Practicum 1: Taking Time

Given my appreciation of things that someone took time with, my first practicum was based around making sure I took time with things. One night I made sure to do a damn good job flossing my teeth (something I detest doing since I got braces), I made sure that I got breakfast each morning, I took time with my Secret Santa gift, things like that. Eventually, what it got me thinking about was not just taking time to do things, but making time to do those things. This sometimes means taking less time to do something in order to take more time with something else. For example, in order to make myself a decent breakfast, I often would have to cut a hefty chunk out of the time I’ve grown accustomed to taking in the shower.

The thing about making time to do things, though, is that I suck at it big time. I’m one of those people who has lists and lists of little things to do that I “just never get around to”, because I’m always procrastinating, or getting distracted, or taking too much time with the wrong things, or unimportant things, or basking in lazy comfort, and blah, blah, blah…Managing my time well, and keeping those little promises to myself is one of the hardest things in the world for me and something I consistently disappoint myself about, and it’s one of the things that drives me nuts about myself.

So, while I was satisfied with the things I took time with (aside from the flossing, which I hated every second of), the practicum sort of degraded into a load of self-deprecation, which I regret. I was also kind of expecting to gain some new insight on my beliefs, but really didn’t at all.

Text Study: Walden

My first text study was a chapter out of Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, titled “The Bean Field.” In this chapter, he reflects on the two and a half acres of land he planted by his cabin and all the time and work he put into them. It’s pretty clear, just by this chapter, that he shares some of my values regarding taking time with things and doing them the slower, more involved way. Hours and hours of his summer days were spent weeding and taking care of his field with nothing but a hoe, and he makes a point of this: “As I had little aid from horses or cattle, or hired men or boys, or improved implements of husbandry, I was much slower, and became much more intimate with my beans than usual. But labor of the hands, even when pursued to the verge of drudgery, is perhaps never the worst form of idleness. It has a constant and imperishable moral, and to the scholar it yields a classic result.” Hard and thorough work is obviously something he gets a lot out of, giving meaning and giving connection to what’s beyond the physical product, in his case, nature. Later, he complains about how husbandry “was once a sacred art; but it is pursued with irreverent haste and heedlessness by us, our object being to have large farms and large crops merely.” All this jives very well with the high value I place on spending time and effort to do something, and to do it well, even if it means the quantity of your product is not as high as it might otherwise be.

Thoreau also puts a lot of importance on self reliance, which is something else we have in common. For as long as I've been aware of it, I've had an appreciation for the DIY ethic; I like being able to do and make things myself, rather than buying mass produced things which have followed a long chain that I know nothing about. This is a value of mine that I think often gets undercut because even if I wanted to do something myself, there's a pretty good chance that whatever my product is will be a piece of crap, and i'd rather have something of quality.

Something I think me and Thoreau might not agree on is the importance of material objects. He seems to be the anti-materialist type, and I am someone who cares a lot about and finds a lot of comfort in physical objects that I surround myself with. That is, nice things, which gets back to quality.

Interview: Kitty

Kitty is someone I haven’t spent much time at all around in recent years, but, being my babysitter, was an important figure in my childhood. Asking her what she thought of my credo, I found out that she’s not so idealistic about quality the way I am. She was quick to tell me when I brought it up that really, finances come first, quality comes second, and you make do with what you have. Which isn’t something I can really ignore, no matter much I want crappy things to not exist.

The very first thing she did when I asked her about her own beliefs is quote Shakespeare: “unto thine own self be true.” Being true to, and not misrepresenting yourself, is at the very center of her values. Integrity is very closely linked to this for her, as is language. She talked to me about what her mother called “weasel words,” that try to excuse you from responsibility for what you’ve done or what’s happened. It’s important to her not to be a “weasel person, because it nibbles away at your integrity,” as she put it. This particularly resonated with the chunk of my soul that PSCS inhabits, with its philosophy and value of integrity.

I don’t know if my credo has been changed at all by my interview with Kitty, but it’s definitely given me something to think about, and I’m grateful to have had the opportunity to get some insight on her that I didn’t have before, and I’m grateful to have had her in my life at all.

project proposal

Anyone who knows me will be able to tell you that I’m way into music. Music has been a hugely important part of my life, from the kinds that surrounded me as a little kid, to all the different kinds that I listened to through various stages of my life. So, I’ve done tons of listening to music, but aside from my years in choir, making my own isn’t something I’ve done much at all of. Recording is something I’ve always imagined myself doing at some point, though, so that’s what my senior project will be. I’m going to pick six songs, all from different decades, rearrange them to put my own spin on them, and record them. Having never done any of my own musical writing or arranging, this will be challenging for me simply because I’ve never done it before, but it seems like a good place to start. I don’t think I’ll have much of a problem getting musicians if I need them, I’ve got plenty of connections inside and outside of school. The hardest part for me regarding that will, I think, asking for help from and dealing with people I don’t know well if I need to. At this point, another challenge I see is the recording part. I’m not yet sure how exactly I’m going to do it. I know that I have the option of borrowing a four track (and other equipment) from my dear brother, and I could try to master something like garage band. The final result of my project will be a set of song covers, on a CD that can be listened to through headphones at the student showcase, and its progress can be seen in the form of the recordings taking shape over the year. If I can pull this off without doing any rush jobs, overworking anything, keeping the music devoid of sheer corniness, and adding a considerable amount of myself to it, I think I will be quite satisfied with myself.

and my project is......

i'm gonna take bunch of songs and rearrange them, put my own twist on them...essentially, make covers. this will include playing them and recording them, too

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooooo*hack*

i did it!!