A brief look back.

I just went back and read all of my blog posts, starting from the beginning and working my way to present date.
Mostly I'm just kind of disappointed. I can see right when my life started getting hectic, which was when the posts started getting shorter and less fun to read. At the beginning of the class I had free time when I could really get to know the readings and the ideas we talked about in class. I think it can be seen in my blog, when I had fun writing them.
But as the semester has progressed, I've fallen right back into my old ways of burning the candle from both ends. This means I don't have as much time to really reflect on the class work enough to have insightful and fun posts that I can be proud of.

Things I would like to see happen:
1. I want to spend more time each week thinking about my posts.
2. I want to be able to tie my posts back to class material better.
3. I want to really make this blog mine, which would mean that I no longer look at it as an assignment.
4. I really really really wanna zig-a-zig-ah.
5. I know that we are writing for our audience with these blogs, but I think I've kind of lost my voice in trying to fit to what I think people expect from me.
6. I want to start having solid endings to my posts, because normally they just sort of trail off...

Academics = Non-hostile Audience?

We've been talking about writing an academic paper with the intent of convincing the audience that our point of view on a particular argument is correct. In these papers we don't have to motivate action or change the world, we just have to make sure that we give enough valid information, in a form that makes our opinion clear and encourages the reader to share that opinion. Our teacher mentioned that our audience, which includes pretty much all of the University of Michigan population, has a majority of academics. Also that academics are generally a non-hostile audience. This means that if there is doubt cast on your paper, they will give you the benefit of it, or at least read it with an open mind.

I think that's an interesting idea, that because of their academic nature, our audience is considered non-hostile. From what I've found, many of the academic-types I've encountered are more than willing to get a little hostile. Meeting with teachers and instructors both in high school and college, I've been on the receiving end of a lot of "I'm smarter than you, your ideas are wrong and here's why" attitude. Granted, some of the time I definitely was wrong, but it was the way that these teachers/instructors pointed it out to me, like I was wasting their time by being ignorant.

Maybe it's because I spend most of my time around a faculty of artists, who, I feel, are usually pretty open-minded, but from what I see of a great deal of academic-types is that the more intelligent a person becomes the less patient they are with people who aren't as knowledgeable as they are. I'm certain that Brett will be an absolutely non-hostile audience member, as well as my peers who will read my paper. It was just a little odd for me to think of academics as being a generally non-hostile audience.

Which probably just means I've been hanging out with the wrong academics.

Working the system.

In class our teacher often references how it's possible for people to cheat the school system. Some students figure out what teachers want, and give it to them to earn top marks, without actually learning anything. So then what is the value of getting an education in a system like this? What are we really learning? If students who are taking an active role in their education and actually obtaining useful information don't necessarily earn the grades to show it, and the students who have just found out a way to give the teachers what they want, what does that say about the real world. Are the people who are most successful the ones who took the effort to learn? Or did they simply find a way to work the system?

I hate to say it, but maybe that's the point of education. In the real world, it probably doesn't matter how much you know, but rather how well you can fit into society's rubric. Sometimes it's not the best idea, but the best presentation that gets selected.

If I had to categorize myself I would say I'm a happy mixture of both. In the subjects I cared about, I genuinely tried to learn, including investigating the subject matter on my own time. But for subjects like math and science, I learned the bare minimum to get by, until I could get away with no longer taking these courses. If you asked me to use some of the equations I learned in high school, or do a "proof" I would probably look at you blankly, and have no idea how to. But for my future plans, I only need the most rudimentary math skills.

I doubt that anyone in charge of the education system would come right out and say that schools subliminal purpose is basically to teach people how to do as they are told, without necessarily taking all of the proper steps. But that's kind of the way I'm starting to see it.

Free Write for Inquiry Paper

So our first real paper is an inquiry paper, which I'm still not sure I understand. I'm having some trouble nailing down a topic, so this post will serve as a sort of, flow of consciousness free write to help sort things out!

When I first got this assignment I knew that I wanted to investigate something to do with gender identity. I wanted to explore the idea that gender is a construct and may not have any direct correlation with one’s physical or biological sex. First I looked at the connection between gender identity and language. The English language has a strong gender bias. When referring to a singular person, the pronouns are masculine or feminine, it is not okay to refer to a person as being neutral or “it”. If a person is biologically male but feels that they identify more strongly with the female gender, which pronoun is more acceptable to use? The research articles I found on this topic were, well, dense linguistically. I’m not very strong with linguistics, and this would require a lot of background research that isn’t directly related to my area of inquiry.

