Bryan D.Gonzalez
INTD 105
Octavia Butler states “If we’re not your animals, if these are adult things, accept the risk. There is risk, Gatoi, in dealing with a partner.” I interpreted this quote as I am not socially inferior to you I understand the risk of working alongside a partner. The responsibility that comes from becoming an adult comes with risks. However, these responsibilities might come with many risks but there are rewards with working with a partner.
When Octavia Butler states “There is risk, Gatoi, in dealing with a partner”. It makes me think of many relationships that one might form with people because all relationships come with risk. For instance, when you begin a friendship with someone, the basis to that friendship is trust and getting to know them over time so that you can trust them with what might share or how you might act. Then when one enters a romantic relationship with another the basis of a romantic relationship is trust, but at times both individuals fear the idea of weakened trust. This damages a friendship or relationship severely. Trust in this romantic relationship is the risk because once your secrets are voluntarily exposed to a close companion there is a form of trust that has to be solidified with you and the other person before those secrets are brought into the light. However, the reward in this relationship is the matter that you have a partner in which you can enjoy and confide because exposing yourself to another form deeper and meaningful relationships.
Another type of partnership that brings many risks are partnerships involving a classmate or academic peer because when collaboration is part of a project grade are really dependent if your peer carries their own weight. Your peers in an academic or professional setting are difficult to trust and the risks that come with an academic peer are that in most cases you don’t know them. A professor or manager can place you with a group of strangers for a project and then you are expected to work with them. Also, fear is a concept you can include since we are talking about risk-taking and working with a partner you don’t necessarily know is an intimidating task. In such a situation, having to work with a new person is risky because it is vital to your success academically or professionally because your partner may contribute to your success or inhibit it.
For the other half of the quote “If we’re not your animal” Octavia Butler, makes me think of a student’s younger academic career in high school. By teachers tending to remind students to turn in assignments whereas, in college, professors don’t because students are looked as adults that are responsible for producing their own work. Plus, this type of responsibility is important to understand that students must carry such skills with themselves into adulthood and throughout their individual careers because one won’t always have a teacher or a more experienced person to remind one to return or do work. Essentially teachers held students hand through most of their lower education academic careers, by giving students small responsibility.
However, a difference between high school and college is the hierarchy in high school. This hierarchy in highschool, ingrained this thought in students that teacher is the superior in-class settings because they know more and they are teaching students the material. However in college this far from the case because you could form relationships with your professors and collaborate with thoughts by bouncing off each others’ thoughts. This new status is what most college students struggle to understand because the lower education system has really deep-seated this hierarchy in the classroom inhibiting them in the college to form relationships with their professors.
Following “If we’re not your animals, if these are adult things, accept the risk.” on a personal level this quote made me realize how I have matured in setting certain goals because as a kid entering adulthood. The goals that I set for myself as an adult versus a child allowed me to be realistic/truthful with myself and kept me on the task of improving the skills I wanted to work on. For instance, I know I get distracted in class and sometimes I lose focus so I set a goal to go to office hours when my professor offers them. Also, another goal that I set is, I want to be able to have an intellectual conversation with people that are more practiced in their field, hoping to learn something valuable through those conversations and interactions. The risk in these goals is the fact that imma have to retire my shy, quiet self and talk to my professors and other experienced people. Despite that risk, there is a huge reward of learning and developing a stronger connection and valuable relationship with my professor.
In conclusion, the way I interpret our epigraph is that every relationship has a risk and when reaching adulthood there are new responsibilities that require you to be in a partnership, whether in a professional, academic or personal. Meaning relationships cost risk.