very nuanced readings, I would say I had an enjoyable time trying to grasp the concepts presented in them. The readings that stuck out to me the most were Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower and Beatrice Marovich’s Religious Biodiversity and Our Common Home. I’ve thought about these two texts a lot outside of class and they were definitely my favorite readings. While this class functioned somewhat like a typical New School class the translation of it to online seemed rather easy. 

The class is very reading and text-heavy made it even harder when I didn’t quite grasp the material. The reading responses forced me to finish the readings in a timely manner and without them, I probably wouldn’t have done such a thorough read and completed them before the day of class. Despite finding the response a good part of the class, it really stressed me out to get them done. Even though I feel like I tried my best throughout the journey that is this class I still feel like I could’ve done more. I think a lot of students feel this way. My favorite assignment was the You and the Anthropocene essay and the video describing climate change in your hometown. I really enjoy self-reflective assignments and especially during a time where we have nothing to do but look inward. 

I do believe that I got what I signed up for in the class, there were no surprises and the course ran exactly how the course description made it seem. Perhaps this would be a different class but I really enjoyed learning about religions other than Christianity and I wish there was more of that. I would’ve loved to read about religions like Asatro or the Satanic Temple, while I’m sure it would be difficult to connect smaller religions to the Anthropocene it would be interesting to hear their perspectives since the Anthropocene is very Christian centric. Even though I had my own struggles with readings, I wouldn’t want to change the structure of the course just perhaps switch out some of the readings for something more alternative. 

Overall this course has been a really interesting ride and I would recommend it to anyone especially during this time of uncertainty since, as I stated previously, it maintained a very normal feeling which is hard to come by these days. I think a good class should present a challenge whether that be reading materials that present difficult topics or intense discourse and I feel as though this class provided that without losing my engagement. 

(JC)