Wow. I finally upgraded my OS to Snow Leopard specifically so I could attempt to use Dragon Dictate, a program that learns to recognize speech and type it up for you. My hope was t use this program to transcribe my interview transcripts but a trial run just now resulted in something like, "though go this to um bulging and to way you". No joke, "bulging" was in there.
So it's looks like I'll be transcribing the old fashioned way (as opposed to the very old fashioned way) where I play, type, pause, catch up, play type, pause, catch up. Or maybe I'll cheat and just note timecodes of pertinent information such as "community", "social justice", "activism, "youth voice," and the like.
Curses! When I left professional editing to come to graduate school, I truly thanked the universe for offering me a path where I could forget the horrors of transcribing video footage. It is so tedious! so torturous! so awful! that I'll commit to getting it all done in a single day so it's just... over with. If I cheat. If I do it proper.... well, it'll take til the end of the month, at least. This is what I get for hiring interns to do the dirty transcribing work for so many years...
... at least my computer is up to speed for the decade though. It probably won't be upgraded again until Superlion OS XIV comes out in never.
I guess this is also a good sign that I should at least pretend to meet my own deadlines and wrap up this Parameters section tonight...
ADD: for the record this is my voice dictating to dictate Dragon. and, for the record, the following is what Dragon Dictate thought was being said when I played a personal introduction of an interview through my computer speakers aimed at the internal microphone:
"I is and is what news do is open a allusion to you is associate with a a new world we knew low what evolution is usually loses you know working as a research assistant gave him you produce a movement of goods interviews and 20 00 does also eight Julia Sancho is bulging with his oh so we will oh do it also you will a huge trouble soon only restriction she is RESEARCH it is a or"
Do you see that? Bulging again. I think this is how people generate spam e-mails.
(when i'm the one talking this program is actually pretty insanely amazing. maybe i'll dictate the whole rest of my thesis!)
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Saturday, April 9, 2011
Thesis v. Blog
Note to self: Your thesis writing is your thesis writing. Your blog is your blog. Keep the emotional philosophizing contained, and contained here.
Just removed from my thesis document:
"This was incredibly disheartening and it meant spending an entire semester being rejected over and over though being completely ignored or through by led on then disappointed. Is it worse be get stood up on a first date or to never get a date at all? Does it matter? No. Rejection feels like failure- sometimes it is and it’s your fault- but when it was a matter of people simply not responding to my laboriously crafted emails and voicemail messages- delicately constructed to seem thorough but concise, confident but not entitled, warm and open but professional.... well, it felt really lousy and I didn’t know what to do except keep emailing, keep calling, keep Googling, and then..."
Blegh.
Just removed from my thesis document:
"This was incredibly disheartening and it meant spending an entire semester being rejected over and over though being completely ignored or through by led on then disappointed. Is it worse be get stood up on a first date or to never get a date at all? Does it matter? No. Rejection feels like failure- sometimes it is and it’s your fault- but when it was a matter of people simply not responding to my laboriously crafted emails and voicemail messages- delicately constructed to seem thorough but concise, confident but not entitled, warm and open but professional.... well, it felt really lousy and I didn’t know what to do except keep emailing, keep calling, keep Googling, and then..."
Blegh.
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Okay, focus.
I met with my adviser today after six hours of critiquing sound art with my freshmen. I was frazzled and I had a whole lot to say and almost as much to ask and I couldn't believe when it was suddenly 5pm and I was suddenly late for work, but I left feeling largely relieved and not like the worst Masters student in the world. Thank you, Andres!
So what came out of the meeting?
1. My DVD is a go, and it will actually incorporate elements of my entire thesis. Yet to be determined: Will my (greatly shortened) intro, lit review, methods, parameters, etc. sections be text screens or ME? I'm thinking me, to tie in more appropriately with all my interviews, but we'll have to see about that.
2. My "writey writing" as it came to be called in the course of the meeting, at least as far as the story and discussion sections go, might only exist to fill in gaps left by the video clips on the DVD of interviews and some of my (recorded) reflections. The blog will also supplement clips in the DVD where appropriate. I don't want people to have to watch every clip- though I'm keeping them small- to have a full understanding of what this whole thing is about.
3. No one's yet turned in to this department a completely digital thesis, and I'm probably not going to be the first. That's okay.
4. I've gotta get my interviews transcribed in detail (fingers crossed for the pending software experiment). I'll use those transcripts to reframe my lit review and use the reframed lit review to structure my DVD.
