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news — home last changed 9 July 2008 |
i'm going to Alaska! for a few weeks anyway. it's going to be a great hurricane of packing Raechel's stuff, moviewatching and reminiscing about the good ol days, finding jobs, and driving the roughly 2,300 miles back to Seattle. i'll be arriving in Fairbanks in ...
i spent Christmas in San Diego, with my grandmother, mom, two aunts, one uncle, a cousin, and my cousin's girlfriend. good times were had (i think) by all. historically, i've been rather cynical about my family, and about family relationships in general. i'm beginning to realize that this probably has everything to do with the environment i grew up in, and the definitions i was raised with. i've always felt like the black sheep of the family, and this time i felt like i fit in. the only thing that i know has changed is me.
i stopped in Los Angeles for several days on the way down to hang out with one of my best friends. it's been four years since we've had a chance to hang out, so that was great too. it was tough to say bye— so tough in fact that i'm not sure the word was ever said. right now it feels like this will figure into the story of my life somehow, like it's not just a particularly enjoyable Christmas but rather something which affects the future in some subtle or dramatic way.
and upon returning from this trip, i still have a week to work on other projects before returning to classes. sweet!
this was my first quarter at The Evergreen State College, and it was a great experience. i've never felt so alive, so connected with the world, so integral to a community, or so respected and valued. the people are wonderful, the faculty are exceptional, the campus is beautiful; it's a brilliant combination. i'm really hoping that the friendships i made here will outlast my time at Evergreen.
conceptually, Evergreen is distinct from the other colleges and universities i've attended. there are no grades; instead, each student receives a fraction of the total credits offered for the course based on their individual performance. in place of transcripts, there are narrative evaluations. if a graduate school inquires into my performance for this quarter, for instance, they will receive three pages— a description of the program i was enrolled in, the faculty evaluation of my performance, and my self–evaluation. among other things, this means that i have a voice in shaping the reader's impression of my scholastic achievements.
the program i enrolled in this quarter was called Mixing Messages: Bringing Art and Science Together for Conservation. the idea, as i like to explain it, was to find ways in which art and science can be combined to form something greater than the sum of its parts. both artists and scientists are interested in the environment. however, a work of art which is devoid of factual support is simply a pretty picture. likewise, a bunch of charts and graphs may possess a great deal of veracity but that's useless if it succeeds only in confusing the viewer.
Mixing Messages was a sixteen–credit class, and took up most of my waking hours for ten weeks. i thoroughly enjoyed it; although the tasks were tedious at times, i saw their value and i knew that my momentary fits of boredom were due to the fact that i've been in college for a long time and i've already done more than my fair share of research papers and group projects.
at the end of the quarter, i sat down to write the self–eval and take stock of what my little experiment had accomplished. i was amazed by the difference in my overall happiness. there might be something to this "socializing" thing. maybe.