Trevor Gustafson
Revised essay
Eng 101 c
From the youngest baby, crying for attention, to the oldest senior sitting lonely in a nursing home; from the nun locked away in a convent in the coldest section of Siberia, to the glamorous pop star on T.V; from the country redneck, to the city hillbilly, All have one thing in common: they have dreams aspirations and longings. These dreams may not always be easy to fulfill, and the dreamer may choose not to fulfill them, but everyone has dreams. I, too, have a dream. I want to become an architect. An architect is a person who talks with a client; finds there needs; and designs a building for the client. I am enthralled by the concept of having an enormous idea in my head, drawing it, and having it built. One thing I like about the career of architecture is the many different facets involved with the job. There’s sitting down and talking with the client, there’s drawing the blueprints and there’s visiting the construction site to make sure everything is going as planned. I like a job that has varied work environments instead of the same things day after day. The biggest reason I am attracted to architecture, however, is probably my love for buildings. I am attracted to buildings. I honestly have no idea why, but for as long as I can remember, architecture has fascinated me. I love seeing building from the time the foundation is poured to the time the building is one-thousand years old. My parents dread when we drive by an interesting building because I always glue my face to the window to see out, thus leaving breathe prints on the window. Whenever I walk into a building and notice a floor plan on the wall, I am drawn like a magnet to the plan. Those who are with me think I belong in a mental institute; I mean who actually reads those building maps? I do. I don’t know why. I just do. When I go to a museum I tend to be more fascinated by things such as the way the walls meet the ceiling than I am with the exhibits. Sometimes my interests seem extremely weird, even to me. Do I get this interest from a parent, grandparent, aunt, uncle, or a family friend? I don’t personally know anyone who is an architect. So where did this passion come from?I might possibly have inherited this passion from my grandpa. He was a carpenter. However I can’t really remember ever seeing him do much carpentry work. Could it be that interest is inherited? I don’t know. But I don’t want to become a carpenter because I couldn’t stand working out in the rain that we so often get here in beautiful Washington State. I hate being out in the rain. There is nothing more irritating than having to be outside, getting soaked. Buildings were initially built for the sole purpose of keeping out the elements. Maybe I love architecture because I dislike the elements so much. My love of buildings, however, does not in any way keep me tucked inside all day. I am an outdoors person. Hiking, backpacking, and biking are some of my favorite activities. I just like doing these activities when it’s not raining. Out of all the possible reasons that I might have gained this desire to design buildings, I believe the foremost reason I have been given this desire is because God gave it to me. God uses some desires to show me what he wants me to do. God has given me many gifts. One of those gifts I believe is architecture. The gifts God has given me should be used wisely. I don’t want to waste a gift. However I have been given many gifts. Which one should I utilize as a career? Another gift I believe I have been given is the gift of music. I have played the violin for more than half my life. Does God want me to bless others through a career as a musician, or with the gift of architecture? I can also use my gifts besides in a career form. I enjoy playing old-time music at senior homes with my band. There are some gifts that can be used as a hobby instead of as a career. I don’t love absolutely everything involved in architecture. For one thing it takes a ton of school to even become an architect. The pay is also not the greatest. However I still believe that I want to become an architect. I have considered doing another job. I imagine going to work day after day after day and wondering what if? What if I had become an architect? What would I be doing right now? For me, being content in an occupation is more important than having a career that provides a vacation to the Bahamas, a Ferrari, and an eight thousand square foot house. I know that there are many people who would rather take the money and settle for a job that they’re not content with, but that’s not how I am. Contentedness in a career is also worth a lot of work to me. I am willing to go through the five plus years of school required for me to become a licensed architect. I don’t really like school, but I am willing to make sacrifices in order to become an architect. I could take a different occupation besides architecture. There are plenty of other occupations with similar qualities as architecture. Manufacturing, for example, designs and sees things built, but I am not attracted to manufacturing. I love buildings. I could become a general contractor, but I hate the rain. There are many occupations with similar aspects as architecture, but none that I know of are as appealing as architecture. I am open to different ideas. I have taken on-line career assessments, but for the record those are messed up. No I do not wish to become a nuclear engineer. Someone I have talked with about the idea of becoming an architect is local architect, Michael Smith, who works at Zervus Group architects. I believe that it is important to get the advice of others before making a big decision such as what occupation to explore. I asked Michael about what all is involved in becoming an architect, what school to go to, and what classes to take at community college to prepare for a transfer degree. We also discussed his latest project, Bayview Tower, the twenty-tree story condominium planned for downtown Bellingham. Michael is in charge of coordinating all the designers involved on the project. Just to hear him talk about this awesome project made me more exited to become an architect.
Just like everyone else, I have an aspiration. It is not a perfect aspiration, nor will it be easy to fulfill, but I feel that it is worth a little work to reap the rewards of an occupation that I am exited about. I believe that the pros for following this dream will outweigh the cons. Not everyone will feel that way about their dreams, but I do.
Friday, December 7, 2007
Revised essay
Following My Dream
Trevor Gustafson
[Intro]
An architect is a person who talks with a client; finds there needs, and designs a building for the client. I am enthralled by the concept of having an enormous idea in my head, drawing it, and having it built. One thing I like about the career of architecture is the many different faces involved with the job. There’s sitting down and talking with the client, there’s drawing the blueprints and there’s visiting the construction site to make sure everything is going as planned. I like a job that has varied work environments instead of the same things day after day. The biggest reason I am attracted to architecture, however, is probably my love for buildings.
I am attracted to buildings. I honestly have no idea why, but for as long as I can remember, architecture has fascinated me. I love seeing building from the time the foundation is poured to the time the building is one-hounded years old I love buildings. My parents dread when we drive by an interesting building because I always glue my face to the window to see out, thus leaving breathe prints on the window. Whenever I walk into a building and notice a floor plan on the wall, I am drawn like a magnet to the plan. Those who are with me think I belong in a mental institute; I mean who actually reads those building maps? I do. I don’t know why. I just do. When I go to a museum I tend to be more fascinated by things such as the way the walls meet the ceiling than I am with the exhibits. Sometimes my interests seem extremely weird, even to me.
Do I get this passion from a parent, grandparent, aunt, uncle, or a family friend? I don’t personally know anyone who is an architect. So where did this passion come from?
I might possibly have inherited this passion from my grandpa. He was a carpenter. However I can’t really remember ever seeing him do much carpentry work. Could it be that passion is inherited? I don’t know. But I don’t want to become a carpenter because I couldn’t stand working out in the rain that we so often get here in beautiful Washington State.
I hate being out in the rain. There is nothing more irritating than having to be outside, getting soaked. Buildings were initially built for the sole purpose of keeping out the elements. Maybe I love architecture because I dislike the elements so much. My love of buildings however does not in any way keep me tucked inside all day. I am an outdoors person. Hiking, backpacking, and biking are some of my favorite activities. I just like doing these activities when it’s not raining.
Out of all the possible reasons that I might have gained this desire to design buildings, I believe the foremost reason I have been given this desire is because God gave it to me. God uses some desires to show me what he wants me to do. God has given me many gifts. One of those gifts I believe is architecture. The gifts God has given me should be used wisely. I don’t want to waste a gift. However I have been given many gifts. Which one should I utilize as a career? Another gift I believe I have been given is the gift of music. I have played the violin for more than half my life. Does God want me to bless others through a career as a musician, or with the gift of architecture? I can also use my gifts besides in a career form. I enjoy playing old-time music at senior homes with my band. There are some gifts that can be used as a hobby instead of as a career.
I don’t love absolutely everything involved in architecture. For one thing it takes a ton of school to even become an architect. The pay is also not the greatest. However I still believe that I want to become an architect. I have considered doing another job. I imagine going to work day after day after day and wondering what if? What if I had become an architect? What would I be doing right now? To me being content in an occupation is more important than having a career that provides a vacation to the Bahamas, a Ferrari, and an eight thousand square foot house. I know that there are many people who would rather take the money and settle for a job that there not exited about, but that’s not how I am. Contentedness in a career is also worth a lot of work to me. I am willing to go through the five years of school required for me to become an architect. I don’t really like school, but I am willing to make sacrifices in order to become an architect.
I could take a different occupation besides architecture. There are plenty of other occupations with similar qualities as architecture. Manufacturing, for example, designs and sees things built, but I am not attracted to manufacturing. I love buildings. Why not become a general contractor? Because I hate the rain. There are many occupations with similar aspects as architecture, but none that I know of are as appealing as architecture. I am open to different ideas. I have taken on-line career assessments, but for the record those are messed up. No I do not wish to become a nuclear engineer.
Someone I have talked with about the idea of becoming an architect is local architect, Michael Smith, who works at Zervus Group architects. I asked him about what all is involved in becoming an architect, what school to go to, and what classes to take at community college to prepare for a transfer degree. We also discussed his latest project, Bayview Tower, the twenty-tree story condominium planned for downtown Bellingham. Michael is in charge of coordinating all the designers involved on the project. Just to hear him talk about this awesome project was an encouragement to become an architect.
Closing
Trevor Gustafson
[Intro]
An architect is a person who talks with a client; finds there needs, and designs a building for the client. I am enthralled by the concept of having an enormous idea in my head, drawing it, and having it built. One thing I like about the career of architecture is the many different faces involved with the job. There’s sitting down and talking with the client, there’s drawing the blueprints and there’s visiting the construction site to make sure everything is going as planned. I like a job that has varied work environments instead of the same things day after day. The biggest reason I am attracted to architecture, however, is probably my love for buildings.
I am attracted to buildings. I honestly have no idea why, but for as long as I can remember, architecture has fascinated me. I love seeing building from the time the foundation is poured to the time the building is one-hounded years old I love buildings. My parents dread when we drive by an interesting building because I always glue my face to the window to see out, thus leaving breathe prints on the window. Whenever I walk into a building and notice a floor plan on the wall, I am drawn like a magnet to the plan. Those who are with me think I belong in a mental institute; I mean who actually reads those building maps? I do. I don’t know why. I just do. When I go to a museum I tend to be more fascinated by things such as the way the walls meet the ceiling than I am with the exhibits. Sometimes my interests seem extremely weird, even to me.
Do I get this passion from a parent, grandparent, aunt, uncle, or a family friend? I don’t personally know anyone who is an architect. So where did this passion come from?
I might possibly have inherited this passion from my grandpa. He was a carpenter. However I can’t really remember ever seeing him do much carpentry work. Could it be that passion is inherited? I don’t know. But I don’t want to become a carpenter because I couldn’t stand working out in the rain that we so often get here in beautiful Washington State.
I hate being out in the rain. There is nothing more irritating than having to be outside, getting soaked. Buildings were initially built for the sole purpose of keeping out the elements. Maybe I love architecture because I dislike the elements so much. My love of buildings however does not in any way keep me tucked inside all day. I am an outdoors person. Hiking, backpacking, and biking are some of my favorite activities. I just like doing these activities when it’s not raining.
Out of all the possible reasons that I might have gained this desire to design buildings, I believe the foremost reason I have been given this desire is because God gave it to me. God uses some desires to show me what he wants me to do. God has given me many gifts. One of those gifts I believe is architecture. The gifts God has given me should be used wisely. I don’t want to waste a gift. However I have been given many gifts. Which one should I utilize as a career? Another gift I believe I have been given is the gift of music. I have played the violin for more than half my life. Does God want me to bless others through a career as a musician, or with the gift of architecture? I can also use my gifts besides in a career form. I enjoy playing old-time music at senior homes with my band. There are some gifts that can be used as a hobby instead of as a career.
I don’t love absolutely everything involved in architecture. For one thing it takes a ton of school to even become an architect. The pay is also not the greatest. However I still believe that I want to become an architect. I have considered doing another job. I imagine going to work day after day after day and wondering what if? What if I had become an architect? What would I be doing right now? To me being content in an occupation is more important than having a career that provides a vacation to the Bahamas, a Ferrari, and an eight thousand square foot house. I know that there are many people who would rather take the money and settle for a job that there not exited about, but that’s not how I am. Contentedness in a career is also worth a lot of work to me. I am willing to go through the five years of school required for me to become an architect. I don’t really like school, but I am willing to make sacrifices in order to become an architect.
I could take a different occupation besides architecture. There are plenty of other occupations with similar qualities as architecture. Manufacturing, for example, designs and sees things built, but I am not attracted to manufacturing. I love buildings. Why not become a general contractor? Because I hate the rain. There are many occupations with similar aspects as architecture, but none that I know of are as appealing as architecture. I am open to different ideas. I have taken on-line career assessments, but for the record those are messed up. No I do not wish to become a nuclear engineer.
Someone I have talked with about the idea of becoming an architect is local architect, Michael Smith, who works at Zervus Group architects. I asked him about what all is involved in becoming an architect, what school to go to, and what classes to take at community college to prepare for a transfer degree. We also discussed his latest project, Bayview Tower, the twenty-tree story condominium planned for downtown Bellingham. Michael is in charge of coordinating all the designers involved on the project. Just to hear him talk about this awesome project was an encouragement to become an architect.
Closing
Monday, December 3, 2007
The Tight rope between bias and interest
The Tight rope between bias and interest
Trevor Gustafson
To me, what makes a good essay? Whether it is an essay that I have read, or an essay that I have written, to me a good essay is one that is on a subject of interest to me, and is also presented in a convincing, minimally-biased way. That can be hard. Interest quite often creates biasness. But it is when I walk that tight rope between interest and bias that I feel that my writing and my understanding of what I read is the best.
This class has helped me see that preconceived ideas can cause bias against something that I have read when I may not really disagree with it. One way I form a bias for or against an essay is through a preconceived idea from what the author said somewhere else. In his essay, The Owl Has Flown, Sven Birkerts writes that “wisdom has nothing to do with the gathering or organizing of facts.” In answer to this essay I wrote a reading response which is a short, informal writing in which the author critically examines the points presented in an essay. In this reading response [artifact A] I stated that I assumed throughout the rest of the essay that Birkerts was saying that no facts are helpful for gaining wisdom. However, now, looking back on the essay, I believe that Birkerts may have been saying that it’s not just the amount of facts that we gather, but also the quality of the facts that makes us wise. I also believe that the quality of facts is more important than the abundance of facts. While Birkerts and I might disagree on several things, we may not disagree on quite as much as I assumed we did at first.
Sometimes my preconceived ideas cause me to believe that the author is speaking against a subject when all along he is just making his readers aware of a subject. In his essay, The Loss of the Creature, Walker Percy examines expectations. In my reading response [artifact B] I stated that I believed that he was saying that all expectations are bad, but now I believe that he might have been more trying to make his readers aware of expectations then proving them wrong. I think he did still have a slight bias against expectations, but he probably wasn’t as against it as I had thought him to be.
Are there times when pre-conceived ideas are good? Sure there are. My worldview is a preconceived idea. Without a worldview, I would be wandering blindly without knowing what to believe. My worldview is what creates passion for a subject. I have a great passion for architecture so that’s what I wrote about in my personal analytical essay. A personal analytical essay is an essay where the writer gets to tackle a subject of great interest to him and discuss it from his or her own perspective. In my original essay I chose to talk about trying to decide weather being an architect was worth the challenges, but after I turned in my essay I chose to revise my essay into only talking about the pros and cons of the occupation instead of the pros and cons of getting into the occupation. I love writing about what I am passionate about, but sometimes I have a problem putting passion into an essay without making it biased. What is biasness and why is it bad in an essay? Biasness is the lack of coherent thought. It is the ignoring of facts from the other side. I may believe that the reasons for becoming an architect outweigh the reasons not to become one, but there are also those reasons for the other side. To ignore the reasons for the other side, and even say that they don’t exist, causes my readers to believe that I am not smart enough to see that there are two sides to every coin. Biasness causes me to abandon reasoning of both sides of the evidence for ranting about why my side is right and the other side is wrong. It quite often leaves out important facts and illustrations. Susan Willis once wrote an essay entitled Disney World in which she took a very biased opinion against consumerism and in so doing left out many key examples to back her claims. In my reading response to this essay [artifact C] I made it clear that the author had lost my respect. Biasness will cause my readers to loose faith in my ability to be trusted as a thinker.
This class has taught me is to find a balance in-between interest and biasness. I realize now that maybe I let my bias get in the way of understanding what the author is trying to say, and it can also cause me to write a one sided paper. Why is finding the balance important? Because to tackle a subject of no interest to me will be boring and the result will be boring. However to tackle a subject that I am passionate about, but allow biasness to get in the way of clear reasoning will turn out unconvincing. It is important to harness interest into examining all the facts not just spouting out my opinion. The readers will loose interest either because I am not interested in the subject as a whole, or because I am not willing to be interested in addressing the other side. When I loose the interest of my readers, what good is an essay?
How do I find the balance in between biasness and passion? Do I? Unfortunately not always. This is a work in progress in my life, but I am now more aware of it. In my reading response to Willis’s Disney World [artifact c], I ranted against, of all things, ranting. However this class has helped me make progress in this area. In my personal analytical essay [artifact D] I gave a two cited argument about becoming an architect. I did show the readers why I thought the pros outweighed the cons, but along the way I also mentioned the cons and the reasons I thought the pros outweighed the cons. I now realize that to rationally discuss all the evidence is far more convincing than dogmatically stating my view. This does not compromise my views; rather it allows me to share them in a far more convincing manner. Walking that tight rope between biasness and passion makes for a far better essay.
Trevor Gustafson
To me, what makes a good essay? Whether it is an essay that I have read, or an essay that I have written, to me a good essay is one that is on a subject of interest to me, and is also presented in a convincing, minimally-biased way. That can be hard. Interest quite often creates biasness. But it is when I walk that tight rope between interest and bias that I feel that my writing and my understanding of what I read is the best.
This class has helped me see that preconceived ideas can cause bias against something that I have read when I may not really disagree with it. One way I form a bias for or against an essay is through a preconceived idea from what the author said somewhere else. In his essay, The Owl Has Flown, Sven Birkerts writes that “wisdom has nothing to do with the gathering or organizing of facts.” In answer to this essay I wrote a reading response which is a short, informal writing in which the author critically examines the points presented in an essay. In this reading response [artifact A] I stated that I assumed throughout the rest of the essay that Birkerts was saying that no facts are helpful for gaining wisdom. However, now, looking back on the essay, I believe that Birkerts may have been saying that it’s not just the amount of facts that we gather, but also the quality of the facts that makes us wise. I also believe that the quality of facts is more important than the abundance of facts. While Birkerts and I might disagree on several things, we may not disagree on quite as much as I assumed we did at first.
