Week One: Resource Reflection
Readings:
Autoethnography: An Overview (Ellis, Adams & Bochner): “Who reads our work, how are they affected by it, and how does it keep a conversation going?”
Across all of my academic disciplines at Penn, these three questions have been central to everything. But they also strongly apply to the work I do in the NBC newsroom, and act as a bridge between my professional and academic practice. These questions prompt three whys behind every assignment in asking us to know our audience, empathize with them and try to offer value, but also know that what we write is never an end point. And this class feels like that too. It’s an opportunity to reflect, but it is far from the end. Maybe it’s just the end of the beginning. But the space stretching out ahead is longer, brighter, and more exciting than the road behind.
Why Career Transition is so Hard (Ibarra): “As constant reinvention becomes the norm, the stories that define us have no start or ending.”
Many of the professional jobs I’ve had did not exist five years before I had them. And my academic journey at Penn has followed a similar trajectory of reinvention, often through the unexpected path of taking a class and falling into deep curiosity for its material. Positive psychology, political science and anthropology, and the joy of creative writing have all been areas of work which have yielded incredible returns, and built me into a more confident, more informed, more thoughtful individual inside and outside of work. They have also caused me to slow down, to truly savor quiet, and to think of how I use time with less rigor.
Videos:
Ernesto: “What makes some of our instructors so damn unique, and reaffirms why you decided to come to Penn”
Ernesto is absolutely right in affirming the value of the faculty staff at Penn, and this has very much been my experience. Across all the disciplines I’ve studied, I’ve found every professor insightful, intensely knowledgeable and generous, but also patient, kind and genuinely helpful. Our work is not easy, but affirms the belief that the more you put in, the greater the rewards will be. Professors have challenged me, but also lifted me up and broken down the uncertainty of going back to school. I am a firm believer that you never forget a great teacher, and this has shown up in abundance at Penn.
Karl: “I had always felt there was a missing piece and an overwhelming need to continue my education”
Karl’s sense of needing to scratch an academic itch mirrors my own experience of coming to Penn. I have always been a lifelong learner, but the challenge to take it from casual hobby to rigorous discipline caused me to have to stretch my own sense of capability with every assignment. But echoing Karl, I too found that with the opportunities afforded by many different areas of study, I can do it. I can write deeply curious papers on greek tragedy. I can create compelling videos on the ethics of artificial intelligence. And perhaps most challenging of all, I can solve complicated equations!
Fernanda: “Be intentional with your engagement, and give your assignments the effort they require”
Given this class’ opportunity for deep and curious reflection, I am greatly enjoying the space to savor not just the academic journey, but the body of work I’ve been able to create over the past four years. When viewed in aggregate, it’s wonderful to reflect upon the ‘greatest hits’, but also on the sheer volume of work I’ve been able to achieve in traveling from there to here. Hundreds of quiz responses, video comments, discussion threads and papers which have taken me from an uncertain returning student to an exponentially more confident graduating candidate, and one ready with intention to face the challenge of what’s next.
Debbie: “Welcome to the rest of your entire life”
This is exactly what it feels like! While this class marks a reflective end to one journey, it also actively turns the page on the opportunity of what’s next, and the wide open white space of post-Penn life. In moving from undergraduate to graduate, I’m excited for what’s next, if a little uncertain as to what that might actually be, but Penn has more than shone a light on what it could be, and shown me that if I want it enough, everything is possible. Ultimately I hope to continue my studies in antiquity and religion, and I am currently casting around for where such graduate study might happen. Ideally still at Penn, but also still through the lens of work and family.
