When I first began taking courses in Bryn Mawr’s Department of Education in the spring semester of 2019, my eyes were already fixed on the concept of change — personal change. I had just returned from what had been a depressingly difficult semester abroad in Paris that forced me to reconsider the entirety of my long-held plans for a life and career after my undergraduate studies. Before studying abroad, I was near-sightedly and decidedly set on the idea of becoming a French professor; in order to achieve this, I had long intended to move immediately from my undergraduate studies into a PhD program. I had no other plans, and believed that I did not need to entertain the idea of other careers. During that semester, however, I was forced to confront the realization that I did not want to pursue an advanced degree in French and that I had mistakenly believed that as a result of my true passion for education. Discerning this fact was difficult, but, upon finally making peace with the changes that changing my plans would bring to my studies and my future outlook, I decided to make the change, return from France, and take as many courses in the Education Department as my constricted schedule would allow.

What I found in making that change was the comfort of a department that was similarly positioned toward the concept of making change. While it does not take the formal study of education to recognize the transformational capacities of the practice, I found that the way Bryn Mawr’s department is able to direct attention to the core issues and prevailing means of thought in the United States’ system of education immediately forced me to recognize the need for a deeper change — the type of transformative restructuring and profound reworking of a system that implicates each and every member of American society, as we are all stakeholders in the country’s educational system, whether that fact is realized or not.

Because of this deep orientation toward overarching structures and patterns, I was immediately made to grow and change in my perceptions surrounding the whole of education. Having arrived in the department with only my own positionality informing my beliefs on education and its role in the advancement of societal equity, these preconceived notions were immediately challenged; I found myself in a position of confronting my own power and privilege in a system designed to protect the American status quo. The course of study that I entered seeking to change my own path, then, became a means of uprooting my personal ambitions from the personal. Education became something that I desired to study not for the change it would bring to my life, but for the radical, institutional change that I saw both possible and necessary through the progression of my courses in the Education Department.

Assembled in this portfolio are five “artifacts” from my time within the Education Department, these being primarily a series of the readings and practices which I believe to have been most transformative to both my perspective on the purpose of education and my own place within that grand scheme. Paired with each artifact is a brief reflection which contemplates the precise impact of each material highlighted. While the brevity of these reflections is intentional, the true weight of each artifact in my life both now and in moving forward cannot be bound by the confines of a short contemplation. These are pieces that I likely will never cease thinking about; their ultimate impact will only continue to grow and change through time and across experiences. I can only hope to have done justice to the truth of where I am at now, after the whirlwind of constant academic challenge and deep personal and intellectual growth brought to me by my studies in the Education Department.