In the summer of 2023, as we were deep in production for 'Humanity Unlocked,' Alejandro Dominguez worked with the Human Powered podcast team as an intern. Alejandro is entering his senior year at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and is majoring in Communication Arts with certificates in Digital Studies and Digital Cinema Production. He was drawn to Episode 2 because of its focus on education - something Alejandro believes is the gateway to a better life for all. As he spent time listening to the interviews for episode two, which focuses on Odyssey Beyond Bars, he shared his personal reflections with us on his own education with us. They are his own words and ideas, yet we share them with you because we believe he points to a more universal human experience of awe, wonder, and reflection as one is confronted with new ideas. Perhaps you remember reading a text that changed your worldview or meeting someone who influenced the course of your life. Thanks for reading.
Reflections in the Water, by Alejandro Dominguez
All my life, I have been a servant to my mind’s default setting.
It took me a long time to realize this, of course. When we are young, it is immeasurably difficult to see the world through any lens other than that of our own instincts. We are hard-wired to see ourselves as the complete and utter center of the universe, and the individualistic tendencies of the Western world do nothing but reinforce that self-centeredness. By default, we don’t choose to consider the experiences and struggles of those around us; instead, we cannot help but see things exclusively as revolving around “our tiny skull-sized kingdoms” (Wallace 117).
That self-centeredness is so fundamental that it is unconscious. It is our mind’s default setting.
The only reason I even know how to put this idea into words is for the same reason I even realized that this setting existed. At age fourteen, during my freshman English class, I read This Is Water - a commencement address given by David Foster Wallace to Kenyon College’s class of 2005. In the address, Wallace posits to the graduates that the value of their education is not just in learning how to think, but learning to choose what to think about. To refrain from engaging with our self-centered default settings, and to choose to consider the struggles of others, and the inherent value in the world around us. To remind ourselves of the everyday little details that are essential to living consciously - “This is water. This is water” (Wallace 132).
Needless to say, my attitude toward life has been a lot different since reading that piece.
During my search for internships, I came across my current position with Wisconsin Humanities. As an intern, I get to work on promotion and outreach for season 2 of Human Powered, a podcast focused on the humanities in Wisconsin’s prisons. I am a student of the humanities, and I consider myself invested in the re-humanization of incarcerated people. Helping out with a podcast that serves to rehumanize imprisoned people through the power of the humanities seemed right up my alley.
In working on HP Season 2, I have been reminding myself to challenge my default responses when it comes to each episode’s content. I’ve been grappling, as the season encourages us to, with my preconceptions around imprisonment and the people impacted by it. I have been doing the internal work to connect their experiences and stories to those of everyone else, and hearing from imprisoned people has helped tremendously. In terms of my intellectual effort to think differently about imprisonment, I felt I had been doing well.
However, in being truly honest with myself, I had not felt particularly connected to these stories. We hear from Peter Moreno in Episode 2 about an early experience he had inside a prison. After seeing the same Fisher-Price kitchen his daughter played with, he wept, realizing that the incarcerated people he worked with were just as human as anyone else. While I of course intellectually knew this, I honestly couldn’t say that I had experienced a similar realization of emotional connection. I hadn’t had that moment in the same way Peter had.
Odyssey Beyond Bars
In order to gain more insight I reached out to Kevin Mullen, who we also hear from in episode 2. Kevin is the Director of Adult Education for the UW Odyssey Project and an Odyssey Beyond Bars instructor. If anyone could provide insight on connecting with incarcerated students, it’s him.
In the beginning of our conversation, Kevin told me about the intense excitement in the OBB classroom. He described the class as ‘ready to learn,’ and filled with an intellectual enthusiasm that many of us who have experienced “a really kick-ass humanities class” (as Kevin puts it) often take for granted. Most Odyssey students - Beyond Bars or otherwise - have never had an outlet to flex their minds and open up to an engaged group. Kevin said that being able to provide that space for students to express themselves is extremely fulfilling - and as a student, I thought this sounded really cool. I started to get it.
