Blog #2

       After reading What's I Got to Do With It? by Amy Hodges Hamilton, I found two areas to be very interesting. The first hotspot I came across was Mina Shaugnessy's quote on students who are just starting to attend college, "…They arrive on our campuses as young adults, with opinions and languages and plans already in their minds," (Shaugnessy 65). As a freshman myself, I am meeting new people everyday whose backgrounds i don't know and who don't know anything about me either. It's so strange for me because I come from a small town where everyone has known each other since kindergarten and, for the most part, have very similar views. It's sort of refreshing to meet people with different opinions, languages, and plans. As the section goes on, it discusses how people write from their own experiences, but I think that getting to know other people's stories can help a person write even better. Instead of just drawing from your own experiences, you can start to use what you learn about others to influence your writing.
       I also thought that the idea that "…experiences are automatically linked to a larger social and cultural reality," (67), was very true. Every thing that happens to a person happens because of the world that they live in. Someone living in a poor village in Africa is going to have a completely different set of experiences than someone living in an upperclass suburban neighborhood. I think it's important that people explore new and different cultures in order to obtain an understanding of diversity and the experiences of other people in this world.