Blogging Around

My first comment was to Margaret's blog about cleaning her closet, "Getting Organized". She said that it was a tedious closet and she felt no better when she was done than when she had started. She said that all she had gained was yarn and an extra pair of pants, etc. I said

"You cleaned your closet?!?! Wow! The real question is: is it still clean? Also, why does the mess in your closet matter to you so much? If you really are attached to it you should at least feel some sort of loss. I would be elated to have more pants! I think the mess in your closet is really just the extent of your rebelling. Go get a tattoo or something. Closets are meant to be organized spaces!I think we all need to feel some sort of control, even if that control is a mess!"

I thought it was interesting that she was using her room as a means of rebellion. I think that if she found other ways to keep control or express herself she would be happier and her closet would be cleaner!

My second comment was to Nina's Blog, a connection to Thomas Edison and Steve Jobs. She talked about their "Grit" or their perseverance in inventing, discovering, and learning. I said

"I would be really interested to know how you feel about "grit" in your own life! I agree that these people were so inspirational, and they changed the world. I think it's really cool that you acknowledge their talents and look up to their example. It would be enlightening to hear what you think about that in your reality!"

I think that "grit" is very real for everyone and that if we all had more of it we would be more daring and not as quick to back down when things got hard. That would also mean people like Thomas Edison and Steve Jobs would not be nearly as cool as they are to us now! I think a little grit can go a long way.

It Matters: Challenging the Status Quo Today

What were you doing when you were eleven? I was listening to trendy music, trying to fit in, and usually I was trapped in my own world that was defined by the pop culture around me. I never once questioned what I saw if I knew it to be "cool" or liked by other people. 

Tavi Gevinson was not doing that. She is the perfect modern example of challenging the status quo in teenage girl form. At age eleven she started a style blog to essentially "blow off fashion steam" that her parents didn't want to hear. She called the blog "Style Rookie" and used it to blog about her fashion interests. She followed major names and offered her opinion as well as recording pictures of her own style. Her blogs were written with quality that most eleven year olds could not achieve. She covers her own fashion issues in her blogs, especially ridicule from her peers for her odd fashion tastes. She says in one blog

"My classmates called me a hippie. One kid told me I should have been "in a basement, smoking a joint."

I'm not offended by this. Lately 70's is a style I've been trying to impersonate. But come on kids, if you wanna insult me, come up with something better!

I try not to let these kinds of things get under my skin, though (...)

 Ah, well. What are you gonna do."

She was immediately recognized in the fashion community and became big fast. She has most recently started a magazine called "Rookie" for teenagers that offers positive images and messages for girls. In an interview she had with Steven Colbert on his show “The Colbert Report”, Colbert asked Tavi “if girls feel good about themselves how are we going to sell them things they don’t need?” Colbert put her on the spot with this witty yet unfortunately true question about the way images in popular media effect teenage girls today.

Tavi Gevinson continues to challenge the status quo with her casual and yet brilliant ability to be herself. She may not be making the kind of waves that Martin Luther King Jr. or Gandhi made, but she is fighting a battle amongst women and especially teenage girls that has gone on for far too long. We cannot continue to let the status quo expectations of appearance create unhealthy situations for women.

She challenges the image of teenage girls in a multitude of ways from dying her hair grey for a year to arguing for the intelligence of teenage girls. She argues that the overall picture people see when they think of the typical teenage girl is invalid especially when it comes to pop culture. When asked about the role models of this time she says,

“I think about how obsessed everyone is with Miley Cyrus' virginity. You see everyone being like 'that's so awful all these girls look up to her blah blah blah' and you never really hear anything from girls themselves. I think you can trust young women to look at something like Miley Cyrus and form their own opinions. But there isn't really a place for them to do that. So I guess that's part of what we'd like to do with Rookie.”

In this way she is saying that the pop-culture interests of teenage girls today are not superficial. She has high respect for her readers. Though some consider their interests ridiculous she says about “Rookie” that,

“When I tell people I'm starting a website for teenage girls I'm met with laughter so many times because people can't really imagine that existing and not being vapid or something. But you have to respect the intelligence of your readers. Teenage girls are smart and can think for themselves.”

