EMU Highlights: Experiments

I want to be the kind of person who consistently strives to make herself more aware of the world, and more engaged in conscious and generous living.  Since my first year at EMU, there have been many "experiments" I've done, usually in an attempt to change myself, sometimes in an attempt to change the people around me (often both).  Not all of them have been successful, but I've learned something from each one.

• Two weeks of eating only local foods (for first-year Ruling Ideas project)
• Spending 10 weeks not using shampoo

Supposedly, if you stop washing your hair, your hair eventually adjusts and you don't need shampoo anymore.  Mine definitely improved, but it never got totally clean without washing, so now I just wash it less frequently than I once did.

• Three weeks of eating only local foods
• Writing a letter every day for a month (self-titled the Letter Revolution)

For most of the letters I sent, I asked the recipient to pay it forward by writing a letter of their own.  I have no idea if they actually did, but hopefully the world got a little more snail-mail love.

• Wearing the same outfit for 5 days straight to see if people noticed

This was interesting because people actually did NOT notice.  Of course, it's totally possible that people in my classes noticed but didn't say anything.  But of my close friends and intentional community members, plus my now-fiance, all of them were surprised when I clued them in on Friday of that week.

• Wearing makeup every day for a week (failed: gave up after 2 days)

It turns out this isn't the sort of thing that people really comment on (at least to me).  It just made me feel weird and fake, so I stopped.

• Screen-free Sabbaths

For my own well-being, but they also allowed for extra roommie time, which was usually spent doing a puzzle on the living room floor.  And who can regret extra time spent doing something relaxing and non-essential with friends?

EMU Highlights: Classes

 As part of my reflecting on my time at EMU, I started making lists of notable aspects of the past four years.  So, to start, here are the classes that I currently consider to be the best ones I've taken.

1.  Social Psychology (Judy Mullet)
This is one of the few classes whose key concepts still come back to me regularly.  If you ever do anything with people, this class will be helpful to you.

2.  Creative Writing (Kirsten Beachy)
So much imagination, philosophizing, and hilarity contained in one class.  Words are a vessel, and this group of writers carried some interesting things.

3.  Worldview Seminar (Ken J. Nafziger)
We get to choose what we do each class period.  We get to talk about interesting ideas and experiences and worldviews in a group of honors students.  We get to laugh and be serious.  We get to wonder about life. 

4.  Native American Lit (Andrew White)
I've liked most of my lit classes, but this one was especially fascinating to me.  I loved the ideas immediately, and soaked in this new understanding of oppression and disadvantage.  The Native American philosophy seemed so right to me, and I was inspired by the emphasis on circularity and balance between all living things.  If I believed in reincarnation, I would say I was a Native American in a past life.

5.  Chamber Singers (Ken J. Nafziger)
A constant of my college experience, and yet different every semester.  I've learned to appreciate many, many styles of singing, and it feels like we've done a bit of almost everything.
Our concert last night was bittersweet, but absolutely beautiful, as always.  As we sang "No ways tired" (with the words "I don't believe he's brought me this far just to leave me"), I looked out at the audience, at so many faces with smiles and tears, and I felt tears beginning in my own eyes as I realized, We are all a part of each other.  This is my community, which I love.