Reaction to Reynolds (This turns into a personal rant--sorry).

If Nedra Reynolds' approach to place has done anything to alter my reading of "the place of place," it made me reevaluate where I'm standing.

First and foremost, thinking of composition as a product of capitalism is interesting for me, and I would have liked to have read more about this. When considering her Marxist connections with Time-space compression, it seems like we're so much more a part of "the system" than we are willing to admit. This puts a whole new perspective on my/our frustration with students who just look at college as job-preparation.

More significantly and more personally, Reynolds' characterization of presumably safe places as being a threat to women is something that two weeks ago I would have thought was a little dramatic, but she really snapped things into perspective for me. She says:

"Even spaces presumed to be safe are often a threat to women. College campuses provide a good example of this image, especially as they are represented in typical media shots... The serene appearance, however, masks the politics of space; for example...the threat to women who dare to walk alone at night" (20).

The connections between my gender and the politicization of space is something that I'm becoming much more aware of as I make my way through graduate school. I was raised by a single dad and, probably consequently, have always had more male friends than female friends. I've never felt uncomfortable, inferior, or quiet around anyone--men included. However, it was not until I came to OU that I started to realize my gender (and my age) make it necessary to negotiate my surroundings much differently than I ever had to before. I live alone here. And I'm short. And the hint of what my Northern friends call "Southern Hospitality" has, at the very best, made me a couple friends, and at the very worst encouraged unwanted flirtation. Nowadays I'm finding myself scanning the areas around me as I walk home from class, making sure to avoid dark areas (impossible) and drunk students (also impossible). I take note of what almost everyone around me is wearing--just in case.

My apartment used to be my safe-place, but that has even been challenged lately, making me feel, for the first time in my life, that I am a woman and I need to be scared always because no place is safe for me.

The university police send out emails whenever a sexual assault happens to an OU student--but the places they cite, the "scene of the crime," mean nothing to me. As a relatively temporary student here (2 year MA program), I have little concept for the building names other than Ellis Hall, Ping, Chubb, and Baker--places where I work/learn, exercise, pay my bills, and sometimes spend money on food. So here I am, dropped in the middle of a place where I need to be more aware than ever, feeling less aware than ever.

And I'm sure that I'm bringing this insecurity and constant questioning of my place in a place into my academic life. Reynolds' description of her institution's teaching assistant office sounded way too familiar (sans the trashcans catching rain...thank god.) I realize that we're at the bottom of the totem pole and everyone "above" us has paid their dues. But, in Reynolds' words "place does matter; surroundings do have an effect on learning or attitudes towards learning, and material spaces have a political edge" (20).

So, I guess I would say that Reynolds' approach to place, paired with recent experiences, made me reconsider my position as a youngin' in the university institution and as a women living alone in a college town with drunk students running around.

On a less heated note, I thought her discussion of cyberspace as the new frontier was noteworthy. She suggests that the impact of cyberspace on the writing classroom is "as large as that of Open Admissions" (27), and this was published in 1998. So I wonder (yes, wonder, because in 1998 I was 12) if the impact of cyberspace is still seen as equally dramatic as Open Admissions? Is it what she (and others) expected it would be?

I know that working with the blog in this class was a very new experience for me. Because I had read this piece before, I did think of our blog as a space--but actually posting and manipulating that space made me really wrestle with the idea of "imagined space." It blows my mind a little because I think of the blog as a concrete place where I'm putting my work--not much different from laying my paper on a desk--but it's not concrete. Weird.