Hi! My name is Rebecca Baxter
but I go by Becky! I was born and raised in Lincoln, Nebraska. This is my
fourth year at the University but I will be taking 5 years to complete my major
(super senior status!). I am studying
Secondary Education English with a minor in Spanish. I am hoping to teach high school students! On
campus, I am involved in my sorority, Delta Gamma, the Navigators, a Christian
ministry on campus, and I am a part of Dance Marathon. I love to travel. I have been to Africa, Spain, Switzerland,
and many places in the United States, and I hope that the list continues to
grow in length! I am a huge people person and I love meeting new people
wherever I go. I am a huge movie
junkie. I love comedies and sports
movies. Remember the Titans is my all
time favorite movie. I am also a big sports fan. I’ve played volleyball my entire life and
love to watch basketball. My team is the
Duke Blue Devils and I’m a die-hard fan; March Madness is one of my favorite
teams of year. I love to write. However, since a majority of my schoolwork is
writing, it can become tiresome and a burden at times. During our sharing of “I write because”
during the first class, someone said that they “hate to write but loved to have
written”. This describes exactly how I
feel lately about writing. It is a
discipline to start writing, but looking back over what I have written and
seeing the place that it has taken me in my thoughts brings a great deal of
joy. With this, I write to uncover
thoughts, ideas, or parts of my mind that may go untapped unless I seek and
search through reflection and writing. I
also express my thoughts on paper in order to understand what is truly
happening in my heart and in my mind. Lastly, I write to remember. I am constantly taking in so many experiences
and ideas on an everyday basis. I write
to preserve these moments and lessons because life is fast and fleeting. I
write as discipline in the hopes that it continues to transform into joy. It usually doesn’t fail me. So that’s a
little bit about me!
After reading Hastings’ writing about community, I began
to analyze the fact that community is usually based upon a “shared purpose or
effort”. This made me think of one of my
favorite C.S. Lewis quotes, which states, “friendship is born at that moment
when one person says to another: ‘What! You, too? I thought I was the only
one”. This, in a nutshell, is my belief
about where community begins: with some sort of commonality. This common bond is what creates a sense of
being an insider or an outsider to a community.
For instance, I am involved in the Greek community as a member of Delta
Gamma sorority. Thus, I have created
friendships and bonds with other people in the Greek community based upon a
single common factor of being in a sorority or a fraternity. With this being said, I also recognize that
being a part of community does not mean that there is always a consensus on everything
we do. I believe that, similar to
Hasting, that conflict or disagreements can be good and is an important part of
a community. Therefore, I have this idea
that a community is a group of people brought together by any commonality,
depending on one another in some type of way, yet with diverse and distinct
members.
Becky, It sounds like you are part of a lot of communities that are ripe for further exploration! I think it could be super cool to look at the role writing or language or something plays in your English Ed. cohort (Do you guys have a facebook group too?). I really hope this class can help you think about how you might incorporate different kinds of writing in your future classroom. English Education and teacher education is my research focus, so I think we'll have a lot to talk about!
ReplyDeleteI love that Lewis quote! What a fascinating way to think about what starts a community. I think you could make a real argument for that truth. Maybe that should be one idea we talk about in class as a potential way for defining community. What about, though, when that falls apart? How often or on how many things do we have to say "what you, too?" before something is a community? Can we have communities of two, I wonder?
I tend to think that we may just need to have one common core or purpose in a community, other than that we can be extremely diverse in our opinions and ideas. For instance, our English Ed cohort is bonded by the fact that we are all Secondary English Education majors and that is why we have created a community. However, as individuals, we don't always have moments of "what, you too?" but we began with a "what, you too?" in terms of our major. That's just my thought!
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