Final Portfolio: Let's start with an adventure...

That's what I think I'll call my freshman year of college. An adventure. I don't think there's really anything else I can call it to be honest. When I think back to my first day, it seemed almost like camp. A new place, a new room, a new person to share it with and a beautiful campus. My path seemed so clear at this trail head of sorts. Even when I looked at the syllabuses for my respective classes, they seemed to read like a map I'd studied before. I thought, 'I've done school before, I can do this.' But just as I thought I knew the trail I was hiking, the path I thought I would take was obscured and I had to take a new path with a much steeper incline.
    Perhaps it was the suddenness with which my work load escalated, or maybe I retained too much of my "senior-itis" from my last year of high school. Whatever it was, it hit me full force straight in the nose, and I was not prepared for it. On top of that, my very first semester in college was filled with scandal and sadness, as a legend passed and a single man shrouded my school in confusion, controversy and tragedy. The persistent media and my ever growing work load seemed insurmountable. I spent countless hours on the phone with my mom trying to figure out the big questions: "What am I doing here?" "Is college even the place for me?" "Why do I feel like this stress can't be fixed?" "What does it all mean?" and "Why the hell am I having all these existential issues?"
    Over the course of this tumultuous first semester, I kept myself sane by focusing on my music and my art whenever I was stressed, and I eventually learned to organize myself both literally in terms of the papers on my desk and the assignments on my calender and in the sense that my thoughts were so scattered that they needed to be reigned in somehow.
    Then, during second semester, I felt like I had a hold of things. I got back on the path I saw for myself in August and I was able to read the map again.

    At this point, maybe it is clear why there is a Calvin and Hobbes panel above this introduction, but let me clarify just to be sure. This is the last panel from the last strip of Calvin and Hobbes that Bill Watterson ever wrote. In my opinion, it is nothing short of genius. To me, this panel has come to represent among other things, the profundity of simplicity and the power of fewer words (ironically I think this introduction is quite a few words). Mostly though, this strip, especially the ending line, "...let's go exploring!" has served to remind me not to pass up opportunities and not to ignore possibilities. In the last of the three blog posts I've included in this portfolio, I discuss the importance of living in the moment. If there's one thing that I value over all else that I've learned this year it's that life goes too fast. Maybe that seems silly or naive coming from a 19 year old, but I really believe it. There's not time enough in life to waste dwelling on feelings of stress or jealousy or anger or any other such emotion.
   
    So without further verbiage, I thank you for visiting my page, and hope you enjoy the material I've included in this portfolio.

And finally...

This week, I would like to talk about the concept of finality. Pretty broad term right? I'm not really quite sure what I want to say about it yet, but we'll see... wherever the page takes me.

Hmm, let's talk about things ending. That seems like an ironic place to start. SO. I clearly chose to write about finality because this is the final blog post and the semester, and year, are both coming to an end. How quickly time does pass...

Things ending definitely have a lot of rhetoric behind them. Thinking about the end of school fills us with feelings of joy for the summer, yearning for the end to come to pass and stress for all the work we know has to be done before we get there. Then, over the summer, we look forward to the end of our jobs or the end of our chores so that we can hang out with friends or go to dinner with parents etc. etc.

Then, when it gets close enough to August, we begin looking forward to the end of summer. We itch to come back to State, to see all of our friends, start new classes and begin a new adventure. Then about 3 weeks into the semester we realize, "Damn, where did summer go? I want that back, I can't wait 'till next summer."

We seem to always be looking forward to the end of things don't we?

Then, come graduation time, there will be tears of joy and tears of sadness. There will be nostalgia, reminiscing and pictures with friends we know we may never see again. There will be happiness for the collective accomplishments of the class of 2015 and there will be fear for the next unfamiliar step in the staircase- because we can never be quite sure just how far up we will have to step to stand on it.

But on this day, we don't think of the fear. We don't think of the next step. We don't think of the internships and jobs we may or may not have lined up. We try not to think about the future without some of our closest friends.

On this day, we don't think about the end.

On this day, we truly live in the moment- and we are happy.

I think Henry David Thoreau hit the nail on the head, it's all about living in the moment. That is the key to happiness. If you're always worried about the next thing, you'll never appreciate what is good right now.

And almost everything that is good is only good now. Memories are nice, but they are even better (and much less necessary), if you really enjoyed yourself while it was happening.

Living in the future?

Impossible.

You will never experience anything if you are always waiting to experience something, whether it be good or bad.

Well. This surely didn't take to the page how I expected. But I'm pretty happy with it. Guess I was just living in the moment while writing it huh? (<-- see what I did there?)

Here's a final remark for my final blog post which is on finality: I am NOT saying that you should never have plans or expectations or indeed, that you should never look forward to something. Sometimes, the anticipation of an event is on of the best parts. HOWEVER, there is a difference between keeping those things in your head and focusing on them.

Example: Right now, everyone is undoubtedly looking forward to the summer for one reason or another. But if you let it control your thoughts, you will not live for now and you'll probably lose focus on school which, though we hate to admit it, is what's most important when we're not on break.

Anyway. I hope this wasn't completely incoherent and maybe it was mildly enjoyable. I wish you all a lovely end of semester and an even more lovely summer. I hope it is safe, productive, fun, ridiculous, miraculous, fantastical, emotional and all sorts of other adjectives.

But mostly, I hope you live your summer for the moment. That way, when Fall semester rolls around, you're ready to go and you're not wishing to get back what you feel like you missed.

Let's talk about something...

You know what's an interesting concept?

