Middle School "Revision" Days-September 30,2012

 Writing into the day for Thursday's class involved reading a short piece from Katherine Bomer called Writing a Life. She talks about revision, and using it in a large context. She believes that revision opens up our minds to greater possibilities

It's interesting to think about how much "revision" we experience in our lives, and what prompts us to go through revision.


I think that the biggest time period of revision that I went through was in middle school. Haha..back then I'm sure that I was the most awkward kid alive. Looking back, it's pretty embarrassing haha.  Middle school was that time of figuring out where to fit in and who you want to be essentially. For me, I think that process involved molding myself into every group there was until I just decided to be me and do things that I like. It's crazy how I would make myself change so much just because I would see other people that were always seeming to have fun who acted like that. All I can say now is that I'm so thankful that I'm no longer in that stage!

Where did our creativity go-September 22, 2012

In class on Tuesday we watched a short video on creativity. It was called Creativity requires TIME 

The video got me thinking about a conversation I recently had with one of my teachers. He seems to think that most college kids are completely lacking in creativity. He references the younger years when we could just get some crayons and draw a picture. If we were to do that now, it would most likely take much longer because it wouldn't look right, we would need to start over, or we wouldn't want to because we have better things to do.

The video we watched had the idea that if given more time, there's more time to let creativity flourish. 

I agree with what my teacher was saying, which makes me think the opposite of the message the video displayed. We've had a lot of time to grow, mature, get new creative ideas, etc. However, we're less creative and more limited than we were as children...so is time really the answer to the lack of creativity? 

Kid's drawing:

I think that as kids we were free. No one was going to tell us that our stick figures sucked and looked like crap because we were kids. If I still drew the same pictures and was all excited and confident like I was when I did anything like that as a kid...everyone would think I was crazy! Now we have expectations. I think that, more than anything limits our creativity now....What do you think?

I do what I do for Erin-September 15, 2012

In class on Thursday we looked at a blogging site, wdydwyd?. This site is filled with pictures and descriptions of different people answering the question: Why do you do what you do?

This got me thinking on what exactly moves people, and makes them act.  In my day book I made a little list of the things I came up with. Some of my ideas were: religion, parental influence, to make a difference, peer-pressure, self-satisfaction, and some people just do things for the hell of it. Whatever the reason, I believe that we all have some rhyme and reason behind our actions--some underlying force that we allow to move us.

According to Sara Bareilles in her song “Bottle It Up”—she does it for love…she really gets that point across by repeating “I do it for love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love….” Over and over again in that one song alone.

My day book entry...nothing spectacular.

For myself, I thought about some things that I do personally and my reasoning behind it.  I work with a mentally retarded girl for my job.  Her name is Erin and she’s 23 years old.  She loves playing hide-and-seek and doing puzzles.  When we’re not doing one of those things, she’s always interested in asking me a hundred questions (most are repetitive) on my day. Around her, I take on a more simplistic view of life.

I never imagined that as a college student I would be running around still playing hide-and-seek, or any of the other countless things I find myself doing to make her laugh, but I couldn’t have asked for anything better. I consider my job a complete blessing.  It’s hard to describe, but I do all that I do with her simply to see the smile on her face.  That smile makes every worry of my “normal” world go away in an instant.  Knowing I have the power to put even a little bit of joy-even for a moment- in her life makes everything worthwhile for me.

Erin, my best friend Bristol (who introduced me to Erin, and also works with her), and me. An example of something weird that I'll do to make her laugh:

All of that to say, Erin’s smile, joy, and laughter is the reason why I do what I do. J

Childhood Memory :) September 6, 2012

So, today we did our writing into the day on this typewriter video-I can't find it on youtube to post a link, sorry (:. I didn't really get any deep meaning out of it...in fact, I didn't really understand it. However, it reminded me of when I was a little girl. My Grandma had a typewriter similar to the one in the video. It brought me back to all of those memories of me sitting there typing away. For the most part, I would never type anything sensible, it was mostly gibberish but it meant more to me than that. It made me feel like a little adult and I was positive that I was acting out exactly how my life would be when I grew up...thank God technology has updated from typewriters. I'm really glad that adulthood isn't like that now  

Anyways, that was one of my childhood memories, feel free to comment with one of yours :)