Sometimes my preconceived ideas cause me to believe that the author is speaking against a subject when all along he is just making his readers aware of a subject. In his essay, The Loss of the Creature, Walker Percy examines expectations. In my reading response [artifact B] I stated that I believed that he was saying that all expectations are bad, but now I believe that he might have been more trying to make his readers aware of expectations then proving them wrong. I think he did still have a slight bias against expectations, but he probably wasn’t as against it as I had thought him to be.
Are there times when pre-conceived ideas are good? Sure there are. My worldview is a preconceived idea. Without a worldview, I would be wandering blindly without knowing what to believe. My worldview is what creates passion for a subject. I have a great passion for architecture so that’s what I wrote about in my personal analytical essay. A personal analytical essay is an essay where the writer gets to tackle a subject of great interest to him and discuss it from his or her own perspective. In my original essay I chose to talk about trying to decide weather being an architect was worth the challenges, but after I turned in my essay I chose to revise my essay into only talking about the pros and cons of the occupation instead of the pros and cons of getting into the occupation. I love writing about what I am passionate about, but sometimes I have a problem putting passion into an essay without making it biased. What is biasness and why is it bad in an essay? Biasness is the lack of coherent thought. It is the ignoring of facts from the other side. I may believe that the reasons for becoming an architect outweigh the reasons not to become one, but there are also those reasons for the other side. To ignore the reasons for the other side, and even say that they don’t exist, causes my readers to believe that I am not smart enough to see that there are two sides to every coin. Biasness causes me to abandon reasoning of both sides of the evidence for ranting about why my side is right and the other side is wrong. It quite often leaves out important facts and illustrations. Susan Willis once wrote an essay entitled Disney World in which she took a very biased opinion against consumerism and in so doing left out many key examples to back her claims. In my reading response to this essay [artifact C] I made it clear that the author had lost my respect. Biasness will cause my readers to loose faith in my ability to be trusted as a thinker.
This class has taught me is to find a balance in-between interest and biasness. I realize now that maybe I let my bias get in the way of understanding what the author is trying to say, and it can also cause me to write a one sided paper. Why is finding the balance important? Because to tackle a subject of no interest to me will be boring and the result will be boring. However to tackle a subject that I am passionate about, but allow biasness to get in the way of clear reasoning will turn out unconvincing. It is important to harness interest into examining all the facts not just spouting out my opinion. The readers will loose interest either because I am not interested in the subject as a whole, or because I am not willing to be interested in addressing the other side. When I loose the interest of my readers, what good is an essay?
How do I find the balance in between biasness and passion? Do I? Unfortunately not always. This is a work in progress in my life, but I am now more aware of it. In my reading response to Willis’s Disney World [artifact c], I ranted against, of all things, ranting. However this class has helped me make progress in this area. In my personal analytical essay [artifact D] I gave a two cited argument about becoming an architect. I did show the readers why I thought the pros outweighed the cons, but along the way I also mentioned the cons and the reasons I thought the pros outweighed the cons. I now realize that to rationally discuss all the evidence is far more convincing than dogmatically stating my view. This does not compromise my views; rather it allows me to share them in a far more convincing manner. Walking that tight rope between biasness and passion makes for a far better essay.
Friday, November 30, 2007
Following My Dreams
I sit here all alone on a park bench on this chilly, November day with the bitter northeasterly wind biting at my face. Normally I might have noticed the pealing green paint on the bench, the lady from two apartments down out briskly walking her handsomely trimmed golden retriever, and the children playing together on the playground. However today I just sit here thinking back on the last seven and a half years. What had gone wrong? Had I not studied enough? Is there something wrong with me? Should I try again, or just give up? The last nearly third of my life I have spent studying for nothing. I remember nights studying until, exhausted, I fell asleep at my desk. I remember not being able to go on outings because I had assignments to finish. Now what am I to do? Should I study for another occupation? Do I just settle for a blue collar job? Life seems so unfair. Then I hear a sound. It is not the sound of children playing or of dogs barking. No. This is a different sound, one all too familiar. It is the bringer of fear into my tired, weary bones. With a start I wake, then lazily roll over and hit the snooze button.
Like every other person on the planet, I have a dream. My dream is to become an architect. Having recognized this dream, my parents encourage me to pursue it. However, many goliath sized obstacles lie in the way of becoming a licensed architect. Will I be able to conquer these giant sized obstacles, or will I waste precious years of my life chasing after the wind? This is a question I ask myself day and night.
For as long as I can remember, architecture has fascinated me. I am enthralled by the concept of having an enormous idea in my head, drawing it, and having it built. That is not to say the job of an architect is an easy one, but to me it seems extremely gratifying. Do I get this passion from a parent, grandparent, aunt, uncle, or a family friend? No person I know is an architect. In fact, my parents have unknowingly somewhat aggravated my architectural passions. My parents are extremely practical people; we have dreadfully little design elements in our home. Everything must have a “purpose.” While I love my parents incredibly, I believe architecture should be artistic. It seems no human has influence my architectural interests.
My love of building does not in any way keep me tucked inside all day. I am an outdoors person. Hiking, backpacking, and biking are some of my favorite activities. I believe buildings should showcase pieces of nature. Cedar, stone, and bamboo, are the best building materials in the world. What I do not love, and down right despise, is the elements. There is nothing more irritating than having to be outside, getting soaked in the rain. Buildings were initially built for the sole purpose of keeping out the elements. Maybe I love architecture because I dislike the elements so much. Maybe it is the art form I love. Maybe I love architecture because I love creating things. Maybe, but where do my desires truly come from?
My desires are placed there by God. God uses some of them to show me what he wants me to do. My highest concern throughout this decision making process is to follow God’s will.
God has given me many gifts, one of which is architecture. The gifts God has given me should be used wisely. I don’t want to waste a gift, but since I have been given many gifts, which ones should I utilize in my career? What about my gift of music? I have played the violin for over ten years. Does God want me to bless others through a career as a musician, or with the gift of architecture? Can I use my gifts besides in a career form? I enjoy playing old-time music at senior homes with my band. Should I utilize my musical gifts in this way, or as a career? I wish I knew.
There are plenty of other occupations with similar qualities as architecture. Manufacturing, for example, designs and sees things built, but I am not attracted to manufacturing. For some reason I am attracted to buildings. I honestly have no idea why. My parents dread when we drive by an interesting building because I always glue my face to the window to see out, thus leaving breathe prints on the window. Whenever I walk into a building and notice a floor plan on the wall, I am drawn like a magnate to the plan. Those who are with me think I belong in a mental institute; I mean who actually reads those building maps? I do. I don’t know why. I just do. Once, while visiting a friend in the hospital, I became fascinated by the hospital’s architecture. What normal person notices the architecture in a hospital? I do. Or how about when I go to a museum and am more fascinated by the way the walls meet the ceiling than I am with the exhibits. Sometimes my interests seem extremely weird, even to me.
When I consider career choices, money is not a big deciding factor for me. Sure I want a sweet car, the grandest house on the block, and a dream vacation every summer to Hawaii just like every other American, but being at a job where I belong is more important to me than money. When I am on my death bed, will I remember the car I bought in 2013? I think it was a mustang. Or was it a minivan? It won’t matter. What will matter is how I have left this world. Is it a better or a worse place? Have I used my gifts wisely or poorly? At least to me, happiness is not obtained through a large pay check, but rather through serving others in ways I am gifted.
A gift seldom comes completely naturally. It must first be taught and challenged before it can be utilized. The road to learning how to properly use my gift of architecture is not an easy one. I must attend seven and a half years of college, but I will not know until part way through my schooling whether or not I will be able to finish my degree. Then, if I am able to complete my seemingly endless years at college, I must find a place to apprentice at. After serving a minimum of two years there, I must study for, and then take a gruelingly long test to become a licensed architect. However, it is not just one test for the entire nation. I must take a different test for every state I wish to be licensed in. These are just the major challenges I am aware of on my path of learning. I shiver to think of what small obstacles are lying, waiting to ensnare me.
Every time I start to fear about my future career I say to myself, “So self, what else could you do as an occupation besides architecture?” Every answer self has given me, I have rejected. I imagine going to work day after day after day and wondering what if? What if I had overcome my fears? What if I had gone to school and gotten my degree? What if someone had hired me and I could be fulfilling my dream of designing buildings right now? What if? However as many times as I say this, something, somewhere deep in my stomach says, “But what if by the time you finish school, you decide you don’t want to be an architect? What if no one will hire you?” Thus the inward battle rages on.
Fear stems from a loss of certainty about the future. The future is unclear; anything could happen. I want to be in charge of everything and I want to know what will happen. The cold truth of life is I will never know what tomorrow may bring. I know God is in control of whatever happens, but I feel as if studying for nothing is wasted time. All those years could have been spent doing something instead of stressing myself over learning information never to be used again.
When confronted with a life changing choice, I should not try to make a decision without consulting others. My parents have more life experience than me and are thus able to give helpful and wise advice. I know they have my best interest in mind and they will always love me. They have given me lots of wise counsel about priorities in life. Is money or fulfillment better? God’s will or mine?
Another person I have consulted is local architect, Michael Smith, who works at Zervus Group architects. I asked him about what all is involved in becoming an architect. Now I might have discovered a major part of architecture I dislike, or downright despise. Michael may have been able to tell me of some other occupation I should pursue. However talking with him actually gave the opposite result; it encouraged me towards become an architect. Michael also gave me advice on what schools firms look at to hire from. If I had not sought advice, I might have ended up going to a bad school.
So what am I going to do? On the one hand, all the clues seem to be pointing to becoming an architect, but on the other hand, could my fears be for a reason? I don’t want to waste so much of my life pursuing a dream only to see it fade into the black abyss of impossibility. What if I can’t get into the school? What If I can’t pass the licensing exam? What if I can’t get hired? As the time approaches to when I must make my decision whether I am going to transfer to the Washington State University’s school of architecture or not, I am sure of one thing: God will provide.
Like every other person on the planet, I have a dream. My dream is to become an architect. Having recognized this dream, my parents encourage me to pursue it. However, many goliath sized obstacles lie in the way of becoming a licensed architect. Will I be able to conquer these giant sized obstacles, or will I waste precious years of my life chasing after the wind? This is a question I ask myself day and night.
For as long as I can remember, architecture has fascinated me. I am enthralled by the concept of having an enormous idea in my head, drawing it, and having it built. That is not to say the job of an architect is an easy one, but to me it seems extremely gratifying. Do I get this passion from a parent, grandparent, aunt, uncle, or a family friend? No person I know is an architect. In fact, my parents have unknowingly somewhat aggravated my architectural passions. My parents are extremely practical people; we have dreadfully little design elements in our home. Everything must have a “purpose.” While I love my parents incredibly, I believe architecture should be artistic. It seems no human has influence my architectural interests.
My love of building does not in any way keep me tucked inside all day. I am an outdoors person. Hiking, backpacking, and biking are some of my favorite activities. I believe buildings should showcase pieces of nature. Cedar, stone, and bamboo, are the best building materials in the world. What I do not love, and down right despise, is the elements. There is nothing more irritating than having to be outside, getting soaked in the rain. Buildings were initially built for the sole purpose of keeping out the elements. Maybe I love architecture because I dislike the elements so much. Maybe it is the art form I love. Maybe I love architecture because I love creating things. Maybe, but where do my desires truly come from?
My desires are placed there by God. God uses some of them to show me what he wants me to do. My highest concern throughout this decision making process is to follow God’s will.
God has given me many gifts, one of which is architecture. The gifts God has given me should be used wisely. I don’t want to waste a gift, but since I have been given many gifts, which ones should I utilize in my career? What about my gift of music? I have played the violin for over ten years. Does God want me to bless others through a career as a musician, or with the gift of architecture? Can I use my gifts besides in a career form? I enjoy playing old-time music at senior homes with my band. Should I utilize my musical gifts in this way, or as a career? I wish I knew.
There are plenty of other occupations with similar qualities as architecture. Manufacturing, for example, designs and sees things built, but I am not attracted to manufacturing. For some reason I am attracted to buildings. I honestly have no idea why. My parents dread when we drive by an interesting building because I always glue my face to the window to see out, thus leaving breathe prints on the window. Whenever I walk into a building and notice a floor plan on the wall, I am drawn like a magnate to the plan. Those who are with me think I belong in a mental institute; I mean who actually reads those building maps? I do. I don’t know why. I just do. Once, while visiting a friend in the hospital, I became fascinated by the hospital’s architecture. What normal person notices the architecture in a hospital? I do. Or how about when I go to a museum and am more fascinated by the way the walls meet the ceiling than I am with the exhibits. Sometimes my interests seem extremely weird, even to me.
When I consider career choices, money is not a big deciding factor for me. Sure I want a sweet car, the grandest house on the block, and a dream vacation every summer to Hawaii just like every other American, but being at a job where I belong is more important to me than money. When I am on my death bed, will I remember the car I bought in 2013? I think it was a mustang. Or was it a minivan? It won’t matter. What will matter is how I have left this world. Is it a better or a worse place? Have I used my gifts wisely or poorly? At least to me, happiness is not obtained through a large pay check, but rather through serving others in ways I am gifted.
A gift seldom comes completely naturally. It must first be taught and challenged before it can be utilized. The road to learning how to properly use my gift of architecture is not an easy one. I must attend seven and a half years of college, but I will not know until part way through my schooling whether or not I will be able to finish my degree. Then, if I am able to complete my seemingly endless years at college, I must find a place to apprentice at. After serving a minimum of two years there, I must study for, and then take a gruelingly long test to become a licensed architect. However, it is not just one test for the entire nation. I must take a different test for every state I wish to be licensed in. These are just the major challenges I am aware of on my path of learning. I shiver to think of what small obstacles are lying, waiting to ensnare me.
Every time I start to fear about my future career I say to myself, “So self, what else could you do as an occupation besides architecture?” Every answer self has given me, I have rejected. I imagine going to work day after day after day and wondering what if? What if I had overcome my fears? What if I had gone to school and gotten my degree? What if someone had hired me and I could be fulfilling my dream of designing buildings right now? What if? However as many times as I say this, something, somewhere deep in my stomach says, “But what if by the time you finish school, you decide you don’t want to be an architect? What if no one will hire you?” Thus the inward battle rages on.
Fear stems from a loss of certainty about the future. The future is unclear; anything could happen. I want to be in charge of everything and I want to know what will happen. The cold truth of life is I will never know what tomorrow may bring. I know God is in control of whatever happens, but I feel as if studying for nothing is wasted time. All those years could have been spent doing something instead of stressing myself over learning information never to be used again.
When confronted with a life changing choice, I should not try to make a decision without consulting others. My parents have more life experience than me and are thus able to give helpful and wise advice. I know they have my best interest in mind and they will always love me. They have given me lots of wise counsel about priorities in life. Is money or fulfillment better? God’s will or mine?
Another person I have consulted is local architect, Michael Smith, who works at Zervus Group architects. I asked him about what all is involved in becoming an architect. Now I might have discovered a major part of architecture I dislike, or downright despise. Michael may have been able to tell me of some other occupation I should pursue. However talking with him actually gave the opposite result; it encouraged me towards become an architect. Michael also gave me advice on what schools firms look at to hire from. If I had not sought advice, I might have ended up going to a bad school.
So what am I going to do? On the one hand, all the clues seem to be pointing to becoming an architect, but on the other hand, could my fears be for a reason? I don’t want to waste so much of my life pursuing a dream only to see it fade into the black abyss of impossibility. What if I can’t get into the school? What If I can’t pass the licensing exam? What if I can’t get hired? As the time approaches to when I must make my decision whether I am going to transfer to the Washington State University’s school of architecture or not, I am sure of one thing: God will provide.
The Tight rope between bias and interest
To me, what makes a good essay? Whether it is an essay that I have written, or an essay I read, to me a good essay is one that is on a subject of interest to me, and is also presented in a convincing, non-biased way. Agreement with the authors point is secondary to me. It is more important that I am interested in the subject then that I agree with the author on everything. However, reading an essay I disagree with does get me riled up, and while that’s fine sometimes, it’s also nice to have the occasional essay that I agree with.
Sometimes what causes bias in an essay is having a preconceived idea about what the author is saying. Sometimes I might have a preconceived idea based on from whom I received the information. Is my teacher a liberal. Chances are she or he is going to give me liberal material that I should “of course” be automatically discarded. The opposite of having a bias against something is believing everything. Since I am conservatively minded when I have a conservative teacher it’s easy to believe that I’m going to agree with everything that the teacher presents. I might not stop to question weather or not I agree with the teacher.
Another way I form a bias for or against an essay is through a preconceived idea from what the author said somewhere else. When in his essay, The Owl Has Flown, Sven Birkerts writes that “wisdom has nothing to do with the gathering or organizing of facts” I assumed throughout the rest of the essay that he was saying that no facts are helpful for gaining wisdom, but now looking back on the essay I believe that Birkerts may have been saying that it’s not just the amount of facts that we gather, but also the quality of the facts. While Birkerts and I might disagree on several things, we may not disagree on quite as much as I assumed we did at first.
Do I avoid biasness in my writings? Not as much as I wish I did. Several times in my reading responses I have slammed the author when I really agreed with him or her on several issues. Sometimes my preconceived biasness causes me to believe that the author was speaking against a subject when all along he is just making his readers aware of a subject. In his essay, The Loss of the Creature, Walker Percy examines expectations. I believed that he was saying that all expectations are bad when in fact he might have been more trying to make us aware of them then proving them to be wrong. I think he did still have a slight tend against expectations, but he probably wasn’t as against it as I had thought him to be.
What is biasness and why is it wrong in an essay? Biasness is the lack of coherent thought. It is the ignoring of facts of the other side. I may believe that the reasons to believe one side of an argument outweigh the reasons on the other side, but there are almost always those reasons for the other side. To ignore the reasons for the other side, and even say that they don’t exist, causes me to loose credit with my readers. My readers start believing that I am not smart enough to see that there are two sides to every coin. Biasness causes a person to abandon reasoning of both sides of the evidence for ranting about why your side is right and the other side is wrong. It quite often leaves out important facts and illustrations such as was true in Disney World. Biasness will cause my readers to loose faith in my ability to be trusted as a thinker.
