by B.J. on 5/21/2006 02:08:00 PM 0 comments Print this post

What I Learned from UCLA This Year

No, this is not a graduation post.

This is a what I learned from UCLA this year post as if I'm a first year or second year recapping what happened.

Yeah.

So.

I became more hip-hop, history of medicined, more community organized, and went all out doing stuff.

(Dang, how we define ourselves by institutions?)

But some concerns about all those gains because when you become more specialized in something you most likely lose your talent or feel for something else:

1) Can I gain back that intellectual power I thought I had ? Can I still find the interesting in the uninteresting ?
2) Have I faced anything that tough ?

Labels: , ,

 

Read Entire Post...





by B.J. on 12/11/2005 06:15:00 PM 0 comments Print this post

What It Is Is What It Is

- The best time to write is when you're commenting on a picture. By you're, I mean me.

- I don't think I should watch any more Bears football. Not until they get to the Super Bowl. BTW, the Loyola Cubs are 2005 CIF Division I champions. What a game. I was thinking as I was driving my sister to her debut practice about my high school: "we are the college basketball Duke Blue Devils of high school football." Damn right.

- Stephen Colbert is funnier than Jon Stewart. The driving force behind any humor on the Daily Show. I hope they don't fight.

- Balance. Don't try too little, nor too hard.

- In correlation with that last comment, I'd like to color code: I'm the latter. The color for that is dark blue. The color of balance is grey. Santa Crizzooze all the way. I've never tried so little, so I don't have a color for that.

- Art drives science. I want to do autobiographical studies of Da Vinci, Einstein, etc to prove that true. An I want to correlate that with intelligence.

- On intelligence: the more complex your mind, the "slower" you are, but once you get it together, you'll be not only quicker than the "quick" but also tougher to argue against. That's why as we go up the primate scale from prosimians to chimps, we see longer infancy times. We see longer infancy times because the brains, which take up about 20% of our energy, are taking their time to develop.

- My topics of interest list: intelligence and its concepts, urban planning and the construction of stuff, deconstructing everything, time studies, internationalism, noting racism, language and analyzing it, art, medical anthropology and holistic healing and how effective they actually are, music, hip-hop, Canada, NYC, France,India, dichotomies, the masses and their stupidity and intelligence, park-sitting and reflecting with my notebooks, grey track pants with a single light blue outline, exhaustion after a long and/or fast run, my grey everyday pants, ladykiller collared shirts, London, Alicia "my boo" Keys, snow, making dreams come true, ass, sluts, and girls/women, girls "in a relationship"/getting slammed from behind on myspace and facebook by some walking A&F model (man we are still such bonobos), finding your weakness especially on eggheaded science minded people, know-it-alls-assholes and pouncing on that weakness, yelling racist remarks at all bad drivers (yes, even Filipinos), football, Reggie Bush, running like Reggie Bush, high-stepping, high-striding, UCLA Bruins football, Chicago Bears Football, Mulatto Mike Brown, basketball, Chicago Bulls basketball, New York Knicks Basketball, Ben Gordon, Jamal Crawford, Ron Artest, shooting stars

Labels:

 

Read Entire Post...





Deconstruction of Procrastination

by B.J. on 11/30/2005 11:20:00 PM 0 comments Print this post

Never has it ever been more apparent than this quarter of academics in the life of one Brian J.: a lot of things done last millisecond.

Why do we procrastinate ? For me, as an individual human being, there's about five outstanding reasons. Over half of the reasons relate to getting started.

I'll use me as an example, because I do me the best.

1) I can't get started because I often don't see any immediate benefit or how I can make an immediate impact. I feel like I have no control. It seems pointless. It's like punching a reinforced steel gate.

In addition, I figure that time will sort itself out as it does with my socio-cultural anthro classes. As a result, I wait for the deadlines to dictate when I do my work in those classes because I feel pretty confident in what I know. When I apply this study method to classes that have any remotely scientific thread to it, the studying method falls apart.

