Semi-Coherent Ramblings

Author's Note: The following is an exercise in stream of consciousness writing. Owing to the mental condition of the author when written, it might not follow in a logical pattern, but trust me, he was trying to get somewhere with it.

It's the week before finals and the week of my Capstone presentation. I am going absolutely crazy, like raving mad. The light at the end of the tunnel is so close I can almost feel it bathing my skin in it's effervescent glow. Yet, at the same time, I'm sitting here fumbling around in the darkness, hoping that my legs stay underneath me and allow me to continue heading towards the light. Again, I'm not sure I can over-emphasize the madness that has descended on my existence.

The one comforting thing about this madness is knowing that there are plenty of people wearing straight jackets right along with me. Feeling crazy is one thing, but feeling crazy along with other people makes it seem as if we have all contracted a temporary virus that has afflicted our ability to perceive reality as it truly is, or to question if that's even possible. See, who writes crazy thoughts like that on a blog post?!

This week, the week before finals, has always been a particularly trying one for me. My first semester at Southwestern, 3 years ago, this week saw me crying hysterically in the Wal-Mart parking lot while on the phone with my mother. It got better after that semester, but that same hysteria seems to be creeping back into my life. I anticipate having a hysterical crying moment sometime in the next week, just hope you're not the person around me when it happens. For safety's sake, better carry a package of tissues in your pocket, just in case.

How do I sum up the fall semester of my senior year? I have always felt that the only person who stands in the way of me doing something I set my mind to is myself. This semester has seen me question that notion. What if I truly don't have what it takes to make it through? I've never doubted my ability with regards to school, but I have found myself doing so several times in the past couple of months.

In the first couple of weeks of my Capstone class, I seriously considered dropping my Communication major to a minor and keeping only my other major, Spanish. Then I thought about all the years of hard work and studying I have put in to get to this point and wouldn't allow myself to quit. At this very moment, I regret that decision, but I won't come next Tuesday when I drop off the final copy of this godforsaken assignment. That's the light that's keeping me going. As long as I keep my eyes glued to the only source of hope in the darkness, I've got a chance of making it through.

In case you, too, find yourself in a dark tunnel with a light at the end, would you mind walking with care, as it's quite possible I could be on the ground rocking back and forth in the fetal position? If you find me, please just grab the collar of my shirt and drag me along with you. I might need the assistance.

Insanely,

Brady

Off-Campus Activity Blog

For my off-campus activity, I chose to attend the Up the Chisholm Trail Cattle Drive & Chuckwagon Cook-off, presented by the Williamson Museum. It was held on Friday the 17th and Saturday the 18th of September at San Gabriel Park here in Georgetown. I attended on Saturday, mostly because my friend Kelly was using my camera to take pictures and asked me if I was free to attend with her. I'm glad I did, as it allowed me to take a step back in Texas history and my own history.

The Chisholm Trail is the cattle driving trail that led from ranches in Texas to railways in Kansas, where the cattle were distributed to buyers. Interestingly enough, the town where I graduated high school, Ozona, Texas, is also located on one of the main feeder trails to the Chisholm trail. At the event, they hold a miniature version of the cattle drives that occurred during the trail's heyday. They also, as the title of the event would indicate, hold a chuckwagon cookoff that requires that participants be dressed in period costumes, attire that would have generally been found on the ranch-hands that drove the cattle north along the trail.

I mentioned earlier that going to the event was a step back in time in my personal history as well. I grew up outside Lubbock, Texas, for 12 years of my life and have been many a time to Texas Tech University's National Ranching Heritage Center, where there are chuckwagon cooks who demonstrate the cooking typical to the ranch lifestyle. There is also a museum that shows important dates in the history of ranching in the United States.

I went many times to the Center because my family on my mother's side were farmers for many years. Now, the family farm is a state-designated wildlife habitat. My mom has a few of the old farm "relics," like barbed wire and picture frames made from the the barn doors. It's interesting to me how quickly the world has progressed in terms of technology and output potential. If my family hadn't moved away from the farm due to the effects of the Dust Bowl, they would probably have delved further into debt trying to maintain a lifestyle when big corporations could produce the same crop at a fraction of the cost. That, however, is a thought best left to discuss another day.

