Women's Studies Portfolio Pieces
This portfolio is comprised of reflections on a selection of written pieces or specific experiences that I feel are most relevant to my years of Women's Education.
This portfolio is comprised of reflections on a selection of written pieces or specific experiences that I feel are most relevant to my years of Women's Education.
Why Women's Studies?
I began to take women’s studies courses during my sophomore year of college mostly because of my interest in women’s health. Since I was a teenager I have had aspirations of becoming a midwife, and so had I known women’s studies was even a field of study when I first arrived at college, I’m sure I would have started down that road at the beginning of my first year. As it was, I didn’t enroll in a women’s studies course until the fall of my sophomore year. By that winter, I had experienced that jarring shift in perspective that I think is responsible for many young women choosing to pursue a further education in women’s studies. It is a very unsettling thing to have one’s perspective change dramatically, as anyone who has once believed in Santa Claus or the omnipotence of adults can attest, and for me one class was enough to alter the way I experienced the world. I felt I had no choice but to keep going, for while it was in many ways upsetting (not to mention exhausting) to suddenly find myself hating the songs, movies, stories, and terms of endearment I had once loved, I was hungry for it. I wanted more.
Now in that last semester of my college career, I can say with certainty that out of my entire collegiate experience, my women’s studies education has had the most drastic affect on me. While my major in French has also provided me with invaluable perspectives and skills (fluency being at the top of the list), women’s studies has completely changed the way I interact with the world. I’m on the feminist clock 24/7 interrogating, analyzing, unpacking, debunking, critically engaging. It’s exhausting and frustrating and unbelievably gratifying. The amount of awareness I’ve acquired is akin to suddenly developing telepathy. Women’s studies has irrevocably changed the way I think and thus the way I feel, act, and believe. It’s, for lack of a better term, empowering to a level I had never before experienced.
I began to take women’s studies courses during my sophomore year of college mostly because of my interest in women’s health. Since I was a teenager I have had aspirations of becoming a midwife, and so had I known women’s studies was even a field of study when I first arrived at college, I’m sure I would have started down that road at the beginning of my first year. As it was, I didn’t enroll in a women’s studies course until the fall of my sophomore year. By that winter, I had experienced that jarring shift in perspective that I think is responsible for many young women choosing to pursue a further education in women’s studies. It is a very unsettling thing to have one’s perspective change dramatically, as anyone who has once believed in Santa Claus or the omnipotence of adults can attest, and for me one class was enough to alter the way I experienced the world. I felt I had no choice but to keep going, for while it was in many ways upsetting (not to mention exhausting) to suddenly find myself hating the songs, movies, stories, and terms of endearment I had once loved, I was hungry for it. I wanted more.
Now in that last semester of my college career, I can say with certainty that out of my entire collegiate experience, my women’s studies education has had the most drastic affect on me. While my major in French has also provided me with invaluable perspectives and skills (fluency being at the top of the list), women’s studies has completely changed the way I interact with the world. I’m on the feminist clock 24/7 interrogating, analyzing, unpacking, debunking, critically engaging. It’s exhausting and frustrating and unbelievably gratifying. The amount of awareness I’ve acquired is akin to suddenly developing telepathy. Women’s studies has irrevocably changed the way I think and thus the way I feel, act, and believe. It’s, for lack of a better term, empowering to a level I had never before experienced.