Reflecting on the Semester

This semester was one unimaginable, unprecedented, and unconventional. The transition to online learning was something that I thought I'd never have to do in any of my classes, especially one that had a focus on the senses. I appreciated our weekly zoom calls and efforts made by groups to implement each of the senses through the computer screen. If anything, I thought that this experience brought us closer together as a class. Hearing everyone's sound, seeing their image, a story of a sixth sense experience, and even observing a slideshow of foods put something of importance to each individual student on display. As I said during our banquet last week, I thought that I knew all there was to know about sensation and perception being a psychology major. When presented with readings and being tested to dive deeper into thinking about what each sense means, I have grown in perspective.

Although I had read the Song of Songs many times before, I had discovered a new point of view when reading it this time around in class. In the Aroma of Righteousness, Green expresses the difficulties in explaining scent to another person whether it is verbally or through writing. The scents described in the Song of Songs are used to relate to someone in a relationship. I believe that this is well done in how partners of relationships share similar emotions towards specific smells, especially ones that they surround themselves with. A woman's perfume for example, can be used in a love poem such as this one to evoke a certain emotion, one that is specific to those in the relationship. This only produces a more intimate connection through writing.
This new perspective I found on smell specifically was one that remained with me throughout the rest of the semester. We interpret smells differently and have various ways of explaining how they make us feel. I think that smell is one of the more complex out of the senses because of this contrast.

The intimacy that smell provides for me was only the beginning to a semester full of emotional connections to the rest of the senses. Rather than going on for fifteen pages to explain my newfound emotional connection to each sense (which I would gladly do), I would like to end by saying that I am appreciative of this experience and transformation in perspective.