Though I am only now getting around to writing this blog, I am sitting here wondering why I left it until the last minute as I always do. I didn't have much stress about school during September and I now have more than I feel I can handle. The life of rancher, riding a horse up a dusty trail sounds appealing in contrast to all this hard work I'm doing in pursuit of my degree. Then I remember that I would be sleeping outside on the ground and not showering for days on end and snap back to reality.

Brady

On-Campus Activity Blog

For my on-campus activity, I chose to attend the lecture over magic that was given by Dr. Larry Hass last Monday, November 15. I was joined in attendance by two of our cohort members, Dr. G and Steven. When I read the description of the event, I thought it definitely sounded like something that would be interesting to write a blog post about. When I left the event, I did so with many ideas about which to write, though none of them fit my original expectations.

The best way to describe the magic show portion of his show is how Steven characterized it as we walked through the Bishop's Lounge after leaving the event. He said, "When someone starts out with card tricks, it doesn't bode well for the rest of the performance." That statement accurately describes the rest of the magic performance. At one point, he put his hand and a deck of cards under a handkerchief that he had draped over his hand. I find that if a magician has to hide (outright) the trick, then I can no longer extend my disbelief enough to think that he has performed something that I cannot explain. Not to berate the man, but I'm just trying to give an idea of my view of the magic show.

Though he was far from the best magician I've seen, his ideas about what we stand to learn from the study of magic were intriguing. The "everyday magic" that we perform are the things we do that seem to have an effect that we cannot explain, such as shushing a baby soothingly to soften their cries. I didn't interpret this as magic, but I would like to see it as more than just a sound that soothes them. One connection he touched on, but didn't develop as fully as I would have liked was the function that magic serves in teaching us that some things cannot be explained on the surface, but in experiencing them, we learn to look at the world in different ways. Or, at least, that's what I gleaned from the lecture.

I also saw that the Communication Studies department was co-sponsoring the event, in addition to other departments. I enjoy the co-departmental events because I feel they bring a wider perspective to an event. However, this event was rather boring and I am having a hard time finding connections to any of the communication classes I have taken thus far in my time here at Southwestern.

I really found no meaningful connection to the event and though I didn't think it was awful, it definitely missed the mark and failed to live up to my fairly low expectations. That said, I think the kind of academic questions events like this one bring up are helpful and assist us in broadening our academic horizons, being open to new ideas and ways of thinking. That's what a lecture should be about, and in its goals, this event accomplished that.

Brady

Mid-Semester Progress Report

Hey all,

As with everyone else in the group, this semester has been so busy for me that I have hardly had the time to reflect on anything I've done thus far. I've simply been living day-to-day and sleeping on the weekends only. I wasn't anticipating being nearly as stressed out or busy as I have been, so I quit my summer job (that I wanted to keep) within a couple of weeks of starting the semester. To sum up, senior year is hard.

I'm currently doing my Capstone in Communication Studies and it is easily the hardest paper I've ever written. As I told you all previously, I'm doing my paper on the HBO television show True Blood. I've written the literature review and have the rest of the paper sans the conclusion due next week. To clarify my topic, I'm attempting to comment on notions of citizenship as they are brought up in the show. Specifically, I'm using the Great Revelation on the show - vampires revealing their existence to the world due to the invention of synthetic blood by Japanese scientists - as an event in the Badiou sense, meaning that it was an "event" that restructured the way that we look at reality, thus laying bare the social constructs that existed all along, but were simply hiding underneath the surface. I'm not so certain as to how successful I am in achieving my goals, but I am trying harder than I ever have to say something that is valuable to the academic community as a whole. I hope that when I present the fruits of my labor at the beginning of December, people will see my research as contributing to a larger community of media scholars. I'm currently in freak-out mode, death con level 7. But, besides wanting to throw all of my materials from the class into a deep crevasse, it's going pretty well. But, I really don't like talking about Capstone, at all. So, let's move on to something more pleasant.

