Carry it Forward: Continuing My Writing

     For the past couple of weeks in class, we have been taking time to listen to quotes and passages from Letters to a Young Poet.  After the passage was finished being read, everyone would just privately jot down their ideas, and whatever thoughts came into their mind about the topic.  This would all be done privately, so everyone was able to express themselves however they wanted without worrying about feeling judged by others.

     I found that under these circumstances, I could write anything that came to my mind without worrying about what other people thought of my work.  It really showed that I was using my own voice to write down my ideas.  I noticed that I was able to continuously write down all my ideas, and if I did have a break in my thoughts, I was able to give myself time to think of a good thought to record.

     I was shocked to find that if I just tried to continuously write without worrying about other's opinion on my work, it was much easier to come up with a good idea.  Even if I had to stop writing to think, I found that if I just kept spewing words out of my brain onto paper, I came up with some good thoughts.

     The way that I will carry this strategy of "never stop writing" forward with me into my future is that whenever I'm writing something for college, I will just keep writing my ideas down.  Even if some of the ideas that I put onto paper turn out to not work out for the certain topic, I can always use what I wrote to think of more ideas to make a better paper.  I think it will help my writing a lot in the future.

     Another way that I'll carry this forward is into my work field.  I want to be a journalist, so I feel like if I continuously write down my opinions, I can eventually piece them together to create a good report or news section.  I believe that this will be a very important strategy to my future success.

Metacognition: Mashup

Creating my mashup was an interesting thing to do.  I found it very difficult at times to figure out the perfect choice for each requirement.  Before I started it, I thought it would be a lot easier than it actually ended up being.  I didn't take into consideration how difficult it would be to create something that sounds like it is one idea that flows smoothly.

My first step in creating the mashup was choosing a topic I feel like I could connect a bunch of different humanities works in.  I figured solitude would be a great choice, because I knew that Rainer Maria Rilke wrote a lot about it in Letters to a Young Poet.  

Next, I made a checklist of all of the elements I needed to imcorporate in the mashup.  I knew this would be the most organized and simplest way of keeping track of all of the 19 elements I had to include.  I then tried to think of memorable quotes about the subject that I had heard in some of the works we've covered.  I chose a few important ones, then I tried to put them into an order I thought might end up working.

As I took a break for the night, I would be listening to music and just thinking to myself some things that could work for the mashup, and a song I liked came on, and I heard some lyrics that I thought would fit perfectly into part of my mashup.

I finished the mashup by searching for pictures to fill in the breaks and thoughts in my ideas.  I tried to choose ones that seemed like they would tie together the thoughts.  

I think that the order I did all of this in was very organized, and I'm glad I completed it like this, because I don't think I'd want to have done it another way.  

Blogging Around: Taso and Melanie

Taso K.
Taso wrote a blog post about aesthetics and beauty, and it made me realize that I also have the same opinion as him on the subject.  This is my reponse:

"Taso, I love this post a lot.  I can agree completely with your opinion that, why does beauty or aesthetics have to have rules.  I also agree that everyone has varying opinions on what is beautiful and what isn't.  That is why people like different things.  Thanks for writing about this, because I didn't realize until right now that beauty shouldn't have rules.  You really opened my eyes."

Melanie M.
In Melanie's post, she wrote about how humanities is influencing the way she sees art.  The post made me realize that I also have been viewing other things differently due to humanities.  This is how I responded to her post:

"Melanie, I can totally relate to where you're coming from.  My experiences in not just other classes, but in my life experiences have shaped the way that I see artwork now.  I've noticed that this is what humanities has done to me throughout the year as well.  I've noticed that the way I experience not just art has changed, but the way I view other things in my life has changed due to humanities as well."

What if: Life of memory is the only chance of meaning?

In class this week we started learning about the principles and ideas of modernism and postmodernism.  Since we are currently living in postmodern times, I find it very interesting to see how differently the two ideas contrast.  I was especially intrigues by the differences of the views about memory.  The current, or postmodern idea of memory is that we are withing memory; memory is not within us.  The modern view is that life of memory is the only chance of meaning.  I didn't really understand what that meant at first, so I looked into it further.

I realized that the meaning of the modern philosophy for memory is that in order to have a meaning to our lives, we must remember all of our life.  I found this very interesting.  So, what if life of memory is the only chance of meaning?

Well if that is true, then does that mean since I cannot remember the first years of my life, then those years had no significance at all?  How could that be?  Those are the years when I first planted my feet on the ground and walked forward.  I surely find that to have some sort of meaning.  Those first years, I made great friends, some of whom I cannot remember their names for the life of me.  I find myself struggling to remember times in elementary school, and middle school.  I learned plenty of valuable information, and made many friends and decisions, all of them shaping who I am today.  So I guess I don't understand why it is that if i don't remember something, it would have no meaning or significance at all.

