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A week ago I gave my blog a much needed facelift and direction dedicated to showing more creative content and what I am doing here!
It looks a little something like this:
Adjust your google reader, change the bookmark and follow me now on www.lemelp.com
” There’s kids who wanna leave and I encourage them. Go out and see the world, never return from. Yeah, you don’t come back until you learn some” – I’m Beaming, Lupe Fiasco
I chose the above quote by Lupe Fiasco because it really resonates my experience in America as a whole so far. I’m really fortunate with this whole Year Abroad experience because I’m able to really see American life and culture not only first hand through living here in Philadelphia and travelling to neighbour states but most importantly through the learning aspect.
What I’m learning and being introduced to here is influencing my thought process in so many ways, it really is mind-blowing and I’m having to alter my perceptions and pre-dispositions in order to allow these new ideas in and let them grow alongside my own thoughts. The beauty of the African American studies here at Temple is that it encompasses so many topics and angles in order to teach you about African American people and the black lived experience here in America.
There are classes that focus specifically on the African American and African in areas of Psychology, Philosophy, Literature, Music, Dance, Gender, Photography – you name it and I guarantee there is a subject through which you can explore the African American experience. People may criticise and say that’s way too much and why does it need such focus but in order to dissect a culture, you need all those angles.
I’ve just started my second and final semester at Temple and I know already that more than anything I’m going to miss the education aspect when I go back home.
Although I’ve just come off an extremely long, tiring and strenuous term and although it looks as if the upcoming one will be the same – this is the aspect I am truly going to miss the most. In my experience there is something quite unique about the way and the standard of teaching is conducted here. My opinions about this come heavily from being so involved and so in awe of the AAS department here as they have embraced me so heart-fully and in the case of some exceptional Professors taken the time to teach me outside in the classroom and educate me on Philadelphia life.
As well as that I do believe that the American way of things in education leads and is more susceptible to student contact and interaction and open-ness. I’m not saying come here and learn in America and you can suddenly feel liberated in education and have a great rapoor with your educators, that’s not it all. It’s just the American way of things that I have experienced at Temple is built more around student interaction and involvement. I think this is the first time I haven’t felt like I have a price tag over my head and that I am truly getting value for money – if I was paying these ridiculously priced fees. Here at Temple my breadth of knowledge has increased and I’m able to create and write things that I never could before.
I’ve made a documentary on and could possibly be writing my dissertation on the effects of sneaker culture – I mean come on! My ability to do both of these has come from being at Temple.
It may sound as if I’m totally bashing the British way of things but that is not my intention as certain parts of the American system are not all rosy and great. I’m purely commenting on the social,personal and intellectual level of teaching here because that’s what I crave for and what I have had to really hold onto as being the saving grace for this American college madness.
Lupe says, “Don’t come back until you learn some” and sometimes I feel like lying and saying I haven’t learnt a damn thing, in order to stay here longer. But I know there is a great benefit of being here for my third year as I can go back and approach my last year with tenacity and encompass all these new ideas, thoughts and approaches to my discipline.
I want to be as energised back home as I am here!
Dear All,
Thank you for taking your time out to read this and possibly help me with my request.
For the past two months I have been making a short documentary on sneaker culture for a class I’m taking out here. In my documentary I focus on three factors the culture, the business and the social aspects.
The Business: When did sneaker culture become something for profit? How significant is Michael Jordan in the changing of sneaker culture?
The Social Aspects: Why were kids being killed for their sneakers? What do sneakers symbolise in inner-city neighbourhoods?
What I’m asking of you guys is a picture of you with your favourite sneaker which will be used in the closing credits of my documentary.
This is an example of what it should look like.
Please e-mail all entries to lemara@lemelp.com.
THANK YOU IN ADVANCE! YOUR HELP IS GRATEFULLY APPRECIATED!
This was my first thanksgiving – EVER!
Contrary to what some of my American friends think, we don’t actually celebrate turkey day in England. There are so many things we don’t have in England because they are distinctly American!
I’m telling you this a country and culture on it’s own, there is nothing like America – FACT!
Thanksgiving is about food and family and some more food. It was great to be with my family and be a part of a tradition but really it was great to have some chill time, to relax and to reflect.
I used this thanksgiving time to put things in perspective and do give thanks for me being here and having this opportunity. Lately I’ve been feeling very distant from home and everything in it and that’s understandable but in all those thoughts distract me from the great experience of being here.
Sometimes we move at a million miles an minute and we don’t step away and just reflect.
You see things are getting intense at Temple the amount of WORK to do and the little amount of time to do it in is so far from a joke. So coming to New York was that chance for me to get away from all of that and I made sure I appreciated it to the max.