The most impressive thing about Tavi is that she continues to stay true to her style throughout all the recognition she receives. Her fame began with her character and continues with her character. Every day the Internet creates opportunity for average people to challenge the status quo in their own unique ways. Tavi continues to take advantage of the outlet that made her an icon to create something worth listening to for what society has deemed the “vapid-vain-self serving” culture that Tavi and I belong to.

If this interests you at all here are some wonderfully Tavi things to check out:

Her interview with Steven Colbert 

Her interview with Piper Weiss of Shine Yahoo

Rookie Mag

Her blog, The Style Rookie (which by the way continues to be as insightful as when she started 5 years ago at age 11!!!)

Blogging Around

In response to Margret's post "It Matters: Creative Problem Solving" where she applied the ideas from the creativity crisis to the recent Chicago Public School teacher strike. She had extremely interesting insight!

It is extremely interesting to see how you broke down different steps to creativity and problem solving and applied them to the strike. You went beyond the basics and provided some serious insight to a current and relevant problem! Now I would suggest taking a train downtown and yelling loudly about it. Just kidding. The strike is over and even if it wasn't I don't know who would listen. I would! Anyway, good problem solving!

in response to Nina's post "Captured Thought: Full Blast Living" where she looked deeper into the article "The Creative Personality" by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. She covered topics of gender, individualism, and contradictions.
 I agree, this article made me really think too, but in a way that wasn't thinking. Reading this affirmed me, the way I think and the way I am started to make more sense! The way you connected gender to this is extremely profound! I also am exited to practice "full blast living". I hope you are too!

Best Of Week: Born into Brothels

Pity is an easy way to stunt learning. Someone who has had greater struggles than you have probably could tell you a lot that you could not learn otherwise. It is when we get past pity that we can really help a cause and also help ourselves. This is how selflessness can really work most effectively. 

In order to really learn from the film Born into Brothels it is necessary to exercise this kind of selflessness. When we really look at these children's situation it is easy to be discouraged. In their own country of India they are considered the lowest of low, and then India is considered a third world country. Pity would drive most people to want to give money, food, or clothing to these children. This is extremely helpful but someone came into their life that really gave them what they needed. 

Zana Briski is a photographer that originally had traveled to the brothel to document what was happening for the kids. Then she looked past her pity and looked for a concrete way to ensure their safety and even removal from the brothel. The first thing she did was teach them photography. Many would argue that this is an impractical skill to teach them for a multitude of reasons; they can't afford cameras, it is hard to find a job with this skill, and it requires further education that the children could not afford. I think she saw what they really needed, and that was creativity. When the children were taking pictures they had to think outside the box to get the perfect picture in the box. This is teaching them problem based learning and giving them an opportunity to grow and learn in a way they were not getting in their normal lives. 

This grabbed the attention of a lot of people. The children's pictures were shown in many shows and people started to really care about their situation. This attention eventually led to the filming of this documentary and many other opportunities for the kids. The best part is that Briski worked to get the children enrolled in boarding school so they were away from their unhealthy environments and they had a chance to get a good education. 

Without Briski the children most likely would have stayed in the brothels their whole lives and then bore children into the brothel and so on. Briski was able to hopefully break the chain because she really cared, she learned, and she was able to provide for them in a way that they could really use for a long time and not just to satisfy and immediate need. Many would argue that Briski learned the most in this situation, and we can learn from her as well so we can bring to light new ideas to creatively and effectively solve all the worlds’ problems!

It Matters: Back to school with multiple intelligences

Today is a fantastic time to be a student in the United States. Education is a hot topic with concerns that range from teacher benefits, budget problems, the necessity of the arts in schools, and the list continues. More recently the hot issue in schools has been how can teachers improve their students' learning? As a student I am very aware of how I learn and what I would like to see changed, but my learning style is most likely pivotally different from the person sitting in the desk next to me in any given class. The question then becomes how do teachers satisfy every students learning needs? I can testify as a student that we as students are demanding. We would also like to tell you that teachers are demanding in a different way. The discussion between teachers and students doesn't have to be a battle; it should be an enlightening conversation. 