Why do I need to pick a subject that I am interested in to write about? Because other wise the essay will turn out very uninteresting. I have lots of friends who are extremely into sports, but I could probably only name three or four Mariners and even fewer Seahawks. I’m sure my friends could write an excellent paper on sports. However if I tried to write a paper on sports it would turn out horribly because I’m not interested in sports. I know that there once was a baseball player nick-named Babe Ruth – on what team and at what position he played I have no idea. Moreover I don’t care to have any idea. Now what would an essay I wrote on a subject I had no idea about and had very little desire to know anything about look like? Pretty darn bad. There would be no soul. It would probably be a list of boring facts that I found in research books. Now who wants to read a bunch of boring facts? No one. So that’s why it’s important to write about something that I’m interested in. I really enjoyed the personal analytical essay a lot because it allowed me to talk about two subjects of interest to me – architecture and my future.
One thing that this class has taught me is to find a balance in-between interest and biasness. Why is finding the balance important? Because an essay written on a subject of no interest to me will turn out retched. However an essay written on a subject that I am passionate about, but was written in a biased way will also turn out unconvincing. It is important to harness interest into examining all the facts not just spouting out my opinion. The readers will loose interest either because I am not interested in the subject as a whole, or because I am not willing to be interested in addressing the other side. When I loose the interest of my readers, what good is an essay?
How do I find the balance in between biasness and passion? Do I? Unfortunately not always. In my reading response to Susan Willis’s Disney World, I ranted against, of all things, ranting. Given the opportunity, I normally don’t have a problem with writing on a subject of interest to me. However sometimes I do have a hard time calmly discussing both sides of the argument and rationally showing the reader how it is that I came to my conclusion about the subject. I now realize that to rationally discuss all the evidence is far more convincing than dogmatically stating my view. This does not compromise my views, rather it allows me to share them in a far more convincing manner. And that makes it a far better essay.
Sometimes what causes bias in an essay is having a preconceived idea about what the author is saying. Sometimes I might have a preconceived idea based on from whom I received the information. Is my teacher a liberal. Chances are she or he is going to give me liberal material that I should “of course” be automatically discarded. The opposite of having a bias against something is believing everything. Since I am conservatively minded when I have a conservative teacher it’s easy to believe that I’m going to agree with everything that the teacher presents. I might not stop to question weather or not I agree with the teacher.
Another way I form a bias for or against an essay is through a preconceived idea from what the author said somewhere else. When in his essay, The Owl Has Flown, Sven Birkerts writes that “wisdom has nothing to do with the gathering or organizing of facts” I assumed throughout the rest of the essay that he was saying that no facts are helpful for gaining wisdom, but now looking back on the essay I believe that Birkerts may have been saying that it’s not just the amount of facts that we gather, but also the quality of the facts. While Birkerts and I might disagree on several things, we may not disagree on quite as much as I assumed we did at first.
Do I avoid biasness in my writings? Not as much as I wish I did. Several times in my reading responses I have slammed the author when I really agreed with him or her on several issues. Sometimes my preconceived biasness causes me to believe that the author was speaking against a subject when all along he is just making his readers aware of a subject. In his essay, The Loss of the Creature, Walker Percy examines expectations. I believed that he was saying that all expectations are bad when in fact he might have been more trying to make us aware of them then proving them to be wrong. I think he did still have a slight tend against expectations, but he probably wasn’t as against it as I had thought him to be.
What is biasness and why is it wrong in an essay? Biasness is the lack of coherent thought. It is the ignoring of facts of the other side. I may believe that the reasons to believe one side of an argument outweigh the reasons on the other side, but there are almost always those reasons for the other side. To ignore the reasons for the other side, and even say that they don’t exist, causes me to loose credit with my readers. My readers start believing that I am not smart enough to see that there are two sides to every coin. Biasness causes a person to abandon reasoning of both sides of the evidence for ranting about why your side is right and the other side is wrong. It quite often leaves out important facts and illustrations such as was true in Disney World. Biasness will cause my readers to loose faith in my ability to be trusted as a thinker.
Why do I need to pick a subject that I am interested in to write about? Because other wise the essay will turn out very uninteresting. I have lots of friends who are extremely into sports, but I could probably only name three or four Mariners and even fewer Seahawks. I’m sure my friends could write an excellent paper on sports. However if I tried to write a paper on sports it would turn out horribly because I’m not interested in sports. I know that there once was a baseball player nick-named Babe Ruth – on what team and at what position he played I have no idea. Moreover I don’t care to have any idea. Now what would an essay I wrote on a subject I had no idea about and had very little desire to know anything about look like? Pretty darn bad. There would be no soul. It would probably be a list of boring facts that I found in research books. Now who wants to read a bunch of boring facts? No one. So that’s why it’s important to write about something that I’m interested in. I really enjoyed the personal analytical essay a lot because it allowed me to talk about two subjects of interest to me – architecture and my future.
One thing that this class has taught me is to find a balance in-between interest and biasness. Why is finding the balance important? Because an essay written on a subject of no interest to me will turn out retched. However an essay written on a subject that I am passionate about, but was written in a biased way will also turn out unconvincing. It is important to harness interest into examining all the facts not just spouting out my opinion. The readers will loose interest either because I am not interested in the subject as a whole, or because I am not willing to be interested in addressing the other side. When I loose the interest of my readers, what good is an essay?
How do I find the balance in between biasness and passion? Do I? Unfortunately not always. In my reading response to Susan Willis’s Disney World, I ranted against, of all things, ranting. Given the opportunity, I normally don’t have a problem with writing on a subject of interest to me. However sometimes I do have a hard time calmly discussing both sides of the argument and rationally showing the reader how it is that I came to my conclusion about the subject. I now realize that to rationally discuss all the evidence is far more convincing than dogmatically stating my view. This does not compromise my views, rather it allows me to share them in a far more convincing manner. And that makes it a far better essay.
Monday, November 19, 2007
The Visionless
The Visionless
By Trevor Gustafson
At the mere age of one and a half, Helen Keller contracted a severe case of scarlet fever which left her both blind and deaf. Her future looked incredibly dismal. What could she accomplish? Instead of feeling sorry for herself for the rest of her life, however, Helen decided to take action. Not only did she become famous as the first blinddeaf person to graduate from college, but she also became a strong advocate for other blind people. However, it took obtaining a vision and much work before she could accomplish this. All of us have dreams and visions, even those who are blind. Never the less, not everyone uses this gift. Sometimes we just accept the way that things are and choose not to notice the pain and grief all around us. Just like Helen, however, we can depart from the darkness of inaction and arrive in the bright sunlight of taking action. It is here, in the sunlight, that we have vision. Not of what our world is, but of what it can be.
Helen Keller was a spoiled child who got whatever she pleased. If she wanted ice-cream for supper, her mother gave her ice-cream. She was never punished for being disobedient or even hitting her nanny. This type of behavior would, of course, never be acceptable when Helen became an adult. Life is not full of people waiting to serve us. With the help of her tutor, Ann Sullivan, Helen realized that if she wanted to excel, she would have to work at it herself. Like Helen, we can take charge of our own lives and do something about our own predicaments. We don’t have to be lazy people who expect our parents, the government, or anyone else to do everything for us. There are some people, however, who don’t have the ability to help themselves. In her essay, In Plato’s cave, Susan Sontag describes this type of person when she mentions a photograph of “a naked South Vietnamese child just sprayed by American napalm, running down a highway toward the camera” (476). This child’s situation was out of his or her control. To say that this child should help his or herself would be absurd. Someone should obviously help this poor child. What did the photographer do? Nothing. He was more interested in capturing a photograph than in saving or, at the very least, comforting a human life. Like the photographer, it is very easy for us to become inactive. Why do we become inactive to our own problems and the problems of others? Because we become desensitized into seeing what our world is instead of what it can be.
Where does desensitization come from? It comes from many places. The photographer in Sontag’s essay was possibly desensitized by visions of how much money he could make selling this photograph. Possibly he became desensitized to believing that it was better for him to make a political statement than to save a human life. Possibly he had become desensitized because he had seen so much pain at war already. There are many possible reasons that this photographer become desensitized, but it is not helpful to dwell on an incident that took place thirty-five years ago. What about today? There are many ways that we become desensitized to pain and grief. Possibly the most common way we become desensitized is through laziness. We see something that needs change, but instead of taking action we allow thoughts of how comfortable we are and how much pain and work taking action can be to desensitize us to the situation. It would have been easy for Helen to give up on going to school. It was easy for the photographer to do nothing for the child. It’s easy for us to turn a blind eye to a problem that we see. It is easy for anyone to become desensitized
Because the photographer in Sontag’s essay allowed himself to become desensitized to the point where he became more interesting in capturing a photograph than in saving a human life, he became a useless member of society. He cared very little, if any, for the well being of others and thus wouldn’t do a thing for someone else. A person who does nothing is useless. A refrigerator that does not work and does nothing is thrown out. It is useless. Every member of society who does nothing when they could is just like a worthless appliance; they are no good and only take up room on our planet. This is not to say that society members who are physically unable to anything should be discarded, but rather that those who have the ability to take action should. Are we useful like Helen Keller who was proactive in helping not only herself but also the lives of other blind people? Or are we like the photographer that Sontag describes who was unwilling to be proactive? How do we become proactive?
To be proactive, we must first have an interest in learning about ways in which we can be active. Walker Percy examines how our interest level can impact our productivity level. In his essay, The Loss of the Creature, he gives the example of two young people, one in a school laboratory, the other on a beach. Both are presented with a dogfish to be dissected, but Percy claims that the person on the beach has “a great advantage over the… [person] who finds the dogfish on his laboratory desk” (409). Why does the beachgoer have an advantage? Because he is interested in what he is doing; it is not an assignment that must be done. If a teacher were to give a student the choice of doing the laboratory project, most students would probably choose not to do it. However, given the same choose, the child on the beach gladly dissected the fish because he was interested. Just like Percy’s example of the two young people, we must be interested in learning about what needs change before we will set about to change anything. Interest is the opening of our eyes to see the situation. It is the switch that turns on our action.
How can we escape desensitization and become interested? The answer to that question is different for every person. Some people may need to see a different tragedy than they are used to before they will become interested in seeing the pain and grief in and around their own lives. Maybe a trip to a slum in Central or South America will wake these people up. Percy examines this need for change when he states that occasionally “poetry students should find dogfishes on their desks and biology students should find Shakespeare sonnets on their dissecting boards” (413). Just as a student may learn more when exposed to new and different subjects, some people become more passionate about change when exposed to new and different tragedy. There are other people, however, who may need a series of events to slowly reveal the situation to them. In his movie, The Truman Show, director Peter Weir tells the story of Truman who is unknowingly the star of a worldwide televised program. Since Truman was a baby he was put in a controlled world where everyone he had contact with was actors. He thought he was living a normal life, but everything presented to Truman was fake. Slowly, through a series of events, such as stage deficiencies and actor blunders, Truman realized the fakeness of his world. However it took him thirty years. Some people just need more time than others to see something that needs change. There are still other people who may need to see a gigantic disaster before they will become aware of the pain and grief around them. Something like 9-11 may wake these people up. There are many ways that people gain an interest in learning about pain and grief around them.
Why should we want to take action? Because we hope if we help someone else, the favor will be returned? Because we hope we can change our own lives for the better? There is no guarantee that if we take action, someone else will return the favor. There is no guarantee of personal advantage for taking action. Why would Truman want to leave his world? It was all he ever knew. He was content and happy there. However, there was the possibility something more. Something better. There was no guarantee that he would find a better place, but he set out anyway in hopes that he would. Ultimately a mindset of change is a personal decision. No one can be forced to do something they don’t want to and don’t have an interest in.
If we decide that we will be a maker of change, and set out to look for things that need change, what will we see? There are many things that are in our own neighborhoods that can use our assistance. It may not be as drastic as helping a child in Vietnam or escaping from a television show. It may be helping the elderly lady across the street bring in her groceries. It may be talking with a friend who just lost his brother over in Iraq. It might be deciding to quite smoking. To mention all the ways we can make a change would fill books. Every one of us is presented every day with an opportunity to make a change. If we are interested in being an active member of society, we will find those opportunities to take action.
Even though Helen Keller had lost her hearing and eye sight, she had an excellent vision for the world around her. A vision that did not see the way things are, but rather the way they can be. Why can’t we who have good eye sight see the way that things can be? We can, but choosing to see is a personal decision. We all see different things that need change. They may be big or they may be small. If we become desensitized, inactive members of society, we become the ones who cannot see. It is not those who are blind who cannot see, but rather those who refuse to see what can be who are the visionless.
Works Cited
Keller, Helen. The Story of My Life. New York: Doubleday, Page & Company.
Percy, Walker. “The Loss of the Creature.” Making Sense: Essays on Art, Science, and Culture. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. 402-415. 2006.
Sontag, Susan. “In Plato’s Cave.” Making Sense: Essays on Art, Science, and Culture. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. 465-480. 2006.
The Truman Show. Dir. Peter Weir. Perf. Jim Carrey. Paramount. 1998.
By Trevor Gustafson
At the mere age of one and a half, Helen Keller contracted a severe case of scarlet fever which left her both blind and deaf. Her future looked incredibly dismal. What could she accomplish? Instead of feeling sorry for herself for the rest of her life, however, Helen decided to take action. Not only did she become famous as the first blinddeaf person to graduate from college, but she also became a strong advocate for other blind people. However, it took obtaining a vision and much work before she could accomplish this. All of us have dreams and visions, even those who are blind. Never the less, not everyone uses this gift. Sometimes we just accept the way that things are and choose not to notice the pain and grief all around us. Just like Helen, however, we can depart from the darkness of inaction and arrive in the bright sunlight of taking action. It is here, in the sunlight, that we have vision. Not of what our world is, but of what it can be.
Helen Keller was a spoiled child who got whatever she pleased. If she wanted ice-cream for supper, her mother gave her ice-cream. She was never punished for being disobedient or even hitting her nanny. This type of behavior would, of course, never be acceptable when Helen became an adult. Life is not full of people waiting to serve us. With the help of her tutor, Ann Sullivan, Helen realized that if she wanted to excel, she would have to work at it herself. Like Helen, we can take charge of our own lives and do something about our own predicaments. We don’t have to be lazy people who expect our parents, the government, or anyone else to do everything for us. There are some people, however, who don’t have the ability to help themselves. In her essay, In Plato’s cave, Susan Sontag describes this type of person when she mentions a photograph of “a naked South Vietnamese child just sprayed by American napalm, running down a highway toward the camera” (476). This child’s situation was out of his or her control. To say that this child should help his or herself would be absurd. Someone should obviously help this poor child. What did the photographer do? Nothing. He was more interested in capturing a photograph than in saving or, at the very least, comforting a human life. Like the photographer, it is very easy for us to become inactive. Why do we become inactive to our own problems and the problems of others? Because we become desensitized into seeing what our world is instead of what it can be.
Where does desensitization come from? It comes from many places. The photographer in Sontag’s essay was possibly desensitized by visions of how much money he could make selling this photograph. Possibly he became desensitized to believing that it was better for him to make a political statement than to save a human life. Possibly he had become desensitized because he had seen so much pain at war already. There are many possible reasons that this photographer become desensitized, but it is not helpful to dwell on an incident that took place thirty-five years ago. What about today? There are many ways that we become desensitized to pain and grief. Possibly the most common way we become desensitized is through laziness. We see something that needs change, but instead of taking action we allow thoughts of how comfortable we are and how much pain and work taking action can be to desensitize us to the situation. It would have been easy for Helen to give up on going to school. It was easy for the photographer to do nothing for the child. It’s easy for us to turn a blind eye to a problem that we see. It is easy for anyone to become desensitized
Because the photographer in Sontag’s essay allowed himself to become desensitized to the point where he became more interesting in capturing a photograph than in saving a human life, he became a useless member of society. He cared very little, if any, for the well being of others and thus wouldn’t do a thing for someone else. A person who does nothing is useless. A refrigerator that does not work and does nothing is thrown out. It is useless. Every member of society who does nothing when they could is just like a worthless appliance; they are no good and only take up room on our planet. This is not to say that society members who are physically unable to anything should be discarded, but rather that those who have the ability to take action should. Are we useful like Helen Keller who was proactive in helping not only herself but also the lives of other blind people? Or are we like the photographer that Sontag describes who was unwilling to be proactive? How do we become proactive?
To be proactive, we must first have an interest in learning about ways in which we can be active. Walker Percy examines how our interest level can impact our productivity level. In his essay, The Loss of the Creature, he gives the example of two young people, one in a school laboratory, the other on a beach. Both are presented with a dogfish to be dissected, but Percy claims that the person on the beach has “a great advantage over the… [person] who finds the dogfish on his laboratory desk” (409). Why does the beachgoer have an advantage? Because he is interested in what he is doing; it is not an assignment that must be done. If a teacher were to give a student the choice of doing the laboratory project, most students would probably choose not to do it. However, given the same choose, the child on the beach gladly dissected the fish because he was interested. Just like Percy’s example of the two young people, we must be interested in learning about what needs change before we will set about to change anything. Interest is the opening of our eyes to see the situation. It is the switch that turns on our action.
How can we escape desensitization and become interested? The answer to that question is different for every person. Some people may need to see a different tragedy than they are used to before they will become interested in seeing the pain and grief in and around their own lives. Maybe a trip to a slum in Central or South America will wake these people up. Percy examines this need for change when he states that occasionally “poetry students should find dogfishes on their desks and biology students should find Shakespeare sonnets on their dissecting boards” (413). Just as a student may learn more when exposed to new and different subjects, some people become more passionate about change when exposed to new and different tragedy. There are other people, however, who may need a series of events to slowly reveal the situation to them. In his movie, The Truman Show, director Peter Weir tells the story of Truman who is unknowingly the star of a worldwide televised program. Since Truman was a baby he was put in a controlled world where everyone he had contact with was actors. He thought he was living a normal life, but everything presented to Truman was fake. Slowly, through a series of events, such as stage deficiencies and actor blunders, Truman realized the fakeness of his world. However it took him thirty years. Some people just need more time than others to see something that needs change. There are still other people who may need to see a gigantic disaster before they will become aware of the pain and grief around them. Something like 9-11 may wake these people up. There are many ways that people gain an interest in learning about pain and grief around them.
