Awareness

All about this guy

As far as I can tell, I've always been particularly attentive to place in the sense of a physical environment, often to the exclusion of any other people present within it. This can be quite problematic, as an attentiveness to one thing can lead to a total obliviousness of others, easily misinterpreted as hatred or disdain. But it is this awareness of environment that led me to take this course, because that awareness was largely a kind of appreciation that I had no language for and no way to communicate. A Sense of Place has truly helped me begin to organize my thoughts on the subject, and find a way to communicate what was previously an acutely internal feeling, incredibly frustrating to explain to others. It's also helped me explore the topic  On the other hand, the course has also illuminated the relationship between places and the people that inhabit them, and has begun to make me more aware of the effects others have on places and each other, in addition to the effects places have on us. 

Yi-Fu Tuan's Space and Place was for me probably the most useful and straightforwardly informative book we read for this course. Among his many insights, Tuan describes the dangers of being unable to articulate experience, that we inevitably fall back on hollow cliché, and effectively say nothing at all. This course, our readings, projects and discussions, have helped me begin to overcome this and approach Tuan's ultimate goal, "to increase the burden of awareness", and I'm glad for it. I know that this class will stick with me for a long time.

Thanks!