Guest Blogger: Cohort IV

Here is a great piece from a new learner from cohort 4. I was excited to read this and remember what it was like to experience residency for the first time.

So much time has passed since the first residency for me, but I remember thinking a lot of the same things….and feeling the same way…..

Submitted by:
Edveeje Fairchild, Cohort 4

As a new student at Union Institute & University, I sat spellbound and silent, surrounded by a room full of powerful, articulate and passionate thinkers. I am not often spellbound or silent. I am a double extrovert with a lot of thoughts and opinions and I usually jump at the chance to share what I think and believe. Yet this was a singular experience in which I wanted to absorb all of the wisdom, talent, and passion that others were bringing to the table. So, I simply remained silent and listened.

But a Union education doesn’t allow for simply sitting and listening for very long. The days that followed swept me along in a rushing and lively current of conversation, debate, discussion, and dialogue in which many of our intellectual and personal assumptions were questioned. During those first four days we literally lived our way into the reality of one of our classes– “Engaging Differences.” This experiential learning is one of the most compelling things about the residencies because it forces one to come out of one’s intellectual ivory tower and step into the human experience, which is often intense, messy and open- ended.

The most profound things I’ve learned during this residency have been in those classrooms without walls where I’ve literally felt myself deepening and widening as I’ve listened to and engaged my cohort in conversation. When I leave this residency, I will be a different woman and scholar for having been here. And I will leave it with the legacy embedded in the following quote that continued to resurface throughout our classes at Union:

“I am because we are.”