“This course has taught me what the reality of learning should feel like, what it should do to a student. The texts in this course have changed the outlook I take on life. I always kept my identity, my struggles, my pain, very close to the chest. It wasn’t something I wanted to share because it never felt like it would be acceptable or understood. Before this class, I saw learning as a task, as something that must be completed just to check the box, but now I see learning as an opportunity to grow and connect with the people I have surrounding me. This shift I saw in my learning deepened the care that I have for outside things. I started to pay more attention to my community and read into the similarities I share with strangers. This class has changed my ways of thinking – the way I approach what is put in front of me. I am blessed to have experienced this class–experienced the outcome of having a classroom and a teacher that wants to touch on real subjects. It was a created environment that allowed for open, often challenging conversations that were introduced with love and acceptance–no one left behind.”
“This class has opened up my scope. In the past I believed that I can only have discourse with those that agree with me or are similar to me, at the very least. Though, throughout this course, I have come to realize that there is power within our unique experiences, that we are bonded by our complexities in identity and different approaches to life. This class has taught me so much, but mainly that thinking and being is not linear. Channeling the messiness of life into something that we find meaning in can be so powerful, it can be revolutionary. I feel as though this course has helped me to become a more empathetic person, to never judge someone for their actions without first knowing their past. This class has taught me that there are complexities in each and every individual and that we can power these differences for good. Whether that be to come together and share art, or to come together and fight for a cause that extends beyond the individual. I have been forced to view the world through lenses that I did not know where possible. I truly cannot find the words to express my gratitude for being present in a space where the exploration of self, pain, healing, home, belonging, of who we are and how we sustain our minds and places we call home, and showing me that strength is in bending, in creating, and in understanding the parts of ourselves that we have been taught to ignore. This class has given me more than I could have ever imagined.”
Going Forward, Looking Back, 1996, Jane Quick-to-See-Smith, MAM“It was through my final project that I began to truly reflect on what these courses have meant for me. What all of the people and stories and projects and pieces of life have added to my definition of love and belonging so much so that I can barely remember a time it seemed to be absent of such things. This class, these books, the material in which we have been invited to explore, it has touched me in such a genuine way it's almost hard to pinpoint an exact moment in which I felt lighter, but perhaps it was a gradual lift that I did not realize the true importance of before now. I walk around differently now. Head held up, looking for something, anything, because for the first time in such a long time I know there always will be something to notice, someone to meet, something to hear, someone to listen to, something to encounter. There really is always a gift, a piece of optimism, a shred of gratitude, an ounce of vulnerability, another soul. It was never that nothing good was happening, it’s that I was hyper fixated on the wrong things, when genuinely the only relationship I needed to strengthen and rely on with all my might was my own with myself, the world I live in, and the mind I make the conscious decision to build (and live in) everyday.”
“This class has not been just an academic experience, it's been something much more. It has enabled me to understand myself in a way I hadn't thought possible, and has let me see the world in a new way. Each assignment, reading, and project has been a stepping stone on the pathway towards finding my voice, understanding the people around me, and trying to find my place in this vast world. This course has been a consistent invitation to explore myself and the depths of myself that are often silenced in other academic areas, and has provided me the space to breathe them to life and dust them off since they have been directed to be untouched for so long. Our final project, crafting our own books, was the culmination of everything I have learned about myself in this class. It wasn't about making something for the sake of the grade; it was about creating something real, something messy and true, something me. It gave me the freedom to explore identity and feeling, brokenness and joy, and hope, all in my own way. It was an invitation to be me, to be genuine and authentic. To make something that not only shows who I am now, and who I have been, but who I am becoming. This class has forced me to have faith in the process of creation and in myself. I was free to rebuild, to break, to bend, to be bold. In doing so, I found a new sense of strength, not because I was doing it "right" but because I was embracing the process and I trusted where it would take me. ”