Answers to (seemingly) random questions for my Peace Education class

My name: Audrey Elaine Morrow
Audrey-English, meaning 'noble strength'
Elaine- French, meaning light
Morrow- Celtic variation, meaning sea warrior

My parents named me Audrey after my mother's sister and my father's mother. Elaine is my mother's first name. I don't know any famous person that is related to me, but my grandmother, whose name was Audrey is a noteworthy person for me. She died when I was fifteen, but in the time that I knew her she was one of the people who challenged me most. She lived in Queens, New York, and I used to visit her in the summertime. She was very loving, but a bit strict and contributed a lot to my becoming a strong, independent person. She challenged me to face my fears and explore the world, and not be afraid to be unique. She was very fashionable, strong-willed, and a straight-to-the-point type of woman.

I love my name. I love how it sounds, how it looks on paper, and its history. The only thing that I can think of that I don't like about my name is that it's a bit difficult to come up with a nickname using my first name. My friends call me 'Audg' sometimes, which I like the idea of having a nickname, but 'g' is just not my favorite letter (looks a little masculine to me) and they refuse to spell it with a 'j' (which still looks a bit..uh, awkward). :-)

Brought knowledge:

I was born in the States, and went to seven differerent schools before uni. My favourite teachers in high school were Coach Durbin and Mrs. Greer. They taught my most challenging courses and were most interactive with their students. At Washington University, where I go to uni, my favorite teachers are Professor Newman and Professor Duncan. They are both in the Education department, and I've taken multiple classes with each of them. I like Professor Newman because she is a very open-minded person and gives me great feedback, which has helped me to become a better writer. She is also readily available outside of class time to talk about philosophical matters having to do with education, even if it has nothing to do with what we're talking about in class. I like Professor Duncan, whom I affectionately call Mr. G, because his classes are very interesting and he is not very 'politically correct', instead being straight-forward, honest, and witty, and allowing his students to think outside the box and come to our own conclusions about the world. He teaches us about theories using ethnographical studies and incorporates themes such as love and spirituality into our discussions, which is somewhat frowned upon in university in the States, but creates a learning atmosphere that is very much in tune with reality and not so much limited to the very insulated, nonpractical theoretical methodology like many other professors that I have had.

I'm not really sure what levels of achievement I have reached academically, besides graduating from high school and making it to uni, but I attend one of the top universities in the US and was accepted to study at UQ, so getting an education at two of the better schools in the entire world, I guess, is a pretty good achievement. However, I like to think more in terms of making progress as a person outside of academia when considereing my own achievements, and the most important for me have been becoming an independent thinker, being honest with myself, and developing a love for humanity. I certainly do not think that I have fully achieved those things, or will anytime soon, but in striving for those things everyday, I think that I am learning a lot more than I ever could at any uni. My main learning interests and ambitions are learning how to communicate with people in a way that is progressive and not destructive, learning how to teach youth in a way that is engaging and making an impact on them that last for their entire lives, and gaining the social, mental, and political skills to be able to maneuver through different obstacles, such as prejudice, ignorance, and pessimism in order to reach my goals of helping people live better lives.

Fit or Relationship

I'm a 21-year-old African American female, I'm not sure where I belong, but I consider home to be my family. We moved around and traveled the states quite a bit as I was growing up, and my parents are from two different regions of the country, so I consider my family to be home because there really isn't a place that I can define as home except to say the United States, but even then I don't know that I belong there, except that I am most comfortable there. I have lived in mostly rural areas, so I would say that the open fields and open sky are more like home to me than the big city or the beach or the mountains. Economically, socially, and politically, I am middle-class, and relatively liberal when it comes to politics. Being a liberal person, a lot of things that I do now as an individual with no one to be responsible for but myself, I am quite liberal in my thoughts and actions, but I see myself as being conservative in the future when I have my own family and other people for whom I am responsible. I don't really see liberal and conservative as being opposites, but different phases in reaching a goal. Like, there's a time for one and there's a time for the other. My spiritual view is that all life comes from a Source, and everything must achieve balance. Anything that follows after that should be whatever works for the individual so long as it is understood that we all have an Origin that we will eventually return to by achieving balance in our lives while we are physical beings. I also believe that everything happens the way that it is supposed to, thus we live in the best possible world, and all of the things that we consider to be 'bad' are, in one way or another, part of the process of achieving that balance. Or something like that.