Why should we want to take action? Because we hope if we help someone else, the favor will be returned? Because we hope we can change our own lives for the better? There is no guarantee that if we take action, someone else will return the favor. There is no guarantee of personal advantage for taking action. Why would Truman want to leave his world? It was all he ever knew. He was content and happy there. However, there was the possibility something more. Something better. There was no guarantee that he would find a better place, but he set out anyway in hopes that he would. Ultimately a mindset of change is a personal decision. No one can be forced to do something they don’t want to and don’t have an interest in.
If we decide that we will be a maker of change, and set out to look for things that need change, what will we see? There are many things that are in our own neighborhoods that can use our assistance. It may not be as drastic as helping a child in Vietnam or escaping from a television show. It may be helping the elderly lady across the street bring in her groceries. It may be talking with a friend who just lost his brother over in Iraq. It might be deciding to quite smoking. To mention all the ways we can make a change would fill books. Every one of us is presented every day with an opportunity to make a change. If we are interested in being an active member of society, we will find those opportunities to take action.
Even though Helen Keller had lost her hearing and eye sight, she had an excellent vision for the world around her. A vision that did not see the way things are, but rather the way they can be. Why can’t we who have good eye sight see the way that things can be? We can, but choosing to see is a personal decision. We all see different things that need change. They may be big or they may be small. If we become desensitized, inactive members of society, we become the ones who cannot see. It is not those who are blind who cannot see, but rather those who refuse to see what can be who are the visionless.
Works Cited
Keller, Helen. The Story of My Life. New York: Doubleday, Page & Company.
Percy, Walker. “The Loss of the Creature.” Making Sense: Essays on Art, Science, and Culture. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. 402-415. 2006.
Sontag, Susan. “In Plato’s Cave.” Making Sense: Essays on Art, Science, and Culture. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. 465-480. 2006.
The Truman Show. Dir. Peter Weir. Perf. Jim Carrey. Paramount. 1998.
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
The blind eye
The Visionless
By Trevor Gustafson
Working draft
Helen Keller was born June 27, 1880 as a normal child. She could talk, see, hear, and run like anyone else. However when she was one and a half, she contracted a serious case of scarlet fever. While she recovered from the disease, it left her blind and deaf. One might think, “what can a blind and deaf person do?” Not Helen. Helen became famous as she was the first blinddeaf person to graduate from college, but it took many steps, and much work before she reached that point in her life. It is easy for us to, like Helen, become blind and desensitized to our own world. We fail to notice the pain and evil in our own neighborhoods. Just like Helen, we must take many steps to get from the darkness of inaction, to the bright sunlight of caring for others.
It is important that we realize that we must be the ones to do something about the predicament. If we don’t do anything, chances are no one will. Think about those who don’ have the ability to help themselves. In her essay, “In Plato’s cave,” Susan Sontag describes this type of person when mentions a photograph of “a naked south Vietnamese child just sprayed * American napalm, running down a highway toward the camera.” This child’s situation was obviously out of his or her control. What did the photographer do? Nothing. He was more interested in getting a photograph than in saving or, at the very least, comforting a human life. This photographer had become desensitized to evil and thus to change.
Where does desensitization come from? It comes from many places. The photographer in Sontag’s essay was possibly desensitized by visions of how much money he could make selling this photograph. Possibly he became desensitized to believing that it was better for him to make a political statement than to save a human life. Possibly he had become desensitized because he had seen so much pain at war already. Possibly he became desensitized by laziness. There are many possible ways that this photographer may have become desensitized, but it is not helpful to dwell on an incident that took place thirty-five years ago. What about today? There are many ways that we become desensitized to evil and pain. We can become desensitized by greed, by political agenda, by to much exposure to pain, but possibly the biggest way we become desensitized is through laziness. It is much easier for us to accept that things aren’t the way we want them to be, than it is to do something about changing it. But it is not through easy feats that great things are accomplished. [Keep on tract of talking about desensitization]It would have been easy for Helen to have given up on going to school. It was easy for the photographer to do nothing for the child. It’s easy for us to do nothing. To do nothing is to really turn a blind eye to the situation. If no one took the initiative to stand and do the not so easy thing, our society would change so drastically that it would be unrecognizable from what it is today. Everyone would be forced to fend for themselves. Crime would go up because no one would care to watch over someone else’s stuff while their away. Those who are physically disabled would receive no assistance. All this would happen if we chose to be lazy and not watch out for others.
[why the visionless are so bad]All forms of desensitization are really just forms of inaction. If we become desensitized to the point where we chose to do nothing for others, we become useless members of society. The photographer in Sontag’s essay took no action to save a human life. Because the photographer was more interesting in getting a photograph than in saving a human life, he was a worthless member of society. He cared very little, if any, for the well being of others and thus wouldn’t do anything for anyone else. Someone who does nothing is useless. A refrigerator that doesn’t work and does nothing is thrown out. It is useless. Every member of society who is useless is just like a worthless appliance; it is no good and only takes up room. Are we useful like Helen Keller who was not only proactive in helping change the lives of others by assisting those who were blind? Or are we like the photographer that Sontag describes who was unwilling to be proactive. How is it that we become proactive?
To be proactive, we must first be interested in learning about ways in which we can be active. If we are uninterested, all the learning in the world will do us no good. In his essay, The Loss of the Creature, Walker Percy examines how our interest level can impact our productivity level. He gives the example of two young people, one in a school laboratory, the other on a beach. Both are presented with a dogfish to be dissected, but Percy claims that the person on the beach has “a great advantage over the… [person] who finds the dogfish on his laboratory desk.” [409] Why does the beachgoer have an advantage? Because he is interested in what he is doing; it is not an assignment that must be done. If a teacher were to give a student the chose of doing the laboratory project, most students would probably choose not to do it. However, given the same choose, the child on the beach will gladly dissect the fish because he is interested. Just like Percy’s example of the two young people, we must be interested in learning about what needs change before we will set about to change anything. If we are uninterested, we will likely never lift a finger to help others. Interest is vital. We must want to learn about our world before we can change it.
[Interest is the opening of ones eyes]How is it that we become interested? The answer to that question is different for every person. Other people will need to see a different tragedy than they are used to. Maybe a trip to a slum in central or South America will wake these people up. Percy discusses the need for change. He argues that “poetry students should [occasionally] find dogfishes on their desks and biology students should find Shakespeare sonnets on their dissecting boards.”[413] It is so easy to become desensitized to the evil and pain right around us that sometimes it takes seeing a different evil or pain to make us realize that we are living in the midst of pain and evil. Still other people may need a series of events to slowly show them the truth. In his movie, The Truman Show, director Peter Weir tells the story of Truman who is unknowingly the star of a worldwide televised program. Since Truman was a baby he was put in a controlled world where everyone he had contact with was actors. He thought he was living a normal life, but everything presented to Truman was fake. Slowly, through a series of events, such as stage deficiencies and actor blunders, Truman realized that his world was fake. However it took him thirty years to realize it. Some people just need more time than others to receive a passion for helping others. Some people may need to see a gigantic disaster before they will become aware of the evil in their own backyard. Something like 9-11 will wake these people up. There are many ways that people realize that there are others in need of help. It is not important how they come to this realization, but merely that they do.
When we open our eyes to see the evils around us, what will we see? There are many things that are in our own neighborhoods that can use our assistance. It may not be as drastic as someone starving on the street. It may be watching a single ladies kids for an hour after school until she is able to get off work. It may be helping the old lady across the street bring in her groceries. It may be sitting and talking with a friend who just lost his brother over in Iraq. Every one of us is presented every day with an opportunity to serve. To mention all the ways a person can help those in his or her own neighborhood could fill books. It doesn’t matter in which way we help, only that we help.
Ultimately a mindset of service is a personal decision. No one can be forced to care. There are hundreds of ads out there vying for people’s attention for a worthy cause. But ultimately it is up to the individual to make the decision that he or she will serve the community instead of being a useless member of society. What means he serves in, or to what capacity does not have as much affect as that he or she merely serves. Once one person starts to serve, the idea will catch on. It only takes one person to be the start of a movement. Will you help start that movement? Will you actively serve your community?
[Tie in Helen Keller and the truly visionless]
By Trevor Gustafson
Working draft
Helen Keller was born June 27, 1880 as a normal child. She could talk, see, hear, and run like anyone else. However when she was one and a half, she contracted a serious case of scarlet fever. While she recovered from the disease, it left her blind and deaf. One might think, “what can a blind and deaf person do?” Not Helen. Helen became famous as she was the first blinddeaf person to graduate from college, but it took many steps, and much work before she reached that point in her life. It is easy for us to, like Helen, become blind and desensitized to our own world. We fail to notice the pain and evil in our own neighborhoods. Just like Helen, we must take many steps to get from the darkness of inaction, to the bright sunlight of caring for others.
It is important that we realize that we must be the ones to do something about the predicament. If we don’t do anything, chances are no one will. Think about those who don’ have the ability to help themselves. In her essay, “In Plato’s cave,” Susan Sontag describes this type of person when mentions a photograph of “a naked south Vietnamese child just sprayed * American napalm, running down a highway toward the camera.” This child’s situation was obviously out of his or her control. What did the photographer do? Nothing. He was more interested in getting a photograph than in saving or, at the very least, comforting a human life. This photographer had become desensitized to evil and thus to change.
Where does desensitization come from? It comes from many places. The photographer in Sontag’s essay was possibly desensitized by visions of how much money he could make selling this photograph. Possibly he became desensitized to believing that it was better for him to make a political statement than to save a human life. Possibly he had become desensitized because he had seen so much pain at war already. Possibly he became desensitized by laziness. There are many possible ways that this photographer may have become desensitized, but it is not helpful to dwell on an incident that took place thirty-five years ago. What about today? There are many ways that we become desensitized to evil and pain. We can become desensitized by greed, by political agenda, by to much exposure to pain, but possibly the biggest way we become desensitized is through laziness. It is much easier for us to accept that things aren’t the way we want them to be, than it is to do something about changing it. But it is not through easy feats that great things are accomplished. [Keep on tract of talking about desensitization]It would have been easy for Helen to have given up on going to school. It was easy for the photographer to do nothing for the child. It’s easy for us to do nothing. To do nothing is to really turn a blind eye to the situation. If no one took the initiative to stand and do the not so easy thing, our society would change so drastically that it would be unrecognizable from what it is today. Everyone would be forced to fend for themselves. Crime would go up because no one would care to watch over someone else’s stuff while their away. Those who are physically disabled would receive no assistance. All this would happen if we chose to be lazy and not watch out for others.
[why the visionless are so bad]All forms of desensitization are really just forms of inaction. If we become desensitized to the point where we chose to do nothing for others, we become useless members of society. The photographer in Sontag’s essay took no action to save a human life. Because the photographer was more interesting in getting a photograph than in saving a human life, he was a worthless member of society. He cared very little, if any, for the well being of others and thus wouldn’t do anything for anyone else. Someone who does nothing is useless. A refrigerator that doesn’t work and does nothing is thrown out. It is useless. Every member of society who is useless is just like a worthless appliance; it is no good and only takes up room. Are we useful like Helen Keller who was not only proactive in helping change the lives of others by assisting those who were blind? Or are we like the photographer that Sontag describes who was unwilling to be proactive. How is it that we become proactive?
To be proactive, we must first be interested in learning about ways in which we can be active. If we are uninterested, all the learning in the world will do us no good. In his essay, The Loss of the Creature, Walker Percy examines how our interest level can impact our productivity level. He gives the example of two young people, one in a school laboratory, the other on a beach. Both are presented with a dogfish to be dissected, but Percy claims that the person on the beach has “a great advantage over the… [person] who finds the dogfish on his laboratory desk.” [409] Why does the beachgoer have an advantage? Because he is interested in what he is doing; it is not an assignment that must be done. If a teacher were to give a student the chose of doing the laboratory project, most students would probably choose not to do it. However, given the same choose, the child on the beach will gladly dissect the fish because he is interested. Just like Percy’s example of the two young people, we must be interested in learning about what needs change before we will set about to change anything. If we are uninterested, we will likely never lift a finger to help others. Interest is vital. We must want to learn about our world before we can change it.
[Interest is the opening of ones eyes]How is it that we become interested? The answer to that question is different for every person. Other people will need to see a different tragedy than they are used to. Maybe a trip to a slum in central or South America will wake these people up. Percy discusses the need for change. He argues that “poetry students should [occasionally] find dogfishes on their desks and biology students should find Shakespeare sonnets on their dissecting boards.”[413] It is so easy to become desensitized to the evil and pain right around us that sometimes it takes seeing a different evil or pain to make us realize that we are living in the midst of pain and evil. Still other people may need a series of events to slowly show them the truth. In his movie, The Truman Show, director Peter Weir tells the story of Truman who is unknowingly the star of a worldwide televised program. Since Truman was a baby he was put in a controlled world where everyone he had contact with was actors. He thought he was living a normal life, but everything presented to Truman was fake. Slowly, through a series of events, such as stage deficiencies and actor blunders, Truman realized that his world was fake. However it took him thirty years to realize it. Some people just need more time than others to receive a passion for helping others. Some people may need to see a gigantic disaster before they will become aware of the evil in their own backyard. Something like 9-11 will wake these people up. There are many ways that people realize that there are others in need of help. It is not important how they come to this realization, but merely that they do.
When we open our eyes to see the evils around us, what will we see? There are many things that are in our own neighborhoods that can use our assistance. It may not be as drastic as someone starving on the street. It may be watching a single ladies kids for an hour after school until she is able to get off work. It may be helping the old lady across the street bring in her groceries. It may be sitting and talking with a friend who just lost his brother over in Iraq. Every one of us is presented every day with an opportunity to serve. To mention all the ways a person can help those in his or her own neighborhood could fill books. It doesn’t matter in which way we help, only that we help.
Ultimately a mindset of service is a personal decision. No one can be forced to care. There are hundreds of ads out there vying for people’s attention for a worthy cause. But ultimately it is up to the individual to make the decision that he or she will serve the community instead of being a useless member of society. What means he serves in, or to what capacity does not have as much affect as that he or she merely serves. Once one person starts to serve, the idea will catch on. It only takes one person to be the start of a movement. Will you help start that movement? Will you actively serve your community?
[Tie in Helen Keller and the truly visionless]
Friday, November 2, 2007
Helen keller #2
Vision is a gift that all of us have been given. Even those who are blind can see. I am not talking about eye sight explicitly, but rather any contact with the world around us. Even Helen Keller, a girl who was both blind and deaf, had contact with the world around her. Sure she could not see the things around her, or hear the people around her, but she could still paint a picture in her mind of her world. She could still make assumptions, true or false. She could still long for something better. All of these things she could do, the same, or even better than you and me.
Helen Keller was born June 27 1880 as a normal child. She could talk, see, hear, and run like anyone else. However when she was one and a half, she contracted a serious case of scarlet feaver. While she recovered from the desease, it left her blind and deaf. However, it wasn’t until quite a while after her desease that Helen realized that she was different than other people. She realized that while she had to make gestures to communicate, other just had to misteriously move their mouthes and they could communicate with each other.
In her essay, In Platos Cave, Susan Sontag tells of how we can become desensitized to the world around us. She tells how just like Helen accepted her blindness as normal at first, it is easy for us to accept the evils in our world as normal. Sontag talks about how people would become desensitized to pictures of the Vietnam War. [read section and expount] Even now, we can look back a the horable things that happen at war and just brush them off as the past. Only once we shake ourselves and realize the tradgedy can we do anything about our perdicament. This is what Helen Keller did, but first she had to change her perspective and see how life works.
Helen Keller was a spoiled kid. From her perspective the world revolved around her. If she wanted bread for supper, her mother gave her bread. She was never punished for being disobedient and even kicking and hittin her nanny. When her teacher, Ann Sulivan came, the first thing she had to teach Keller was that the world didn’t live to serve her. If she wanted to excell, she would have to work towards it herself. Of course there would be people who loved her and would help her, bu it was ultimately up to keller, to make her dreams and visions happen.
Because Helen was not able to communicate in the traditional sense with other people, does that mean that she was a victim to believe anything that anyone told her. I would say she wasn’t. In fact, when Sullivan came to teach her, Helen had to choose that she was going to learn. She had the choice as to whether she was going to learn or not. Because of her disability, no one could force Helen to learn. She had more of a choice than we do what sources she would take in. For us, even when were in line at the grocery store, we might somehow glance at a magazine in the magazine rack and to influenced by the cover on that Magazine. Helen Keller did not have that dilemma. She had almost complete control over the sources presented to her.
Erin McGraw has a similar story that she tells in her essay, Bad Eyes. McGraw had a deteriorating eye-sight problem. Without her glasses she could hardly see a thing. Unlike Keler, however, she started relying on other to be her eyes. [examples]
Helen Keller was born June 27 1880 as a normal child. She could talk, see, hear, and run like anyone else. However when she was one and a half, she contracted a serious case of scarlet feaver. While she recovered from the desease, it left her blind and deaf. However, it wasn’t until quite a while after her desease that Helen realized that she was different than other people. She realized that while she had to make gestures to communicate, other just had to misteriously move their mouthes and they could communicate with each other.
In her essay, In Platos Cave, Susan Sontag tells of how we can become desensitized to the world around us. She tells how just like Helen accepted her blindness as normal at first, it is easy for us to accept the evils in our world as normal. Sontag talks about how people would become desensitized to pictures of the Vietnam War. [read section and expount] Even now, we can look back a the horable things that happen at war and just brush them off as the past. Only once we shake ourselves and realize the tradgedy can we do anything about our perdicament. This is what Helen Keller did, but first she had to change her perspective and see how life works.
Helen Keller was a spoiled kid. From her perspective the world revolved around her. If she wanted bread for supper, her mother gave her bread. She was never punished for being disobedient and even kicking and hittin her nanny. When her teacher, Ann Sulivan came, the first thing she had to teach Keller was that the world didn’t live to serve her. If she wanted to excell, she would have to work towards it herself. Of course there would be people who loved her and would help her, bu it was ultimately up to keller, to make her dreams and visions happen.
Because Helen was not able to communicate in the traditional sense with other people, does that mean that she was a victim to believe anything that anyone told her. I would say she wasn’t. In fact, when Sullivan came to teach her, Helen had to choose that she was going to learn. She had the choice as to whether she was going to learn or not. Because of her disability, no one could force Helen to learn. She had more of a choice than we do what sources she would take in. For us, even when were in line at the grocery store, we might somehow glance at a magazine in the magazine rack and to influenced by the cover on that Magazine. Helen Keller did not have that dilemma. She had almost complete control over the sources presented to her.
