Following the Path of Engagement
I was hesitant to engage with this class. I was hesitant to engage with every reading. I was hesitant to fully commit to the engagement each blog post required. The theme of this semester, and Writing 340 specifically, was full engagement. Looking back on the work I have accomplished, I recognized the initial barriers that existed. I persevered through them, and feel more capable than ever to engage with content that may initially give me pause. I learned that when I connect to a thought leader in the field, when I fully respect the person, their arguments become easy for me to internalize.
Although over the previous semesters at USC I have strived to educate myself, both through talking with others and through workshops on various DEI initiatives, I have continued to internally perceive a missing component. My work has been recognized, resulting in election into multiple different roles that have handled DEI in some capacity. I served first as DEI Co-Chair of Alpha Phi Omega, a community service organization, and then the last academic year as the president of LACI, a social impact consulting organization. The work that I have been able to accomplish has been insightful, but oftentimes I have felt as if it has not reached the level of impact that I would have hoped to accomplish. I have struggled with the fact that I do not come from a traditionally marginalized background, which can make leading initiatives alienating for people involved. I am often unable to relate to others who I’m trying to lift up.
This semester I worked diligently to push beyond previous barriers I may have internally constructed, both through my Writing 340 class and my work with LACI. Specifically for 340, class readings became an interactive event more than previous class readings have been. I found myself dialoguing internally on particular portions of text, acknowledging my lived experiences and how they related to what I was working on in LACI. At points reading became difficult as a result of the interplay I forced myself to have with the readings. Coming from a community that had internalized oppression within me, each text was a struggle within me.
There were moments in which I brought up what I had read for class to friends and family that further stressed my willingness to completely engage with the ideas of the authors. My friends clashed over the feasibility of some of the concepts I was discussing, however; I believe that the discussion that we had triggered further conversations and ideation on both of our ends that benefited us. Additionally I was able to bring in perspectives that they brought up into class and continue to engage with the ideas in the presence of others who had read the texts. As a result I feel that I grew in my understanding of what I had read further than I may have had with my previous approaches to class readings. This process expanded my engagement with other topics beyond the class, and informed some of my conversations with others on ways to properly approach my summer internship.
Simultaneous to the discussions I was having revolving around class reading, I was facilitating DEI workshops for LACI. I spearheaded setting up a personal passion project: a speaker engagement on preparing students to become DEI leaders in the workforce. I networked with one of PwC’s DEI leaders, learning how he has implemented DEI in the client services aspect of his career. His dedication to the field, with over 10 years of experience in consulting and many more on the board of various nonprofit organizations was an inspiration to me. His messages of unpacking a deep understanding of topics resonated with me, and I relentlessly emailed, seeking to bring him in to speak for our club. He kindly agreed, and gave a wonderful lecture focused on the changing landscape of DEI in the workforce. The learning that resulted from the talk was one of my proudest moments as president.
Throughout the semester, many of the readings followed a similar theme, in which I connected to the writer and their cause, ultimately making their arguments much more persuasive. It started with Dr. Vershawn Ashanti Young, whose “Should Writers Use They Own English” was unlike anything I’ve read before. Despite the change from standardized English, it was incredibly cohort and well reasoned. Coming from a Master’s program where many students have international backgrounds, I can especially appreciate the benefit to my education if there was less of a stigma towards standardized English. So often I am exposed to students who spend most of their lecture ChatGPT translating the professor’s words simply to understand the concepts. They are then expected to return to standardized English to express thoughts for group presentations and papers, limiting their ideation and potential. Less emphasis on their language switching skills would certainly allow them greater freedom in their thoughts, and likely unlock improved class discussions.
The semester ended with “Pedagogy of the Oppressed”, one of my favorite novels to engage with, and a very transformative experience. By the end of the foreword and introduction, my education and upbringing had already been significantly challenged, and throughout the novel Freire continued this process. In a major defined by depositing information, I was forced to reconcile the lack of critical thinking and imagination that took place for me at USC. I confronted the oppression that was ingrained in me growing up in my community. The ideas Freire presented were, are, and will continue to be revolutionary. Clearly there is much I need to continue to work on. In my final blog post, the most important concept I wanted to add was reflection. Without reflection, revolutions wither and we return to the oppressive ideologies we fought against. Without reflection, we move quickly beyond lifting others up and promoting equity. Without reflection, we lost sight of what we learned in our Writing 340 class.
This semester I learned a lot about the barriers I had developed during my life. I learned how I interact with those barriers, and how I can potentially begin to lower them. My goals for the rest of college include continuing to promote DEI in my clubs, and engaging with every class reading. My long term objective is to become an ally for others, not just in a DEI sense, but in a tearing down oppressive attitudes sense. Finally, from a writing perspective, I learned to shorten my paragraphs, bring important ideas to the front, and never forget my purpose.
