gum

Hi everyone, my name is Nathan Graves and I am a freshman here at Chico State. Though I have only been a Chicoan for a few exciting months, I already adore this town, as well as our school. Truth be told, I made some unfair assumptions about Chico State before arriving, and I was not sure that I would love being here, but I am pleased to stand corrected. I was introduced to the idea of taking ENGL 431 by my ENGL 130 instructor and her friend and our classmate, Derek. They seemed to see something in me that made this class a great fit for me, and I hope to live up to the perceived potential.

In regard to “gum” as the title of my first blog post- it is actually an idea for the name of a band that I hope to form here in Chico, though the meaning behind it is perhaps more applicable here. I like “gum” for the subtle irony that I find behind it. Divorcing the phonics of the word from its English language definition and approaching it more objectively, the word sounds very unintelligent. All lowercase and monosyllabic with very soft feeling/sounding letters, the word just feels so… dumb. I originally liked the name for a band (though I have since dismissed the name from the list of possilities) because I strive, perhaps unsuccessfully, for eloquence, articulation, and poetry in the lyrics of the songs I write, and “gum” contrasts with that so acutely. When I thought of it in relation to this class, I was even more amused. Here we have a group of students who, even by virtue of being in this class, clearly have talent in their composition. Without knowing each individual yet, I feel comfortable assuming that our class is comprised of very intelligent people. The disparity between the intelligence of “gum” and the intelligence of our class is something I find to be pretty funny.

Here are a few tidbits of information about me: I’ll be turning 20 in less than a month, I love to play, write, and listen to music, and I am fascinated by the small details and minutiae of just about everything on and off planet Earth. I am de facto nocturnal. I am excited, albeit a little nervous, for ENGL 431.

 

So, about those readings.

I will first say that despite their tedium, I did enjoy the readings. It is interesting and stimulating to think about learning in such a conceptual way. I imagine we’ll be doing that a lot this spring. In the Wenger Intro piece, my attention was held for most of the reading by the community aspect that is claimed to be such an integral part of the way we learn. I neither agree nor disagree with the idea, rather, I’m interested and intrigued by it. On page five of the into-

“Community: a way of talking about the social configurations in which our enterprises are defined as worth pursuing and our participation is recognizable as competence.”

Here Wegner is expounding upon one of the components that he claims to be “necessary to characterize social participation as a process of learning and of knowing.” It is easy and simple to think that learning can take place in social environments, but it is more difficult to accept at face value the way Wegner approaches it, where social behavior and community are in fact important parts of the process. The more I think about this sub-theory, the better I can level with it. It makes sense to me that because so much of our lives are dictated by the communities and social groups that we belong to, we naturally learn a great amount through them. Being included in communities is part of living life, and it is impossible to live life without picking up knowledge wherever you go. I suppose, then, that a hypothetical synthesis between objective-based learning and community living could hold great value in the pursuit of learning. Perhaps, though, I am taking this a different direction than Wegner was.