Nidhi Bhaskar | ASAP Fall 2020 Cohort
All eyes on the main green are on us as Liyaan and I mirror Rachel’s introductory dance exercise for the class onscreen. As we take our seats- settling down from the water, earth, and fire positions- to meet our visiting speaker and begin our weekly presentation, I think to myself once again that this is certainly not the “remote experience” that I expected this semester. In subsequent classes, ASaP found me in a plethora of unconventional situations- from improvising a spontaneous onscreen arm workout that substituted barbells for a 2.6 kilogram edition of Gray’s Anatomy “borrowed” from my my parent’s library back home in St. Louis, to practicing ballet’s first position online, strategically maneuvering around the furniture in my university apartment’s bedroom. In a sea of lecture-based online classes, taking an experiential and community-based learning course online has been anything but ordinary.
Through the many years that Artists and Scientists as Partners has been taught at Brown, 2020 has been the first that the experience has been entirely remote. Past alumni have reflected on the insightful experiences that sitting in on one of David Leventhal’s classes or experiencing a collaborative ballet lesson in class have provided them. In my experience, while having class online was difficult, I was struck by both the power that technology holds to connect us from thousands of miles apart, and the creativity that many of the course leaders employed to find ways to continue their activities and engage their participants. Perhaps the most powerful observations were experiencing the power of artistic expression to foster creativity and provide solace and partnerships in the unprecedented times we live in.
Although our class participated virtually, the community-based element of the course was both accessible and tangible with almost every class. Interacting with patients with Parkinson’s who took David Leventhal’s DAPpers class and having the opportunity to join and “dance with” virtual DAPpers lessons allowed us to interact and experience the community of individuals who regularly enjoyed this course. Pam Quinn’s advice to “use our homes as our gyms” suddenly gained a whole new dimension of reality as we scrambled to find household objects and fixtures that we could credibly incorporate into our five step exercise routines. Finally, I was incredibly inspired by the presentations of my classmates, each of which significantly extended and applied the course materials to distinctive subject matters and areas of nuanced thinking that extended beyond what we had learned in the readings.
If our remote experience this summer has taught me anything, it is that great collaboration can’t be forced, but must be built through regular engagement and an openness to look beyond and engage with experiences and viewpoints outside one’s immediate comfort zone. I feel fortunate to have taken the course along with a wonderful class who were eager to participate and have vulnerable conversations. I am also grateful for our dedicated team of instructors, T.A.s, and guest speakers who have persevered to uphold the course an unforgettable experience that despite the occasional technical glitch and Zoom malfunction, this course has taught me an incredible amount about the power of interdisciplinary learning and ally-ship and has convinced me of the necessity of incorporating the humanities and the arts within scientific learning and practices.