Waiting for Superman

What are you passionate about? Education. For those of you who are naive, its true, we face some serious educational issues right here in the good ole United Stated of America. Tonight my TFA internship team hosted a screening of the movie Waiting for Superman (http://www.waitingforsuperman.com/action/) It's a documentary but it doesn't feel like one. It's got some great facts and shows solid research, but it is also extremely inspiring. If you are not convinced to use at least some of your time to help confront this issue, you have no heart. This is real stuff people. And we can do something about it. I never wanted to be a teacher before this semester. I thought, "why learn all this stuff just to go back and teach it?" But it's a lot more than that. It might be cheesy and cliche, but it is about changing kids' lives. I am planning on devoting just two years to teaching (http://www.teachforamerica.org/), but I hope to make a difference.

If you can't be convinced to even give a couple years to teach (or if you are really terrible at it, but don't try to use this as an excuse), then at least get involved in the issues. For instance, teacher unions and tenure. Do your research, but man, these do not encourage teachers to be good at what they do. Get involved! Cut red tape! Don't let bad teachers ruin the education of American children! Do whatever you want, but at least be informed and do something about your findings.

Like I said, I've been sick

Oh Gilmore Girls, how I love you. I love how fast you talk and your witty banter. I love all the weird relationships and strange characters. I love the small town setting of Stars Hollow and Rory's cool college life at Yale. Speaking of Yale, I have been having a bit of Ivy League jealousy. Part of me wants the more challenging academics and the intelligent and purpose-driven student body. The other part of me is glad that I can miss two days of school and work and still feel like I can stay up blogging about Gilmore Girls instead of studying. And sometimes I really do like the Provo "bubble" with all of it's quirky people that my roommates and I have deemed "classics."

So graduate school then? How about Oxford?

A girl can dream, right?


In other news, I adore hats. Even though I rarely wear them, I can't resist trying on and buying hats.
This is proof: me, my roomie heather, hats, target, and cheesy smiles.

I bought one last weekend that kind of looked like this:

Except less fedora-y and more straw hat-ish. I wish men still wore top hats and women still wore ridiculous feathered hats. And gloves. And lipstick. I'm done.

I think I'm back

I've been sick for two days, I'm way behind in schoolwork, and its 11:23PM. So naturally, I feel the need to blog. Again. But this time it's not so secretive and unpersonable.

So I know you are all wondering what I mean by "The Uncommonplace Book." Well, Last year I took a comparative literature class (one of those classes you realize later was unnecessary, but you love anyway) and my professor introduced us to Michel de Montaigne, an influential french essayist. Apparently, back in the day lots of old men with nothing else to do would write in these notebooks called commonplace books (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonplace_book). These books were full of little bits of wisdom, random notes, recipes, essays, quotes, etc. I realized I love commonplace books and I've been sporadically keeping one since my junior year of high school. This is when my English teacher made us pick a habit to aquire in 21 days (I was very adament that mine would be a positive one, not like Supersize Me), and so I started writing. Now I have like five notebooks full of random tidbits, and well, it's time to go cyber.

So why the UNcommonplace book?

1. I am embracing the rebel, nonconformist inside of me.
2. I would like to think I'm a bit uncommon
3. It's not in a notebook like common commonplace books, but on the internet.

Enjoy!

But What If I'm Wrong??

Yesterday in one of my classes we discussed a short story that we read about a family in which each individual had the emotional maturity of a three year old. We talked about how in many families, the person with the most power is the one who is thought of to be in the most pain. This totally makes sense to me, though there are certainly exceptions. The vulnerable get the most attention. **This is not a sob story of middle child syndrome** I have a point. So when people want others to see them as in a lot of pain, they tend to get very defensive. "I'm not perfect, but..." However, the last thing this person wants to hear now is about their imperfections. My professor gave us an example with her own children. She said that sometimes when her kid would come up to her accusing another child of doing something, she would tell the child to stop and tell her the whole story without making the other child the subject of a sentence. Instead they would have to focus on "I." The last time the Israelis and the Palestinians had a successful peace talk it was because they were not allowed to talk about past harms the other had done to them. They started with a clean plate and had to try to understand the other.

