iMedia: That Year

            This work strikes me so much because of how soothing it is. First of all, the artist Brandi Carlile is extremely talented. The song itself is absolutely beautiful and strikes me as a listener to want to know more about it. I looked up the meaning to it and discovered that she lost a great friend of hers when she was in high school to suicide.
            The music video clearly displays this, but it seems a bit too cliche. She is standing letting life pass her by as the seasons change as she talks about how she felt "that year". It's a cute idea, but it seems like there could have been something else more creative to make into a video for that song.
             Sometimes I think that this needs to be displayed in that type of way in order to transfer the message the artist tried to send. It seems that the music video at least was a bit too predictable which seems to be what a lot is made of in the media today. Even though the video is set up in this way, we can put that aside as the viewer and understand something greater about the actual music. What really struck me was that she found a way to incorporate a past experience of hers into something that caught my attention right when I heard it.
             This piece really matters because it shows how different people display their emotions. It needs to be seen that people can still be creative in today's society. However, some might view it as not being creative because of how much the video matches the song. The way that a person views this can say a lot about that person. There is so much to learn from a simple song or music video, and how you or I view this can say a lot about the type of people we are.

Best of the Week: Born in the Brothels

           This week we watched a very uncomfortably truthful film of children born into brothels in India. Just like so many underprivileged children, they grew up in an unloving, dirty environment. Although we are constantly told about underprivileged children and what we can do to make a difference, seeing footage of these very intelligent kids who have no hopes for their future but to work in the brothels like their mothers made me understand the realization of the struggle for so many children. They really are hopeless for their future because no schools will take kids who are from brothels in India. I believe that all people should have the rights to start their life clear of their family's history. To have a burden to carry starting from birth is an unfair truth that these kids face. They truly want an education and this film we watched help me to understand that. It rises awareness of the horrors that are happening right now, and by filming that, hopefully it will cause someone or some group of people to step up and make a difference.

Metacognition: QE Essay

                     Quite honestly, the first part of the QE essay I wrote was very unclear because I had no idea what I was doing. I felt as though the assignment was thrown at us and I was unsure of what type of question would go with what type of response. Upon completion of the first section, I felt no relief because it seemed very confusing.

 

                   These questions that were given to us to write about are very confusing. They require much more thinking than I am used to. Once I started the next section however, I was able to get a better understanding of my question and write my explanation. I think it takes me some mapping out before I really dive into what I'm working with to understand what I am writing about. I was blabbing a bit in the first section, which I was able to revise after completing the other two sections.

                 I think it's harder for me to write in order sometimes because I can never figure out how to open the essay to the reader until I know what I will write about. Often times I will change my mind to take a different direction than what I had originally planned so I like to save my introduction for the end. I would have liked to do the entire essay at one point as opposed to having each section due one at a time. On the contrary though, I think this helped me a lot to stay focused and feel more on top of my work. When I am given long time spans to do my work, I become more stressed out because I have so much of it to do. This did help me in that aspect, but in terms of my writing, I think I work better having everything due together so I can avoid messing up the first part of it when I work on it too soon.

Blogging Around

Spencer explained how the best thing he learned during one week of class was that good things take time. He used great examples from the movie Avatar, and its long process, as well as the Harry Potter series.

My comment on Spencer's Blog:

This is super interesting, ONE... because I didn't know that Avatar took 10 years to make and two, because I couldn't agree more with your discovery of the week.
For a movie to this extreme, of course it took a lot of money like you mentioned. That's one factor that made it so unique and creative.
I totally agree with that. I always knew that good things take time, but I guess I never really paid much attention to how much time can really impact a piece of work.
　
Elyse on the other hand, talked about how she is more productive at night. When she did her first mindbook entry, she waited until late at night before it was due, and realized that her mind is more creative in the evening when she is exhausted.

My comment on Elyse's Blog:

So reading this blog really opened my eyes to how you think and what your mind is really like. I never knew this was how you thought and how you work best. I guess it was also a discovery for you as well. I just read Spencer's blog and he wrote about how good things take time, but now I see the other end of that statement in your blog, I kind of like it. Maybe it's just that having a smaller amount of time will force you to get your mind fully engaged in the project and able to create such beautiful work. It seems that in past experiences of mine, cramming for a test or doing a project late sometimes seems to result in more productivity, or even a higher grade. I'll have to test this out in the near future.