2) I can't get started because there is no love for the subject. By love I mean, interconnectedness. The subject matter is too distant because it feels like I'll just get stuck.

3) Not in a very encouraging environment that encourages me to be busy. There's a TV, bunk bed, new computer with internet connection, iPod, a free-flowing sister, sleep-walking mom, and cold dad rather than a mass of coffee-drinking conversing branch of intellectuals or head-to-book aZns reading.


4) Another reason is once because I have high expectations to enjoy my schoolwork. For example, when I look at anything race or education-related, I know I can pull something interesting out of the subject. However, when the expectation isn't met once I start, there ends up being/staying a disconnect between schoolwork and what i like to think. I usually enjoy my work because I spend time thinking about it, making it meaningful to me, metaphorizing it, which I haven't been able to do this quarter.

5) There's another thing I'm doing that's more fulfilling than homework. For example, blogging when there's clearly undone homework as another tab. With that something else, you want to fulfill yourself short-term for as long as possible, you imply that you are having some kind of deficit or imbalance. Perhaps this is a by-product of thinking that you are entitled to rest.

So in closing based on empirical observations of myself, I procrastinate because of an inability to start on the project because of a lack of interest and/or feeling of hopelessness with the subject, a terrible environment, high expectations of having fun and then not, and finally because of other distractions.

As American-white middle-class culture and biology dicate now that we've identified reasons to procrastnation: what about solutions ?

A smartass or complete dumbass would say, get an ability to start because of interest and feel like you can control the subject, a good environment, low expectations, and lower the distractions. OK, but then the questions then become: how do I get this ability to start because of interest, a feeling like I can control the subject, and finally, how do I lower my expectations ?

I let time dictate too much.

Random primate fact: males will kill the offspring of another male and the female will mate with that killer just so she could keep up with her social group.

Labels:

 

Read Entire Post...





by B.J. on 10/30/2005 10:24:00 AM 0 comments Print this post

Updates on Thinking: The Study Edition

Or at least a studying twist. . .

Or 2 twists.

- When you are stretched thin, you cannot devote too much time to studying, which makes you more of an ARTISAN, which is NOT the ideal personality type for school and academia. I have a sneaking suspicion that academians, particularly the purely "intellectual" and less radical types who place a premium on cold logics and objectivity were all privileged children who were not stretched thin.

- On practical tips for studying: Making sense of what you study means being able to RE-CREATE a PICTURE of what is being said in your notes/books and explain why the said thing is occurring in a certain time and place.

- You ain't seen bouncin' back ! by Mystikaal.

I believe in KHARMA in this sense: For every bad thing that happens, there is a good. For every good, there is a bad. There's always some kind of tradeoff. It's just when there's a lot of bad, it's difficult to see the good. When you're in the bad, the good you're searching for seems few and far in between.

- UCLA Football, Chi White Sox, this is a great time to be a sports fan. For each team I get this feeling that my teams have nothing to lose. And if they do, there's another shot.

- Speaking of sports, I think message boards will eventually dominate the earth and from watching the Chicago Bulls message boards, I predict that sports fans will be divided along management ideology rather than geographic region.

- I need to escape people. People make me sick.

- Things that seem wrong but can't quite win an argument in because I'm not into useless power struggles: The ongoing war in Iraq.


Herego, my thoughts quantified.

Labels: ,

 

Read Entire Post...





by B.J. on 7/17/2005 08:26:00 PM 0 comments Print this post

The Institutional Man Knows All

Shawshank Redemption. Morgan Freeman's character.

He said the word: institutionalize. In the context of describing what a life-time prisoner had become. The prisoner got used to living in the prison to the point of becoming dependent on it and not knowing anything outside in the "real" world. Institutionalized.

I'm afraid that's what I've become with regards to not prison, but school.

So for me it would be: the student got used to living in school to the point of becoming dependent on it and not knowing anything outside in the "real" world.

Unless you're browsing with Windows Explorer 3.1 on your Windows 95 Packard Bell with a 14.4 connection, you can see to the side of this blog blinking letters that reveal my school. U. . .C. . .L. . .A. UCLA. I spent a whole 3 days figuring out how to do that.