I have really enjoyed the conversations we've been having in class this semester. I think the complete, smaller group is nice and allows me to get to know more about each person than I would if the class was still as large as when we began Paideia. I thought the conversation we had involving Laurel's reading was interesting, because I didn't initially take the same concepts from the reading as others seemed to. We spoke about the chauvinist assumptions in German modern art (during the same time period) that dictated that women could not make the same art as men, even questioning the ability of them to be artistic. Thus, German art from the modernist period is still evolving as a movement as we move further and further away from those chauvinist assumptions. I also like how our conversations embrace the tangents that arise during discussion, as opposed to always trying to get back on track. I think this more closely mirrors everyday conversation that one might have in a similar, non-school setting. In this, I see Paideia as being incredibly valuable because it does something that no other class at this school does. It allows genuine conversation to develop and then the participants get to decide in which direction to take the class.

In all, I can't wait for this semester to be over.

Brady

I Still Have a Hard Time Explaining What Paideia is

Yo Yo Yo,

As much as I am dreading this semester and the immense workload that is about to become my life, I am comforted by the fact that the end of my undergraduate education finally feels within my grasp. This summer has seen many a change in my life plans, most significant of which is my recent realization that I can't handle going to graduate school immediately following graduation. This summer has made me realize that I enjoy working in an environment where I go to work and after leaving, I am able to return home and do whatever I please with no concern or worries about said work environment, as opposed to school forcing me to be in class and also put in significant time outside of class. So, that's just a little update on Brady, now on to the topics at hand.

To be completely honest, I have yet to come across any explanation that accurately reflects the reality of Paideia. What is it? I can blabber on for hours about the three year class with one professor and the same group of peers, but as to the effects this has on those who choose to participate in Paideia, I have no idea. I really have a hard time pinpointing the effects that Paideia has had on me. In other words, I feel unable to answer the question of what my goals for this year of Paideia are because of the lack of a tangible goal in the program itself. The program is said to benefit students based on mere participation, but this offers no way for me to possibly understand what my goals should be. If I was forced to articulate some sort of goal for Paideia, I would say that my goal in Paideia this year is to do that which will be of the most benefit to my development in all areas of life, or that Paideia will do for me what it is "supposed" to do for me.

I've definitely fulfilled the intercultural experience requirement, having studied abroad three times during my time here at Southwestern. This year, I am staying at Southwestern for both semesters in order to complete the Capstone in both of my majors, in addition to wanting to spend my entire senior year on campus.

I apparently had been totally oblivious to the creative works aspect of Paideia until recently, thus I feel I will probably utilize one of my Capstones to fill the creative works requirement. I'm currently participating in the Communication Studies Capstone research seminar. Though I have decided on a topic and general direction of this Capstone, it is far from being refined enough to elaborate on it at any great length. I have chosen to examine good and evil as they are present in the HBO show True Blood. As for my Spanish capstone, I have no idea. In relation to my Capstone, I hope to be able to present my work not only in front of faculty and students of Southwestern, but in attendance at conferences as well.

I have caught an early case of Senioritis, and it's very serious. Whenever I'm asked to think about the future, I end up deliberately avoiding thinking about it. So, when asked to confront the goals I have for this semester, I instinctually reacted by not thinking about what my goals for this year of Paideia were. Thus, the blog post you see before you. Basically, I'm avoiding confronting the reality that comes shortly after graduation by avoiding even grappling with the question.

Talk to you soon,

Brady

End of Spring 2010 Semester Reflection Blog

Wow.

What a year this has been for me. During the Fall 2009 semester, I studied abroad in Madrid, Spain, and took classes for my Spanish major as well as doing an internship with a non-profit organization called Club of Madrid, whose membership comprises the world's largest forum of democratically-elected ex-presidents and prime ministers from around the world. I have talked about this in a previous blog post, so I will not devote much space to it here. Needless to say, my experiences with studying abroad have returned me to the United States a well-heeled traveler who has attempted to incorporate the lessons I learned from living abroad into my everyday life so as to become a "citizen of the world."

