Coming back to teaching after so long felt like a risk. My uncertainty on day one felt overpowering. I’ve felt echoes of that uncertainty every Tuesday as our class time approaches. I remember wondering during the first session what kinds of thoughts, ideas, feelings, connections would emerge through the semester. If we would collectively do work that felt valuable, useful, interesting, joyful.

Now, as we wrap up, I feel the delight of having taken a worthwhile risk. I haven’t commented on your posts this week but I am sitting with each of them, savoring them. I have especially appreciated working with Matt—our mutual co-thinking process and his support and assurance—as I have learned, slowly, a little bit, to trust myself as a teacher.

I snapped this at Riis Beach with my kids this past weekend; it feels like a fitting image to hold onto as we close this semester. The affirming message etched in stone, the swirls of graffiti layered on top—it makes me think of the complex layers of thought and possibility and hope that this class collectively generated.

I think the thing that has most changed my thinking is to celebrate smallness, and not to discount the seemingly little actions we take. I’m reading Emergent Strategy now and am immensely grateful for that recommendation; adrienne maree brown puts into words so many things I haven’t known how to articulate, and things I sometimes haven’t known how to value.

Thank you, each of you, for being a part of this ephemeral community we call a class.

I have a lot of feelings about this semester. Despite several difficulties and challenges, what I feel most is gratitude. I am grateful for the opportunities afforded to me in so many walks of life. William Arthur Ward once said, “Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it.” With that in mind, I must express my gratitude to this class – both the professors and students. Thank you for this experience.

I know a girl from college who thinks misery is a sign of great success. When I see here, which isn’t often, she brags about having to check her work email around the clock and the weekends– it’s a sort of misery brag as if to say, “wow you guys have moments of your life that doesn’t involve work?” Her implication: that’s pathetic!

While reading this week’s materials, I was sitting with my mom. She asked what I was reading. I told her it was a piece on radical self-care. I went on to describe the importance of self-care in academia– The Academy demands a lot of one’s self. When you’re producing ideas and writing about them, they become extensions of oneself, perhaps more than a project proposal or excel spreadsheet can. Literal products of your mind manifested into the world for consumption– this takes a toll.

But the reality is in our capitalistic world, it appears the concept of a life is haughtily contested and the idea of existing outside the sphere of productivity (of a particular kind) is castigated.

This semester we’ve been challenged to think about The Academy and an idea of schooling that entails doing “less.” I’ve felt seen because so much of my time as a MALS student thus far has been chaotic– doing this on top of work is a challenge (that I wanted and accepted), but I have purposefully introduced another standard of productivity into the part and time of my life that’s meant to be absent of the corporation’s grasp.

This semester has taught me how much I crave a fully cultivated life removed from my schooling and work mainly because it’s taught me the extent of the grip of capitalism on us all. On our last day of class, I’m choosing to take a stand that my desire isn’t underachieving. I shouldn’t let my peer’s misery bragging belittle me. My own time is a period where I tend to feel most fulfilled. That is good and valid and acknowledging that is a form of rebellion in itself. To quote Miguel, I can hold two truths at once: want to be an engaged citizen and leaner, and want to create meaning beyond expectations.

This semester has felt vast and overwhelming, like the ocean, and grounding, also like the ocean.

My Spring 2021 semester is like the bud of a tulip. I have been studying hard to grow in the field of education, just as a plant strives to bear its fruits and bloom a beautiful flower. Although the plant hasn’t yet blossomed, It’s going to bloom soon. Although it has gone through a lot of difficulties, It will bear plenty of fruits to give joy to many.

I’m grateful for the radical honesty that all have spoken within our virtual learning community. It helped me tremendously with looking deeper and connecting to the texts/concepts. Overall, feeling gratitude and hopeful……………

眠れなくても　夜は明ける
それを僕は　眺めている

Even if I cant sleep, dawn will break as I gaze over it

(Lyrics from Yorugaakeru by Given)

This spring semester, I tried my hand at 2D animation for the first time. With no experience, it has been challenging (this GIF took several hours) but it gave me a new sense of joy. A lot has happened over this semester; I struggled with a lot of anxiety, stress and hopelessness…but I’ve found moments of happiness with new friends, new hobbies and imagining a bright future ahead.

夜は明ける literally translates to “the night will get light”

This song is really meaningful for me, and music in general has been a huge emotional support.

I currently feel a mix of apprehension and optimism.