I have not only defined myself by my school but I am also assuming superiority over those who may not have had the chance to go to school. I'm supposed to be loud and proud of the institution I metriculate at, and I have been for the most part, but what am I really celebrating ?

Am I celebrating that I know more valued knowledge than other people ? That I go to the same school once inhabited by people who got popular for putting a ball into a hoop ? Am I celebrating that I'm going to get a good job ? Or am I learning a certain something here that I couldn't learn somewhere else ?

The last question is the one I would respond the most positively to, but while I'm learning different things, I'm still learning things in this institution called college in a certain way --- via writing.

College. School. Largely constructed by centuries of Europeanness and writing. A place valued by the government and military mainly because it produces the most valuable knowledge to the government and the military, and not necessarily intellectual or societal development (despite efforts from those within the departments to get students to do so). A place valued by the citizens because it enables it's consumers/the current college students (still low amongst ethnic, racial, and other kinds of minorities) to monopolize the high-end job markets and economic mobility. A place that emphasizes only one way of knowing things: through written tests, written essays --- writing stuff down. Writing.

Writing. I think it's rare outside of academia that people think of writing as something that has a history to it, mainly because writing has become so "natural" and almost second nature. All you need is paper and some kind of marking untensil. That's all over the place. All over my damn place.

Writing stuff does make sense for this place and age --- the info age with computers and a mass population.

But think about how it was with cultures that did not have writing. There was no writing in those environments and cultures probably because it wasn't needed in such an environment where people learned to survive for centuries maybe even millenia without writing. In other words, what's the point of rocking the boat by integrating writing into your culture if you're sailing smooth by just passing stories by word of mouth ? Think about it more: these are not big societies but rather small scale which are bound together by family lines. They don't move to Jersey for the purpose of avoiding their relatives or something white like that.

So anyway, in those societies without writing, I assume knowledge they could not write down was passed down orally. For example, the Hmongs from Laos, as described in the most awesome book ever: The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman, passed their knowledge down orally. The Hmong knew tons about surviving in their environments: what herbs have medicinal benefits, what are the poisons, the patterns of animal movement, stuff that no matter how many books they read, a western biologist or chemist would have trouble figuring out.

We in the West, particularly the United States of A, know stuff from reading books and articles about people, animals, astrophysics. B ut in those reading materials we still don't gain any intuitive knowledge of whatever it is were trying to learn. An intuitive knowledge in which they know it in their hands, their legs, their feet where they can basically feel their knowledge in every part of their bodies. We in America have been learning things by having things dictated to us, making metaphors, emphasizing the important points and patterns to notice being dictated to us by some middle-class white folks in class and in the books. Then as our form of learning we regurgitate what those important points and patterns were. It follows that in this society where we want people to "get to the point", we often forget context, the time and place and just about everything little detail, when we do something.

An example of that last point: you can buy a cookbook with plenty of dishes and detailed instructions from the ingredients to how much you have to put, and make something like yo mama's fried chicken. So you use the same ingredients, the same amount, but if you're trying it for the first time, you practically know it's not going to be quite the same no matter how much you stick to the book. You won't have that intuitive, knowing knowledge of your mom's fried chicken until you've been and keep doing it and have internalized it to the point where you just know little details like the angle to place your fingers when your pouring the salt.

And that's what were like in the US of A right now: instructions to lots of things like in the sciences with "universal" language for the masses, but nothing really internalized to the point where we know the little "unimportant" details. We are a culture defined by writing where our language explains "everything important" but tells you nothing else. It affirms principles but no context.

But those principles contain much power. It's in writing that affirms and sustains the existence of my going to school, knowledge, and the existence of these "modern" institutions. Institutions like prisons, hospitals, and school. Just think. . .if you didn't have any notes, tests, transcripts or report cards or diplomas, what else would you have to show for your education in school ?

In this society it's as if you can't know things away from those institutitions, when many a society without writing like the Hmong have shown that you can know things.