Erin McGraw has a similar story that she tells in her essay, Bad Eyes. McGraw had a deteriorating eye-sight problem. Without her glasses she could hardly see a thing. Unlike Keler, however, she started relying on other to be her eyes. [examples]
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
The Way I See It
The way I see it
A very rough first draft
By Trevor Gustafson
Vision is a gift that all of us have been given. Even those who are blind can see. I am not talking about eye sight explicitly, but rather any contact with the world around us. Even Helen Keller, a girl who was both blind and deaf, had contact with the world around her. Sure she could not see the things around her, or hear the people around her, but she could still paint a picture in her mind of her world. She could still make assumptions, true or false. She could still long for something better. All of these things she could do, just like you and me.
The clearness of our vision is based on our perspective. If we can only see part of the picture, we will not have a good idea of what the picture says. There is an old Far East Indian folk tail of six blind men who see an elephant. Of course since they are blind, they do not see with their eyes, but rather with their hands. One of the six touched the elephant’s leg. Because of this he thought that an elephant was tall and round like a pillar. The second man felt the tail. He felt that what he was holding was long and flexible like a rope. The third man felt the trunk. He assumed that the elephant was like a branch of a tree. The fourth man felt the elephants enormous ear. He assumed that the ear must be like a fan. Feeling the tusks, the fifth man assumed that an elephant is like a solid pipe. The six man, feeling the belly, assumed that an elephant is like a wall. All these men were right: an elephant is like all these things, but all these things are only portions of an elephant.
Several religions have taken examples like this story to far and have said that since there are many truths as to what an elephant is like, there are also many truths in life so we should accept that others have a different belief system than us. The problem with that is that when the men felt the different parts of the elephant, the parts didn’t contradict each other; they were just many different parts of the same item. However some people believe that beliefs that contradict each other can both be true. This can never be. Water cannot be both hot and cold. A room cannot be both light and dark.
Just like not seeing the whole picture, another thing that will deter our vision is preconceived ideas. Preconceived ideas are not all bad by any means. Some preconceived ideas can speed our process of seeing the picture. If we start fixing the car knowing what sound we heard before the car broke down, we can find and fix the problem faster. Other preconceived ideas can deter us from seeing the picture. Most of us have probably had experiences when we either misjudged others or were misjudged ourselves. We see a man with grubby clothes and we assume he’s poor. That may not be the case. There are a multitude of reasons someone could be wearing grubby clothes, but our brains have bee programmed to believe that grubby clothes are a sign of poorness. We have been talking a lot about preconceived ideas in my art class. When we draw an apple do we draw a perfect little circle with the stem sticking out and the one little leaf? Or do we include the chunk bitten out, the way it’s a little crooked, and the two leaves? The idea in art class has been to get away from preconceived ideas about what an apple should look like, and draw what’s really there. Just like in drawing, we shouldn’t jump to conclusions, but should examine the facts of what is really there.
Why is it we like the perfect little apple without the teeth marks and bruises? It’s because we long for a perfect world. We long for the fairy land world where no one tells lies, no one gets hurt, and everything goes the way we planned. Can we look to any place on earth where that is happening? No we can’t. Not even the rich have a fairy land world. The rich are never satisfied, they always want more. As the MasterCard commercial says, “there are some things money can’t buy.” One of those things is the perfect world.
Sometimes what jumbles our vision is not seeing only part of the picture or even having preconceived ideas about the picture, but rather an outright refusal to believe or take in what we see. As a person who enjoys photography, I have had many situations when I have seen “the perfect shot,” gotten out my camera, gotten ready to set up the picture only to realize there was a humongous tree in the centre of my view. Had the tree not been there before? Of course it had been there, but I had refused to accept its existence. Had my eyes literally passed over the tree? Of course not. This reminds me of how Erin McGraw in her essay Bad Eyes shares how she married someone only to have the marriage go south. She tells how even before the marriage, she took little pleasure in being around her fiancé. Her friends tried to point this out to her, but she refused to listen. The result was a failed marriage.
Sometimes we refuse to see things because we have become immune to them. We have been desensitized. When we see in the news that Britney Spears had yet another breakup, do we get shocked that this woman could take relationship so nonchalantly, or do we just brush it off as another crazy celebrity? When we see pictures of a horrible crime on the late night news, do we think about how terrible it is, or just brush it off as another news item? The more we are confronted with evil, the more immune we become to it. Recently our family watched the 1963 classic horror film, “The Birds.” Now I have not watched many horror films at all, but this classic seamed tame compared to the bits and pieces of the modern day horror films I have seen.
Not only can we become desensitized to evil, but we can also become desensitized to change. When we see a tragedy on the news, we want to help. When we saw footage of the devastation in New Orleans, many people wanted to help. But as time wore on, and stations began playing the same footage over and over again, people became desensitized. No longer was this a tragedy, it was now a news story.
Why do we become desensitized? Why do we just accept? Because we have lost a grasp of the picture. We feel that our dream of a perfect society can never come about. And indeed there will never be a perfect society on this earth, human kind is too wicked for that, but there can be change. Unfortunately we allow other things to influence us and tell us that the way things are is the way things are. If children are dying from aids in Africa that’s just the way it is. If we have a problem with an addiction that’s just the way it is. When we allow things to influence us like this, we put on their glasses of seeing the world and abandon our own eyes. We shouldn’t see our world just the way others see it, but with our own eyes. With our own dreams. With our own goals.
At what point do we see the entire picture clearly? At no point on this earth can we see the entire picture. We can never understand why everything in this world happens the way it does. When we live life, it’s like we’re standing right in front of a picture the size of a football field. There is no way we can see the whole picture. Only once we have died will everything be revealed. But here on earth we have a tool that enables us to see the big picture. That tool is the Bible. It acts as a mirror showing us the picture of life. However even with this mirror, everything is not revealed. We still don’t know why God allows bad things to happen to good people. Or many other mysterious things about God, but the bible does give us insight for life on earth.
A very rough first draft
By Trevor Gustafson
Vision is a gift that all of us have been given. Even those who are blind can see. I am not talking about eye sight explicitly, but rather any contact with the world around us. Even Helen Keller, a girl who was both blind and deaf, had contact with the world around her. Sure she could not see the things around her, or hear the people around her, but she could still paint a picture in her mind of her world. She could still make assumptions, true or false. She could still long for something better. All of these things she could do, just like you and me.
The clearness of our vision is based on our perspective. If we can only see part of the picture, we will not have a good idea of what the picture says. There is an old Far East Indian folk tail of six blind men who see an elephant. Of course since they are blind, they do not see with their eyes, but rather with their hands. One of the six touched the elephant’s leg. Because of this he thought that an elephant was tall and round like a pillar. The second man felt the tail. He felt that what he was holding was long and flexible like a rope. The third man felt the trunk. He assumed that the elephant was like a branch of a tree. The fourth man felt the elephants enormous ear. He assumed that the ear must be like a fan. Feeling the tusks, the fifth man assumed that an elephant is like a solid pipe. The six man, feeling the belly, assumed that an elephant is like a wall. All these men were right: an elephant is like all these things, but all these things are only portions of an elephant.
Several religions have taken examples like this story to far and have said that since there are many truths as to what an elephant is like, there are also many truths in life so we should accept that others have a different belief system than us. The problem with that is that when the men felt the different parts of the elephant, the parts didn’t contradict each other; they were just many different parts of the same item. However some people believe that beliefs that contradict each other can both be true. This can never be. Water cannot be both hot and cold. A room cannot be both light and dark.
Just like not seeing the whole picture, another thing that will deter our vision is preconceived ideas. Preconceived ideas are not all bad by any means. Some preconceived ideas can speed our process of seeing the picture. If we start fixing the car knowing what sound we heard before the car broke down, we can find and fix the problem faster. Other preconceived ideas can deter us from seeing the picture. Most of us have probably had experiences when we either misjudged others or were misjudged ourselves. We see a man with grubby clothes and we assume he’s poor. That may not be the case. There are a multitude of reasons someone could be wearing grubby clothes, but our brains have bee programmed to believe that grubby clothes are a sign of poorness. We have been talking a lot about preconceived ideas in my art class. When we draw an apple do we draw a perfect little circle with the stem sticking out and the one little leaf? Or do we include the chunk bitten out, the way it’s a little crooked, and the two leaves? The idea in art class has been to get away from preconceived ideas about what an apple should look like, and draw what’s really there. Just like in drawing, we shouldn’t jump to conclusions, but should examine the facts of what is really there.
Why is it we like the perfect little apple without the teeth marks and bruises? It’s because we long for a perfect world. We long for the fairy land world where no one tells lies, no one gets hurt, and everything goes the way we planned. Can we look to any place on earth where that is happening? No we can’t. Not even the rich have a fairy land world. The rich are never satisfied, they always want more. As the MasterCard commercial says, “there are some things money can’t buy.” One of those things is the perfect world.
Sometimes what jumbles our vision is not seeing only part of the picture or even having preconceived ideas about the picture, but rather an outright refusal to believe or take in what we see. As a person who enjoys photography, I have had many situations when I have seen “the perfect shot,” gotten out my camera, gotten ready to set up the picture only to realize there was a humongous tree in the centre of my view. Had the tree not been there before? Of course it had been there, but I had refused to accept its existence. Had my eyes literally passed over the tree? Of course not. This reminds me of how Erin McGraw in her essay Bad Eyes shares how she married someone only to have the marriage go south. She tells how even before the marriage, she took little pleasure in being around her fiancé. Her friends tried to point this out to her, but she refused to listen. The result was a failed marriage.
Sometimes we refuse to see things because we have become immune to them. We have been desensitized. When we see in the news that Britney Spears had yet another breakup, do we get shocked that this woman could take relationship so nonchalantly, or do we just brush it off as another crazy celebrity? When we see pictures of a horrible crime on the late night news, do we think about how terrible it is, or just brush it off as another news item? The more we are confronted with evil, the more immune we become to it. Recently our family watched the 1963 classic horror film, “The Birds.” Now I have not watched many horror films at all, but this classic seamed tame compared to the bits and pieces of the modern day horror films I have seen.
Not only can we become desensitized to evil, but we can also become desensitized to change. When we see a tragedy on the news, we want to help. When we saw footage of the devastation in New Orleans, many people wanted to help. But as time wore on, and stations began playing the same footage over and over again, people became desensitized. No longer was this a tragedy, it was now a news story.
Why do we become desensitized? Why do we just accept? Because we have lost a grasp of the picture. We feel that our dream of a perfect society can never come about. And indeed there will never be a perfect society on this earth, human kind is too wicked for that, but there can be change. Unfortunately we allow other things to influence us and tell us that the way things are is the way things are. If children are dying from aids in Africa that’s just the way it is. If we have a problem with an addiction that’s just the way it is. When we allow things to influence us like this, we put on their glasses of seeing the world and abandon our own eyes. We shouldn’t see our world just the way others see it, but with our own eyes. With our own dreams. With our own goals.
At what point do we see the entire picture clearly? At no point on this earth can we see the entire picture. We can never understand why everything in this world happens the way it does. When we live life, it’s like we’re standing right in front of a picture the size of a football field. There is no way we can see the whole picture. Only once we have died will everything be revealed. But here on earth we have a tool that enables us to see the big picture. That tool is the Bible. It acts as a mirror showing us the picture of life. However even with this mirror, everything is not revealed. We still don’t know why God allows bad things to happen to good people. Or many other mysterious things about God, but the bible does give us insight for life on earth.
Friday, October 26, 2007
The loss of the creature
Trevor Gustafson’s response to
The Loss of the Creature by Walker Percy
My knuckles tighten instinctively onto the seat in front of me as I stare out the van windows. On one side of our van is a near vertical drop, on the other a near vertical cliff. If I strain my neck just so, I can see the corn rows hundreds of feet bellow. However going over a cliff is only one of my concerns right now. We are in the back woods of Guatemala. When I say backwoods, I mean backwoods. We are on our way to Honduras, to visit Copan, the ancient Mayan runes. Our tour guide had said that the quickest way to Honduras would be to take this road over the mountain. Ha. Road. More like a muddy path through some of the pretties, yet unseen parts off Guatemala. There is definitely a reason it is unseen. We hardly notice the beauty of the mountain scenery. What we do notice is the police car escorting us to make sure we make it over just fine. But as mother so helpfully pointed out, not all police in Guatemala are good guys. “These guys could be just prodding us out in the middle of nowhere so they can rob us,” said mom with a laugh. No one else was able to see the humor in that. “You know this is just like that scene on Romancing the Stone.” Thanks mom. That’s exactly what I need to hear right now. Romancing the stone, the movie where the main character, novelist Joan Wilder, gets a phone call that her sister is being held hostage in Columbia. So this big city girl [with her high heals on of course] sets out to find her sister. She gets lost, robbed, and has many other incredible adventures in the jungles of South America. Right now, being like Joan Wilder doesn’t sound like to much fun
I actually do like taking vacations off the beaten path. Like our Guatemala trip, it can be scary at times, but I think it’s quite rewarding. However I know many people who aren’t so adventurous. They have there one vacation spot and they go to that spot every vacation. This sounds boring to me, but to others, this is what they are familiar with, and are thus comfortable with. Like me you might ask, “But are these people really having fun on their trip?” I actually believe they are. Maybe some of the kids would like something a bit more adventurous, but the parents [the ones who have final say on where the family goes for the vacation] are perfectly fine with the old and well known.
When I say that I am the type of person who likes off the beaten trail adventures, that doesn’t mean that I don’t like “normal” vacations. Normal vacations are more relaxing than off the beaten trail ones. Everything is presented to you in a package. No deciding what to do and what not to do. No wondering what will give you the best experience, everything is given to you. I don’t think every vacation needs to be a wild Joan Wilder traipsing through the jungle experience.
It’s amazing how we live our lives in comparison to media. Part of our every day vocabulary consists of quoting movies. I definitely agree with the author that when we view something famous, we judge our experience against what we had known or scene about the place beforehand. I believe this might tie into the essay, In Plato’s Cave, a little. We take photos of everything to try and convince ourselves that what we are seeing is as good as what others have scene. However we can take this a step back. When read a book before seeing the movie, we will almost always dislike the movie. Why? Because it didn’t meat our expectations. We had envisioned the main character as being blond and blue eyed instead of having hazel eyes and red hair as depicted in the movie. You see it is not just media that “runes” things for us. Anything can be ruined when we make expectations of it.
So is it bad to have expectations? Certainly not. Life as we know it would not exist without expectations. When you go to the restaurant you have expectations of what your service should be like. Parents have expectations of their children. Everyone has expectations of who they want to date. Walker Percy seams to look down on expectation, but in fact there is a bright side to them. Sometimes our reality can exceed our expectations. Maybe this happens more rarely then our expectations being let down, but that just makes the instances that are better than our expectations even more rewarding.
The Loss of the Creature by Walker Percy
My knuckles tighten instinctively onto the seat in front of me as I stare out the van windows. On one side of our van is a near vertical drop, on the other a near vertical cliff. If I strain my neck just so, I can see the corn rows hundreds of feet bellow. However going over a cliff is only one of my concerns right now. We are in the back woods of Guatemala. When I say backwoods, I mean backwoods. We are on our way to Honduras, to visit Copan, the ancient Mayan runes. Our tour guide had said that the quickest way to Honduras would be to take this road over the mountain. Ha. Road. More like a muddy path through some of the pretties, yet unseen parts off Guatemala. There is definitely a reason it is unseen. We hardly notice the beauty of the mountain scenery. What we do notice is the police car escorting us to make sure we make it over just fine. But as mother so helpfully pointed out, not all police in Guatemala are good guys. “These guys could be just prodding us out in the middle of nowhere so they can rob us,” said mom with a laugh. No one else was able to see the humor in that. “You know this is just like that scene on Romancing the Stone.” Thanks mom. That’s exactly what I need to hear right now. Romancing the stone, the movie where the main character, novelist Joan Wilder, gets a phone call that her sister is being held hostage in Columbia. So this big city girl [with her high heals on of course] sets out to find her sister. She gets lost, robbed, and has many other incredible adventures in the jungles of South America. Right now, being like Joan Wilder doesn’t sound like to much fun
I actually do like taking vacations off the beaten path. Like our Guatemala trip, it can be scary at times, but I think it’s quite rewarding. However I know many people who aren’t so adventurous. They have there one vacation spot and they go to that spot every vacation. This sounds boring to me, but to others, this is what they are familiar with, and are thus comfortable with. Like me you might ask, “But are these people really having fun on their trip?” I actually believe they are. Maybe some of the kids would like something a bit more adventurous, but the parents [the ones who have final say on where the family goes for the vacation] are perfectly fine with the old and well known.
When I say that I am the type of person who likes off the beaten trail adventures, that doesn’t mean that I don’t like “normal” vacations. Normal vacations are more relaxing than off the beaten trail ones. Everything is presented to you in a package. No deciding what to do and what not to do. No wondering what will give you the best experience, everything is given to you. I don’t think every vacation needs to be a wild Joan Wilder traipsing through the jungle experience.
It’s amazing how we live our lives in comparison to media. Part of our every day vocabulary consists of quoting movies. I definitely agree with the author that when we view something famous, we judge our experience against what we had known or scene about the place beforehand. I believe this might tie into the essay, In Plato’s Cave, a little. We take photos of everything to try and convince ourselves that what we are seeing is as good as what others have scene. However we can take this a step back. When read a book before seeing the movie, we will almost always dislike the movie. Why? Because it didn’t meat our expectations. We had envisioned the main character as being blond and blue eyed instead of having hazel eyes and red hair as depicted in the movie. You see it is not just media that “runes” things for us. Anything can be ruined when we make expectations of it.
So is it bad to have expectations? Certainly not. Life as we know it would not exist without expectations. When you go to the restaurant you have expectations of what your service should be like. Parents have expectations of their children. Everyone has expectations of who they want to date. Walker Percy seams to look down on expectation, but in fact there is a bright side to them. Sometimes our reality can exceed our expectations. Maybe this happens more rarely then our expectations being let down, but that just makes the instances that are better than our expectations even more rewarding.
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
In platos cave
Trevor Gustafson’s response to
In Plato’s Cave by Susan Sontag
I agree yet disagree with Susan Sontag. Photos can be an accurate or an inaccurate depictions of truth. However I do not believe that photos in themselves are a truth of there own. When I say that a photograph is not a truth of its own, I mean that it is not a truth of the item being photographed. It is a truth of itself. That photograph is lying on my table is a truth, but IT is not the table that was being photographed.
