Putting the Plan into Action: How the Past Will Influence the Future

When I first started this class, citizenship and the responsibility of being a citizen were dictionary terms. I knew what they meant, and thought nothing more about them after the fact. But with each activity, reflection, and the history projects, I have had a gradual deepening of understanding with the more complex and realistic applications of the terms. This growth from the start of the semester until now has also really fueled my basic theme, classroom to reality, by building a realistic definition within the confines of the classroom that now bears the tempering of reality. While the first few reflections did not build much in the way of further information on citizenship, they did begin to form the basis of understanding and reflection while opening the door for introspection. The Voice of Witness book had multiple stories on various hardships that the narrators endured and something that really struck me throughout reading was how the rights of citizens in these respective countries were not being respected like they should be. It began to really emphasize the difference in how the American democracy and government operate in comparison to other places that are less allowing of constructive criticism and open-minded problem solving. The plight of these people, especially of the stories that I read on forced relocation, company healthcare failures, and the struggles of being a refugee in one’s own country suggested to me that the responsibility of the government to the people is just as important as the responsibility of the people as citizens of that nation. The second reflection with Herzberg and McKnight on community service furthered my conviction in the importance of a reciprocal relationship between responsible parties of citizens and governing bodies. They talked about the importance of community service as a responsible and upstanding citizen of the realm and it struck a chord with me personally due to my morals and ethics. I strongly believe making ties with your neighbors and building community are key parts to upholding the duties of a citizen. As we progressed further into the semester and more reflections rolled around, the way I started thinking about the assignments we had started to change. I began thinking more about how the roles citizens had and how they shaped their own personal citizenship experiences and beliefs accordingly. I also really began to understand the expectations of citizenship that act as unwritten rules meant to guide the newcomer and old-timer alike. I think I really took the biggest steps in terms of growth through the Invisible Knapsack and Homelessness reflections because they made me relate experiences directly back to myself. The Invisible Knapsack was a piece on the overt yet covert usage and expectation of white dominance in daily life, opportunities, and other situations and the things that whites should do to minimize such ‘advantages’ themselves. The Homelessness reflection was based upon the visit to Moore Place, a housing-first model group home that supports and houses people who have been qualified as chronically homeless and have an outstanding medical condition. Whereas the other activities thus far had allowed the subconscious to keep a wall up separating the reflection into a ‘situation outside oneself,’ these last two really related back to the reader in a more personal way. Due to this, I actually found these two to be the most enlightening reflections because of how they forced the wall away and allowed for personalized experiences to come to light and be reflected upon. With these, I really delved into what I thought about citizenship and understood how important it is to me that people act responsibly and for the better of the group and not only serve themselves. This series of reflections greatly strengthened my awareness of citizenship, community service, and the roles they are intended to play in personal and daily life choices. My view of citizenship gradually shifted as the semester progressed and more of the reflections were completed. Each reflection served to stimulate different ways of approaching citizenship, so that by the time all of them were completed, I had created a more in depth idea of what it meant to me specifically. Citizenship has slowly built a new meaning to me, one that relates to what I do personally, how my actions can impact others for the better, and how important it is to have community service as a gateway into the community’s true face and needs. From a simple word-for-word dictionary meaning that was very flat and uncompromising, citizenship now has a more amorphous form. It has stretched out to include an element of community service, branched out into personal experiences that can be drawn upon in relation to others, and has overall flourished into an entirely different thing that now really reflects my personal beliefs. For me, citizenship has always been more than just a privilege, but now it has a more reflective meaning. To be a good citizen, and to be someone worthy of citizenship, one has to put in the community time and effort, bear the responsibility of decisions that affect those with and without citizenship, and put forth the best effort that one can. This working definition of citizenship and community service set me up very well for the oral history and personal history projects that were to follow. I think that the reflections built a base by which we could explore our own citizenship before attempting to examine someone else’s citizenship. The first thing that we did for the oral history was listen to one from the previous semester. This allowed me to really get an idea as to what kind of questions or experiences we should be focusing on in the interview and what a rough idea of the questionnaire would look like. After some technical issues, the oral history that I chose to listen to was the one interviewing James L. Atkinson, a long-time resident of the Optimist Park neighborhood in Charlotte. His interview ended up having more suggestions on what not to do in the oral history that my partner and I would be conducting, but was at least relatively clear and pertained to his story and views adequately. The article that we had to read in advance of our interview talked about the various methods that could be used to conduct an effective interview. As someone with writer parents, I found it particularly accurate, though it did not have much in the way of new information that pertained to the style of interviewing or the methods therein that my partner and I had decided upon previously. My experience with the oral history project overall was a positive one. Though it was more difficult than originally intended due to technological incidents with the recording device and the nature of the interview as a whole. The biggest hurdle that my group experienced was with the actual set up of the interview where we were playing phone tag with our first interviewee before finally getting a response that indicated she was no longer interested in participating. Due to this setback, we had to find a new participant who was willing to be recorded and published for future usage. The interview itself went smoothly with only minor communication issues. Overall it was a great opportunity to learn more about an older community with historic significance that is currently struggling to maintain its identity while progressing into a more contemporary age. With everything that has been done in this class, I believe that I have learned a lot and been challenged to think outside the box. This course has allowed me to think more about the responsibilities of citizenship and community service. Having a new working definition that actively fits my individual ideals and is flexible in relation to daily occurrences and fits well into my classroom to reality theme and understanding as well as into my views overall.