Knowing things in that internal small-scale society way away from "modern" institutions with those skills can get a job, but you need to be certified by those institutions. . .in writing. . . to actually make money with your skills in this society. Making money by getting a job is virtually the only way people are permitted to live in this society of choice. They have to know writing. And unfortunately a lot of minorities don't have that access to the institutional experience via college or any other choice they may want.

They know things, but no one cares to extract it and make use of it.

Labels:

 

Read Entire Post...





by B.J. on 5/28/2005 10:13:00 PM 0 comments Print this post

I'm Not a Psychologist but. . .

I don't think it's a good thing to be falling asleep just thinking about what you're going to write for your 10-page term paper worth 45% of your grade due on Tuesday that you have not started on.

I've already written more in this entry than that paper.

The dog days of studenthood. I hate this paper. I this class.

Once I get over with this and hopefully pass, I will probably completely forget how much it sucks to be put in this position the next time I am in a predicament like this.

Labels: , , ,

 

Read Entire Post...





by B.J. on 12/18/2004 04:27:00 PM 2 comments Print this post

Why Can't I Just Sit Down and Study

Everything I did leading up to and during finals week was half ass. Papers, final exams, I did everything to avoid actually grasping the material for fear that I might actually get an A. Thank you gmail.com, facebook.com, and of course the infamous basketballboards.net.

It's not that I don't like "intellectual" activities like reading or studying because I usually pride myself on reading all this random excess stuff in whatever I'm interested in, particularly at the bookstore and I extract a lot of interesting info. I'm in there so much I know all the cashiers and when their shifts are. Sad.

But anyway, as much I like doing all that "intellectual" stuff of reading, I could not bring myself to actually sit down and study. Now why the hell is that ?

Simple, I love learning, but I hate studying. (Cliche I know)

Study for me implies me being forced to do something.

So I don't study because I hate being forced into doing things like studying and just plain feeling like I got nothing better to do, but am doing something important for me.

As a short immature-looking brown kid I've been forced to take a lot of crap from bigger kids and adults as if these people know better. I fuckin' know better now.

And usually I sit down and read or type during those times when I feel I ain't got nothing better to do but that what I do is something important, like now, as I write this blog. Unimportant in the bigger picture of things, but pretty important now because I put my thoughts into this thing.

Some places can help me feel like I got nothing better to do but that I would be doing something important. The times I like to read are at the bookstore, while taking that 1-minute crap (see the "Urge to Shit Makes You More Ambitious" post, which is somewhat similar to the feeling I get when I am on the verge of finishing a run and I want to go out with a hard last run instead of a walk), and just recently at the Charles E. Young library on the 4th floor where no one ever goes.

And some things I definitely know that when I'm on the computer, nothing is ever going to get done at least for school because I always convince myself that there's something that needs to be checked out online. TV is just. . .terrible.

The obvious solutions such as taking away the computer or going into an environment probably wouldn't do much because it would fall under the principle of some entity forcing me to do work. Remember: I don't particularly respond well to being forced to do things or even doing them for a long time unless it's very interesting. At the bookstore and toilet, I don't read as much as I sift through. It's rare that I spend more than 10 minutes with a single piece of literature. On top of that, I fall asleep in the library. I feel too damn tired every time there and wander off after every new discovery that took about 10 seconds to discover in those lameduck studies.

The only time I actually respond well to anything is when I feel something is amiss which is on ze message boards when I feel stuff becomes a bit personal and emotional and allows for interpretation. That's the only time I respond in a timely and well-thought out manner. And it follows that those are pretty meaningful to me (even though to about 99% of the population it's absolutely meaningless). It's a place full of emotional charges and interpretation. I always feel like I'm educating or creating new ideas into people's heads (or least I like to think so).

So my solutions to my studying problem have been tried to go off that: to learn by integrating my studying with my interest of message board posting. But they have not been successful because I don't think people actually understand what I say or even what to say. I'm working on it. Some other practical solutions have been to just speed read and scan through books like I scan and sift through other books in the bookstore, but then I'd have the potential to miss a key detail. I'm working on it.

