LearningReflection
Stephanie Cunningham
Before entering Truth and Society I had a very different picture of what I would be learning. I thought that we would be doing loads of content with extra studying complete with long difficult essays. I had assumptions about everything; without even knowing it. Belief I now know is not simply a word or a term to be taken lightly. Beliefs dictate our lives. The three individual disciplines included in Truth in Society; Religious Studies, English, and Journalism are interesting not because of the subject matter, but because of the perspectives that come with them. When I am in each class I now know how to attempt to switch my thinking from my everyday lens to that of a Religious Studies or English or Journalistic lens.
When I was presented with Paden’s “Interpreting the Sacred” I couldn’t appreciate. But now that I have had the chance to put some of his techniques into practice I am realizing what an effect it has had on my day to day living I don’t think that I can ever go back to the way I saw the world before. What I gathered from Paden’s text was that he wanted us to realize that no matter who you are or what background you come from you have lenses through which you see the world. You have a different perspective on everything and that it is best to look at things from the perspective of which they are intended. I realized this in class but then last week in my Western Philosophy class I realized that the reason I was having such a difficult time trying to understand it was because I was looking at the subject matter from a scientific lens and not that of a philosophical lens. When I thought of this and tried to switch my point of view it worked!
Paden’s frames and lenses are shifting my reality and forcing me to see how things could be another way.
In English class we worked with ‘Doubt: a parable’ for a long time. I now understand why which is great because now I understand why I look for a deeper meaning and how to differentiate between coincidental placements of terms, words, sentences, or even character descriptions. I know that in order to see if someone is placing a particular president in a play it’s maybe not for the reason you first thought. For example when we were talking about Father Flynn’s first sermon I was intrigued by the fact that this was a play about Catholicism so Shanley used the only openly Catholic president while talking about national tragedy. Before Truth in Society I would not have given that choice of President anymore thought, that’s just one huge thing that I am learning and that’s the art of properly asking an effective line of questioning in order to get to the most important part of the text or situation for us which is of course “how do people come to believe what they do?” Studying ‘Doubt: a parable’ also helped me to appreciate a writers craft. I honestly never knew how much work it was to write stories that you could study intensely like Shanley’s ‘Doubt’. I was concerned that maybe some of it was coincidence or chance but it was apparent after almost all of the examples were linked together that these were no accident.
Journalism class is so revealing. Each time I go into that class I leave feeling as if society has been deceiving me for years. The stories we read at the beginning were important because they showed me things that I think maybe I was choosing not to see in modern journalism. I now am aware of the fact that journalism is not just about delivering facts in a clever way. After seeing Michael Harris speak I now know that journalists have a commitment to their communities and society to give a voice to those who desperately need someone to fight for them, like in the case of Donald Marshall. This part of the course has taught me that things aren’t always as they seem. And of course I thought that I knew this before, as I thought I knew how to be a journalist, but I didn’t realize to the extent that this was true. I know never to assume things but when it came to the news I was being provided I trusted CNN or CBC to me they were reliable to give me the facts I needed to be properly informed about the world around me. Now I know that journalists can only say some much and sometimes as a consumer I am not getting the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I have also learned that journalism has a purpose even when it’s not being used to broadcast the latest headline. When we watched the movie in class “College Days, and College Nights” I noticed that maybe there was no immediate demand for a story of that kind, but it still had some wonderful elements of relevancy.
I feel like the most important things that I am learning are hard to figure out, but once I understand it is as if a light bulb has gone off. I know that I am gaining appreciation for academics, journalists, and religious scholars. I know that I am more interested in most everything I am doing in finding the root cause and effects of any issue, for example when a classmate comes to me and says “I hate that NB power has recently been sold to Quebec it’s not right”, instead of thinking ok sure that’s your opinion and you are entitled to it I ask “well what makes you believe that it’s a bad thing?” I am learning that beliefs are powerful and as tangible as knowledge they are the cause for wars, loss, victory, protest, and the moral structures of society just to name a few. I am a formation of my belief and I respect that I am marinating in a different society than someone my age in university in Hong Kong.
It has taken me what I feel is a long time, but as I look back I have learned how to effectively question things, when and where to find the meanings behind what is being said, appreciation for things I thought I previously understood, and that what people believe will be fascinating to me forever more because of these courses and there focus.