5. I need to make a schedule and I need to stick to it. It'll go a little something like this:
Tonight: Finish abstract revisions and make schedule through June 30; Email these to Andres
April 11: Parameters and Methods section should be complete
April 19: Introduction should be complete; Meet with Andres again
April 26: Transcriptions should be complete and broken down into 3-5 key concepts
May 2: Have some video clips ready and be about done with myPowerpoint Prezi for the Symposium
May 9: Literature Review redone, and done (which is probably a smart idea because the symposium is two days later. BLARG!)
Then la di da, work work work, "graduate", finish DVD and written project by June 10, have my panel by June 30 and then graduate for real.
Wowza. And there's so much going on between and around all that....
As always, a lack of time is the best kick in the pants.
So what came out of the meeting?
1. My DVD is a go, and it will actually incorporate elements of my entire thesis. Yet to be determined: Will my (greatly shortened) intro, lit review, methods, parameters, etc. sections be text screens or ME? I'm thinking me, to tie in more appropriately with all my interviews, but we'll have to see about that.
2. My "writey writing" as it came to be called in the course of the meeting, at least as far as the story and discussion sections go, might only exist to fill in gaps left by the video clips on the DVD of interviews and some of my (recorded) reflections. The blog will also supplement clips in the DVD where appropriate. I don't want people to have to watch every clip- though I'm keeping them small- to have a full understanding of what this whole thing is about.
3. No one's yet turned in to this department a completely digital thesis, and I'm probably not going to be the first. That's okay.
4. I've gotta get my interviews transcribed in detail (fingers crossed for the pending software experiment). I'll use those transcripts to reframe my lit review and use the reframed lit review to structure my DVD.
5. I need to make a schedule and I need to stick to it. It'll go a little something like this:
Tonight: Finish abstract revisions and make schedule through June 30; Email these to Andres
April 11: Parameters and Methods section should be complete
April 19: Introduction should be complete; Meet with Andres again
April 26: Transcriptions should be complete and broken down into 3-5 key concepts
May 2: Have some video clips ready and be about done with my
May 9: Literature Review redone, and done (which is probably a smart idea because the symposium is two days later. BLARG!)
Then la di da, work work work, "graduate", finish DVD and written project by June 10, have my panel by June 30 and then graduate for real.
Wowza. And there's so much going on between and around all that....
As always, a lack of time is the best kick in the pants.
Monday, April 4, 2011
Ask (Google) and you shall receive!
DING!
Huzzah for the 2010 Nonprofit Employment Trends Survey, which is conducted through a partnership between Nonprofit HR Solutions (though I suspect they are not a non-profit) and the Caster Family Center for Nonprofit and Philanthropic Research.
Though the data is not specifically focused on arts non-profits (and they don't use a hyphen in "non-profit" so I should check my style guide, huh?), it covers a broad scope of non-profits and it seems that data should translate relatively well to arts organizations. As it turns out, the suspicions generated by my certainly limited interactions thus far with organizations that have cooperated with my fieldwork interviews seem to be supported by statistical demographic data by this particular group of 500+ non-profits who responded to the Survey. I'm not especially surprised at that, but I didn't feel alright continuing on without some data to support my perceptions. On the hiring of qualified and diverse staff, the Survey says:
"Diversity across age, gender, and race remains a staffing challenge for many organizations. By far, balancing ethnic diversity (43%) is the most challenging diversity issue faced by the respondents to this survey. Furthermore, 65% of respondents reported that attracting qualified persons of color is their organization’s greatest ethnic diversity challenge.
Twenty-nine percent of respondents reported that balancing gender diversity was their greatest challenge and 13% of respondents reported balancing age diversity as their greatest challenge. In our observations, the vast majority of nonprofit positions below the senior executive level appear to be dominated by women. As such, attaining gender diversity is commonly found to be an issue at the executive levels of larger nonprofits and the staff levels among medium and smaller sized nonprofits.
Interestingly there appears to be a relationship between organizational size and issues of diversity. The percentages suggest small organizations have less of a challenge with diversity. Moreover, the percentage of organizations indicating balancing gender and age diversity as their greatest diversity challenge increased as the organization grew in size. The 2009 Nonprofit Times list of top 50 leaders reflects this phenomenon where 62% of those named were men and only 38% were women.
However, larger organizations seemed better able to manage the challenge of ethnic diversity since the percentage of organizations indicating balancing ethnic diversity as their greatest diversity challenge decreased as the organization grew in size."
They go on to say, regarding more specifically the race and ethnicity of non-profit employees:
"The composition of organizational respondents’ staff race and ethnicity were also representative of the nonprofit sector as a whole where approximately 60% of the employees are white. It is also important to note that the percentage of non-white staff decreased as the position level increased. This confirms the need for increased ethnic diversity in top leadership positions in the sector."
YAY, RECENTLY COLLECTED DATA!
Huzzah for the 2010 Nonprofit Employment Trends Survey, which is conducted through a partnership between Nonprofit HR Solutions (though I suspect they are not a non-profit) and the Caster Family Center for Nonprofit and Philanthropic Research.
