I had such a wonderful experience in this class. Responding every week was a challenge, but one that pushed me to be a more consistent writer. I absolutely loved the topic of this class and felt it was so refreshing! I remember having had no idea that we would be focusing on mermaids. I was pleasantly surprised, and as much as I love analyzing the classics, or deciphering fragmented post-modern literature, I was overjoyed to look into how we as humans engaged with the environment through literature, most importantly our relationship with water and land. This is something that has helped me look at the texts I’ve studied, even in other classes, through a different angle, and ask what it’s saying about the ways we’ve been conditioned to regard our dominance over nature, and how we might be able to shift the conversation by broadening our scope for what we consider to be important. The texts we’ve covered in this class has helped us further in this direction, wether that be looking at ancient, or cultural myths, or modern stories and poems that incorporate our histories as well as a new interest in the blue humanities.

This final week we are reading Stephanie Burt’s poem, “We are Mermaids,” and I’d like to share a few lines which stuck with me and remind me to stop and take a moment:

“You don’t have to be useful. You are not required to come up with something to say”

You can spend your life benthic or brackish, subsisting and even thriving where a fingertip come back saline and still refreshing, exploring the estuary, and congeries of overlapping shores, on the green-black water, the harbor, the bay

You can live with your doubt, that’s why it’s yours

Some of us are going to be okay.”

In a moment where our culture and society ask us to produce, and keep producing or consume and keep consuming, I think it is important to stop and consider the fact we don’t have to “be useful”, that we can just be, and still be beautiful, and wonderful, and important. Our value, as people, or creatures on this earth does not hinge on the ability to maintain a persona, or consume a product, or toil endlessly in a system that excludes us.

I’ve been very lucky to share this space with all of you! Reading your discussions, and getting to hear your perspective in class has broadened my experience of the texts we’ve read together, and I’d like to thank everyone who gave me feedback and was willing to hear me out, even if I was still in the process of understanding! I hope you all have a very happy holiday season!