Although fulfilling, Kevin described his position with OBB as “heartbreaking work.” Much of this comes from the inherent circumstances of teaching in prison. Of course, there is the most obvious challenge; Kevin gets to leave the building after every session, while his students can only return to their prison cells.
Kevin’s reflections on his work also carried with them an underlying sense of anger. Despite the classroom’s enthusiasm, some students often walked into class “pissed off” because of just how fulfilling the coursework was. They were often angry because the things they read were so impactful, yet they had never had the opportunity to experience them before going to prison. Mark Anthony Espanol reportedly walked into class one day “pissed off” because he had never heard of James Baldwin before an assigned reading. One student claimed he might not have even gone to prison if he was exposed to a class like this before his sentence.
One of Kevin's students was actually angry with him - but only because he saved the 'best' assigned reading for last. Kevin told me that one of the class's most impactful pieces is, in fact, This Is Water. One student even said that it was the best thing he’d ever read.
I sat for a moment after Kevin told me that.
At first, I thought this was super cool. ‘Wow, Kevin assigns one of my favorites, and his students like it as much as I do!’ But as our conversation continued, I kept thinking about the different ways This Is Water would affect different people. Kevin put it best:
“If you know it that well, imagine this. Imagine being incarcerated for a decade and then reading that… when you get the idea of being trapped in your own tiny skull-sized kingdom, that’s gonna have a different resonance to somebody who’s been stuck inside a prison cell. It hits them in this really strong, strong way.”
And finally, it hit me. This was that moment.
I sat and reflected on the conversation for a while. Of course I had read James Baldwin, Langston Hughes, and most of the writers Kevin mentioned. But none of their work impacted me like Wallace’s commencement. It completely changed much of how I view the world. I can’t even imagine how many other pieces have affected me in a similar way over the course of my education. Yet, I rarely think about how uncommon those experiences are. I forget that as a privileged undergraduate student at a prestigious university, I am in the absolute minority when it comes to the education I have had the opportunity to receive - and that made me think further.
How many assigned readings have I skipped throughout my dozens of college courses? How many book chapters have I skimmed searching for the answer to a discussion question? How many abstracts were taken as a summary, and how many quizlets did I look up to ‘study’ for my homework?
How many works did I brush aside that could have been life-changing for someone else in the way This Is Water was for me - and what would students like Kevin’s do just to have the chance to find them?
What’s Next?
At the end of our conversation, I asked Kevin what an undergrad like myself could do to continue reevaluating how they view their education - and how to reconsider the fact that non-traditional students like his are indeed our intellectual peers. He told me about volunteering with Odyssey, taking courses on incarceration and sociology, and reading more about what goes on in underprivileged communities that uphold systemic inequalities. But more than anything, he emphasized the idea of simply being in conversation with those that are different from you:
“Understand that connecting with people from a totally different background is education in itself. You don’t get a grade, and there’s no GPA, but at the end of the day, that’s what expands your mind is talking to people who have totally different ideas than you do.”
Establishing a connection with other people, and understanding the commonality of our shared experiences, is the true value of education. This includes challenging preconceptions and recognizing that incarcerated students are just as human and valuable as everyone else. I have to keep reminding myself just how lucky I am to be an educated person - and that despite the structural disparities between those who are ‘educated’ and those who are ‘not,’ everyone has a mind that is just as valuable as everyone else’s.
I couldn’t help but compare Kevin’s words to Wallace’s:
“It is about the real value of a real education, which has nothing to do with grades or degrees and everything to do with simple awareness - awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over:
‘This is water. This is water’” (Wallace 131).
How many works of art have affected you in a profound way? Have any ever been truly life-changing? How would your life be different today if you had never had the opportunity to experience that art - and how do you think someone else’s life would be different today if they had? These are just some of the questions that Human Powered Season 2 has forced me to grapple with. I can only hope you’re asking yourself even more.
