When I first moved to Lafayette I was very excited. It was a new place and I was out of Alabama. I had much to learn.I have learned a lot about people and the nature of human society as I reflect on my years existing in conservative environments. I have learned that there are good people everywhere and I have learned the value and the importance of human connection. I have learned and embraced the possibility of bonding across social and political spectrums. I have learned patience and I am beginning to learn to embrace myself. When I ran from Alabam into the web of Indiana, I had naive dreams of utopia filled with intellectual stimulation, exciting exchanges, and a new found freedom and liberation in which I could explore, discover, and mine the depths of my self and the world in order to make a connection to humanity. I have become familiar with patriarchy, its insides, outsides, and its very core. I know it, identify it, and know it for what it is. I know hegemony and I have recieved the gift(most definitely in the Duboisian sense) of sight. I have tasted of the tree and the knowledge I possess is something I must learn to handle. This knowledge is not rare, many people have it--the people I look up to and admire have it and I have known of it, but I now have come into cognition of it, which for sure makes a difference. I know and it is a blessing and I will continue to learn. Knowledge exists on two waves, something that the Germans readily express with the terms kenne and wisse. It is the difference between an intimate knowledge and a superficial one or a surface knowledge. To possess an intimiate knowledge is a blessing and this understanding must be used to make the world into a better place. We have only to live and learn.