The real problem is this: Sitting at home with an assignment that makes no sense to me, not knowing how and where to begin, and then coming in to class and being the only one who is as clueless as you. Every student has his or her own personal learning styles and habits, and when a student is stuck mentally it can be good and it can be bad. Challenge is good, discomfort and failure are not. We students are frustrated but we, unfortunately, can't strike. Luckily our cry has been heard by many teachers and researchers and there have been amazing and numerous results. 

Debbie Jacob writes the article attached to this blog.  The article references Gardener's Multiple Intelligences, a theory that breaks up humans intelligence into categories based on learning preference. More teachers are moving to teaching methods that effectively are inclusive of a variety of learning methods. This article suggests that if you know your specific learning style you are more likely to not only be more successful in learning in an educational environment, but also you are more likely to feel more comfortable with yourself in daily life! 

This is different from just knowing what you are good at. Most students today are incredible multi-taskers. Most students are involved in a multitude of activities, and this confuses our brains ability to know what we are truly most comfortable with. It is also not uncommon to have more than one best learning intelligence. When teachers and students are both aware of the students learning style the student will learn better. It is huge to know this information! Teachers now have the potential to change the way we as students learn, and students have the opportunity to really invest in learning and not mindlessly complete tasks! The only real question is how will we utilize this information? It truly is a fantastic time to be a student in the United States. 

http://www.guardian.co.tt/columnist/2012-09-03/back-school-multiple-intelligences?qt-realestate_classfieds=0

Carry It Forward: The Creative Personality

Glenbrook South is huge! Not necessarily in comparison to other schools even in the area but it’s big! We all have pretty extensive groups of friends but most of us stay within those groups. Admit it, if you attend GBS you probably don’t know everyone in your graduating class. That’s ok! If anyone were to know everyone in his or her class it wouldn’t be me.

Stop calling it shy. 

Even though that is a valid point to make it’s a silly one. A lot of people are shy and all for different reasons; personality, habit, experiences, ect. Shy is an adjective that can be applied to a multitude of circumstances and stories. There are very specific and purposeful reasons for my “shyness” the biggest one having a perfectly logical explanation!

The article The Creative Personality by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi thoroughly described ten traits about creative minds. I found the article extremely insightful and thought provoking, especially one point. He said that “Creative people tend to be both extroverted and introverted” (Csikszentmihalyi). Let’s break that down!

The pure definition of extroverted is “an outgoing, overtly expressive person”.

The pure definition of introverted is “a shy and renitent person”

Csikzentmihalyi goes on to say that “extroversion and introversion are considered the most stable personality traits that differentiate people from each other and that can be reliable measured”.

So the question is how on earth can a person exhibit both at once?!

The answer is that it is uncomfortable. In my situation the introversion part stems mostly from fear of judgment and pure, unfiltered awkwardness. The extroverted part is easily explained by a want for people to know me and the ideas I have about life! The biggest problem is that I have some kind of “wall” that prevents the sharing of these ideas. I will very rarely raise my hand or participate in class voluntarily even though I have a yearning to! It really has created a war within me.

I'm not shy!

The most unfortunate part about all of this is that Mr. Csikszentmihalyi (What a name!) did not discuss a coping solution to this problem, only the idea that it exists. I think the biggest part of this is that the article only described the creative mind, and didn’t suggest that there was anything wrong with having the personality described. In fact it is important now more than ever because the creative mind is being stifled! We need creative minds like mine and maybe yours to speak out, which is ironically a problem for me!

I think what I really can learn from this and carry into my life is that my ideas are important and worth it! I need to remember that merely existing on this planet gives me license to grow and share just as much as any other person. So you actually read this and do know me as one of the people in your graduating class, feel free to push me out of my comfort zone and approach me. Better yet, maybe I’ll even raise my hand in class! This really is an exiting time in life where we as young people can be changed so radically! Being a person who is both introverted and extroverted, I have a unique view of life that many others cannot share with me. So which one is it? Only the winning side will tell!