Metacognition: Being aware

    This first quarter has been an interesting year. I have found that my mind has been blending a lot of my classwork together from my other studies. I have noticed that my connections have been fueled by my own mind trying to find reason for all this information. 

    I constantly find myself talking about nothing. I am in my head going over what I see, reviewing what I know. My conversations may seem a bit insane but for me, it's healthy digestion. This first quarter has talked about the creative aspect of human nature. How, to be creative, we must blend all sides of the spectrum into one. Sometimes I think that I do this on a daily and in other instances it never happens. My brain tends to wander when I am as exhausted; especially recently because of an overload of course work. When my mind is wandering I pull on all the ideas that have been circulating my mind. The creativity that has been shown in humanities somehow blends into a mixture with my psych and bio class. This results in one jumbled mess of life and culture. 

     In bio we were discussing how life started with one point and that one point broke apart and grew and grew until it became the diverse multi-specie world that we live in today. This kinda of relates to the fractal topic we recently covered. I found myself going over the many different ways we use fractals in our lives. So much of our organization starts from one idea, then breaks down and down until it is so complex that I no longer looks the same. 
     So much of this class has been taking what we know of art, literature, and creativity and applying it to real world applications. We begin to focus on what we know and by how we know what we know, we make something knew. We are constantly thinking about ourselves. Wanting to upgrade and improve what we are to what we should be. If it is the pressure from parents, friends, or society as a whole. There is this inner push that we create for ourselves. Understanding that we are constantly thinking of this push is something I think we notice but not enough that we think about it. 

Blogging Around

For starters.... Everyone is really good at writing. All the blogs I have seen are extraordinary.

ninaf2012humanities: Captured Thought: Full-blast Living

In this blog entry Nina talks about how being aware of the world and creativity opens people up to understanding the many view points of people. 

I really enjoyed this reading. Your understanding of this article was so deep that it led you to a really powerful conclusion that I really liked. I liked how you said "After reading, I understood that creative people don't want to be compared to others of the same gender, or ones of the opposite. They want to feel equal to others, regardless of gender". I really found that you saw from his article that creative people are just people who want to be felt. Yes, as equals but also as people. They don't want to be alone, separated by ridged roles, they want to fit the complexity of all human thought. I really enjoyed reading this. It gave me a new insight into how creativity can open ones mind.

samj2012humanities: What If?:Learning to fully understand thigs before I reject them.
Sam's blog talks about his realization of human viewpoints and how he wants change himself and has changed for the better.

I really like your point on how sometime you don't see everything for what it fully is before you reject it. I know I do this more that I should and suffer it's consequences. I feel like through your experience on those mission trips, as I have experienced as well because we went on the same trips, that we can only become truly more aware of the world around us from others. They gave us the ability to listen to some of the most awe provoking musicians on the face of this planet and they showed, at least me, that I can see more than what is just there. I agree that being open to new things makes the world a brighter place. If you close your mind off you fail to see what is there and the vast multitude of color life brings. I really enjoyed reading your realization of this fact of humanity.

Best of Week: [Creating Art]

From class we've read articles and talked about art and creativity but something really stuck out to me in  "Sea of Information". The authors writing really got into my soul. It showed me how art takes time to be formed. The energy that comes from literature doesn't just flow out all the time. It takes diligence. There is a driving force behind it. Sometimes I feel like life is like this. It is this constant push that keeps us moving but we have to put so much effort into making it worth wild. If we just live the art of our life is meaning less, but as Andrea Barrett illustrates through her writing art take constant studying and revision to make great. You can be a good artist/singer/performer/whatever but it takes studying and practice to make a masterpiece. Sometimes, I feel that art is overlooked. It is seen as something it was not supposed to be. In writing the sounds of words are so great. The first time listening to poetry can be the most beautiful thing. However, there are works that the more you look into the more they mean. A good song, for example, is something that on the hundredth listening can be so much more than it was the first time. I feel that is what makes art.

