To briefly start off, I will mention the guidelines I will be reflecting on.

” 1. Strive for intellectual humility

2. Recognize the difference between opinions and informed knowledge.

3. Let go of personal anecdotal evidence and look at broader societal patterns.

4. Notice your own defensive reactions and attempt to use these reactions as entry points for gaining deeper self-knowledge.

5. Recognize how your own social positionality (such as your race, class, gender, sexuality, ability-status) informs your perspectives and reactions to your instructor and the individuals whose work you study in the course. “

Sensoy, Ö., & DiAngelo, R. (2017). How to Engage Constructively in Courses. In J. A. Banks (Ed.), Is Everyone Really Equal? (2nd ed., Ser. Multicultural Education Series, pp. 4–4). story, Teachers College Press.

Each of these guidelines pose some type of dilemma, as I have been living in my own closeted and closed off mind, and have only recently learned to open up to my own biases, and I will be reflecting on each guideling and how I will learn to apply it in this class.

1. Striving for intellectual humility:
   • The main point of this one is to broaden your horizons and try to understand the material rather than focus on getting things right.
   • In this course, I definitely will get to use this one a lot as I am very open and willing to learn hard/difficult topics. I will do my best to listen to everyone’s standpoint when it comes to the topic and keep an open mind about whether or not I change my stance on the topic given others’ evidence in direct relation to mine. I definitely think I am flexible to change my stance on certain views and think that with the proper discussion, I will certainly reflect on others’ knowledge of the subject. I think the hard part about this guideline is that I will have to strive to understand things at a very fundamental level, that of which I don’t think I’ve tried before, but am very open to doing.
2. Recognize the difference between opinions and informed knowledge:
   • The main point of this one is to move on from your opinions and gather more knowledge on the subject to enhance your understanding.
   • I think that in this course, I am coming in with a lot of opinions. However, as I said in the first guideline, I think that I am very open to having that opinion change or broadened for me. I also think that the idea of asking strong open questions is a very good idea as most group discussions, especially in zoom breakout calls, there is one main idea and everyone shares their opinion on it, instead of collectively pooling the knowledge we do have on the subject and changing each of our opinions by adding different sides of view on the subject at hand.
3. Let go of personal anecdotal evidence and look at broader societal patterns.
   • The main point of this guideline is that we should stop focusing on the one or two exceptions we use to disprove a certain social justice topic and instead look at patterns of society showing that these are problems and have been problems for a long time.
   • In this course, I think this guideline will be particularly difficult because everyone wants to share their personal stories and ways they think they have been oppressed, while not fully analyzing the whole situation and taking the patterns into account, they can exempt themselves from certain topics such as racism. However, reflecting this guideline on myself, I will need to make sure I’m not doing just that and sharing my biased opinion and ‘exemption’ from these rules and taking into account that these situations will have been heavily biased.
4. Notice your own defensive reactions and attempt to use these reactions as entry points for gaining deeper self-knowledge.
   • The way this is explained is to use the reactions we have to controversial topics and hold them in and reflect on them instead of immediately acting on them to widen our spectrum of the subject.
   • In my personal opinion, I do think I am good at holding reactions/holding back from talking over others on their stance because I do want to hear everyone’s side and I know that there are people affected worse than others, so I have to analyze this information in my head before coming to a conclusion on what I think and that may not even be right. If it’s not, I do want to be corrected because I am not marginalized by any means and do come from a place of privilege, so I hope that my peers can do that for me if I’m ever in the wrong about a topic we discuss even after coming up with these revised ‘conclusions’.
5. Recognize how your own social positionality (such as your race, class, gender, sexuality, ability-status) informs your perspectives and reactions to your instructor and the individuals whose work you study in the course.
   • I definitely think that I can get over this one because again, I really want to hear from the people that are marginalized and are directly affected by these social justice topics because I know that it’s not fair to these groups what’s happening because nothing really ever is, I just have never experienced it in great detail because I do come from a place of privilege. I am not well versed in some social justice topics and am very open and willing to hear the hardships and traumas people have dealt with because of it to try and become an ally in whatever I think is right, and knowing that right now, is probably still heavily biased, another reason I really like hearing everyone’s perspective to topics and gathering all of that information.