I generally enjoy this time of year. In fact, from a climate standpoint, I generally only enjoy fall and spring. There is something about the extremity of the weather in summer and winter that I find off-putting. The moderation of the former seasons appeals to me. The last time I can recall actively attempting to notice what I felt while outside was a few days ago when the sky was on the brink of rain, but the precipitation never actualized. The air was incredibly thick, dense, and discomforting – it was not the spring I affectionately recognized. In some ways, the air evoked feelings of disgust as it felt more like a muggy summer than spring. In other ways, the air awakened feelings of nostalgia.

Perhaps I have taught everyone I encounter to one degree or another. As I internalize information, it permeates through my thought processes and, furthermore, my communication and interactions.

My sister is a florist, so she is wont to notice any and all blooms when we walk down the street together– way more than I do. I often feel guilty for not noticing. I tend to walk quickly and am so concerned with getting to Point B, that I disregard the larger environment I’m in. I guess this is a type of progress gone haywire, that Tsing discusses– a literal physical progression.

Given this, I was really happy with myself when last week (Thursday specifically), I noticed the countless flowers in full bloom on my walk to my parents’ house. It happened to rain earlier that day, and everything felt so atmospheric: the air smelled and felt like it did when I was in elementary school and the school year was waning. When teachers started to pack up books and I got to wear shorts to school. While it was the ending of one thing, it was the promise of something else: warmer longer days, relaxed dinners out with my parents, time being less of a concern. I happened to have gotten my second vaccine that morning. In that instance, I could feel my normal worried sensations relax and I truly just soaked up the environment I was in. Things seemed as if they could get better and allow for some amount of joy.

This week’s readings and assignments ask you (ask us) to look at higher education at a slant. Maybe mushrooms and spark birds have nothing to do with higher education, or maybe they do—but we’re not asking about mushrooms and birds, we’re asking about noticing.

Two underlying questions connect these pieces in my mind:

• What preconditions make a certain reality possible?
• How might we find delight in that reality?

Here’s more about my noticing for this week, and what it got me thinking about.

I’ve mentioned my walks in Green-Wood Cemetery as an important location for my own noticings. This week, though, I focused on Prospect Park. In particular, I thought about the original caretakers of the land; the ways the park is used now; the places of stillness and the places of joy and the places with barren earth and piles of garbage.

It is easy to notice the beauty of redbuds and dogwoods (and whatever the beautiful tree in the third picture is):

But what about the less obviously beautiful spots? I normally linger in the quiet, peaceful corners, but this time I paused somewhere different.

Here, I asked myself to pause and notice. It’s a still photo, so you can’t hear the sounds, but there was so much joy and vibrancy in the scene. I thought about the bare patches, the leftover garbage—spots where the landscape is not as well cared for, maybe, but also traces of gatherings and celebrations. In COVID times, these residues of outdoor joy are even sharper than usual, since parks are one of the few places we can safely gather.

I thought, too, about who is able to gather and celebrate freely, and who is more likely to have their parties surveilled and put to an end. I thought about whose joy is celebrated in parks, whose gatherings may be bittersweet.

So how does this connect to higher education? I think that these kinds of acts of noticing are necessary in order to have a clear picture of the landscape—to move beyond assumptions or received wisdom and really see what is working in an institution, what is harmful, what might have unintended consequences (good or bad). In higher ed there is so much that is taken as a given without much of a pause to ask why something is the case, and whether or not it is beneficial to the underlying goals. Like we talked about in an earlier week, there’s often a sharp disconnect between stated values (mission statements etc) and tacit values (the structures that govern how the institution functions)—and pausing to notice helps bring the tacit values into clearer focus so that change becomes possible.

In “Spark Bird,” City College professor Emily Raboteau applies this art of noticing to the murals in her neighborhood. From a starting point of murals on closed shop grates, Raboteau’s prose swirls through much bigger patterns.

The murals of the birds do not make these connections: Raboteau does, in her walking, wandering, photographing, thinking, writing. Noticing.

So, in class tomorrow I’ll ask what happens when you (or we) apply this kind of noticing to higher ed, to CUNY, to our departments? Where are there unexpected pockets of joy and delight? Matsutake only grow in pine forests that spring from areas of deforestation—human disturbance and destruction. They spring up on their own, but have never been successfully cultivated. Without the deforestation, the matsutake would not grow. As we consider our own imperfect ecosystems, where might we find the kinds of “patchy assemblanges” that Tsing describes in the ravaged landscapes that nonetheless foster life?

I’ll end with some terms I hope we talk about (in a word cloud, because a linear list doesn’t feel quite right):