Though the data is not specifically focused on arts non-profits (and they don't use a hyphen in "non-profit" so I should check my style guide, huh?), it covers a broad scope of non-profits and it seems that data should translate relatively well to arts organizations. As it turns out, the suspicions generated by my certainly limited interactions thus far with organizations that have cooperated with my fieldwork interviews seem to be supported by statistical demographic data by this particular group of 500+ non-profits who responded to the Survey. I'm not especially surprised at that, but I didn't feel alright continuing on without some data to support my perceptions. On the hiring of qualified and diverse staff, the Survey says:
"Diversity across age, gender, and race remains a staffing challenge for many organizations. By far, balancing ethnic diversity (43%) is the most challenging diversity issue faced by the respondents to this survey. Furthermore, 65% of respondents reported that attracting qualified persons of color is their organization’s greatest ethnic diversity challenge.
Twenty-nine percent of respondents reported that balancing gender diversity was their greatest challenge and 13% of respondents reported balancing age diversity as their greatest challenge. In our observations, the vast majority of nonprofit positions below the senior executive level appear to be dominated by women. As such, attaining gender diversity is commonly found to be an issue at the executive levels of larger nonprofits and the staff levels among medium and smaller sized nonprofits.
Interestingly there appears to be a relationship between organizational size and issues of diversity. The percentages suggest small organizations have less of a challenge with diversity. Moreover, the percentage of organizations indicating balancing gender and age diversity as their greatest diversity challenge increased as the organization grew in size. The 2009 Nonprofit Times list of top 50 leaders reflects this phenomenon where 62% of those named were men and only 38% were women.
However, larger organizations seemed better able to manage the challenge of ethnic diversity since the percentage of organizations indicating balancing ethnic diversity as their greatest diversity challenge decreased as the organization grew in size."
They go on to say, regarding more specifically the race and ethnicity of non-profit employees:
"The composition of organizational respondents’ staff race and ethnicity were also representative of the nonprofit sector as a whole where approximately 60% of the employees are white. It is also important to note that the percentage of non-white staff decreased as the position level increased. This confirms the need for increased ethnic diversity in top leadership positions in the sector."
YAY, RECENTLY COLLECTED DATA!
Continuation, correction
After mulling over that last post, I'm left feeling very uncomfortable with the ideas I'm trying to wrap my head around. Again assuming (without statistics or documentation!) that most NPAOs are run by white guys, I failed terribly yesterday to address the different approaches to engaging youth that might be found desirable by different communities. The last entry was utterly incomplete, in that was addressing specifically the seeming deficiency of accessible NPAOs run by people of color, without really addressing the seeming abundance of accessible NPAOs run by white people, and I'll try to address that more thoroughly here, in an effort to balance my exploration and acknowledge the habit (?) I fell back on yesterday (thanks, White Privilege!) of skipping straight to discussing the Other without first attempting to suss out the role of my own racial and class community in creating a perceived structure of imbalance.
I'll write more thoroughly later, but I needed to have this up to bookmark and set the stage for a correction of such lousy writing and analysis yesterday. Also, I need statistics.
Blogging thinking is hard. I wonder if it's not safer to write, then think, then rewrite if needed, then post that, finally, to one's blog. I should probably address the definition of a blog and its nature in my methodology, huh? I think blogging is different from posting something you've written to the internet.
I'll write more thoroughly later, but I needed to have this up to bookmark and set the stage for a correction of such lousy writing and analysis yesterday. Also, I need statistics.
Blogging thinking is hard. I wonder if it's not safer to write, then think, then rewrite if needed, then post that, finally, to one's blog. I should probably address the definition of a blog and its nature in my methodology, huh? I think blogging is different from posting something you've written to the internet.
Saturday, April 2, 2011
Baby's First Panic Attack
It is an age-old problem: what to do when you have absolutely no idea what to do. Similarly: what to do when you have so, so incredibly much to do.
I experienced my first panic attack- and I am indeed choosing to use the word "panic" over the word "anxiety"- early in high school and it was very surreal and for several years I didn't understand what it had been or how it had happened. A traumatic experience at the start of college later became a trigger for more of these seemingly uncontrollable spells, but eventually they faded again, only be be reawakened by graduate school applications, and how! As I began receiving letters back from the schools, my life regained it's average state of calm... until now.
Something yesterdayhit pummeled a nerve and my day, despite being enormously busy, was overwhelmed with this increasingly heavy sense of dread. I woke up much too early this morning with my heart pounding and every fiber of every muscle stretched taught. I'm imagining piano wires, but maybe even better would be the cable suspending a piano from a 5th floor window. And maybe not a piano, but a cartoon anvil, and from a flying machine, not a window, and being dropped, not lowered...
