My Tool Kit

I have definitely learned a lot from taking this class. The lessons that I have obtained will definitely help me throughout my final year at IUPUI as well as in my future. I have learned to not care about critics. I learned to do what is in my heart and to not be afraid of failure. I think that with hard work and dedication, one can become very skilled in what they really want to do. I took a seat and remembered why I was in this program and if this was the life that I really wanted to live. I have always been interested in the arts and I feel that I belong here. After watching the movie "Wasteland", I learned that anything can become art, even garbage and dirt. Creativity can come from any source and it is up to the artist to see the vision. I definitely would recommend this class to any New Media student because it was a lot of fun and I learned things about myself as well as received some good pointers as I am set to begin my capstone this fall.

FEAR

My two greatest fears have always been needles and heights. When I was a little kid, my mother said that I never had a fear of getting shots at the doctor. When I got older however, I developed a big fear of needles. I dread getting shots at the doctor and I did have an incident where I became light headed and almost fainted upon receiving one. It is weird though, because on television I can normally watch people getting shots except in one particular area on their arm.The video below illustrates the area that I am talking about. I feel for this girl because this is one reason that I never donate blood, no matter how many free cookies and punch I would receive. Whenever I see someone getting a shot there I normally cringe and can't watch.

My second fear is heights. This fear is quite ironic because I love roller coasters  and I also have a huge desire to go skydiving sometime in my life. I am afraid of being high in the air unrestrained. If I am climbing a ladder for example, I get really nervous when I look down because I am afraid that I will fall down. If I was on top of a tall building and looked down I would probably pee my pants. This would be an example of something that would freak me out.

Oh Shit!

I think that the majority of the class will either share in one or both of the fears that I have or at the most have a somewhat discomfort in the two. I know that there were a few people in the class already that didn't enjoy roller coasters so they may have a fear of heights to accompany that as well. I also figure that no one in the class enjoys getting shots at the doctor, so a few of my classmates may have the same fear as well.


After presenting to the class, my hypothesis was pretty much correct. A few other people in the class had the same fear as I had. I did get a little uncomfortable though when a few people in the class started talking to me about donating blood and things of the like. I became a bit light headed and shaky. All in all though the class didn't make fun of me or anything for having these fears since these two fears are considered pretty common.

class recap

Class was very interesting today. It was really neat to see and observe other people's fears. Two of the best performances in the class were the presentation that dealt with religion and the presentation that dealt with silence. The presentation about religion really intrigued me because I have done alot of my own religious thinking over the years and i have thought about similar things as to what were presented in the graph. The second presentation really intrigued me because the entire time that the classroom was silent, I was trying to think what the presentation was really about. I was wondering if the presentation was about a fear of silence or maybe something else. Overall, I enjoyed class today and am looking forward to others presentations on Wednesday.

Dream Land

I am not gonna lie, I used the three hour period of time to catch up on my sleep and score some z's. I have always enjoyed to sleep. I know it may sound lazy, but I love relaxing after a long hard day and nothing really can accomplish relaxation better than being in a nice air conditioned house and taking a nap. I also love to dream and over the course of time I have tried to accomplish the art of controlling my dreams. Sometimes I can and sometimes I can't. I used this block of time to dream in my sleep and just explore my dream world. Everything felt so real that it was rediculous. I tried to remember as much as I could while I was in the dream so when I woke up, I could possibly start drawing it out on paint or something of the sort. As soon as I awoke however, that was not the case. I always wondered why that was. It is practically impossible for me to remember everything in a dream. I can always remember pieces or some areas but never the entire thing. I like to study my dreams and remember certain objects in them. Maybe the objects in the dreams are trying to tell me something. I wish that I could get paid to sleep. That way, I could get some research done about dreams themselves as well as enjoy some z's. The sandman is always welcome at my house whenever I have had a hard day.

Imagination...where did it go?