Groupwork

Groupwork is necessary at some point for individual success. And individual work is necessary at some point for group success. Humans are social beings, so it is impossible to go through life without consulting, collaborating, and communication with others. Groupwork in the classroom setting is not really what I consider to be groupwork because it's always just people dividing up the work, doing their own parts completly individually, and putting together a presentation at the end. (I don't think that's real groupwork because there's usually no exchange of ideas, debating, or compromise necessary). My best experience with groupwork, at least recently, was when I was on a planning committee for my choir's concert and we had to truly work together to plan all the logistics for the concert. My worst experiences of groupwork, besides what I described above as what usually happens in my classes when there is a group presentation, include any time where I either end up doing all the work myself or am not given the opportunity to do any work at all. I think groupwork should be assessed by how much effort each individual puts into the process, as well as how much the final project looks like a merge between the different inital ideas, as opposed to the final project just being one or two people's idea that everybody just kind of agrees with.

Peace

To me, peace is simply when everyone is at peace, which is whatever it means to the individual. Peace is something that must be attained by the collective group, but is defined by each individual for oneself. If every individual is at peace, then there is peace, but if there is at least one person who is not at peace, then there is not peace. (Which is why I don't believe it won't be achieved). Nonviolence is the absence of any action that causes pain or suffering to a person or group of people. Violence is the presence of any action that causes pain or suffering to a person or group of people. I think that peaceful practices are most important because that implies peaceful attitudes and peaceful knowledges. Also, if peace is something that must be obtained collectively, but attitudes and knowledges are more internal, it is a person's peaceful practices that have impact on society. For me, the most challenging of the three is peaceful practice because sometimes I don't act the way i know I should act in order to have peace, and also, what i may demonstrate as peaceful practices may unintentially be viewed by another as not so peaceful. Critiquing my own practices, I think my most important anxieties around peace and groupwork is being able to properly convey my own ideas, which I think are correct, without undermining someone else's ideas when I think that they are wrong. I think other people's most challenging growing edges for me is when I introduce ideas that seem way 'out there' and require more openness challenging people to think more laterally than they may feel comfortable doing.

love and peace

A Response to Identity Shmidentity, or A Continuation of Previous Post

http://likedwbrother.blogspot.com/2010/03/lessons-learned-from-hadza-identity.html#comments

"Blackness, then, is a very local identity. As such, it can only be conferred or denied by the Black people in the area."--Wanda

Write a book on it. Maybe I can write the foreward if Duncan won't do it. lol

That is something I can definitely understand, and honestly, I'm just not sure how to deal with it. It also makes sense if you think about it in other terms. Morality: How can one be a good or bad person without doing good or bad to another person? Beauty: How can any aspect of life or art be beautiful or ugly without comparison to another aspect? Sex: How do you know if you're that good? lol, I digress...kind of.

Anyway, I guess what I'm kind of caught up on is whether I should let my identity be defined by others. This then makes me wonder if such a refusal comes at the risk of being considered "not black enough" by other 'local' blacks and if I even care. Right now I do, or at least I did when I left the States. Now, having experienced life being black but not blackened, this is something I'm willing to consider changing about my life. I mean, not identifying myself as a local black. Whether or not this is even possible, well, I guess we'll see, but there are a lot of things to take into account. What would that even look like? I'll still listen to hip hop, celebrate Black history, sing spirituals, get niggaitis, refuse to wear leggings without a skirt, etc. But what actually changes? Something on the inside. Something that refuses to let me get upset when a non-black person uses the words 'nigger' or 'nigga' or resolve not to use those terms myself? Something that propels me to refrain from using the terms 'oreo' or 'wannabe' in the racial sense? I don't know. I'm kind of rambling/thinking out loud...comments, criticisms accepted here.