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(me)
Eh, mixing metaphors again. The point is, I woke up this morning feeling right on the verge of losing it and so I climbed quietly out of bed and took a long hard look at a small stack on books on the kitchen table. Then I took a long shower and made a mental to-do list for the day. Then I started reading those books and finding many good things with which to (entirely) rewrite my lit review. Nothing is the same, and I've been dreading the process of redoing it, so awful was it last year around this time. But I can, and I must. So here is my list, and I'll be here on this computer until it's done:
-Make sure everything I need from my computer is backed up. I think it is.
-Upgrade my mac from the stone age of 10.4 (didn't realize I'd have to wait for the disks so I sprung for rush delivery. Doh!) so I can try and install Dragon Speaking Naturally. I need to find out if it can transcribe my interview videos for me. Transcripts would make my life SO. MUCH. EASIER. in the next few weeks, but if I can't get this program to do it for me, I'll probably try to do without entirely. Transcribing is for interns and people with time.
-Blog.
- Read some "story" and "discussion" sections and see if my blog might be able to serve at least some part of either or both of those sections. (Put off til I can get to the Flaxman on Monday)
-Deal with some consent form stuff
-Most importantly: Put together a first draft of the abstract that will be printed in the programs for our graduate symposium and which I must turn in on Monday.(the level of ease with which this was completed leads me to believe I have done it all wrong... YAY FOR FIRST DRAFTS!) I'll be honest and say I find this very annoying because we've been told so many times on paper and by advisers: YOUR ABSTRACT COMES LAST. Well, not this one! But I saw dear J again a couple of days ago and she had wise, relaxing words from her adviser to pass on regarding this particular requirement. If she (and Jim) are correct, maybe writing this version of my abstract will even help the actual meat of my thesis feel more... defined. Or contained. Or something.
So, it's a short list but full of big things. While I'm thinking of it, I need to blog more later about:
- Critical pedagogy and social justice education for rich kids
- Gender/race statistics of people running NPOs
- How healthy crying can be
- Personal enlightenment
- What my thesis is now, and if it's okay to say not only, "It's not what I meant to do," but "It's not what I meant to do and it's so much bigger than what it even is."
My body hurts. My guts hurt. But "forward ever, backward never".
I experienced my first panic attack- and I am indeed choosing to use the word "panic" over the word "anxiety"- early in high school and it was very surreal and for several years I didn't understand what it had been or how it had happened. A traumatic experience at the start of college later became a trigger for more of these seemingly uncontrollable spells, but eventually they faded again, only be be reawakened by graduate school applications, and how! As I began receiving letters back from the schools, my life regained it's average state of calm... until now.
Something yesterday
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(me)
Eh, mixing metaphors again. The point is, I woke up this morning feeling right on the verge of losing it and so I climbed quietly out of bed and took a long hard look at a small stack on books on the kitchen table. Then I took a long shower and made a mental to-do list for the day. Then I started reading those books and finding many good things with which to (entirely) rewrite my lit review. Nothing is the same, and I've been dreading the process of redoing it, so awful was it last year around this time. But I can, and I must. So here is my list, and I'll be here on this computer until it's done:
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-
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- Read some "story" and "discussion" sections and see if my blog might be able to serve at least some part of either or both of those sections. (Put off til I can get to the Flaxman on Monday)
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So, it's a short list but full of big things. While I'm thinking of it, I need to blog more later about:
- Critical pedagogy and social justice education for rich kids
- Gender/race statistics of people running NPOs
- How healthy crying can be
- Personal enlightenment
- What my thesis is now, and if it's okay to say not only, "It's not what I meant to do," but "It's not what I meant to do and it's so much bigger than what it even is."
My body hurts. My guts hurt. But "forward ever, backward never".
Saturday, March 19, 2011
Shameful!
What a terrible blogger I am. My deepest apologies to my devoted followers and my fieldwork and thesis advisers. And myself, because this project is for me, right? Right.