Our MindBooks are a vast exploration into what this world of art is. From just sitting and looking at others I have seen such creative ideas that come out of single thought. This thought, however, was more than just an instantaneous post. It was cultivated. The idea of bring in outside information and refining it to fit exactly, or as close as possible, in the form of which the creator wanted. Sometimes, I look at these MindBooks and wish they can hold more than just the physical. I wish that sounds could be captured. That the actual emotion could be locked up in that book. But then again that is what art is. The capturing of emotions and feelings without explanation.

I think that this week, as many weeks have been and most likely will be, was an exploration into the world of creating art. We read how difficult ideas can be in  "Sea of Information" by Andrea Barrett and we acted on that by trying to do something new in out MindBooks. This is were our best conversations and discussions came from during this week.

Captured Thought: What Makes Something Interesting?

In life we experience so much. We see beauty, we hear humor, and we feel love. But what causes us to feel these things? In what aspect does life do we choose between good and great. As a person who wants to do well in life I have always compared myself to the great. Good enough, usually isn't enough. However, I've seen people try so hard to be good at something and they've missed the point. They missed the reason why they did it in the first place.

Art is the best way to explain this. Some people are so amazing at drawing, or painting, or dancing, or whatever but no matter how good they are they don't stand out. What makes someone who is technically perfect so much less than someone who may be flawed in their skills but you feel them? Is it because we as humans know perfection isn't real? And when we experience it we are bored by it or we ignore it?

This occurs so much in school. The student who spends their life working on their textbooks and pushing to be that perfect five point o always seems to be the one that misses out. Well that or they are the most miraculous person in the world. It seems that the student who work for the grade and the end result miss out on why they are their in the first place.

I have many friends who are so upset with school. "It's so much work! Why am I here," said by many of my friends, even myself at times. It can sometimes be hard to see the end result when your in the midst of construction but we wouldn't be in school if it was useless. The classes I do the best in are the classes I like the most. I can't tell if I like them because I do well, or I do well because I like them but I know that in both cases they are the classes I learn the most from. The hardest part is understanding that when it gets hard and things turn for the worst we need to put the most effort in staying afloat. It could be that we find things interest  because they fit within what we are good at.

But does that explain for why we enjoy art? Music, dance, paintings they are all something that people pay huge amounts of money on yet many don't excel in those areas. Could interesting things be caused by passion? By their creation? Is something interesting because we don't have all of it? These questions I don't know the answers to. But I have the rest of my life to search because in the end I want my life to be interesting. I want to be remembered. Things that are boring never get remembered.

It Matters: United States Growth Of A Creative Nation

In class we have discussed the importance how how being creative has lead people to create wondrous things. However, we have noticed that this form of creative thinking has been slowly declining from American society. The once impressive nation of inventors and innovators has become the arrogant and overpowering nation; filled with egotistical brutes and uneducated citizens. In exploring the world around us we have noticed that we have slipped in the ranking of prestige. This video from the new HBO show The Newsroom, I feel, hits deeply the message that needs to be spread to Americans.

The main speaker in this clip longs for the times when we used to view America as what it could be rather than who it was or who it is. He wants to have a better nation; a place were justice is the forefront of our decisions. In discussion with our relation to China's education system that we talked about in class the ironic nature is that we think we are the greatest nation in the world but, like any great competitor, the focus should be on how can we better. 

I find that it does matter in how we live our lives. Creativity comes from the want to be more. To explore the world and find new things. Our education system has declined on the focus for more and now is focused on the what was. There is always room for improvement. And seeing that there is more to life than what just is is creativity. Seeing life in its full is creativity. This looking, this wanting, is the bases in which we must form our education system. The basis in which we should form our society. Instead of praising those who have money and fame we should be praising those with talent and ingenuity. We are the deciders of this world. We are the parents of the future. It is our place to lead. "America is not the greatest country in the world anymore," but it has all the potential to be more than this.