Individuality.

It's interesting for a couple reasons:

1. I think we can agree it's considered a virtue by some
2. It's strived for by many
3. I don't think anyone really knows what it is...

This last reason is the main point of interest to me. In past posts, I've discussed or touched on this idea of individuality, but what is it really? Let's see if we can't put a dent in the definition.

So the first thing I think about when I hear the word individuality is being your own person. For example if someone asked me how to be an individual, I would tell them: be true to yourself. Basically, don't do things that YOU (your true self) wouldn't do.

This raises a new question: How does one stay true to themselves?

This seems like it should be pretty easy to do right? Just do what you think is right. And who knows you better than you... right? This is where the tricky part comes in. Cause this is where outside influence comes in.

Can you be an individual while still responding to outside influence?

Yes.

Can you be an individual while letting yourself be ruled by outside influence?

No.

This, I believe, is the difference. You are who you are. You know it better than anyone. From the way you wear your hair to the shoes you buy, to the house you live in, the things you say, your minor movements and indeed all of your mannerisms and every aspect of your personality and every fiber of your being. That is you.


But the part of you that plays the most influence in individuality are your choices. So if this is true, it would follow that since individuality is about one's own self, then your choices (if your aim is to be an individual) must be your own.

So how do we distinguish our own choices from the ones made for us? Earlier, I said that you could respond to outside influence while still retaining individuality. So if you must make your own choices to remain an individual, then how can an individual still be affected by outside influence?

Good questions. I shall do my best to answer them.

I think that influence is inevitable. It would be absurd to think that someone could live purely on their own influence. That's just ridiculous. So, the question becomes not about rejecting all foreign influence, rather deciding for YOURSELF (<--you can tell it's important cause it's in caps) which influences are good and bad. Which ones you will choose to let influence you and who you are, and which you will not.

Make sense?

I'll give a quick example of what I mean and then wrap this up.

ex. 1: Being an individual: Johnny Smith sees an ad on TV for a pair of shoes. He likes them. He thinks, wow, I would look swell in those shoes. So he saves up some money and buys them and wears them when he wants to.

ex. 2: Not being an individual: Johnny Smith seen an ad on TV for a pair of shoes. He doesn't really know what to think about them. But all of his friends have this pair of shoes, and he wants to fit in. So he shells out the money for this pair of shoes that, really, he might not have wanted in the first place. Johnny wears the shoes.

I hope my thoughts on this have been clear. Questions, comments, arguments, praise, qualifications and all other sorts of response to this entry (as always) are more than welcome.

P.s. RANDOM THOUGHT: If every "J-Walker" at Penn State got a ticket over the course of one day, how much money do you think State College would rake in? (If you're commenting, please don't just respond to this, I'm really very curious about the concept of individuality and this last question I thought of literally a minute ago, thanks!)

Whaddup Social Norms

So. Last week's discussion of a strange social norm was so much fun I decided to pick another one this week, so here goes.

This week I'd like to discuss social norms related to strange ideas of personal privacy (or something along those lines, you'll see...)

First, let's talk about eye contact. The first thing I think of when I hear the words "eye contact" is a conversation. In a conversation, eye contact is important right? It tells the other person that:

1) You're not rude
2) You're actually paying attention to what they're saying
and 3) It tells them a little bit about what kind of person you are (especially in an interview setting, things like eye contact, hand shakes etc. are very important to the interviewer)

Another thing is, when someone is avoiding eye contact with me while we're talking, I either don't trust them (what they're saying) or I get self conscious that there's something wrong with my face. Do I have tomato sauce on my lip? A pimple? WHY WON'T YOU LOOK AT ME??

Anyway, what I'm trying to get at here is that I think it's fair to say that eye contact is something we really value in this society.

So then why are there times when eye contact seems unacceptable? Take this scenario:

You are walking down the sidewalk, maybe walking to or from class, perhaps you're listening to a good song on your iPod. It's a nice day outside, you're looking around at the trees, at the sky, at the buildings on College Ave... and then... all of a sudden, you look (for maybe no other reason than that is simply where your eye went) at a person walking in the opposite direction of you on the sidewalk... you make eye contact.

What do you do? You look away right? Maybe you look at the ground, or try to make it seem like you just happened to look at this person on your way to look at the interesting something to the left of their head, maybe you pretend you just got a text message, I don't know. But the point is, for some reason it's not acceptable to maintain eye contact with this person on the sidewalk.

Other places that eye contact is generally seen as breaking a social norm:
-Classrooms
-Hallways
-Bathrooms (Speaking of which, I'll be getting to a bathroom social norm next)

I just think these sort of unspoken "rules" are very interesting.

Okay- bathroom social norm. *DISCLAIMER* I am only talking about the dude's room. I have no idea what goes on in the ladies' bathroom. Promise.

So in the men's room, if it can at all be avoided, you do not take the urinal next to someone who is already there. Reasonable? Maybe not, but definitely justifiable. However this holds true when there are dividers and even when you move to the stalls.

Can you think of anywhere else where this same thing holds true? (the ladies can answer too now)

In my opinion, just about everywhere. In classes, you don't take the seat next to someone, you take the seat all the way over. On the bus, unless it's full, you take the seat one over from someone who is already sitting down. When eating, you tend to sit as far away from others as you can without seeming like you're trying to do so.

Isn't this weird? I think this is bizarre. I mean, what kind of privacy do you think you're protecting? Do we think it'll be awkward if we sit next to someone? Isn't that what the damn seat is there for?

It's very curious...

These kinds of things are all very curious...