Reflections on Service Learning

     I think service learning at APEX resulted in three new prospectives for me. First, I think I began to understand how fragile and suspect to new environments social roles are. Second, I have gained a sense of the enormous social, cultural and economic barriers that exist not only race and class, but just different neighborhoods in a single city. Finally, I see how violence and status are two of the more intriguing issues because of their relation to gaining power by both the victims of violence and discrimination and those who marginalize others. These all relate to Shakespeare or have led me to question Shakespeare and his intentions.
     Working with students who for the most don't trust me and see me as an outsider, I had no control with how my relation to them would be established. When you volunteer at a youth center, you are under the impression that you will be an authority figure. However, if I did not put a focused effort into interjecting myself into the kids' conversations, they would make sure to isolate me. Whenever I was able to establish some type of authority, it would not last for very long. The flexibility of social roles is something Shakespeare played with a lot and I think working it a context where I had to observe my roles with people unfamiliar to myself and their roles with each other translated well. I was close to comparing the shifting roles and relationship in "Taming of the Shrew" and "Richard" because I thought the gender and authoritative roles have an interesting relationship, and I wanted to see if Shakespeare saw legitimate threats to such roles.
     Instead, I wanted to focus on violence and power. I saw a lot of confrontations this semester between kids and it was always interesting to see what is was over. Almost always,it revolved over credibility: either on the basketball court, over video games or what started as harmless flirting. Verbal violence was really common amongst the kids and they talked trash to each other to establish superiority over the other. There is some sad irony that a marginalized group with little "credential" to the rest of society values their credentials to each other to a point where they will fight each other. When I would try to talk down a fight, it was clear that I was basically speaking a foreign language. The words and slang they used made it nearly impossible to infiltrate their arguments. I enjoyed writing my paper on "Titus Andronicus" because the language Shakespeare uses does a good job showing how power and status relate and can come into conflict together. Overall, service learning helped me question how I read Shakespeare and what function his themes have in marginalized communities and how I relate to such places.