So! Since interviewing Joey Ashenbrenner and Arnold Aprill, I've interviewed:
- Craig Harshaw, Executive Director of Insight Arts Foundation
- Mark Diaz, Program Associate, and Joseph Spilberg, Research Associate, at CAPE
- Marvinetta Penn, Executive Director of Global Girls
- Courtney Reid, Sr. Director of Organizational Effectiveness and Grants Administration, and Iu-Luen Jeng, Youth Program Clinician (and SAIC alum!), at Center on Halsted
- A teen participant at Insight Arts
Whew. I'm hoping to speak with a couple more adults and several more youth participants (or former participants) before I wrap on shooting, but there's a whole lot of footage and I need to finish capturing it and start laying it out very very soon-
OH! Right. I don't think I mentioned that the youth-centric portion of my fieldwork, the Living Newspaper project, was called off entirely. Entirely. Needless to say (but I'll say it anyway), my whole project has had to shift and I'll need to fully recognize in my thesis writing that I failed to immerse myself in the participant perspective and instead I must work almost exclusively from the end of adult organizers and administrators, despite my initial desire to avoid exactly that. I so wanted a well-rounded thesis that made a strident effort to acknowledge and explore perspectives and biases. I wanted to be able to say I really gathered my information from not only the group of people who found and operate youth arts programs, but also the youth who participate in and contribute to those programs. I wanted a different thesis... but this is the one I have. I will still make the best of it. I am making the best of it. It's just going to be a very different project than the one I envisioned even just a few months ago.
That being said, I had to come up with a new way to structure my video data. I intended to create a documentary detailing the experience working with the teens at Insight Arts and pairing pertinent aspects with interview footage from allllll these discussions with adults working in the nonprofit youth arts field. Without the teen footage, all I have in interviews and I simply cannot produce a DVD of talking head interviews. Absolutely not. I realized that as I laid awake in bed the night I found out about the Living Newspaper project cancellation. I was fretting something awful, and continued to fret for days and days. I fretted and I fretted. I forgot, then remembered, then fretted some more. Then one morning I woke up not fretting but nurturing this tiny seedling of an idea that had sprouted in my brain during the night. As it turns out, some ideas blossom with great rapidity and a solution struck me as I flipped open the shampoo bottle in the shower. *Click!*
It was my immediate opinion that the internet has offered few technological novelties greater than the tag. I have used tags to label and sort blog entries for almost a decade, and more recently to submit my #tweets to #relevantcommunities. Tags will play an important role in a video/internet community art project I"m developing (for after grad school), and now- NOW- now they will play an important role in sorting my interactive thesis DVD. Wanna see what my subjects have to say about #socialjustice? Click the link and find out. #community? There's a link for that, too. All of my major key words will have DVD sections dedicated to only their related interview clips. Furthermore, where an interview discusses, for example, social justice and community in relation to each other, both the social justice and community sections of the DVD will link to that video clip *and* each other. I'm going to have to get a lot more graphically saavy to make it look as nice as I think it can, but the DVD building will be relatively simple.
So, yeah. Here's to beating the fear of the unknown (and replacing it with the fear of the all-too-well known).
So! Since interviewing Joey Ashenbrenner and Arnold Aprill, I've interviewed:
- Craig Harshaw, Executive Director of Insight Arts Foundation
- Mark Diaz, Program Associate, and Joseph Spilberg, Research Associate, at CAPE
- Marvinetta Penn, Executive Director of Global Girls
- Courtney Reid, Sr. Director of Organizational Effectiveness and Grants Administration, and Iu-Luen Jeng, Youth Program Clinician (and SAIC alum!), at Center on Halsted
- A teen participant at Insight Arts
Whew. I'm hoping to speak with a couple more adults and several more youth participants (or former participants) before I wrap on shooting, but there's a whole lot of footage and I need to finish capturing it and start laying it out very very soon-
OH! Right. I don't think I mentioned that the youth-centric portion of my fieldwork, the Living Newspaper project, was called off entirely. Entirely. Needless to say (but I'll say it anyway), my whole project has had to shift and I'll need to fully recognize in my thesis writing that I failed to immerse myself in the participant perspective and instead I must work almost exclusively from the end of adult organizers and administrators, despite my initial desire to avoid exactly that. I so wanted a well-rounded thesis that made a strident effort to acknowledge and explore perspectives and biases. I wanted to be able to say I really gathered my information from not only the group of people who found and operate youth arts programs, but also the youth who participate in and contribute to those programs. I wanted a different thesis... but this is the one I have. I will still make the best of it. I am making the best of it. It's just going to be a very different project than the one I envisioned even just a few months ago.
That being said, I had to come up with a new way to structure my video data. I intended to create a documentary detailing the experience working with the teens at Insight Arts and pairing pertinent aspects with interview footage from allllll these discussions with adults working in the nonprofit youth arts field. Without the teen footage, all I have in interviews and I simply cannot produce a DVD of talking head interviews. Absolutely not. I realized that as I laid awake in bed the night I found out about the Living Newspaper project cancellation. I was fretting something awful, and continued to fret for days and days. I fretted and I fretted. I forgot, then remembered, then fretted some more. Then one morning I woke up not fretting but nurturing this tiny seedling of an idea that had sprouted in my brain during the night. As it turns out, some ideas blossom with great rapidity and a solution struck me as I flipped open the shampoo bottle in the shower. *Click!*
It was my immediate opinion that the internet has offered few technological novelties greater than the tag. I have used tags to label and sort blog entries for almost a decade, and more recently to submit my #tweets to #relevantcommunities. Tags will play an important role in a video/internet community art project I"m developing (for after grad school), and now- NOW- now they will play an important role in sorting my interactive thesis DVD. Wanna see what my subjects have to say about #socialjustice? Click the link and find out. #community? There's a link for that, too. All of my major key words will have DVD sections dedicated to only their related interview clips. Furthermore, where an interview discusses, for example, social justice and community in relation to each other, both the social justice and community sections of the DVD will link to that video clip *and* each other. I'm going to have to get a lot more graphically saavy to make it look as nice as I think it can, but the DVD building will be relatively simple.