I am not gonna lie. I did not go onto Oncourse until yesterday to read and see what we had to do for the assignment, but since I was off, I took the day to observe my surroundings and notice things that perhaps others would not. I tried to remember when I was a child and how I viewed the world then. One thing that I definitely remember was that it seemed much bigger. When you are younger and shorter, things seem much larger to you. I remember once when I was at the supermarket with my mom, I wandered off and got lost.
The store seemed so huge to me and I could not find her. I started crying and a lady asked if I was lost and I said I was. She took me over to the checkout isle and they called my mother's name on it. After what seemed like an eternity, she returned with a mad look on her face because I had wandered off. From then on, I had to hold onto the cart when we went to the store. I also remember that when I was a child, I used to have this belief that my dad was the tallest man in the entire world. My dad is a big guy, at 6 foot 7. I used to go with him to places and watch as he towered over everyone everywhere we went. One of the biggest shocks of my childhood, other than finding out the truth about Santa Claus, was when I met someone taller than my dad for the first time. I remember we were at Six Flags Great America in line for one of the roller coasters. There was a guy a little ahead of my dad in line and he was tall. As we got closer to the ride we ended up in the same cart line. My dad stood right behind the man and he was a good head taller than him. My jaw dropped. I grabbed my dad's shirt tail and said that I thought no one was taller than him. He laughed and asked the guy how tall he was and he said he was 6 foot 11. My childhood world went crazy after that.
As I sat out yesterday and took a walk enjoying the nice weather, I noticed that I could no longer think as a child, but as an adult. I am no longer a 7 year old boy but a 23 year old man. All of my beliefs have changed since I was a child and  I thought about why that was. For one, I am further educated so I see things differently in a logical perspective. I am also bigger, so the world seems just a  bit smaller than it used to. I have other commitments now such as college, work and bills so the world is alot more complex than it used to be. Things are so simple when you are a child. The greatest gift a child has is imagination and I felt that I lost alot of it along the way of growing up. I know that I am still creative. But, I feel that looking around at everyday objects and trying to make something out of them is difficult. Why has it become so difficult? The answer is because we live in a society where we are not supposed to think or imagine. They have a certain standard for us and if we do not follow in that norm than we are looked as different or odd. I wish that I can be 7 again and all that I had to worry about was friends and play. Now, I am thinking about my future. That can be a scary thing. A great example about how this project felt for me can be easily illustrated in this video. It is from a television show that we all know and love. Can you figure out which character is the 7 year old me and which is the 23 year old me? It's sad how things change and it is so confusing to me as to why and how that happened. I really hope to find that kid like imagination in me again.

http://spongebob.nick.com/videos/clip/idiot-box-full-episode.html

Observations

I took what we were talking about in class on Monday and tried to see if I could make careful observations at my job. I am a server at a restaurant so all of my money depends on tips from the customers. What I tried to do at work the other day was to observe a customer right when they walked through the door and tried to  guess the tip they would give before they even were sat at the table. I did this in a variety of ways. I noticed what they were wearing, if they had a smile on their face and if they were polite. Other characteristics that I noticed just mere minutes after seating them included what they ordered to drink, what they ordered to eat, if they wanted to switch tables and if they had a complaint about the food or not. All of these factors helped me to determine what tip I would get from the table. By the end of the work day, it was as if I could see giant bubbles with dollar signs hovering over each customer. It sort of reminded me of the game Roller Coaster Tycoon when you would click on random people in the park and how each customer was different. I was correct on more than 50 percent of my tips for the day. I feel that this skill can be expanded upon and used outside of work as well. If I get good enough, maybe one day I can meet a person for the very first time and know exactly what they are thinking, like a psychic ha ha.

Class 2

The thing that stuck with me most from class yesterday was how unique we all really are. We all have very creative minds. As we sat around in the circle and discussed what we had actually done with our eggs, it truly was impressive to see all of the different things that my fellow classmates had done. I feel that we are a creative bunch of individuals and that we are really going to bond this semester as a whole. If I ever hit a roadblock in my exploration of creativity or in my capstone, I feel that one of these guys can help me overcome it. I feel that this is truly going to be a fun semester.