{"id":961,"date":"2016-10-04T22:09:59","date_gmt":"2016-10-05T02:09:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/storytelling\/?p=961"},"modified":"2016-11-07T14:04:51","modified_gmt":"2016-11-07T19:04:51","slug":"first-trip-to-bon-air","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/storytelling\/2016\/10\/04\/first-trip-to-bon-air\/","title":{"rendered":"First trip to Bon Air"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I got back to my dorm after our first trip to Bon Air, my roommate was eager to hear all about my experience. Reflecting on my visit, I noted that it\u00a0never\u00a0felt like I was talking to a “prisoner,” “juvenile delinquent,” or the many other labels these kids have been given. Even when he talked about guns and about violence, it still felt just like a conversation. I was just listening to another person’s story, which was different than my own. Perhaps college has prepared us for this. Many people I’ve met here have strange stories I would have never accepted at home. But I think I’ve grown to learn that everyone experiences life differently. There’s no right or wrong. Different things happen to different people. Different people make different choices.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

When I began to tell my roommate about my conversation with my partner, she kept asking me questions about his life. When I told her, we had to share stories about a time we were scared, she asked what his was. When I told her, some detail he shared with me, she asked me to elaborate, or she asked a follow-up question. She never asked me his name. As I walked to the library and reflected on our conversation, I thought about how that demonstrated that our identities are truly just a collection of stories. They are not our names or the labels other people give us.\u00a0They are simply stories. I also don’t know my partner’s name, mainly because it was a bit hard to understand him and also because his name is so different than any name I’ve ever heard. While I obviously need to figure it out, I’m glad in a way that his identity is solely based on what he decided to share with me this evening.The only defining traits I know about him for the next two weeks are his stories<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I got back to my dorm after our first trip to Bon Air, my roommate was eager to hear all about my experience. Reflecting on my visit, I noted that it\u00a0never\u00a0felt like I was talking to a “prisoner,” “juvenile delinquent,” or the many other labels these kids have been …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2996,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[44426,44423],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-experiential-reflections","category-fall-2016","column","twocol"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7RVTr-fv","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/storytelling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/storytelling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/storytelling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/storytelling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2996"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/storytelling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=961"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/storytelling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/961\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/storytelling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/storytelling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/storytelling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}