So, yeah. Here's to beating the fear of the unknown (and replacing it with the fear of the all-too-well known).
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
So much more
Since we last blogged, I have interviewed Joey Ashenbrenner, Program Director at Power of Hope in Seattle, WA, and Arnold Aprill, Founding and Creative Director of Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education (CAPE) here in Chicago. Also, I've eaten a lot of chocolate, but that is besides the point.
Joey and I talked a lot about how PoH approaches its youth programs and the importance placed on ideas of relevance, community, and leadership. We also discussed the specifics of how PoH conducts organizational assessments, and concerns related to evaluations based on the Developmental Assets Profile (DAP) and similar models of categorizing youth.
Arnold and I spent more time on the development of CAPE and on the necessity and practice of combining "layered research", art, and traditional school subjects to achieve to happier, more successful, more engaged, more empowered students. My mind was pretty blown by the end of our discussion, and I'm very excited to start editing the video footage of the interview so I can listen again to everything we covered.
So what now? Well, after another interview at CAPE with two of their program associates on Friday morning, I'll begin my on-site fieldwork is set to begin (yikes!) at Insight Arts. To prepare, tomorrow I'll interview Craig Harshaw, IA's Executive Director, to get a broad sense of Insight Arts as a whole and the Living Newspaper project in particular. Craig teaches a couple of different classes here at SAIC, (I've taken both and wish there were more!), and from the first day of Social Theory for Artists, my life was noticeably different. By the end of my first semester here, thanks to Craig, I finally had the theoretical background and the contemporary vocabulary to really verbalize and act on things I'd been thinking about and feeling for so long. He has played an important role in the direction my proper adult life has taken in the past year and a half, so I'm thrilled to finally be starting some hands-on work with the organization he helped to found. /gush
What else? I need to start video journaling. This blog has been a good, flat way to track my progress (and vent about my lack of progress), but given my intention to produce an "alternative thesis" by June (more on that later) I'm realizing I should have been vlogging post-interview reflections since the very beginning, way back last year with Steve from EVC. I'll probably have to block off chunks of time on my two open weekdays to re-watch each interview and then record my feelings about it. Soon I'll be caught up and hopefully nobody will hold the staging against me...
I've got a while longer here at work tonight and then I need to go home and extract an mp3 of my conversation last week with Adam Fletcher. With his permission, I'll post a bit of it up here in the next few days (for real this time). After our first Thesis II group meeting last night I realized a couple of things: 1. I'm so glad I'm not in the teaching certification program. Those poor kids have it worse than we do as far as their timeline to finish, and it seems to have given them a very gloomy complex! 2. I'm actually looking forward to the nose+grindstone thing again. Funny how that happens. 3. My thesis does not have to be finished before the Symposium in May. Why didn't anyone make this clear a very long time ago? We technically have all summer to write and rewrite and finish? What?? WHEW!!! Somehow I'm more motivated now. At some point I crossed that line where pressure shifts from being motivating to being paralyzing, and now that I have official confirmation that that need not be the case, I'm back at 100%, I think. What a change a meeting makes.
Some exciting reads for the week:
Champions of Change: The Impact of Arts on Learning
All of this
Lots of emails sent. New interview on the horizon. This long blog post. Now to work on my thesis Introduction until 9pm. Go, go, go!
Joey and I talked a lot about how PoH approaches its youth programs and the importance placed on ideas of relevance, community, and leadership. We also discussed the specifics of how PoH conducts organizational assessments, and concerns related to evaluations based on the Developmental Assets Profile (DAP) and similar models of categorizing youth.
Arnold and I spent more time on the development of CAPE and on the necessity and practice of combining "layered research", art, and traditional school subjects to achieve to happier, more successful, more engaged, more empowered students. My mind was pretty blown by the end of our discussion, and I'm very excited to start editing the video footage of the interview so I can listen again to everything we covered.