After I returned from Spain in December, the realization that I was fixing to have to return to the mass amounts of homework I had not experienced since the previous spring semester had not yet hit me. But, oh boy, did that realization slap me in the face during my first week back. I found myself unable to write a paper as quickly as I had previously done, which I chalk up to the fact that I had only written two essays during my time in Spain. Two sounds like a vacation in Tahiti compared to the mountain of essays that has eclipsed my life this semester.

Our Paideia cohort's topic is, "Understanding Human Behavior." I feel that having a firm grasp of the systems on which other cultures operate is part of the process of beginning to understand human behavior. That is why I found my study abroad experience so valuable. Being able to live in and experience a completely different cultural, political and historical environment is why I feel that study abroad should be an integral part of everyone's college education, not just those students in the Paideia program, or just Southwestern students, for that matter. I have gained experience in learning to live with people different from myself, not just with different value systems and languages, but with different problems, concerns and goals from my own. In Spain, my host mom and I had many disagreements (which might just be the understatement of the year). She didn't like cooking and often fed us frozen meals or the leftovers from the restaurant at which she worked. She had an irrational obsession with the cost of electricity and the fact that the only way I could sleep was with the white noise from a electric fan. She was unwilling to compromise on the schedule she kept, even though she was supposed to per the contracts we signed with program. But, through all these disagreements and problems, I have emerged a person who is more confident and able to deal with situations that aren't exactly favorable. I have learned that in life, we most often do not get what we want and sometimes we just have to make the best with what we are given.

Paideia, for me, is a little like my experience with my Spanish host mom. We are put into this group with people we may not know or like and asked to cooperate and design a civic engagement project. In the process, we not only have to compromise and find ways to make things work, but we also have to make every attempt to get along, as those with whom we work will be with us for the remainder of our undergraduate educations. In the moment, a lot of these compromises and disagreements only serve to anger or annoy us, but for me, after I have time to step away from the situation and reevaluate that which occurred, I usually get a different view than that which I originally had. As the program has progressed, I have gotten to know several of the members of my cohort well and I have also shared intimate details of my life with them in the process. This give and take, back and forth exchange of ideas and feelings is what a liberal arts education is all about and why Paideia works for me. I needed the study abroad experience in my life at this time to open me up to new ideas and ways of living; to teach me to eat the plate of shit that life sometimes gives me and be thankful that I at least have something to eat. Paideia allows me to take the experiences I had while studying abroad and continue the discussion by not only providing a place to vent about the frustrations I had, but also providing a forum in which others can provide advice and commentary which help to bring into focus my perception of the situation.

This year has been a turnaround in terms of what I feel Paideia, as a program, is and aims to be. I love that it is open-ended and up to each group to decide what they want to get from their class. Not that I didn't like the original members of the Paideia group, but I thoroughly enjoy the small size of the group now. It allows for me to form a much more personal connection not only with my fellow cohort members, but also with Dr. Giuliano and her family, the members of which are included in many of our activities. The format of this semester's meetings has been very conducive to conversation. In addition, it required much less preparation and outside work than in previous semesters, which was one of my principal concerns with the program. As it stands, I am as happy in Paideia as I have been since I started the class.

This semester has been rather crazy for me. I have held two different jobs, the second of which I currently hold, and am on the edge of completing some of the last requirements for my majors, outside of my Capstones. I am constantly learning new lessons about myself and about life, in general. These are in addition to the obvious lessons pertinent to aims of my classes. This is one of the reasons for my renewed love affair with Southwestern. When a university makes as its mission the inclusion of life lessons into its classes, that is impressive. I have only recently realized the significance of the combination of these two lessons in solidifying my knowledge of theoretical texts in my classes.

