Tuesday, July 25, 2017

Complements of Each Other

Yesterday Ms. Almandrez informed us class was going to start at 9:30 AM instead of 9:00 AM. In my head I was excited to sleep in an extra 30 minutes and get ready after everyone had because their classes were not pushed back. I did forget that my roommate still had to wake up at 6:00 AM to get ready so I was woken up by her alarm. Although I missed out on the extra sleep time I still felt well rested.

When we arrived to class we began discussing the issues around intersectionality. Which boils down to having characterizations that overlap or intersect that lead to discriminations. Before class we watched a Ted Talk video on the subject that gave us an example of an African American woman who was applying to a job. Now the company had hired African American males and Caucasian women, but never an African American woman.  Due to the fact the judge never had the notion being both African American and a women doubled the ways to be discriminated by.

Left to right: Thea, Ashley, Me, and Kelsey
(My Group)
After that she had us make a list of three things from the list of Big 7. Now the Big 7 are class, gender, sexuality, race, religion, ability, and age. We picked 3 that we believed impacted us the most. After being split into our groups we began explaining how they affected us. After explaining with in groups Ms. Almandrez asked us to switch papers and cross out something on someone else list. After handing the papers back to the original owner we discussed how it would be different if what had been crossed off wasn’t a factor.

This exercise was eye opening because taking out something that made me the way I am most likely left me a completely different person.  And hearing how it affected everyone else’s life just showed who we are because of our challenged not specifically our successes even though they do play a role. As well as this showed how comfortable the class was with each other.

After we finished our discussion we walked to the Congdon Street Baptist Church. In 1986 the African American Pembroke students walked out of class to the Congdon Street Baptist Church. The intent for the walk was to bring attention to the Pembroke admissions attitude. The walk out lead to the school to create 12 points which includes: hiring three more African American administrators, a wavier for the application fee, and not forcing interviews.

After heading to grab lunch we went to the Sarah Doyle Women’s Center. We went in and the center is located in a house giving off a home feeling right when one walks in. The center is home to many books on the issues of being a woman which I found so amazing. The space is a safe space where they can be themselves. We held a small group discussion on how it made us feel which was nice because I saw that many thought the same way I did.

After that we headed to an activity called Listening Skills. The lecture was led by Robin Rose who started the Leadership Institute for high schoolers. During the lecture we learned about the important of listening and how to become good listeners. We practiced listening while asking open ended questions, being aware of hand gestures, as well as summarizing. When I was the talker and the listener did the three things I felt like they were interested in what I was talking about and that they were actually following along. This felt like what I was saying mattered
Kelsey, Esmeralda, Robin and Zunarah

Next we had our first LI Workshop on NSEW: Leadership Styles. During this time we were told about four different leaders North, South, East, and West. 
  • North was more of an assertive leader
  • South was an emotion leader who took everyone’s opinion into consideration
  • East were the big dreamers who visualize the big picture
  • West is seen as being practical and dependable
They then asked us questions and asked us what type of leader we would be in that situation. I always ended up being in West. Personally I would like to be in situations that I am all of them (it wasn’t an option to stand in the middle, I tried) but I always found myself being dependable. Later they asked which one we thought we connected to the most and for me I thought I belonged in the South. Not necessarily the emotional aspect but being a type of leader that takes every ones opinion and trying to find a compromise.

The thing I found the coolest is that in the end each of us(ILCers) found ourselves at a different point on the compass. This how’s that we are different but complement each other’s weaknesses which I found very eye opening. 

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