Katherine Seitel- Blog #4

Throughout my time at Uptown Shepherd’s I questioned my role as a volunteer and attempted to quantify my value as a volunteer in the space. Whether or not I was helping and in what tangible ways was I contributing to the space. This tangibility was perhaps most difficult for me to grapple with because I wasn’t, for the most part, helping in ways that I could point to. I mostly sat and listened, observed and was a presence in the room. My presence changed the space and as I got to know the members of USC, their quirks, likes and dislikes, the cliques that form and who isn’t feeling well today, I realized that my presence was important because contact with those that are unlike yourself is important to growth regardless of age. I think about this as a young person and how much more thought provoking it is to talk to people much older or much younger than myself. Their vastly different experiences force me to examine my own experience and to challenge my way of interpreting the world. It is very easy as a college student to be consumed by other 20somthings and their problems with homework or their service industry jobs or how hard it is to be 23 and feel so much more mature than the 20-year-olds in your class.  But talking to someone who is 90-years-old who lived through the Great Depression, World War II, the Civil Rights Movement, and Vietnam and are still excited and nervous to perform in a play at a community center is pretty remarkable and definitely puts my own problems into perspective.

We talk a lot in literature classes about the place in which the narrative is situated; the political climate, globalization and colonization, and what people must have been feeling when this particular work was written. While writing the research paper for Early Shakespeare I read about the reception of Taming of the Shrew and how the perception of domestic violence was shifting in the Early Modern period in England. In reading about what the political and social climates were when the play was originally performed, I no longer hated the play. I began to see that it was challenging and subversive, to some extent, for it’s time and how easy it is to be dismissive of a work when you have little context. I think people are often dismissive of older generations, much like they are of Shakespeare. In taking the time to get to know a group of older people and in researching one play, I can see the danger of oversimplifying and the importance of examining the complexity of the experience of others. When I go to USC I am exposing myself to the values and experiences a generation that I do not interact with very often. In talking to people who are so much older than me that have perhaps lived through traumatizing events and are still eager to experience new things inspires me to be positive and maintain the curiosity and sense of adventure I think many adults lose as they age.