So what now? Well, after another interview at CAPE with two of their program associates on Friday morning, I'll begin my on-site fieldwork is set to begin (yikes!) at Insight Arts. To prepare, tomorrow I'll interview Craig Harshaw, IA's Executive Director, to get a broad sense of Insight Arts as a whole and the Living Newspaper project in particular. Craig teaches a couple of different classes here at SAIC, (I've taken both and wish there were more!), and from the first day of Social Theory for Artists, my life was noticeably different. By the end of my first semester here, thanks to Craig, I finally had the theoretical background and the contemporary vocabulary to really verbalize and act on things I'd been thinking about and feeling for so long. He has played an important role in the direction my proper adult life has taken in the past year and a half, so I'm thrilled to finally be starting some hands-on work with the organization he helped to found. /gush
What else? I need to start video journaling. This blog has been a good, flat way to track my progress (and vent about my lack of progress), but given my intention to produce an "alternative thesis" by June (more on that later) I'm realizing I should have been vlogging post-interview reflections since the very beginning, way back last year with Steve from EVC. I'll probably have to block off chunks of time on my two open weekdays to re-watch each interview and then record my feelings about it. Soon I'll be caught up and hopefully nobody will hold the staging against me...
I've got a while longer here at work tonight and then I need to go home and extract an mp3 of my conversation last week with Adam Fletcher. With his permission, I'll post a bit of it up here in the next few days (for real this time). After our first Thesis II group meeting last night I realized a couple of things: 1. I'm so glad I'm not in the teaching certification program. Those poor kids have it worse than we do as far as their timeline to finish, and it seems to have given them a very gloomy complex! 2. I'm actually looking forward to the nose+grindstone thing again. Funny how that happens. 3. My thesis does not have to be finished before the Symposium in May. Why didn't anyone make this clear a very long time ago? We technically have all summer to write and rewrite and finish? What?? WHEW!!! Somehow I'm more motivated now. At some point I crossed that line where pressure shifts from being motivating to being paralyzing, and now that I have official confirmation that that need not be the case, I'm back at 100%, I think. What a change a meeting makes.
Some exciting reads for the week:
Champions of Change: The Impact of Arts on Learning
All of this
Lots of emails sent. New interview on the horizon. This long blog post. Now to work on my thesis Introduction until 9pm. Go, go, go!
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Radical Hopefulness
Earlier today I had a really great conversation with Adam Fletcher of the FreeChild Project. I'll try to post some excerpts in the coming days. He had so much to say about how to engage and empower youth, and our discussion of critical pedagogy and its principles as applied to education reminded me of the importance of proactively embracing radical hopefulness and radical love.
Here are some videos of some of the thinker-doers touched on today:
Henry Giroux:
Paulo Freire:
Cornell West:
Well, just click here for a great interview with Colbert.Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Break time
I never thought "break time" would mean working on my literature review and other written elements of my thesis, but I need to give the outreach a rest. 15 new groups/people emailed/called and I have.... two interviews set, (one with Adam Fletcher, director of the FreeChild Project). Maybe another couple in the works? It's unhelpful to speculate on the variety of reasons why I'm having trouble making more headway... I need to mostly cast aside doubt and fear at this point and just do what I can do, when I can do it.
So today's to-do list:
1.Caffeine.
2. Make some copies of old theses.
3.Figure out what other writing it would make sense to start on aside from the lit review.
4. Make a plan for organizing my historical research on the roots of social justice (which is to say, social reconstructionism) in art, education, and art education.
5. Start on that.
Oh, and I shouldupdate my thesis overview sheets and fix some typos (blarg!) that I noticed in my thesis proposal. All doable in the next six hours (eh, or maybe not).
So today's to-do list:
1.
2. Make some copies of old theses.
3.
4. Make a plan for organizing my historical research on the roots of social justice (which is to say, social reconstructionism) in art, education, and art education.
5. Start on that.
Oh, and I should
Monday, January 24, 2011
Legwork
14 new organizations/people contacted in the past couple of days. Hopefully some things will start panning out. It's a frustrated process, trying to convince people to even respond to your email or phone call, let alone actually it down with you for an interview.
If I don't have some responses in the next couple of days, it'll be time for some to hit the streets. Many of the organizations I'm interested in are located relatively close to each other, on the north(ish) side of Chicago, so it might behoove me to just hop on my bike and pay some in-person visits.
April, April, April. How is this going to happen? I'm trying to fight the fear paralysis by just doing more and more outreach, more and more Google searches for variations of "teens", "youth", "art", "social justice", "community building", "activism".... I've traded a deep sense of dread for a middling sense of dread mixed with frustration. Good trade? Surely.
If I don't have some responses in the next couple of days, it'll be time for some to hit the streets. Many of the organizations I'm interested in are located relatively close to each other, on the north(ish) side of Chicago, so it might behoove me to just hop on my bike and pay some in-person visits.
