If you’re comfortable with talking, try getting comfortable with not talking. If you’re comfortable with not talking, try getting comfortable with talking.— via Marshall Ganz
The hardest class I’ve taken, the one that’s prompted me to fall silent, to doubt my ability to think, rendering me incapable of writing anything, is one that has the simple title Power and Pedagogy.
Professor Houman Harouni requires potential students to write about their reasons for taking the course as a way of gaining permission to enroll. As I sat down to take up the task, I quickly found myself in tears. This open-ended offer to write somehow gave me permission to say to this stranger something I’ve never written. Holding the invitation as a kind of extension cord, I found that it electrified my purpose. I wrote in one fevered draft:
As for my reasons for wanting to take the course, my chief reason is a lifelong fascination with power and hierarchies. Part of this is due to my upbringing in an isolated part of the Texas Panhandle; part is due to my major careers: journalism and teaching.
My life is indelibly marked by the structural oppression in Texas, not the least of which is sexism. As an openly gay reporter, I existed in a barely tolerant professional newsroom but found that my sexuality gave me empathy and insight for marginalized…