With photographs we can have an accurate view of things. Policemen have used them for years to convict criminals. They are accepted as evidence in the court of law. Sometimes a photo can catch a thief in the act of robbery. Sometimes it can prove that the suspect had contact with the victim. Investigators take hundreds of photos at the scene of a murder investigation. They take pictures from every angle and of everything. Photos taken rightly by the hand of a professional can be a very accurate depiction of truth, even the courts agree on this.
Sometimes photographs can inaccurately depict reality. A photographer can choice to make the object he is shooting appear brighter than it is by making the shutter speed slower thus allowing more light in. In this way he can make a scene that would almost disappear into the night’s shadows, visible. A photographer can also choose to make things appear larger than they really are.
Photographs cannot fill in other parts of our memory. For a while a picture of grandma may bring back memories of the deceased grandmother. The picture may remind a person of conversations with grandma, the way grandma spoke, and the even the way Grandma smelt. But after a while, as the person’s memory gets filled with other information, looking at the picture will not bring back the same memories. Had the picture changed? Not at all. You see it was not the picture that was creating these memories, it was the brain.
Sometimes we can look at photographs so much that our brain imagines we were there. We see that picture of ourselves at the family get-together when we were two and we think we can remember the situation. We think we can hear what people are saying, the smells in the room, and even the things that went on before and after the situation. Quit often these “memories” are wrong. Yes we were there, but our brain can’t recall information from that far back. So our brain pretends it knows [don’t laugh at poor Mr. Brain. We all pretend we know stuff we don’t to try and impress others.] The brain makes up information, and we accept it as the truth, even though that may not be an accurate depiction of what really happened.
So we know that photographs are sometimes accurate sometimes not. Sometimes they bring back memories, other times our brain creates inaccurate memories from them. Does an inaccurate photo or an inaccurate memory make the photo a new reality? A new truth? Absolutely not. Though men used to think that the earth was flat, that didn’t mean that it was. Though people in Plato’s cave thought there world consisted of shapes dancing around on the wall, truth is that those shapes were formed by people and a fire behind them.
The author says that photography can’t explain anything. She said that photographs are just like fiction. That is a major exaggeration. Photos can explain a lot. They can explain why dad was never able to get a date during high school. They can explain who robbed the bank. Some of them can be misleading, but that doesn’t mean that all of them should be discarded. Some people can be misleading. They can lie to us and steer us in the wrong directions. But that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t trust anyone. Likewise we shouldn’t discard photographs as useless.
Many times we are given false ideas or beliefs. This doesn’t mean that all our ideas are false. I’m convinced that there is something that I am convinced of that is false. Does that mean I shouldn’t believe in anything? Should I say we can’t know anything? If one person says that he saw the suspect with the victim on the night of the murder yet another witness says he say the witness 200 miles away on same night, can they both be right? No they can’t. You see there is only one truth. It can’t be made up. There can’t be two of them. The only way truth can be changed is with action. If I cut three inches off of the table legs, the truth is that that table will be three inches shorter. However, there is never more than one truth.
In Plato’s Cave by Susan Sontag
I agree yet disagree with Susan Sontag. Photos can be an accurate or an inaccurate depictions of truth. However I do not believe that photos in themselves are a truth of there own. When I say that a photograph is not a truth of its own, I mean that it is not a truth of the item being photographed. It is a truth of itself. That photograph is lying on my table is a truth, but IT is not the table that was being photographed.
With photographs we can have an accurate view of things. Policemen have used them for years to convict criminals. They are accepted as evidence in the court of law. Sometimes a photo can catch a thief in the act of robbery. Sometimes it can prove that the suspect had contact with the victim. Investigators take hundreds of photos at the scene of a murder investigation. They take pictures from every angle and of everything. Photos taken rightly by the hand of a professional can be a very accurate depiction of truth, even the courts agree on this.
Sometimes photographs can inaccurately depict reality. A photographer can choice to make the object he is shooting appear brighter than it is by making the shutter speed slower thus allowing more light in. In this way he can make a scene that would almost disappear into the night’s shadows, visible. A photographer can also choose to make things appear larger than they really are.
Photographs cannot fill in other parts of our memory. For a while a picture of grandma may bring back memories of the deceased grandmother. The picture may remind a person of conversations with grandma, the way grandma spoke, and the even the way Grandma smelt. But after a while, as the person’s memory gets filled with other information, looking at the picture will not bring back the same memories. Had the picture changed? Not at all. You see it was not the picture that was creating these memories, it was the brain.
Sometimes we can look at photographs so much that our brain imagines we were there. We see that picture of ourselves at the family get-together when we were two and we think we can remember the situation. We think we can hear what people are saying, the smells in the room, and even the things that went on before and after the situation. Quit often these “memories” are wrong. Yes we were there, but our brain can’t recall information from that far back. So our brain pretends it knows [don’t laugh at poor Mr. Brain. We all pretend we know stuff we don’t to try and impress others.] The brain makes up information, and we accept it as the truth, even though that may not be an accurate depiction of what really happened.
So we know that photographs are sometimes accurate sometimes not. Sometimes they bring back memories, other times our brain creates inaccurate memories from them. Does an inaccurate photo or an inaccurate memory make the photo a new reality? A new truth? Absolutely not. Though men used to think that the earth was flat, that didn’t mean that it was. Though people in Plato’s cave thought there world consisted of shapes dancing around on the wall, truth is that those shapes were formed by people and a fire behind them.
The author says that photography can’t explain anything. She said that photographs are just like fiction. That is a major exaggeration. Photos can explain a lot. They can explain why dad was never able to get a date during high school. They can explain who robbed the bank. Some of them can be misleading, but that doesn’t mean that all of them should be discarded. Some people can be misleading. They can lie to us and steer us in the wrong directions. But that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t trust anyone. Likewise we shouldn’t discard photographs as useless.
Many times we are given false ideas or beliefs. This doesn’t mean that all our ideas are false. I’m convinced that there is something that I am convinced of that is false. Does that mean I shouldn’t believe in anything? Should I say we can’t know anything? If one person says that he saw the suspect with the victim on the night of the murder yet another witness says he say the witness 200 miles away on same night, can they both be right? No they can’t. You see there is only one truth. It can’t be made up. There can’t be two of them. The only way truth can be changed is with action. If I cut three inches off of the table legs, the truth is that that table will be three inches shorter. However, there is never more than one truth.
Monday, October 22, 2007
Disney World
Trevor Gustafson
A reading response to Disney World
Susan Willis is the type of person who is willing to disregard facts in order to make a point. She leaves behind logic in place of ranting. The Cambridge dictionary defines ranting as: a long, angry and confused speech. This would definitely describe Susan Willis’s Disney World.
First off, Susan Willis leaves out many necessary examples. She talks about how awful it is that there is no spontaneity at Disney world, but gives extremely few examples of what spontaneity should look like. I would definitely have liked to have known what the author thinks spontaneity is. Another writing sin the author makes is to stretch the truth to the point of practically lying. One of her many truth stretchers was when she claimed that people only save picture perfect photos. She says they delete the ones of the child’s ice cream covered face. I don’t think anyone would do that. There are plenty of pictures I have kept of an item which may not have been the main attraction of the trip, but was definitely a picture we would look back on in years and laugh at. When my cousin-in-law had her first baby, Meadow, they took lots of cute naked pictures of Meadow crawling around. These were far from picture perfect moments. In years to come Meadow will feel like chocking her parents for taking those photos, yet they will be a fun reminder to mom and dad of the times with the baby.
The third writing sin that Susan Willis commits is an offbeat, out of place, and totally unnecessary mention of politics. It seams that she hates Bush and Reagan enough to somehow push criticism of them into her essay. Why would you want to offend half of your readers over a point that practically doesn’t fit into your essay? The author’s last and possibly greatest sin is her lack of knowledge about what she is really talking about. Is it her dislike for conformity, or her hatred of corporations? She attempts to tie these things together, but fails miserably. Her off the wall mentioning’s of politics and corporations tells me that maybe she should have written about one or the other of these things instead of trying to bring them into an essay on Disney World.
Why is ranting a writing sin? It is the lack of coherent argument. I would say that Disney World is supposed to be a persuasive paper. What is the purpose of a persuasive paper? It is obviously to persuade [wow imagine that]. The Webster’s Standard Dictionary’s definition of persuade is: to convince by reason... Now if we abandon reason, persuasion becomes much harder, even impossible. When we rant, we quite often skip over necessary facts, and stretch truth to fit our means. In doing this, we loose our credibility with our readers.
As I contemplate my distain for this essay, I am convicted to analyze myself. Am I any different than Susan Willis? Do I rant and rave in place of coherent factual writing? Do I leave out necessary examples? Do I stretch the truth and even lie to make a point? I know that lying is wrong, but does my brain say that lying in an essay is okay? Does the outcome of proving a point justify the means? I know that it doesn’t, but do I practice this knowledge? Do I through in off beat topics such as politics and religion where they don’t belong? Am I sure that my topic is the one that I am really interested in?
I realize that in this reading response I have most definitely ranted. What an incredible hypocrite I am, ranting about disliking ranting. Is all my writing this way? I certainly hope not, but this essay has warned me against the dangers of ranting. Isn’t it amazing how you can learn from something you hate? If you can analyze the things you hate, you can then analyze yourself and discover that many of the things you despise are true of yourself. Now that I realize how easy it is to rant, I can be careful not to rant in my future writings.
A reading response to Disney World
Susan Willis is the type of person who is willing to disregard facts in order to make a point. She leaves behind logic in place of ranting. The Cambridge dictionary defines ranting as: a long, angry and confused speech. This would definitely describe Susan Willis’s Disney World.
First off, Susan Willis leaves out many necessary examples. She talks about how awful it is that there is no spontaneity at Disney world, but gives extremely few examples of what spontaneity should look like. I would definitely have liked to have known what the author thinks spontaneity is. Another writing sin the author makes is to stretch the truth to the point of practically lying. One of her many truth stretchers was when she claimed that people only save picture perfect photos. She says they delete the ones of the child’s ice cream covered face. I don’t think anyone would do that. There are plenty of pictures I have kept of an item which may not have been the main attraction of the trip, but was definitely a picture we would look back on in years and laugh at. When my cousin-in-law had her first baby, Meadow, they took lots of cute naked pictures of Meadow crawling around. These were far from picture perfect moments. In years to come Meadow will feel like chocking her parents for taking those photos, yet they will be a fun reminder to mom and dad of the times with the baby.
The third writing sin that Susan Willis commits is an offbeat, out of place, and totally unnecessary mention of politics. It seams that she hates Bush and Reagan enough to somehow push criticism of them into her essay. Why would you want to offend half of your readers over a point that practically doesn’t fit into your essay? The author’s last and possibly greatest sin is her lack of knowledge about what she is really talking about. Is it her dislike for conformity, or her hatred of corporations? She attempts to tie these things together, but fails miserably. Her off the wall mentioning’s of politics and corporations tells me that maybe she should have written about one or the other of these things instead of trying to bring them into an essay on Disney World.
Why is ranting a writing sin? It is the lack of coherent argument. I would say that Disney World is supposed to be a persuasive paper. What is the purpose of a persuasive paper? It is obviously to persuade [wow imagine that]. The Webster’s Standard Dictionary’s definition of persuade is: to convince by reason... Now if we abandon reason, persuasion becomes much harder, even impossible. When we rant, we quite often skip over necessary facts, and stretch truth to fit our means. In doing this, we loose our credibility with our readers.
As I contemplate my distain for this essay, I am convicted to analyze myself. Am I any different than Susan Willis? Do I rant and rave in place of coherent factual writing? Do I leave out necessary examples? Do I stretch the truth and even lie to make a point? I know that lying is wrong, but does my brain say that lying in an essay is okay? Does the outcome of proving a point justify the means? I know that it doesn’t, but do I practice this knowledge? Do I through in off beat topics such as politics and religion where they don’t belong? Am I sure that my topic is the one that I am really interested in?
I realize that in this reading response I have most definitely ranted. What an incredible hypocrite I am, ranting about disliking ranting. Is all my writing this way? I certainly hope not, but this essay has warned me against the dangers of ranting. Isn’t it amazing how you can learn from something you hate? If you can analyze the things you hate, you can then analyze yourself and discover that many of the things you despise are true of yourself. Now that I realize how easy it is to rant, I can be careful not to rant in my future writings.
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Final draft
Following My Dream
Trevor Gustafson
English 101c
I sit here all alone on a park bench on this chilly, November day with the bitter northeasterly wind biting at my face. Normally I might have noticed the pealing green paint on the bench, the lady from two apartments down out briskly walking her handsomely trimmed golden retriever, and the children playing together on the playground. However today I just sit here thinking back on the last seven and a half years. What had gone wrong? Had I not studied enough? Is there something wrong with me? Should I try again, or just give up? The last nearly third of my life I have spent studying for nothing. I remember nights studying until, exhausted, I fell asleep at my desk. I remember not being able to go on outings because I had assignments to finish. Now what am I to do? Should I study for another occupation? Do I just settle for a blue collar job? Life seems so unfair. Then I hear a sound. It is not the sound of children playing or of dogs barking. No. This is a different sound, one all too familiar. It is the bringer of fear into my tired, weary bones. With a start I wake, then lazily roll over and hit the snooze button.
Like every other person on the planet, I have a dream. My dream is to become an architect. Having recognized this dream, my parents encourage me to pursue it. However, many goliath sized obstacles lie in the way of becoming a licensed architect. Will I be able to conquer these giant sized obstacles, or will I waste precious years of my life chasing after the wind? This is a question I ask myself day and night.
For as long as I can remember, architecture has fascinated me. I am enthralled by the concept of having an enormous idea in my head, drawing it, and having it built. That is not to say the job of an architect is an easy one, but to me it seems extremely gratifying. Do I get this passion from a parent, grandparent, aunt, uncle, or a family friend? No person I know is an architect. In fact, my parents have unknowingly somewhat aggravated my architectural passions. My parents are extremely practical people; we have dreadfully little design elements in our home. Everything must have a “purpose.” While I love my parents incredibly, I believe architecture should be artistic. It seems no human has influence my architectural interests.
My love of building does not in any way keep me tucked inside all day. I am an outdoors person. Hiking, backpacking, and biking are some of my favorite activities. I believe buildings should showcase pieces of nature. Cedar, stone, and bamboo, are the best building materials in the world. What I do not love, and down right despise, is the elements. There is nothing more irritating than having to be outside, getting soaked in the rain. Buildings were initially built for the sole purpose of keeping out the elements. Maybe I love architecture because I dislike the elements so much. Maybe it is the art form I love. Maybe I love architecture because I love creating things. Maybe, but where do my desires truly come from?
My desires are placed there by God. God uses some of them to show me what he wants me to do. My highest concern throughout this decision making process is to follow God’s will.
God has given me many gifts, one of which is architecture. The gifts God has given me should be used wisely. I don’t want to waste a gift, but since I have been given many gifts, which ones should I utilize in my career? What about my gift of music? I have played the violin for over ten years. Does God want me to bless others through a career as a musician, or with the gift of architecture? Can I use my gifts besides in a career form? I enjoy playing old-time music at senior homes with my band. Should I utilize my musical gifts in this way, or as a career? I wish I knew.
There are plenty of other occupations with similar qualities as architecture. Manufacturing, for example, designs and sees things built, but I am not attracted to manufacturing. For some reason I am attracted to buildings. I honestly have no idea why. My parents dread when we drive by an interesting building because I always glue my face to the window to see out, thus leaving breathe prints on the window. Whenever I walk into a building and notice a floor plan on the wall, I am drawn like a magnate to the plan. Those who are with me think I belong in a mental institute; I mean who actually reads those building maps? I do. I don’t know why. I just do. Once, while visiting a friend in the hospital, I became fascinated by the hospital’s architecture. What normal person notices the architecture in a hospital? I do. Or how about when I go to a museum and am more fascinated by the way the walls meet the ceiling than I am with the exhibits. Sometimes my interests seem extremely weird, even to me.
When I consider career choices, money is not a big deciding factor for me. Sure I want a sweet car, the grandest house on the block, and a dream vacation every summer to Hawaii just like every other American, but being at a job where I belong is more important to me than money. When I am on my death bed, will I remember the car I bought in 2013? I think it was a mustang. Or was it a minivan? It won’t matter. What will matter is how I have left this world. Is it a better or a worse place? Have I used my gifts wisely or poorly? At least to me, happiness is not obtained through a large pay check, but rather through serving others in ways I am gifted.
A gift seldom comes completely naturally. It must first be taught and challenged before it can be utilized. The road to learning how to properly use my gift of architecture is not an easy one. I must attend seven and a half years of college, but I will not know until part way through my schooling whether or not I will be able to finish my degree. Then, if I am able to complete my seemingly endless years at college, I must find a place to apprentice at. After serving a minimum of two years there, I must study for, and then take a gruelingly long test to become a licensed architect. However, it is not just one test for the entire nation. I must take a different test for every state I wish to be licensed in. These are just the major challenges I am aware of on my path of learning. I shiver to think of what small obstacles are lying, waiting to ensnare me.
Every time I start to fear about my future career I say to myself, “So self, what else could you do as an occupation besides architecture?” Every answer self has given me, I have rejected. I imagine going to work day after day after day and wondering what if? What if I had overcome my fears? What if I had gone to school and gotten my degree? What if someone had hired me and I could be fulfilling my dream of designing buildings right now? What if? However as many times as I say this, something, somewhere deep in my stomach says, “But what if by the time you finish school, you decide you don’t want to be an architect? What if no one will hire you?” Thus the inward battle rages on.
Fear stems from a loss of certainty about the future. The future is unclear; anything could happen. I want to be in charge of everything and I want to know what will happen. The cold truth of life is I will never know what tomorrow may bring. I know God is in control of whatever happens, but I feel as if studying for nothing is wasted time. All those years could have been spent doing something instead of stressing myself over learning information never to be used again.
When confronted with a life changing choice, I should not try to make a decision without consulting others. My parents have more life experience than me and are thus able to give helpful and wise advice. I know they have my best interest in mind and they will always love me. They have given me lots of wise counsel about priorities in life. Is money or fulfillment better? God’s will or mine?