April, April, April. How is this going to happen? I'm trying to fight the fear paralysis by just doing more and more outreach, more and more Google searches for variations of "teens", "youth", "art", "social justice", "community building", "activism".... I've traded a deep sense of dread for a middling sense of dread mixed with frustration. Good trade? Surely.
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Sticking Points pt 2
Sticking Points:
1. Does anyone care about this except me?
2. "You sure didn't pick a very sexy project, did you? Very nuts and bolts, huh?"
3. Why won't you respond to my emails? Is it okay to call you?
4. I'm so. Far. Behind.
5. Will this have any effect on my ability to work in this field when I graduate? ... a negative effect??
6. There's so much I don't know or have. Where do I start?
7. There's so much I know and have. Where do I start?
8. I want to contribute to the field.
9. I want to be proud of my final product.
10. This feels really hard.
But:
"Sometimes things feel hard because they are hard." After remembering that, I'm in a better position to decide if this hard thing is worth doing, and I'm deciding yes.
More emails out. More searching. More writing, soon. Much, much more.
1. Does anyone care about this except me?
2. "You sure didn't pick a very sexy project, did you? Very nuts and bolts, huh?"
3. Why won't you respond to my emails? Is it okay to call you?
4. I'm so. Far. Behind.
5. Will this have any effect on my ability to work in this field when I graduate? ... a negative effect??
6. There's so much I don't know or have. Where do I start?
7. There's so much I know and have. Where do I start?
8. I want to contribute to the field.
9. I want to be proud of my final product.
10. This feels really hard.
But:
"Sometimes things feel hard because they are hard." After remembering that, I'm in a better position to decide if this hard thing is worth doing, and I'm deciding yes.
More emails out. More searching. More writing, soon. Much, much more.
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Sticking Points
Sometimes there is only so much support that a school, department, or mentor can offer. And sometimes even if they have plenty more to offer, it's not what one wishes to hear at times of crankiness or frustration. Sometimes all I want to do is commiserate. When I started to think about this, for a moment I felt so clever: "Ha! Commiserate? Co-miserable!" but fortunately before I got too pleased with myself it occurred to me that it wasn't much of a mental stretch to spot the root word. MW says:
Origin of COMMISERATE
Latin commiseratus, past participle of commiserari, from com- + miserari to pity, from miser wretched
First Known Use: 1594
(and, further:)
Origin of MISERABLE
Middle English, from Middle French, from Latin miserabilis wretched, pitiable, from miserari to pity, from miser
First Known Use: 15th century
So great. My brain's really running on all cylinders, huh?
Well, earlier today I was thinking about my thesis, mulling over the latest sticking point: The start of my actual site-based fieldwork is pushed back at least a month. Mid-to-late February. And I'm supposed to graduate in May? Present to the symposium in April? Interesting position to be in, to say the least. And distressing. So I was thinking about this, and about my options, about how I handle working under pressure, and I was just starting an email to someone I hope will help me when one of my favorite Art Edders walked into the computer lab where I work. J is always incredibly kind and cheerful, even when she's very stressed out about her own thesis work, and she's a good listener and a great commiserat...er. No. Commissar? Nope. One who commiserates. Talking with her always improves my outlook on the whole thesis situation, and today was no exception.
By the time J left, I had declared my intentions to send three emails, write one blog post, and investigate one organization and one art education/author. So far I'm at one sent email, one discarded email, one in-progress blog post, and one organization investigation, and that's more than I've been able to do/focus on in... well, it feels like a really long time. What a boost!
Throughout this time, I've been thinking about why it is that sometimes all I really need is to hear from a supportive peer, "It's not a breeze for me either. I have doubts, too." Does it nudge my senses of pride and competition awake? Maybe sometimes, but that's not really It. There's just something about having a person with whom I can be honest about my failures and my fear of Failure that helps to set in motion at least some little part of me that's been paralyzed by those things. Perhaps it feels more like I wrap myself up tight in a plaster cast, every inch of me encased except my eye, ears, and mouth, and then I try to walk around like nothing's different, like I'm still totally capable of doing yoga or building snowmen or carrying all my groceries into the house in one trip... But I'm not totally capable, and instead i just bump into things and gripe about how hard it is! How incapacitated I feel! Paralyzed! And woooe! Sometimes I can realize what I've done and snap out of it, and that's worthwhile and fulfilling, but sometimes I need more help, even when I don't know it exactly, and then it's so wonderful for somebody to stumble in with cast saw, maybe even one they didn't know they were carrying.
That metaphor got a little out of hand, but I think it does the job. I need to be more honest and more focused and figure out how to figure some things out. I'll post again soon touching on other sticking points. Thanks, J.
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