My professor also explained this exercise she would try when she was teaching high school. She chose a subject that all of the students would be on one side of, and then she made them argue for the other side. The trick was that they had to argue like the other side was an intelligent person with morals. In other words, they had to argue like if someone who really would argue that side had heard them, they would have no complaints. This seems to simple and essential for learning, but I feel that it is rarely done. The problem that one of her students pointed out was "well what if I argue for the other side and then I realize that I am wrong." Oh no! What a horrible thing learning is. We still have our agency, we will not be tricked into changing our minds just because we think how another person would think. If we disagree, then we have made our beliefs stronger, if we agree, then we have learned a great deal.

Sometimes people are scared to learn about other religions in depth or philosophy or politics or anything important, but if you really believe that something is true, why would you be scared to think for a minute from another perspective? Perhaps you are really insecure about your own beliefs.

Having the Courage to Say "I Don't Know"

It feels like we are expected to have an opinion on everything. Politics, religion, that pair of shoes, sports, music, food, etc. Don't get me wrong, I have a lot of opinions (have you been reading my blog?) but sometimes it gets a little crazy when we are supposed to have a strong opinion on things that we might not even care about. The result? Well I have definitely seen people make judgments without doing their research. They will say "this is the best" or "that sucks" all day long but cannot produce a reasonable answer when asked why. I know I am being very general here, but just work with me. Part of the beauty of life is that we don't have all the answers, we are still learning. So the next time someone asks you if you are, for example, conservative or liberal, don't just spout out the first thing that comes to your head that sounds right. Figure out what it really means and make an informed decision.

Have the courage to say I don't know, but then have the will to go find out (if its not about that girl's shoes.)

depression.

Walking home, eyes to the ground, noticing for the first time the stains that leaves make on the cement after a storm.
Locking myself in my version of Antigone’s cave, hoping (but only a little) that my fate won’t be so gruesome.
Three day old water slowly swishes down my throat. Semi-suffocating, I imagine myself fully submerged.
Horizontally resting, but finding no rest. My staring eyes are tired, my view of everything is tired.
Hour after hour pass. I wait for them to say something, to do something. But only silence.
My mind like the planets, wandering (as the saying goes), but mostly still, so still.
Wanting to gasp awake, realizing I wasn’t breathing. But I’m conscious.
Ate a bag of potato chips, decided against eating an apple.
Back under the covers, always stay undercover.
My pen unused, my book unopened.
When does it all end?
12 o’clock time.
Escape.

Today I read almost two pages by fernando pessoa

"Today I read almost two pages
In a book by mysical poet
And I laughed like someone who'd cried a lot.

Mystical poets are sick philosophers
And philosophers are crazy.

Mystical poets say plowers feel
And they say stones have a soul
And they say rivers have ecstasies in the moonlight.

But flowers wouldn't be flowers if they felt,
They'd be people;
And if stones had a soul, they'd be living things, they wouldn't be stones;
And if rivers had ecstasies in teh moonlight,
Rivers would be sick people.

You need to not know what flowers and stones and rivers are
To talk about ther feelings.

Talking about the soul of stones, of flowers, of rivers,
Is talking about yourself and your false thoughts.
Thank God stones are only stones,
And rivers are nothing but rivers,
And flowers are just flowers.

Me, I write the prose of my poems
And I'm at peace,
Because I know I comprehend Nature on the outside;
And I don't comprehend Nature on the inside
Because Nature doesn't have an inside;
If she did she wouldn't be Nature."

-fernando pessoa

Why do we attach thoughts and feelings to people or objects when we do not know what is on the inside? I am all about metaphors, but there has got to be some intrinsic characteristic about an object to be able to compare something to. You should not say that she is happy like a flower. Flowers are not happy. They are just flowers. Maybe they make you happy but please don't get your own emotions confused with a flower's.

I have realized that I do the same type thing with people. I see some qualities or characteristics about a person and then attach 10 times the amount of my own made-up qualities. The scary thing is that I think that I am right. I have a hard time separating what I want someone to be like and what they are really like. When my assumptions are disproved, I am shocked and put off. But its not the person's fault when they are not what I expected them to be. Its my fault. Maybe I am a sick metaphysical philosopher.