If this were truly the case, that a life of memory is the only chance of meaning, then I'm positive that plenty of my life would be wasted, simply because I don't have the ability to remember it all.

Connection: Grit, Tenacity, and Sports

In class this past week, we learned about grit and tenacity.  These are two very interesting words.  Well what do they mean?  The Merriam Webster definition of grit and tenacity are:

"Grit- firmness of mind or spirit : unyielding courage in the face of hardship or danger"

and,

"Tenacious (Tenacity)- persistent in maintaining, adhering to, or seeking something valued or desired".

These two words' definitions have similar concepts.  Both involve a sense of hard work and determination.  Those are two things that anyone needs to have if they want to be successful.  I can connect it to my own drives and incentives for being successful in sports.

I swim and play water polo for South, and both are tough, fast sports that require great knowledge of the sport, and flawless technique.  It is almost impossible to come close to perfect in these sports, but I have seen and experienced that with some elbow grease and determination, it is possible to come close.  However, what I have seen and experienced had come with a price.

The success came with hours upon hours of practice in a cold pool.  It came with hours of lifting in the weight room.  It came with blood left on a wet pool deck.  It came through victories and failures.  But these are prices that are necessary for success.

I believe the quote from Leonard Brody in the Tenacity vs Intellect video exemplifies tenacity in swimming and water polo perfectly. He says, "... it is about taking ten punches to the stomach, and getting up for the eleventh, and being prepared that the risk you take, and the failure that you'll inevitably face at some point down the road is exactly the right path".

The two sports do require much hard work, and a lot of pain, but it is the right path, because it is the only path that will lead to success at the end of the season.

Blogging Around: Maria + Melanie

Maria G.

In Maria's blog, she posts an inconvenient truth about college.  To me, it seemed like a very passionate rant, mostly all of which I agreed with strongly.  I loved this post, so I replied:

"Maria, as I am reading this, I continuously compare my life with yours. I think it is great that you have so strong of an opinion on this subject. I completely agree with everything you say, and I have found that lately, I have also been thinking about my future college. I wonder how a college can cost so much, yet give hardly any personal attention. Like you said, "They don't know me.", I don't think that they will ever know me. Throughout the 4 years of college, a college can never know me. Like I said before, I agree with a lot of what you said, and I have the same, strong opinions."

Melanie M.

Melanie's blog post was about how she organized a large pile of clothes that she needed to put away.  I know from personal experience that this is not a fun task.  It actually inspired me to be a better person!  I replied:

"Melanie, I love how I can totally relate to this post. I have a lot of clothes, as well, and I tend to hate putting them away. And honestly, sometimes I change twice a day too... As I was reading your post, I also had an epiphany: If Melanie can do it, I can too. This post has honestly made we want to keep up with my chores so that my mom won't get mad at me for not doing them. It will also help me stay organized. So, Thanks for the motivation!"

Get Organized: My Closet

     I consider myself to be a creative person, and as we have learned in class, creative people can escape gender stereotypes.  The gender stereotype that I escape is clothes.  I love clothes.  I love fashion.  I like shopping for and buying clothes.  I'm not sure why, but my best guess would either be that I love looking good, or I love spending money.  Its probably both...
      So, I have a lot of clothes. A LOT of clothes.  Its almost ridiculous.  I also have almost 10 different pairs of shoes that I wear on a regular basis as well.  Now that you know this about me, you can probably guess how my closet looks.  Needless to say, its very messy.  I have 9 different shelves and drawers on which I put my jeans, shorts, shirts, sweaters, shoes, hats, and other clothing pieces.  Now this isn't counting the 2 other places I use to hang other clothes.  I've been avoiding organizing this part of my closet for a long time, but since I had this assignment, I found a perfect opportunity to organize and do homework at the same time!
     Beforehand, I still wasn't very excited that I had to organize all the piles of clothes that were jammed into the small space.  I was thinking that I would have much rather been playing video games, or going on Facebook   However, I decided to plug in my headphones, turn on some good music, and get down to organizing.  It took me about an hour to take everything out, stack them in neat piles, and put them back in.  It took me another 15 minutes to just organize all my shoes and re-hang all of my hanging shirts, pants, and jackets.  Afterwards, however, I stepped back from the closet, took a good hard look, and felt really good about what I had just done.
     I feel like if I wasn't simply motivated by the fact that I needed to do it for a class, it would have felt much better.  That being said, I was still extremely satisfied with the work I had done.  I didn't realize how many clothes I actually have.  I knew I had quite a lot, but I didn't realize how many I actually had.  I also saw how my fashion has changed over the years.
     I like that everything is organized now, but now it is just a matter of maintaining this level of neatness.  I guess we'll see how long that lasts!