Jordan Welker
Final Reflective Essay
At the beginning of the semester I truly had no idea what this course would have to offer me and did not really think too much about the class before the semester started. I can remember the week before class started when I actually started to look at the syllabus for each class and remember being a little overwhelmed with this class in particular because I can remember seeing all the course texts and all of the things that seemed different about this class. I remember thinking to myself that it seemed like a much more involved class than others because it seemed like professor McCoy really cared about us reading over the brightspace before class started so we would be much more prepared going into this new semester with a new class that I seemingly had no real idea what it could be about. This reminds me a lot of the problems that occurred throughout the course texts including Parable of the Sower, King Lear, The Big Short, and A Mercy, that relate to the 2008 housing crisis and the many problems of trust leading to expulsion throughout these events and books.
In the 2008 housing crisis pretty much all went bad due to the trust that the homeowners put into these people in charge of their mortgages. People acting in bad faith just to get money as quick as possible and at the expense of others caused the bubble’s tension to build until it could not take any more of this. However, it can be said that if these homeowners, who were to their credit mostly acting in good faith, could have been way more cautious of these things that led to their problems, but they were just not aware and did not have the knowledge or experience to know such things. This is very relevant to the way of life portrayed in Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower because this novel shows a way of life that leads to the people depending on constant trust and people almost flushed away and not given the ability to live in one stable place for an extended period of time. We are also shown an extreme version of what can happen when all goes wrong in society. Which we saw in a certainly not as harsh way when it happened in 2008, causing so much more than just housing problems to occur. In Parable of the Sower people are forced to live in a state of constant worry and fear of what is to come next. Mrs. Sims is a good example of this. Someone who lived in good faith herself, was grossly used and taken advantage of by others leading to her mental demise and expulsion of her life. In the book it states “she decided to trade pain for eternal pain in the hereafter”(Butler, 24). Suicide is something very real and serious and is pretty much the ultimate self-expulsion. Mrs. Sims is a perfect example of how people preying in bad faith on those who act in good faith. The anarchy and no rule society shown in this novel directly leads to the downfall of Mrs. Sims. The book talks a lot about how religious she was and that she did in fact believe that suicide lead to hell. So this shows that she would rather burn forever instead of living in this gross society being preyed on for her innocence by bad faith acting people. These people can be seen as the companies and people trying to get as much money from the unfit homeowners of 2008 that preyed on their innocence and low knowledge. Many of these people being young homeowners with no experience buying homes. They were pretty much used just because they were and easy target, very similar to Mrs. Sims situation. Both scenarios where the problems stem from the top, the people who do know what they are doing and deciding to do it in bad faith anyway.
I also think many of the principles that I have applied from the course readings and how they relate to the 2008 housing crisis can apply to something like me throughout this class this semester. This class has certainly interested me much more than a majority of the other classes from my time here, and made me actually think about my growth as a student and really learn about myself as a student. With saying earlier that I read the syllabus about a week before class and really noticed how much professor McCoy really seemed to care that we were all up to date on everything on brightspace prior to class. I certainly think this reflects on the themes learned from the course material because we constantly learned how not reading and understanding things leads to these horrible downfalls. So that really seems like a theme based off of what we learned in class itself, that problems occur when both parties are not on the same page. The fact that GLOBE says we need practice in the ability to “reflect upon changes in learning and outlook over time” shows that a course like this is important in a students overall growth. Most classes I have gone through with basically no real thought as to how I am learning or how it can all connect on a bigger and broader scale. For example, no other class has really ever tried to get me to connect thing together that are not simple, let alone something that seems to be complete opposites. Many of the books we read would appear at first to have no relation or connection to a financial crisis at all. But upon reading and really opening up a deeper thought process, I found myself really seeing things before they even happened. After the first mini collaboration, I really started to see the class themes unravelling throughout reading the course texts while and before even finishing the story. Even when reading King Lear, I found myself seeing how people acting in carelessness were doomed by people taking advantage of them just like in the housing crisis. And I can honestly say, without being forced to do such a thing and really being made to think about it, I would have never really opened my mind to this kind of learning. I am not one to really do anything extra in class or add to discussion normally. But during the mini collaborations I really found it helpful because we were all going through this learning experience for the first time together by comparing these things to something that seemed very different. Taking in the other students’ interpretations of their own comparisons and thoughts opened my mind as well. I believe this was because we were all acting in good faith to help each other come to a conclusion, however if there were someone in the group who did not do the reading or did not want to add anything in the discussion, that could be considered bad faith which could cause problems. In general, this course was very reliant on reading and being in the loop. However, professor McCoy acted in good faith and constantly told us this is what was needed so everyone knew. Going through the course it was clear that this was very important, and the one time I did forget to do the reading it had a chain effect and it made me feel the importance of reading the brightspace and being caught up. When we went into group work that day I was unable to really add anything of value which has its consequences, I didn’t really get to add to the discussion or do any critical thinking because of my lack of knowledge. While I did not act in bad faith by doing this, I saw how it affected me and those around me and how I should not let that happen again. In the 2008 housing crisis, if everyone was made aware of the importance of reading about your mortgages and making sure it was something reasonable, many people would not have gotten themselves into these things. This is very relevant in Parable of the Sower as well because Lauren knows how important the ability to read and write is and how it could improve and save so many people which is why she wants to teach more people. In many cases basically, reading and being aware can be two huge stepping stones to avoiding any kind of disaster or mess up.