Though it is still a year in the future, I can literally taste the finish line for this portion of my life. I love college, and my rediscovery of Georgetown has only furthered that effect, but I am looking forward to seeing where my journey takes me next. The view from this side of the future is rather foggy and undetermined; yet this is one of the reasons I am so excited to move into the next step in my life. I am a much different person than I was when I arrived at Southwestern. Hell, I'm a much different person than I was at this time a year ago! Not that I didn't like who I was then, I did. But now, me is the me specifically designed for this period in my life. I guess that one could say this about any time in their life and thus make it their preference at all times, but maybe that is part of growing up. Recognizing the changes one has gone through to get to the present day, being happy with one's current self and always keeping one eye on the horizon, ever searching for the next piece in this puzzle we call Life.

Yours,

Brady

On-Campus Event Blog

Hey again!

I have been to more on-campus events this semester than in any previous semester in my time here at Southwestern. Not sure why this is, but I am going to chalk it up to me growing up and rediscovering the reasons why I came to Southwestern in the first place. Anyway, the event I decided to write about is the most recent of the events that I have been to, the theatre department's production of Escape from Happiness.

In the play, we find ourselves thrown into the life of a family in turmoil, due to the accusations made against them due to the presence of hidden drugs in a bag in their basement. We witness the transformation of the father, an ex-cop who has supposedly been reduced to a shadow of his former self by Alzheimer's disease, from a blithering, stumbling old man into a criminal mastermind who has been pretending for the purposes of reconciling with his family members. He has recruited the help of his daughter's husband to rid the neighborhood of crime so that his family members might finally come to terms with the things he put them through during previous years, when his alcoholism caused a familial rift. All of this is staged within the kitchen of the family.

Not only does the play take us on the journey of discovering the truth behind the drugs' presence in the basement, it does so in a way that explores the depth of relations between the members of a damaged, seriously dysfunctional family. To stay funny amidst the seriousness of the subject matter, the play relies on the ability of the actors to subtlety insert the proper amount of sarcasm and cynicism into their lines.

At a liberal arts school like Southwestern, I feel that attending theatre productions is a good way to get some insight into not only the world of the performing arts, but also into the emotions that are conveyed in said productions and the messages communicated through them. I feel that this play not only depicted a dysfunctional family in a rather strange situation, but it also depicted a group of people who struggle with problems that sometimes have no solution. The message communicated through the story of this family, or at least the one I took away, is that just as blood has the power to bond us together, so can it tear us apart. What I mean by this in the context of the play is that we are bonded by blood to our family members, but when that bond of blood is betrayed or desecrated in some way, it hurts more than if a complete stranger had done the same thing. Coming from a strong family background, I cannot imagine what it would be like to not have my family members in my life, or what it would be like to have to deal with a rift in my familial unit, a rift like the one in the play.

Good works of art, in my opinion, evoke some sort of personal emotion in the viewer. One that sometimes cannot be explained or understood. In the case of Escape from Happiness, my connection is that of the complete opposite family situation in which I was raised. I have spoken about my family numerous times in Paideia sessions as they form an integral part of who I am. When times are tough, I turn to my family to help me get through. I define myself in terms of my relationships with others, my family being the single biggest influence upon the person I am today. I can't imagine what it would be like to not have family connections and bonds that I can always depend on. Sure, my family has its problems, like any normal family, but the presence of problems just signals that at least the family is communicating with each other, as opposed to bottling up all their emotions inside in order to keep the peace.

Family relations is very relevant when one considers the topic of human behavior. Families represent the most basic of social structures, one that has evolved over the millennia in order to better the survival chances of humans and to fulfill our need for social interaction. The complex nature of the modern familial structure is much more developed than those of early humans. This is good in some ways and bad in others. In the case of the family from the play, a rift has formed that probably wouldn't have had the characters not been family members, an example of a bad effect of the modern family structure. But, in this same family, one sees the ruthless lawyer daughter who fights to protect her family and will go to any lengths to accomplish her goals. This illustrates the strength of familial bonds.

I was not expecting to come to Southwestern and be a regular attendee of theatre department plays and musicals, yet that is exactly what I have become. The production values are much higher than what I would expect here at Southwestern and the actors are all immensely talented. If they continue to put on moving performances that allow the audience to think instead of just blindly consuming that which is occurring onstage, you can expect to see me in line for my tickets as soon as they are available.

Brady