Next I came across the term Childhood Gender Nonconformity with its relation to adult personality. This was really interesting, it dealt with children who didn’t conform to gender stereotypes either in free time activities or in hobbies and interests, who later grew up to be homosexuals. But once again, all of the research for this topic is very dense and difficult for me to make my way through.

I’m currently at a loss for what my topic should be, because gender identity as a whole is too big of a topic to tackle, but when you start getting more specific, the research becomes too difficult to work with. I have ideas for my paper, but as of right now, I don’t have enough research to say whether or not I can use them. I think I’d like to do something with the occupations chosen by gay men and women, to see if they are less likely to coincide with gender role stereotypes. I’m sure there is lots of research on this topic, and it would be interesting for me personally, because of the nature of my future occupation. Costume design deals with a lot of things that fall on to the feminine side of the gender spectrum, sewing, style, etc. But as a career it attracts a lot of men, often men who are homosexual.

The problem I have with finding a topic is choosing what it is I want to say about that topic. Do I want to make a comment on how some occupations like costume design have high percentages of males, but are still considered feminine. If so how does that deal with the issue of identity?

Drew meets Andrew and bad things happen.

So, I spent six and a half months in Germany. I don't want to be a cliché, but it changed my life. I got to be Drew, the funny, outgoing, down-for-anything guy, that I've always wanted a chance to be, but never found myself in the right surrounding. I'd always been Andrew, the constantly stressed, always tired, burning-the-candle-from-both-ends control freak.

I arrived in Germany and the change was instantaneous, I slept more than I have in years, I had time to kill, and a new found blood-lust to kill that time. Life was perfect. I was taking classes, sure, it was a semester abroad, but everything came easy. I finally got a chance to see what living like an average college student was like. I loved it.

But now I'm back in America, in the town I grew up in, going to the school I'd always dreamed of going to, and I'm straight up exhausted. Readjusting has proved to be somewhat insurmountable. I'm doing the roughly the same amount of work I did before I left, but everything constantly feels like I'm barely keeping my head above water.

So the question is: if who I am as a person changed, but this new person doesn't fit into my old life, how do I reconcile these two selves and become a complete person? I like Drew better, but I'm back in Andrew's world now, and there's very little place for Drew here. Most people change gradually, and in a lasting environment. I see it as being the frog, in the whole boiling-a-frog scenario. (If you put a frog in boiling water it will jump out, but if you put a frog in cool water and heat it gradually to boiling, the frog stays. Which by the way is a really unpleasant concept, but fitting for this example.) If a person changes gradually they don't notice until they look back at who they were. But I changed rapidly and in a different environment, and coming home just feels like being thrown into boiling water I can't jump out of.

The obvious answer is to just change my life here, but that is way easier said than done. Andrew's world is exciting and challenging, but it doesn't leave much wiggle room. I'm at a point where I'm either all in, or all out. I guess I just have to see if the boiling water cools down before I have to jump out, or just end up boiled.

Costume Design and Identity.

When you go see a play, whether it's on Broadway or in a regional theater, there is almost always a costume designer responsible for the clothing seen on stage. Most people don't think about the process that goes into selecting and providing costumes. What people don't often realize is just how good at recognizing personality traits a costume designer has to be.

When we first become part of the creative staff of a production, we generally get a copy of the script, and occasionally meet with the director to talk about his or her creative vision for the play. The next step is reading the script several times, taking note of the characters themselves, but also anything in the text that needs to be addressed in the costuming. For example, if a script mentions that a man gives a woman a handkerchief, where does he get it from, and what kind of handkerchief is it?

Costume designers have to be able to get an idea of what kind of a person each character is, and then find a way to translate it into what they wear, taking into consideration any special notations in a script. This is a lot harder than it sounds, because in the real world people don't always dress like the people they are. For example, bad people aren't always easily identified as being the person in the black top hat and cape. An added difficulty is that plays are often set in a certain period, or performed in a specific style.

It is our job to find a way to represent who a person is, without making them a stereotype. In my opinion, a designer has done an exemplary job, if during the performance the audience doesn't even think of the costumes as being costumes. If the audience sees the characters and not the actors dressing up like the characters.