Last week when I was stressing about my homework, I thought I wasn't cut out for this. I thought I was too stupid. I made a plan to make it through this semester somehow and then quit school. However, I feel a lot better now.
I started off my day by stopping in at work to print off an assignment. While I was there, I got mobbed by some of the clients, expressing how glad they were to see me. It was sweet and it actually served as an affirmation that I am good enough, smart enough and dog-gone it, people like me.
Afterwards, I headed to school, saw a fight outside a coffee shop, researched at the library some (for the first time), ran down and grabbed a veggie chick'n salad sandwich with veggie bac'n from DC Vegetarian (absolutely divine) and started my day.
In my policy class, we began talking about mental health so I was very enthralled in and somewhat knowledgeable about the subject. I also got to talk to some classmates for the first time who expressed how it was all a bit overwhelming for them as well.
In my culture class, the teacher explained the homework a little more thoroughly and made me realize I was on the right path. I also was able to gather that I knew a lot more about it than I was aware of. Our assignment was to talk about the importance of a critical framework when it came to oppression, liberation and justice. I finally realized (with a little help) that what she was really looking for was our own personal bibliography or where we are getting our information from.
It got me thinking about my sophomore year of high school. I was involved in speech competition and, for my persuasive speech, I chose to address the quincentennial of Columbus Day. I wrote and spent a year delivering a speech on why Columbus should not be celebrated but should be looked at as a mass murderer, responsible for a genocide. It didn't go over too well and I only really had one judge (the only person of color I had as a judge not-so-coincidentally) nod along and highly praise my speech. However, it got me in the mindset of what I view as oppression. The next year, I did a speech on how using indigenous cultures as mascots (both for sports and products) is horrible. Again, it wasn't well received but I determined that I was right and it solidified my opinions on what is wrong about this society.
So I've had seventeen years to be in this mind-frame and to set my critical framework. I've backed it with papers in college about sexism in literature and with my activist work in Portland. I've attended protests aimed at class disparages, racist policies and policing, homophobic preachers and governments and also anti-Columbus day events. I've attended numerous Black Panther events and classes, sat through more than my share of video showings and read a helluva lotta books on all sorts of liberation and oppression. I have constructed a critical framework that I am most proud of and it was time to celebrate.
Our professor split us up into groups of three and we went our separate ways for an hour to discuss the assignment. First, Eric, Sammy and I headed to the coffee shop. Then we went to the Cheerful Tortoise. This bar is right across the street from my class so it was convenient. Otherwise, I would never have gone to this bar. Still, I went back to class with confidence and it wasn't just the strawberry-kiwi vodka talking.
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