It’s funny how I’m writing this and watching Alica Keys and Jay-Z perform Empire State of Mind. That song will forever be the anthem of New York City and quite rightly so. I here that song in Philly which is funny to me seeing as the Yankees beat the Phillies in the World Series but I played it on my Ipod going through the city and I heard it on the radio while I was there.
The whole song is incredible yet while I was standing in Times Square the lines in the chorus were all I could think of,
” These streets will make you feel brand new, big lights will inspire you ”
So let’s here it for New York where I had the greatest Thanksgiving with my family and time with my friends.
“There is so much more to learn than the insides of a classroom” - Lemara Lindsay-Prince
Watching the American college system through English eyes is amazing as I pick out all the weird and wonderful things about it. And while I can only talk about my time here at Temple so far, I’m sure other people on their year abroad now would agree with me.
The other day I asked my professor to explain why the kids here are they way they are. Why they seem really relaxed in class, why they turn up to class with full blown meals of Chinese, Mexican or slices of Pizza, walk in and out of class when they feel like it and turn up and hour late to an hour and twenty minute class. It’s been baffling me for some time and I actually took a bit of offence to the fact that they could have this blatant casual attitude to learning and lack of respect for the classroom. I never understood why until my teacher said, “the American school system is a factory, you clock in – get your work done and clock out”.
From my time here I’ve seen some who here have no desire to extend what they learn inside the classroom – outside. When I asked one student why they do all the above she said “I have to take this class in order to graduate” – not for pure passion or wanting to learn but if this box is not ticked they can’t move on.
You see there is a policy here at Temple that says in order to graduate you MUST take a race class and it just so happens that all the disregard I see in these students is in every single African American studies class I take.
I have a mixed personal opinion on this and it stems from what I said before how SOME students have this relaxed attitude in class and a lack of desire to learn about all things African American.
Firstly, the understanding of the concept of race, is crucial in understanding a lot of things. How can a sociological construct create the biggest racial dichotomy? It partly serves as an answer for racism but by tracing everything back to that “unthinking decision” to enslave Africans eons ago you get today the argument that although not living in a system of racialized chattel slavery, the mechanisms that keep them oppressed are still in existence today.
It’s also crucial in our understanding of America: it’s society, it’s culture and it’s history. When we look at America today, I personally hold it above other nations as being the leading country in the world – although my opinion is changing on that when I hear the furore over universalhealth care however, songs proclaim that here is a place where dreams are made of and there is nothing you can’t do but in actuality that is so far from the truth. Although that song highlights a particularly state it is built on words to describe a nation.This supposed great nation was built on a lie, on notions of liberty and freedom that were only extended to one type of people. Not every man was created equal in America and it is through The Declaration of Independence that is on view a couple of subway stops away from me and The Constitution that slavery and racism were sanctioned de jure and continue de facto today.
It really is thrilling stuff (as you can see I went in a little deep there) but it’s thrilling to ME! And while I’m not saying that you have to be an African American Studies major to understand and want to learn all these things, from my experience at Temple you have a bit more passion about it which SHOWS and your pursue it out of the classroom as well as in!
I’m just saying. People sit in my classes who are Communications or Business majors and make really random statements that I believe not only come from a position of ignorance but mostly innocence of not knowing truly knowing what they are being taught. You also get students who vehemently oppose what they are being taught as I have witnessed in a rather heated Dimensions of Racism class I am taking here. They get angry and hurt by what the teacher is saying but if they took it outside the classroom, learnt not to take what the professor says as the only authority on this matter and learn outside the classroom – I’m not saying they would know more but maybe have a better critique and understanding of where he is getting his knowledge from.
A guy walked out of class two weeks ago after a disagreement with a professor only to return on the day we had a mid-term. He couldn’t give a damn about the class and was more focused on fulfilling his requirement.
I have a professor who believes that until America discusses the issue of race then the nation simply can’t move on and while many would see my African American studies classes as rooms for discussion, you don’t solve the above problem by imposing these theories on people. There’s one thing in learning and being told to learn.
In the next coming weeks I will choose my Spring classes and all the classes I chose will be because I want to, not because I have to.
Talking is good but to talk because your graduation is at stake? How much talking are you really going to do? Either a lot because you like to, or a little just to get passed. What was it someone told me in class “I’m just trying to get my 10% for class participation and get the hell on outta here!”
……
You don’t solve a nations problem by making a race class compulsory and if this is Temple’s solution to the problem it’s wrong. I deserve and the professors deserve more attention and respect for their class.
Your thoughts?