Another person I have consulted is local architect, Michael Smith, who works at Zervus Group architects. I asked him about what all is involved in becoming an architect. Now I might have discovered a major part of architecture I dislike, or downright despise. Michael may have been able to tell me of some other occupation I should pursue. However talking with him actually gave the opposite result; it encouraged me towards become an architect. Michael also gave me advice on what schools firms look at to hire from. If I had not sought advice, I might have ended up going to a bad school.
So what am I going to do? On the one hand, all the clues seem to be pointing to becoming an architect, but on the other hand, could my fears be for a reason? I don’t want to waste so much of my life pursuing a dream only to see it fade into the black abyss of impossibility. What if I can’t get into the school? What If I can’t pass the licensing exam? What if I can’t get hired? As the time approaches to when I must make my decision whether I am going to transfer to the Washington State University’s school of architecture or not, I am sure of one thing: God will provide.
Trevor Gustafson
English 101c
I sit here all alone on a park bench on this chilly, November day with the bitter northeasterly wind biting at my face. Normally I might have noticed the pealing green paint on the bench, the lady from two apartments down out briskly walking her handsomely trimmed golden retriever, and the children playing together on the playground. However today I just sit here thinking back on the last seven and a half years. What had gone wrong? Had I not studied enough? Is there something wrong with me? Should I try again, or just give up? The last nearly third of my life I have spent studying for nothing. I remember nights studying until, exhausted, I fell asleep at my desk. I remember not being able to go on outings because I had assignments to finish. Now what am I to do? Should I study for another occupation? Do I just settle for a blue collar job? Life seems so unfair. Then I hear a sound. It is not the sound of children playing or of dogs barking. No. This is a different sound, one all too familiar. It is the bringer of fear into my tired, weary bones. With a start I wake, then lazily roll over and hit the snooze button.
Like every other person on the planet, I have a dream. My dream is to become an architect. Having recognized this dream, my parents encourage me to pursue it. However, many goliath sized obstacles lie in the way of becoming a licensed architect. Will I be able to conquer these giant sized obstacles, or will I waste precious years of my life chasing after the wind? This is a question I ask myself day and night.
For as long as I can remember, architecture has fascinated me. I am enthralled by the concept of having an enormous idea in my head, drawing it, and having it built. That is not to say the job of an architect is an easy one, but to me it seems extremely gratifying. Do I get this passion from a parent, grandparent, aunt, uncle, or a family friend? No person I know is an architect. In fact, my parents have unknowingly somewhat aggravated my architectural passions. My parents are extremely practical people; we have dreadfully little design elements in our home. Everything must have a “purpose.” While I love my parents incredibly, I believe architecture should be artistic. It seems no human has influence my architectural interests.
My love of building does not in any way keep me tucked inside all day. I am an outdoors person. Hiking, backpacking, and biking are some of my favorite activities. I believe buildings should showcase pieces of nature. Cedar, stone, and bamboo, are the best building materials in the world. What I do not love, and down right despise, is the elements. There is nothing more irritating than having to be outside, getting soaked in the rain. Buildings were initially built for the sole purpose of keeping out the elements. Maybe I love architecture because I dislike the elements so much. Maybe it is the art form I love. Maybe I love architecture because I love creating things. Maybe, but where do my desires truly come from?
My desires are placed there by God. God uses some of them to show me what he wants me to do. My highest concern throughout this decision making process is to follow God’s will.
God has given me many gifts, one of which is architecture. The gifts God has given me should be used wisely. I don’t want to waste a gift, but since I have been given many gifts, which ones should I utilize in my career? What about my gift of music? I have played the violin for over ten years. Does God want me to bless others through a career as a musician, or with the gift of architecture? Can I use my gifts besides in a career form? I enjoy playing old-time music at senior homes with my band. Should I utilize my musical gifts in this way, or as a career? I wish I knew.
There are plenty of other occupations with similar qualities as architecture. Manufacturing, for example, designs and sees things built, but I am not attracted to manufacturing. For some reason I am attracted to buildings. I honestly have no idea why. My parents dread when we drive by an interesting building because I always glue my face to the window to see out, thus leaving breathe prints on the window. Whenever I walk into a building and notice a floor plan on the wall, I am drawn like a magnate to the plan. Those who are with me think I belong in a mental institute; I mean who actually reads those building maps? I do. I don’t know why. I just do. Once, while visiting a friend in the hospital, I became fascinated by the hospital’s architecture. What normal person notices the architecture in a hospital? I do. Or how about when I go to a museum and am more fascinated by the way the walls meet the ceiling than I am with the exhibits. Sometimes my interests seem extremely weird, even to me.
When I consider career choices, money is not a big deciding factor for me. Sure I want a sweet car, the grandest house on the block, and a dream vacation every summer to Hawaii just like every other American, but being at a job where I belong is more important to me than money. When I am on my death bed, will I remember the car I bought in 2013? I think it was a mustang. Or was it a minivan? It won’t matter. What will matter is how I have left this world. Is it a better or a worse place? Have I used my gifts wisely or poorly? At least to me, happiness is not obtained through a large pay check, but rather through serving others in ways I am gifted.
A gift seldom comes completely naturally. It must first be taught and challenged before it can be utilized. The road to learning how to properly use my gift of architecture is not an easy one. I must attend seven and a half years of college, but I will not know until part way through my schooling whether or not I will be able to finish my degree. Then, if I am able to complete my seemingly endless years at college, I must find a place to apprentice at. After serving a minimum of two years there, I must study for, and then take a gruelingly long test to become a licensed architect. However, it is not just one test for the entire nation. I must take a different test for every state I wish to be licensed in. These are just the major challenges I am aware of on my path of learning. I shiver to think of what small obstacles are lying, waiting to ensnare me.
Every time I start to fear about my future career I say to myself, “So self, what else could you do as an occupation besides architecture?” Every answer self has given me, I have rejected. I imagine going to work day after day after day and wondering what if? What if I had overcome my fears? What if I had gone to school and gotten my degree? What if someone had hired me and I could be fulfilling my dream of designing buildings right now? What if? However as many times as I say this, something, somewhere deep in my stomach says, “But what if by the time you finish school, you decide you don’t want to be an architect? What if no one will hire you?” Thus the inward battle rages on.
Fear stems from a loss of certainty about the future. The future is unclear; anything could happen. I want to be in charge of everything and I want to know what will happen. The cold truth of life is I will never know what tomorrow may bring. I know God is in control of whatever happens, but I feel as if studying for nothing is wasted time. All those years could have been spent doing something instead of stressing myself over learning information never to be used again.
When confronted with a life changing choice, I should not try to make a decision without consulting others. My parents have more life experience than me and are thus able to give helpful and wise advice. I know they have my best interest in mind and they will always love me. They have given me lots of wise counsel about priorities in life. Is money or fulfillment better? God’s will or mine?
Another person I have consulted is local architect, Michael Smith, who works at Zervus Group architects. I asked him about what all is involved in becoming an architect. Now I might have discovered a major part of architecture I dislike, or downright despise. Michael may have been able to tell me of some other occupation I should pursue. However talking with him actually gave the opposite result; it encouraged me towards become an architect. Michael also gave me advice on what schools firms look at to hire from. If I had not sought advice, I might have ended up going to a bad school.
So what am I going to do? On the one hand, all the clues seem to be pointing to becoming an architect, but on the other hand, could my fears be for a reason? I don’t want to waste so much of my life pursuing a dream only to see it fade into the black abyss of impossibility. What if I can’t get into the school? What If I can’t pass the licensing exam? What if I can’t get hired? As the time approaches to when I must make my decision whether I am going to transfer to the Washington State University’s school of architecture or not, I am sure of one thing: God will provide.
Sunday, October 14, 2007
A rock upon which to stand
Following My Dream
Trevor Gustafson
I sit here all alone on a park bench on this chilly, November day with the bitter northeasterly wind biting at my face. Normally I would have noticed the pealing green paint on the bench, the lady from two apartments down out briskly walking her handsomely trimmed golden retriever, and the children playing together on the playground. However today I just sit here thinking back on the last seven and a half years. What had gone wrong? Had I not studied enough? Is there something wrong with me? Should I try again, or just give up? The last nearly third of my life I have spent studying for nothing. I remember nights where I would study until, exhausted, I fell asleep at my desk. I remember the times I wasn’t able to go on outings because I had assignments to finish. Now what am I going to do? Should I study for another occupation? Do I just settle for a blue collar job? Life seams so unfair. Then I hear a sound. It is not the sound of children playing or of dogs barking. No. This is a different sound, one all too familiar. It is the sound that brings fear into my tired, weary bones. With start I wake, then lazily roll over and hit the snooze button.
Like every other person on the planet, I have a dream. My dream is to become an architect. Having recognized this dream, my parents have encouraged me to pursue it. However there are many obstacles that lie in the way of becoming a licensed architect. Will I be able to conquer those obstacles, or will I waste precious years of my life chasing after an unachievable dream? This is a question I ask my self day and night.
Architecture fascinates me. I am enthralled by the concept of having an enormous idea in my head, drawing it, and having it built. That is not to say that the job of an architect is easy, but to me it seams very gratifying. Do I get this love from my parents Grandparent Aunts Uncles, or a family friend? No person that I know is an architect, so it seams to me that no human has influence my architectural interests. In fact, my parents have unknowingly somewhat aggravated them. My parents are extremely practical people; we have very little in our house that is for design. Everything must have a “purpose.” While I love my parents very much, I believe architecture should be artistic.
There are plenty of other jobs with similar qualities as architecture. Manufacturing for example, designs and sees things built, but I am not attracted to manufacturing. For some reason I am attracted to buildings. I honestly have no idea why. My parents dread when we drive by an interesting building because I always glue my face to the window, leaving breathe prints. Whenever I walk into a building and notice a floor plan on the wall, I am drawn like a magnate to the plan. Those who are with me think that I belong in a mental institute; I mean who actually reads those building maps? I do. I don’t know why. I just do. My parents tell me that when I was young, and was visiting a friend in the hospital, I was fascinated by the hospital’s architecture. What normal person would care to notice the architecture in a hospital? I would. Or how about when I go to a museum and am more fascinated by the way the walls meet up with the ceiling than I am with the exhibits. Sometimes my interests seem really weird, even to me.
My love of building does not in any way keep me tucked inside all day. I am an outdoors person. Hiking, backpacking, and biking are some of my favorite activities. I believe buildings should showcase pieces of nature. Cedar, stone, and bamboo, are the best building materials in the world. What I do not love, and down right despise, is the elements. There is nothing more irritating to me than having to be outside, getting soaked in the rain. Buildings were initially built for the sole purpose of keeping out the elements. Maybe I love architecture because I dislike the elements so much. Maybe I love architecture because I love creating things. Maybe I love architecture because I love that type of art form. Maybe, but where do my desires really come from?
I personally believe that my desires are placed there by God. God sometimes uses them to show me what he wants me to do. My highest concern throughout this decision making process is to follow God’s will.
God has given me many gifts, one of which I believe is architecture. The gifts God has given me should be used wisely. I don’t want to waste a gift, but since there are many gifts that I have been given, which ones should I utilize in my career? What about my gift of music? I have played the violin for more than ten years. Does God want me to bless people through a career as a musician? Or does he want me to bless people with the gift of architecture? Can I use my gifts besides in a career form? Right now I am in a band that plays old time music at senior homes. Should I utilize my musical gifts in this way, or as a career? I wish I knew.
When I consider career choices, money is not a big issue for me. Sure I want a sweet car, the grandest house on the block, and a dream vacation every summer to Hawaii just like every other American, but I feel that being at a job where I belong is more important than money. When I am on my death bed, will I remember that car I bought in 2013? Now was that a Porche or a mustang? It really won’t matter. What will matter is what I have left the world. Is it a better or a worse place? Have I used my gifts wisely or poorly? At least to me, happiness is not obtained through a large pay check, but rather through serving others in ways I know I am gifted.
A gift seldom comes completely naturally to a person. The person must first be taught and challenged before they can know how to utilize their gifts. I must attend seven and a half years of college to be taught how to use my gift of architecture. I will not know until part way through my schooling whether or not I will be ale to continue my schooling. Then, once I have completed my seemingly endless years at college, I must find a place to apprentice at. After serving a minimum of two years there, I must study for, then take a gruelingly long test to become a licensed architect. However it’s not just one test for the entire nation. No. I must take a different test for every state that I wish to be licensed in. These are just the major challenges on my path of learning that I am aware of. I shiver to think of what small obstacles are lying, waiting to ensnare me.
Every time I start to fear about my future career I say to myself, “so self, what else could I do as an occupation besides architecture?” However every answer that self has given me, I have rejected. Every day at that job I would wonder what if? What if I had overcome my fears? What if I had gone to school and gotten my degree? What if someone had hired me and I could be fulfilling my dreams of designing buildings right now? What if? However as many times as I say this, something, somewhere in my stomach says, “But what if by the time you finish school you decide you don’t want to be an architect. What if no one will hire you?” Thus the inward battle rages on.
Fear stems from a loss of certainty about the future. The future is unclear; anything could happen. I want to be in charge of everything and I want to know what will happen. The cold truth of life is that I will never know what tomorrow may bring. I know that God is in control of whatever happens, but I feel like a valuable part of my life would be wasted if I were to go to school and yet not make it as an architect. All those years I could have been doing something else instead of stressing myself over learning information that I would never use again.
When confronted with a life changing choice, it would be foolish of me to try to make a decision without consulting others. There are many people that are experienced and thus qualified to give advice. Two of those people who I have consulted are my parents. They are older and wiser than me, and while I don’t always agree one-hundred percent with them, I know they have my best interest in mind. I also know that they will always love me. My parents have given me lots of wise counsel about priorities in life. Is money or fulfillment better? God’s will or mine?
Another person I have consulted is local architect, Michael Smith, who works at Zervus Group architects. I asked him about what all was involved in becoming an architect. Now maybe I might have discovered that there was some major part of being an architect that I would dislike, or downright despise. Michael may have been able to tell me some other similar occupation that would not entail this despised task. That was not the case, however. Talking with him actually gave me encouragement to become an architect. He also told me what schools firms look at to hire from. If I had not sought advice, I might have ended up going to a bad school.
So what am I going to do? On the one hand, all the clues seem to be pointing to becoming an architect, but on the other hand, could my fears be for a reason? I don’t want to waste so much of my life pursuing a dream only to see it fade into the black abyss of impossibility. What if I can’t get into the school? What If I can’t pass the licensing exam. What if I can’t get hired? As the time approaches to when I must make my decide whether I am going to transfer to the Washington State University’s school of architecture or not, I am sure of one thing: God will provide.
Trevor Gustafson
I sit here all alone on a park bench on this chilly, November day with the bitter northeasterly wind biting at my face. Normally I would have noticed the pealing green paint on the bench, the lady from two apartments down out briskly walking her handsomely trimmed golden retriever, and the children playing together on the playground. However today I just sit here thinking back on the last seven and a half years. What had gone wrong? Had I not studied enough? Is there something wrong with me? Should I try again, or just give up? The last nearly third of my life I have spent studying for nothing. I remember nights where I would study until, exhausted, I fell asleep at my desk. I remember the times I wasn’t able to go on outings because I had assignments to finish. Now what am I going to do? Should I study for another occupation? Do I just settle for a blue collar job? Life seams so unfair. Then I hear a sound. It is not the sound of children playing or of dogs barking. No. This is a different sound, one all too familiar. It is the sound that brings fear into my tired, weary bones. With start I wake, then lazily roll over and hit the snooze button.
Like every other person on the planet, I have a dream. My dream is to become an architect. Having recognized this dream, my parents have encouraged me to pursue it. However there are many obstacles that lie in the way of becoming a licensed architect. Will I be able to conquer those obstacles, or will I waste precious years of my life chasing after an unachievable dream? This is a question I ask my self day and night.
Architecture fascinates me. I am enthralled by the concept of having an enormous idea in my head, drawing it, and having it built. That is not to say that the job of an architect is easy, but to me it seams very gratifying. Do I get this love from my parents Grandparent Aunts Uncles, or a family friend? No person that I know is an architect, so it seams to me that no human has influence my architectural interests. In fact, my parents have unknowingly somewhat aggravated them. My parents are extremely practical people; we have very little in our house that is for design. Everything must have a “purpose.” While I love my parents very much, I believe architecture should be artistic.
There are plenty of other jobs with similar qualities as architecture. Manufacturing for example, designs and sees things built, but I am not attracted to manufacturing. For some reason I am attracted to buildings. I honestly have no idea why. My parents dread when we drive by an interesting building because I always glue my face to the window, leaving breathe prints. Whenever I walk into a building and notice a floor plan on the wall, I am drawn like a magnate to the plan. Those who are with me think that I belong in a mental institute; I mean who actually reads those building maps? I do. I don’t know why. I just do. My parents tell me that when I was young, and was visiting a friend in the hospital, I was fascinated by the hospital’s architecture. What normal person would care to notice the architecture in a hospital? I would. Or how about when I go to a museum and am more fascinated by the way the walls meet up with the ceiling than I am with the exhibits. Sometimes my interests seem really weird, even to me.
My love of building does not in any way keep me tucked inside all day. I am an outdoors person. Hiking, backpacking, and biking are some of my favorite activities. I believe buildings should showcase pieces of nature. Cedar, stone, and bamboo, are the best building materials in the world. What I do not love, and down right despise, is the elements. There is nothing more irritating to me than having to be outside, getting soaked in the rain. Buildings were initially built for the sole purpose of keeping out the elements. Maybe I love architecture because I dislike the elements so much. Maybe I love architecture because I love creating things. Maybe I love architecture because I love that type of art form. Maybe, but where do my desires really come from?
I personally believe that my desires are placed there by God. God sometimes uses them to show me what he wants me to do. My highest concern throughout this decision making process is to follow God’s will.
God has given me many gifts, one of which I believe is architecture. The gifts God has given me should be used wisely. I don’t want to waste a gift, but since there are many gifts that I have been given, which ones should I utilize in my career? What about my gift of music? I have played the violin for more than ten years. Does God want me to bless people through a career as a musician? Or does he want me to bless people with the gift of architecture? Can I use my gifts besides in a career form? Right now I am in a band that plays old time music at senior homes. Should I utilize my musical gifts in this way, or as a career? I wish I knew.