The only real solution I can offer is that I gotta constantly build the base for the knowledge. Gradual study or gradually picking info from the books. I mean when some material is newly introduced, it's not that meaningful unless I have encountered it before. People in general tend not to catch on as quickly. People like to cling to something they know, especially when that something they know is put in a different context. For example, when I was taking life sciences and learned for the 25,334 time about evolution, I clung to it and used that concept to connect the whole course together.

I dont like being forced into doing things and during mundane times, I'm doing something important, that's when I learn. . .

Labels:

 

Read Entire Post...





The Sciences and the Arts and Religion and. . .

by B.J. on 11/18/2004 08:00:00 PM 1 comments Print this post

I get kind of annoyed when people in "hard" sciences and engineering think that they're better or going through tougher shit than those who do humanities and arts.

Ha, sorry anti-intellectual aZn boooI69669 and the add/subtract libertarian engineer !

The only reason it's "tougher" is because what you study is very unenjoyable. It's unpractical in the sense that it's very detached from what you do in real life but what you know it's practical in the sense that eventually you will get money.

Sciences (and I'm thinking UCLA sciences, not necessarily liberal arts school sciences which might be a bit different) right now just make you a machine, even though it may not have started that way. It was very practical in real life, as in experiments and so forth in science were very related to what you believed in and what you did on a regular basis in real life. For example: Michael Faraday, father of magnetoelectricity, modeled his theory of atoms being nothing more than force as to do away with the idea of a material world. Of course what isn't mentioned is that he held allegiance to an anti-materialistic sect of Christianity.

The subjects of sciences and arts came out of the same pressures: they were something to do for fun and to tinker exhaustibly with. Science and humanities subjects were just one and the same. Once science and art became very popular amongst people, people who did science and art found (and continue to find) out it became a form of power. And once science and arts became a form of power, folks start to really believe in things produced within them. They then begin to believe in those things very strongly, and develop their own principles around those things to both solidify and justify their beliefs, like it's a religion. They weeded out it's humanity bases and carved in their own importance into these sciences. For example, no one will think to question what motivated Ike Newton to think of the concept of gravity. Instead, they will just look at gravity and just assume it exists, blah, it's all forgotten !

Science has become today what religion was like during the medieval period.

Even though they came out of the same pressures, what separates the hard sciences from arts and social sciences is that the hard sciences offers the best guarantee of money. It offers the most certainty in a life, just like being part of the church offered a lot of certainty during the medieval period.

The human race has had a tendency to want to establish certainty and will go to great lengths to ensure it. We have a tendency to distrust everything we do and we feel the need to put the power in structures and deities or what have you. Those who have had great power and control towards establishing certainty in society has often made their subjects and followers mindless and do something stupid (unfortunately still present and displayed in War on Iraq).

Offering the most certainty is why hard sciences is considered "better" than its arts and social sciences. And whenever something offers the most certainty, it usually goes unquestioned by a lot of folks.

Absent from contemporary sciences in their observations/statements has been any sort of underlying philosophy or artificiality behind them. As a result these observations just become meaningless truths to accept in which the underlying philosophy that bred it is slowly forgotten by more generations of students. The intellectual curiosity gets lost because of this loss of philosophy. Helping to supplant this curiosity are these tests to make sure we know what's "important" (yeah, well according to you guessed it, hint: they're my favorite targets on this blog). This is why folks don't get much out of science other than a paycheck.

I need to remind you guys that science was actually done for actual intellectual curiosity.

People endeavored in science early on more out of intellectual curiosity and excessiveness and more fun as people would connect their philosophies with the way they thought things "naturally" worked. For example, Hermann Hulmholtz worked on his engineering theories based on the way the political economy was supposed to work for him. So basically his concoction of science was based on his own philosophies. And it just so happened to work. Philosophy was what drove him to innovate this engineering. And it wasn't even just him.

