I had to link these two ideas because I was inspired from our Blackboard discussion.
Here’s where my thinking went after dropping into Bb: when I took a directed study in 19th c. British Imperial History and Women (a lot of years ago), I was required to submit 8 pages of writing per week to my professor. I started calling these papers my “In which I make connections” papers. They were variously named:
- In which I make connections among war reporting, war art (illustration and painting), and women’s rights
- In which I make connections between Italian and British political policy in the 1850s
- In which I make connections between religion and science in the literature of war
- In which I make connections among the poets Byron, Shelley, Barrett Browning, and Tennyson–on war and liberty
And so on. My professor had a good laugh over my conceit and enjoyed the Victorian-ness of such titles. Mainly those papers were the kinds of musings I enjoy writing, like the writing in my blog–thinking based on a wide range of reading and a total lack of disciplinary boundaries to reign it in. Freedom. Always been appealing to me. (I think that’s why I am drawn to certain writers–Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Charles Dickens–they evoke, embody, the desire of freedom through their writing, and sometimes actually engender freedom in the world they lived in.)
I like making connections between vast bases of knowledge–between things one might not think connect at all. And yet, what is everything made of–molecules, atoms, quarks, strings, whatever–and do we not all connect with everything on some level then? Patterns matter and are everywhere: fractals. Can’t really get away from Mandelbrot, even if you want to.
So the making of connections is inherent in us, yes? Thinking across disciplines, around and within, and through the curriculum seems so wise and natural then to me–so why not make writing part of that? That’s a lot of what we’ll be reading about in this course in which we will be making connections. A whole passel of connections–that’s what we’ll be making.
And that’s the sort of synthesis several of you have mentioned is at or near the top of the list on Bloom’s Taxonomy. Synthesis is hard, man, it’s so hard. It takes the most effort, the most background knowledge, the most commitment, the most conversation, the most reading, the most willingness, the most most most. And the most writing. If we can come to our thinking through writing, and we most certainly can (sometimes), then we can synthesize and create new knowledges we can then share. What the university is all about–the creative process. Creation is a kind of synthesis. When we share that creation, we enable a better future.
“EVERYONE should be writing” is right. If everyone was writing, and in conversation with one another, what could be accomplished? Well, a revolution in computer code has already happened. So have online communities many of you have mentioned that help us do a lot of things: caring, questing, talking, learning, helping.
What is that all about: connections. Making connections between people possible without the rigors and time of travel. I am passionate about my friends in England as I am about my ones here–I just don’t physically hang out in the same location as my English friends too often. But we talk on Facebook and through email all the time, and we read each other’s blogs. Shoot, sometimes I talk more to my friends in Montgomery via Facebook than I do in person–we have jobs and kids.
The way everyone is thinking in this class already has kept me wanting to dip into this blog constantly to write about anything and everything. I feel connected, and we’ll only get more connected as we go. EVERYONE should be writing and making connections, and we sure are–to each other, to our interests, to other classes, to the world.
Nice.
write across this_________ 