When I consider career choices, money is not a big issue for me. Sure I want a sweet car, the grandest house on the block, and a dream vacation every summer to Hawaii just like every other American, but I feel that being at a job where I belong is more important than money. When I am on my death bed, will I remember that car I bought in 2013? Now was that a Porche or a mustang? It really won’t matter. What will matter is what I have left the world. Is it a better or a worse place? Have I used my gifts wisely or poorly? At least to me, happiness is not obtained through a large pay check, but rather through serving others in ways I know I am gifted.
A gift seldom comes completely naturally to a person. The person must first be taught and challenged before they can know how to utilize their gifts. I must attend seven and a half years of college to be taught how to use my gift of architecture. I will not know until part way through my schooling whether or not I will be ale to continue my schooling. Then, once I have completed my seemingly endless years at college, I must find a place to apprentice at. After serving a minimum of two years there, I must study for, then take a gruelingly long test to become a licensed architect. However it’s not just one test for the entire nation. No. I must take a different test for every state that I wish to be licensed in. These are just the major challenges on my path of learning that I am aware of. I shiver to think of what small obstacles are lying, waiting to ensnare me.
Every time I start to fear about my future career I say to myself, “so self, what else could I do as an occupation besides architecture?” However every answer that self has given me, I have rejected. Every day at that job I would wonder what if? What if I had overcome my fears? What if I had gone to school and gotten my degree? What if someone had hired me and I could be fulfilling my dreams of designing buildings right now? What if? However as many times as I say this, something, somewhere in my stomach says, “But what if by the time you finish school you decide you don’t want to be an architect. What if no one will hire you?” Thus the inward battle rages on.
Fear stems from a loss of certainty about the future. The future is unclear; anything could happen. I want to be in charge of everything and I want to know what will happen. The cold truth of life is that I will never know what tomorrow may bring. I know that God is in control of whatever happens, but I feel like a valuable part of my life would be wasted if I were to go to school and yet not make it as an architect. All those years I could have been doing something else instead of stressing myself over learning information that I would never use again.
When confronted with a life changing choice, it would be foolish of me to try to make a decision without consulting others. There are many people that are experienced and thus qualified to give advice. Two of those people who I have consulted are my parents. They are older and wiser than me, and while I don’t always agree one-hundred percent with them, I know they have my best interest in mind. I also know that they will always love me. My parents have given me lots of wise counsel about priorities in life. Is money or fulfillment better? God’s will or mine?
Another person I have consulted is local architect, Michael Smith, who works at Zervus Group architects. I asked him about what all was involved in becoming an architect. Now maybe I might have discovered that there was some major part of being an architect that I would dislike, or downright despise. Michael may have been able to tell me some other similar occupation that would not entail this despised task. That was not the case, however. Talking with him actually gave me encouragement to become an architect. He also told me what schools firms look at to hire from. If I had not sought advice, I might have ended up going to a bad school.
So what am I going to do? On the one hand, all the clues seem to be pointing to becoming an architect, but on the other hand, could my fears be for a reason? I don’t want to waste so much of my life pursuing a dream only to see it fade into the black abyss of impossibility. What if I can’t get into the school? What If I can’t pass the licensing exam. What if I can’t get hired? As the time approaches to when I must make my decide whether I am going to transfer to the Washington State University’s school of architecture or not, I am sure of one thing: God will provide.
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
still following my dreams
Following My Dreams
By Trevor Gustafson
From the youngest baby, crying for attention, to the oldest senior, sitting lonely in a nursing home. From the nun locked away in a convent in the coldest section of Siberia, to the glamorous pop star on TV. From the country redneck, to the city hillbilly. All these have one thing in common: they have dreams, aspirations and longing. I, too, have dreams, though sometimes I find that it is not always easy to follow them. The road that leads to the dream’s completion is quite blurry, and what I see appears to be treacherous. Is it worth it to follow a dream?
My dream is to become an architect and design buildings that will be both practical to the user, and pleasing to the eye of the beholder. I am fascinated by the concept of being able to have an enormous idea in my head, draw it, and have it built. That is not to say that the job of an architect is easy, but in my mind it seams very gratifying. Do I get this love from my parents? Grandparent? Aunts, Uncles? No relative that I know of has been an architect so it seams to me that no human influence has persuaded my architect interests. In fact, my parents have unknowingly somewhat aggravated my architectural desires. My parents are extremely practical people; we have very little in our house that is for design. Everything must have a “purpose.” While I love my parents very much, I believe architecture should be artistic.
You might say, “But there are plenty of other jobs were you might design something and see it built. How about manufacturing?” Yes, there are many jobs that design and build things, but somehow, I am attracted to buildings. I honestly have no idea why. My parents dread when we drive by an interesting building because I always press my face to the window and leave breathe prints. Whenever I walk into a building and notice a floor plan on the wall, I will instantly go over and examine the plan. Those who are with me think that I belong in a mental institute; I mean who actually reads those building maps? I do. I don’t really know why. I just do. My parents tell me that when I was young, and was visiting a friend in the hospital, I was fascinated by the architecture at the hospital. What normal person would care to notice the architecture in a hospital? I would. Or how about when I go to a museum and am more fascinated by the way the walls meet up with the ceiling than I am with the exhibits. Sometimes my interests seem really weird, even to me.
Why do I love buildings? Am I the type of person who spends all his time inside? Absolutely not. Hiking, backpacking, and biking are some of my favorite activities. I love buildings that showcase pieces of nature. Cedar, stone, bamboo, these are the best building materials in the world. What I do not love is the elements. There is nothing more irritating to me than having to be outside, getting soaked in the rain. Maybe my love of architecture stems from my hatred of the elements. Buildings were initially built for the sole purpose of keeping out the elements. Maybe I love architecture because I dislike the elements so much. Maybe I love architecture because I love creating things. Maybe I love architecture because I love that type of art form. I don’t really know.
I consider doing another occupation day after day after day and I know that I would soon realize that I would never be fully satisfied where I was unless I was designing buildings. If I were to become a CEO of a company, I might enjoy some aspects of the job, but I would be more interested in giving the company a bigger or more beautiful building than I would be in anything else.. To me, taking any other career would be stupid. Why should I always yearn to be an architect but never fulfill my dream?
Where do my dreams come from? They are certainly not completely from my parents. Things such as hating the elements may have influenced me, but I personally believe that my desires are placed there by God. I believe that God sometimes uses them to show me what he wants me to do. My highest concern throughout this decision making process is to follow God’s will.
God has given me many gifts. One of those I believe is the gift of architecture. I should use the gifts that God has given me. I don’t want to waste a gift, but since there are many gifts, which ones should I utilize in my career? What about my gift of music? I have played the violin for more than ten years. Does God want me to bless people through music as a career? Or does he want me to bless people with the gift of architecture? Can I use my gifts besides in a career form? I wish I knew.
Now architecture is not a wealthy business. In fact, for the amount of school required, the pay is down right low. Why is money not an issue for me? Why wouldn’t I want a sweet car, the grandest house on the block, and a dream vacation every summer to Hawaii? To be honest, I do want all those things, but I feel that being at a job where I belong is more important than the money. When I am on my death bed, will I remember that car I bought in 2013? Now was that a Porche or a mustang? It really won’t matter. What will matter is what I have left the world. Have I left it a better or a worse place? Have I used my gifts wisely or poorly? At least to me, happiness is not obtained through a pay check, but rather through serving others in ways I know I am gifted at.
I know I have a defendant desire to be an architect, but what about the challenges of becoming an architect? What must I do to obtain this desire? When I look at becoming an architect, I see a very difficult road ahead of me. I must attend seven and a half years of college. Having been home schooled all my life, this seams like a terribly daunting feet to accomplish. Once I transfer to a four year college, I will not know until my second year there whether or not I am going to be accepted into the program so that I can continue at the school. Then, once I have completed my seemingly endless years at college, I must find a place to apprentice at. After I have served a minimum of two years there, I must study for, then take a gruelingly long test to become a licensed architect. However it’s not just one test for the entire nation. No, I must take a different test for every state that I wish to be licensed in. These are just the major challenges that I am aware of. I shiver to think of what small obstacles are lying, waiting for me.
Has being home schooled increased my fears? Possibly. I have been at home, around my loving family for most of the days of my life. The prospect of only seeing them a couple times a year seams heart wrenching. But isn’t this something that every teen who has a close relationship with his family, home schooled or public, encounters? I think it is. I think that it may be more difficult for a home schooled student, but I know it shall be a growing experience for me. However growth means challenges. Challenges mean uncertainty. Uncertainty leads to fear.
Every time I start to fear about my future career I say to myself, “so self, what else could I do as an occupation besides architecture?” Every single answer that self has given me, I have rejected. I consider doing that job day after day after day and I think I would soon realize that I would never be fully satisfied where I was unless I was doing architecture. I would always wonder what if? What if I had overcome my fears? What if I had gone to school and gotten my degree? What if someone had hired me and I could be fulfilling my dreams of designing buildings right now? What if? But as many times as I say this, something, somewhere in my stomach says, “But what if by the time you finish school you decide you don’t want to be an architect. What if no one will hire you?” And so the inward battle rages on.
Why do I fear so much? Might it have something to do with a loss of certainty about my future? Quite possibly. I know that I cannot see what will happen in the future. I want to be in charge of everything. I want to know what will happen. The cold truth of life is that I will never know what tomorrow may bring. I know that God is in control of whatever happens, but I feel like part of my life would be wasted if I were to go to school and yet not make it as an architect. All those years I could have been doing something else instead of stressing myself over learning information that I would never use again.
When confronted with a choice, do I try to figure it out all on my own? Of course not. There are many people that are experienced and thus qualified to give advice. Two of those people who I consult would be my parents. They are older and wiser than me, and while I don’t always agree one-hundred percent with them, I know they have my best interest in mind. Plus I know that they will always love me. My parents have given me lots of wise counsel about priorities in life. Is money or fulfillment better? God’s will or mine?
Another person I have talked with is local architect, Michael smith, who works at Zervus Group architects. I asked him about what all was involved in becoming an architect. Now maybe I might have discovered that there was some major part of being an architect that I would dislike, or downright despise. Michael may have been able to tell me some other similar occupation that would not entail this despised task. That was not the case, however. Talking with him actually gave me encouragement to becoming an architect. I was able to ask him about what school I should go to, and what I would expect there.
Why do I talk to others? Because they have more experience than me. Not that they necessarily have a higher I.Q. level per say, but because they have more life experience. Instead of looking for a school that has the best parties, maybe I should look for one that Michael said firms would look at to hire from. Talking to Michael relieved some of my fears. He was able to tell me what to expect at college. If I had not sought advice, I might have ended up going to a bad school.
So what am I going to do? On the one hand, all the clues seem to be pointing to becoming an architect, but on the other hand, could my fears be for a reason? I don’t want to waste so much of my life pursuing a dream that will be gone in five years. As the time approaches to when I must make my decision on whether I am going to transfer to the Washington State University’s school of architecture or not, I am sure of one thing: God will provide.
By Trevor Gustafson
From the youngest baby, crying for attention, to the oldest senior, sitting lonely in a nursing home. From the nun locked away in a convent in the coldest section of Siberia, to the glamorous pop star on TV. From the country redneck, to the city hillbilly. All these have one thing in common: they have dreams, aspirations and longing. I, too, have dreams, though sometimes I find that it is not always easy to follow them. The road that leads to the dream’s completion is quite blurry, and what I see appears to be treacherous. Is it worth it to follow a dream?
My dream is to become an architect and design buildings that will be both practical to the user, and pleasing to the eye of the beholder. I am fascinated by the concept of being able to have an enormous idea in my head, draw it, and have it built. That is not to say that the job of an architect is easy, but in my mind it seams very gratifying. Do I get this love from my parents? Grandparent? Aunts, Uncles? No relative that I know of has been an architect so it seams to me that no human influence has persuaded my architect interests. In fact, my parents have unknowingly somewhat aggravated my architectural desires. My parents are extremely practical people; we have very little in our house that is for design. Everything must have a “purpose.” While I love my parents very much, I believe architecture should be artistic.
You might say, “But there are plenty of other jobs were you might design something and see it built. How about manufacturing?” Yes, there are many jobs that design and build things, but somehow, I am attracted to buildings. I honestly have no idea why. My parents dread when we drive by an interesting building because I always press my face to the window and leave breathe prints. Whenever I walk into a building and notice a floor plan on the wall, I will instantly go over and examine the plan. Those who are with me think that I belong in a mental institute; I mean who actually reads those building maps? I do. I don’t really know why. I just do. My parents tell me that when I was young, and was visiting a friend in the hospital, I was fascinated by the architecture at the hospital. What normal person would care to notice the architecture in a hospital? I would. Or how about when I go to a museum and am more fascinated by the way the walls meet up with the ceiling than I am with the exhibits. Sometimes my interests seem really weird, even to me.
Why do I love buildings? Am I the type of person who spends all his time inside? Absolutely not. Hiking, backpacking, and biking are some of my favorite activities. I love buildings that showcase pieces of nature. Cedar, stone, bamboo, these are the best building materials in the world. What I do not love is the elements. There is nothing more irritating to me than having to be outside, getting soaked in the rain. Maybe my love of architecture stems from my hatred of the elements. Buildings were initially built for the sole purpose of keeping out the elements. Maybe I love architecture because I dislike the elements so much. Maybe I love architecture because I love creating things. Maybe I love architecture because I love that type of art form. I don’t really know.
I consider doing another occupation day after day after day and I know that I would soon realize that I would never be fully satisfied where I was unless I was designing buildings. If I were to become a CEO of a company, I might enjoy some aspects of the job, but I would be more interested in giving the company a bigger or more beautiful building than I would be in anything else.. To me, taking any other career would be stupid. Why should I always yearn to be an architect but never fulfill my dream?
Where do my dreams come from? They are certainly not completely from my parents. Things such as hating the elements may have influenced me, but I personally believe that my desires are placed there by God. I believe that God sometimes uses them to show me what he wants me to do. My highest concern throughout this decision making process is to follow God’s will.
God has given me many gifts. One of those I believe is the gift of architecture. I should use the gifts that God has given me. I don’t want to waste a gift, but since there are many gifts, which ones should I utilize in my career? What about my gift of music? I have played the violin for more than ten years. Does God want me to bless people through music as a career? Or does he want me to bless people with the gift of architecture? Can I use my gifts besides in a career form? I wish I knew.
Now architecture is not a wealthy business. In fact, for the amount of school required, the pay is down right low. Why is money not an issue for me? Why wouldn’t I want a sweet car, the grandest house on the block, and a dream vacation every summer to Hawaii? To be honest, I do want all those things, but I feel that being at a job where I belong is more important than the money. When I am on my death bed, will I remember that car I bought in 2013? Now was that a Porche or a mustang? It really won’t matter. What will matter is what I have left the world. Have I left it a better or a worse place? Have I used my gifts wisely or poorly? At least to me, happiness is not obtained through a pay check, but rather through serving others in ways I know I am gifted at.
I know I have a defendant desire to be an architect, but what about the challenges of becoming an architect? What must I do to obtain this desire? When I look at becoming an architect, I see a very difficult road ahead of me. I must attend seven and a half years of college. Having been home schooled all my life, this seams like a terribly daunting feet to accomplish. Once I transfer to a four year college, I will not know until my second year there whether or not I am going to be accepted into the program so that I can continue at the school. Then, once I have completed my seemingly endless years at college, I must find a place to apprentice at. After I have served a minimum of two years there, I must study for, then take a gruelingly long test to become a licensed architect. However it’s not just one test for the entire nation. No, I must take a different test for every state that I wish to be licensed in. These are just the major challenges that I am aware of. I shiver to think of what small obstacles are lying, waiting for me.
Has being home schooled increased my fears? Possibly. I have been at home, around my loving family for most of the days of my life. The prospect of only seeing them a couple times a year seams heart wrenching. But isn’t this something that every teen who has a close relationship with his family, home schooled or public, encounters? I think it is. I think that it may be more difficult for a home schooled student, but I know it shall be a growing experience for me. However growth means challenges. Challenges mean uncertainty. Uncertainty leads to fear.
Every time I start to fear about my future career I say to myself, “so self, what else could I do as an occupation besides architecture?” Every single answer that self has given me, I have rejected. I consider doing that job day after day after day and I think I would soon realize that I would never be fully satisfied where I was unless I was doing architecture. I would always wonder what if? What if I had overcome my fears? What if I had gone to school and gotten my degree? What if someone had hired me and I could be fulfilling my dreams of designing buildings right now? What if? But as many times as I say this, something, somewhere in my stomach says, “But what if by the time you finish school you decide you don’t want to be an architect. What if no one will hire you?” And so the inward battle rages on.
Why do I fear so much? Might it have something to do with a loss of certainty about my future? Quite possibly. I know that I cannot see what will happen in the future. I want to be in charge of everything. I want to know what will happen. The cold truth of life is that I will never know what tomorrow may bring. I know that God is in control of whatever happens, but I feel like part of my life would be wasted if I were to go to school and yet not make it as an architect. All those years I could have been doing something else instead of stressing myself over learning information that I would never use again.
When confronted with a choice, do I try to figure it out all on my own? Of course not. There are many people that are experienced and thus qualified to give advice. Two of those people who I consult would be my parents. They are older and wiser than me, and while I don’t always agree one-hundred percent with them, I know they have my best interest in mind. Plus I know that they will always love me. My parents have given me lots of wise counsel about priorities in life. Is money or fulfillment better? God’s will or mine?
Another person I have talked with is local architect, Michael smith, who works at Zervus Group architects. I asked him about what all was involved in becoming an architect. Now maybe I might have discovered that there was some major part of being an architect that I would dislike, or downright despise. Michael may have been able to tell me some other similar occupation that would not entail this despised task. That was not the case, however. Talking with him actually gave me encouragement to becoming an architect. I was able to ask him about what school I should go to, and what I would expect there.
Why do I talk to others? Because they have more experience than me. Not that they necessarily have a higher I.Q. level per say, but because they have more life experience. Instead of looking for a school that has the best parties, maybe I should look for one that Michael said firms would look at to hire from. Talking to Michael relieved some of my fears. He was able to tell me what to expect at college. If I had not sought advice, I might have ended up going to a bad school.
So what am I going to do? On the one hand, all the clues seem to be pointing to becoming an architect, but on the other hand, could my fears be for a reason? I don’t want to waste so much of my life pursuing a dream that will be gone in five years. As the time approaches to when I must make my decision on whether I am going to transfer to the Washington State University’s school of architecture or not, I am sure of one thing: God will provide.
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