Innovations in science have usually had strong philosophical and religious bases. It started with Greek and Roman crap about Cosmos with two worlds, that of the celestial and the human. There was Newton proposing his theory of God. And of course there was Faraday. A lot of the scientists especially in astronomy such as John Stewart Mill, Whewell preceding Darwin were just trying to rationalize and prove in their theories of the future of the world the existence of god.

Though again all this artificiality of science seems to be all but forgotten (except for the better scientists). And we'll continue to grow into an anti-intellctual machinized society. Part of this anti-intellectual machine is to look down upon the arts and the humanities as ways to spend a college education.

The artificiality in arts and humanities subjects are always pointed out becausethey don't provide the certainty that the hard sciences do. They are looked down upon now because it seems like anyone can do these things and anything goes; it's just a matter of opinion because apparently everyone deserves an opinion in this democracy. Yeah, you should have one, but it doesn't mean it should be acted upon. It's artificiality is established from the beginning.

Labels: ,

 

Read Entire Post...





by B.J. on 4/23/2004 07:16:00 AM 0 comments Print this post

Primate Ecology 106 and It Being "hard"

So where have I been (not that anyone really gives a shit) ?

My ass has been getting penetrated by the log grade-wise that is called Primate Ecology 106 with an apparently hard professor named Adrienne Zihlman, who looks like a grayer version of the Weakest Link woman ready to stare you down out of the room if you bring an ounce of stupidity or uselessness to the class (so that means no Cowell people who do things like run down the halls on Friday nights when I try and study or sluts who sit on the lawn at 3 PM working on their laptops with faces that wouldn't even look at me or respect me, waiting for their asses to be molested, crushed, banged, and mangled like a 17-year old Mandy Moore in a state prison singing "Hand in my Pocket" by some chumpass with clean-cut blonde hair and eyes that look like some took two hooks slid it underneath his eyelids and slid the hook to side to give his eyes this wild dumbass look). Key phrase: apparently hard, meaning she's not really that hard despite the fact that I laid an egg on my "quiz" that was 15% of my grade and am pretty sure that I didn't do well on the last "pop" quiz. It's pretty much know a lot of things she wants you to know rather than making any complex connections. In that way it's more quantitative than qualitative, but it's probably qualitative than most classes outside of math.

The reason she's considered "hard" IMHO is because the class is so damn vague and there's such a wide range for you as the student to cover on tests and papers, which all makes her "hard" as in hard to keep up with rather than hard to follow. Hard to keep up with is characterized by a lot of work. A lot seems like busy work like the coloring book, which effectively takes time away from actually delving on to the material. On top of that, readings piss all over the place like a drunk blind guy trying to cover a particular species. There's always work to do for that class. It takes TIME (which I probably don't have right now with the FSA performance) to organize this wide range of stuff.

If I had enough time, I'd be able to do it, but oh well, I'm re-learning how to learn. I like this one challenge of a class for now, but when it comes to grades, I can only hope there is a way to remedy it. I want to learn, but my grade might now show it.

Labels: ,

 

Read Entire Post...





by B.J. on 3/23/2004 07:31:00 AM 0 comments Print this post

From Quarter to Quarter, Here's What Happens

Now this post is more of a mental note than the previous one ! That last post was dominated more by my admittance and I called it "mental notes". I have an itch to edit it. What a bad post, damn. Whatever.

But anyway,

After I pass my classes or whatever with good grades, I always forget the struggles I went through during paper-writing and studying: the neglecting of parties, doing other activities like downloading music and organizing it, watching Jay and Conan for a "break" which would turn into a "little" rest of 3 hours till 3 a.m. and then a full-on sleep to like 7 a.m., the writer's block when I did get started, the mindless staring and wasting of at the time on the computer screen, not catching up with the reading, the overall lagginess I have had.

