sigelphoenix

Okay all, the final plan for my birthday dinner is:

Saturday, 10/9
7:00 p.m. until whenever
Rusty Pelican (1924 N 45th St.)

If you haven't already RSVPed (i.e., commented to my previous post saying "Yes, I'll be there"), please do so here. I'd like to make a reservation since we'll be such a large group, so I'll need to know how many are coming. Those who were maybes, please confirm yay or nay.

Thanks!

I completed my instructor evaluation for my Women Studies course today. We still have one more meeting on Wednesday, but that will be a less formal lunch at a restaurant on the Ave. And anyway, doing evaluations always brings me a sense of closure to a class.

This was an amazing, amazing class. Both for the content (the concept of "victim" in feminism) and the people in it. We're a tiny group of seven students and my professor, and somehow we always ended up with loud and energetic discussions that ran for two hours straight, often without stopping for a break as most two-hour classes will do. We mostly come from strikingly different backgrounds in terms of age, race, and life experience. Still, our opinions often aligned quite strongly. Disagreements came as actual disagreements, none of that malicious or condescending crap that often happens in classrooms, and always seems to happen when oppression is the topic of discussion.

This class was often a haven in the middle of my week or day - when I was sleep-deprived and tired, I knew I could get fired up. Also ... sometimes I was just world-weary, either from another class or just the real world in general, and being able to look forward to a conversation with a group of intelligent and passionate women helped ease that.

You know girl-crushes? Like in grade school when young girls would idolize an older/smarter/stronger girl? I sort of have that with my classmates. Huge, grown-up girl-crushes. They're just so smart - not just in an academic way, but also in their trenchant and discerning worldviews. I suppose I've felt that with classmates of either gender (although there's no similar concept of non-sexual passion for boys, it seems). But in this class - and in women studies/feminism in general - the line between academia and the real world is blurred, so I get to see more than their book intelligence, and also their wisdom and strength. It's probably a small taste of what feminist consciousness-raising groups in the 1970s were like - a way of being able to say, hey, these women think like me, and also, and they are strong and smart and awesome.

We talked about continuing to meet next quarter, when we no longer have this class. I hope we do - it's something I thought about suggesting myself, but chickened out of doing. While I know them as my classmates, I'm not close to them on a personal and friendly level, so I didn't want to seem weird. That probably sounds like an odd thing to worry about, but I can be painfully shy around people, even around people I see and talk to on a regular basis. And especially around people whom I admire.

(What this all means is that I have a hard time socializing with people whom I like - yeah, that gets to be a problem for me sometimes. :P)

Tonight I'll be writing my final paper for this course. It'll probably end up being posted here in some form or another.