It’s the end of this blog as we know it.

And I feel fine.

We’ve come to the end of our Social Media Marketing class.

In this class, our intent was to explore what it means to reach outside our bubble. Some of us focused on reaching into areas of Minneapolis and St. Paul that we’ve never been to. Some of us focused on asking questions and entertaining discussions across intellectual and empathic boundaries. Some of us looked at gender and sexual identities, others reached across religious boundaries to visit mosques and temples. Others looked inside and found the great fear of moving outside–a fear we could all agree on.

We noticed that something happened when we reached out: the people and the stories we encountered humanized issues. We started to see flesh and blood beings with histories and hopes and humor and fears. People just like us.

Plus: we realized reaching across boundaries and through bubbles requires humility.

C. said she felt like “God’s idiot” when awkwardly reaching out. I heartily agree with that. In many ways, this feels more like a beginning than an end.

Thank you.

Thanks for reading. Thanks for liking and commenting and re-commenting and sharing and coming back. We appreciate it. In fact, we intend to eat a toast to our readers (that’s a thing, yes?) with Glam Doll donuts before submitting to the instructor’s ridiculous final exam. By the way, what would you drink while eating a Glam Doll donut? Tell us by taking this poll:

Here’s a link to the REM tune, in case you have an earworm from the title.