Yes, all that gets lost the moment I see that "A" or "B." I then tend to see only the good I did during that quarter and romanticize everything about it. Then I go into the next quarter setting these ungodly expectations trying to do sooo much better than the preceding quarter, losing much steam after a week or 2. My notes become super-organized. I even take care to my penmanship ! Then after 3 weeks I realize that super-organized notes and clean penmanship are a lost cause 'cause I'm fuckin' behind in my classes and so note-taking just becomes something to do during the drag of class rather than this careful art that I had so carefully crafted. During the time that my notes start sucking, I then revert to those struggles, and I once I get the satisfactory grades, I forget these struggles all over again.

Labels:

 

Read Entire Post...





by B.J. on 10/08/2003 10:43:00 PM 0 comments Print this post

Some Notes on Taking Notes

:brushing off dust:

Arnold is the governor (bad). Prop 54 did not pass (good). Belinda had a birthday (good). The Cubs 2 days ago and came back and blew the fish out of the water (goo. . .I don't know).

More on all that shit later.

Damn, I feel like my mind is out of shape.

Oh well. Whatevs.

But case in point: I forgot all the techniques of note-taking that took me to academic success last year.

The story is:

The best notes I ever took was in Oceans last Winter. My notes were all fucked up at first. But when study time for the first midterm came and I realized that there would be no point to taking notes if I was not going to use them, I re-wrote the notes and made big headlines for new topics and subtopics on additional pieces of paper, arranging everything by date. Beneath those pieces of paper, the folder I always wrote on a folder which added resistance to my pen, making the notes a lot neater. Damn was it fun to feel the spokes of my hard-pressed all-capitals writing on the back of those notes.

But then I had spring quarter. I fucking fell asleep in every single class because of this shitty Tuesday/Thursday only school sched. I was not always on top of the reading. My notes just became random shit I would write during the boredoms of the class. But virtually all my tests that quarter were papers (one Community Activism midterm).

Now I have to re-learn how I made my notes cool because I have an actual test again.

Here's what I remember:

- Make big headlines
- Write neatly by pressing down hard with a pen on a folder(it's my way of keeping my own attention)
- Organize
- Put dates
- Make the shit have meaning

I just realized today that my notes suck.

Before



After



They'll get better, I think.

Labels:

 

Read Entire Post...





by B.J. on 7/07/2003 10:17:00 AM 0 comments Print this post

Learning: For the Quick and the Slow (Keith !)

Off went my baby Cressa to school. Aww, she's growing up before my very eyes ! Anyways, :ahem: I hope she does not feel like a bum, cause this age old institution of school apparently dissolves all feelings of being a "bum." It should dissolve those "bummy" feelings because it gives her a chance to learn. And to learn is to succeed, which a bum obviously cannot do.

In my randomly concocted opinion, school is the place where students learn practical-to-society things such as science and history. It is indeed a place to get a job.

In this rush for a job, learning stuff like science and math becomes nothing more than a tool by which society manipulates you.

Here in the grand ole US of A, school is a place to put info into your head just so you can access that bit of info faster. Learning is very dependent on time and result in this society, especially in this age of 2 million GHZ a second. It's evident in these tests like the SATs in which you have about 45 minutes to bust through 25 math questions or something, getting a score based on how much you knew during the time period. This measured and calculated time is something brought to life by the desire of money and respect; the commonplace idea that you need to be at point x and point y at some points in the day for some reason. Learning basically makes you a robot in this system.

So here's how to make people learn stuff and get some meaning out of it at the same time.

Ideally, learning from the start should be about untainted comprehension. The only time limits should be a due date. And this is what is great about writing essays for all subjects that are not named math, like I did for all my classes. And if you can comprehend, you're set. People are able to express themselves in their own comfortable way. People aren't judged according to a standard someone had set, which had previously favored others. Of course, there needs to be some standards, but ones that actually work for the disadvantaged people like extensions and stuff like that.

It may sound slackery, but it's the best way to "learn." To learn is to make things meaningful to yourself.

But we need to change the standards set by society by putting people from different walks of life in positions of power.

Labels:

 

Read Entire Post...





by B.J. on 10/10/2002 10:41:00 AM 0 comments Print this post

The good thing about homework is that there is no time limit until the last minute.

Labels:

 

Read Entire Post...




Home Page