Activist, Artist, Academic: On Integrating Identities

I was talking with one of my friends from high school recently and, as we nearly always do, started talking about parks.

We hung out a lot late at night, driving around our suburb till my gas tank got down low (and, being Seattlites of a kind, we lamented the carbon emissions) and then we would stop at a park. Sitting in the car, listening to whatever music was available, we planned our escape mission. We would both go to college on the east coast, have fabulous adventures, save the world; we would become non-profit managers and write books and lead colorful lives in all the stereotypically naive ways that teens with ambition look at the future. We thought "if we just get out of here, then we can do whatever we want."

It was only partly true.

Stress, College Life, and Self-Worth

I've written before about balancing academics and creativity. Now that we are coming upon the end of finals and yet another dramatic spike in personal free time (a.k.a. winter break), I feel that it must be brought up once more, but in a slightly different light. This time I want to address stress.

Caught My Eye: Tim Burton's Vincent Animation

Sometimes when I am working for a very long time (as I did/am doing today), I like to take a break and watch mindless Youtube videos...
Well, this one is not as mindless as some of the others that I break with, but I remember really enjoying this Tim Burton short animation, most likely for it's quirky and dark tone. Please enjoy it and send me any Youtube videos that I can use to distract myself this weekend as I write two papers and prepare for an exam!

 

P.S.
The Draw-a-thon was great last night! I did a lot of tester drawings that I was not so happy with, but that got me back in the groove, and then came out with a really large and very nice drawing at the end. Pictures will be forthcoming.

See more media in the on-going series Caught My Eye.

Academics and Creativity

It is time for me to tackle the double-edged sword that has been affecting me all of my college life thus far: the complicated relationship between my creative and academic minds.

I have devoted myself to academics, which is a major privilege and portion of my daily life. I am lucky enough to be able to learn about such diverse topics as medical anthropology and American literature after 1945. I get to choose based on my interests rather than a rigid course requirements list - a benefit allowed to humanities majors that I take full advantage of. Yet sometimes I get restless.
It is mostly inexplicable, like the desire to pick up materials I haven't touched in a while and put them immediately back down. "Where are you going with that?" I hear the voice in my head say, "You know you have a fifteen page paper due next week." And then I pack away whatever creative impulse I may have had in order to read more source material.
In these instances, I feel as if my academic priorities foreclose upon my creative ones. While I get a proliferation of ideas from all the new things that I'm learning, transferring those ideas into creative expression is put on hold in favor of doing the academic work necessary for that moment. On certain days, it feels like I've left half of myself in the bottom of a drawer or up on a shelf. Waiting is the most common state I am in.

But, while it seem that the marriage of my two minds is an uncomfortable one, I still believe it's a necessary union.
The beauty of putting these two together is most accessible when I am in a writing or drawing course. I get feedback on my otherwise solitary efforts and am encouraged to go ahead with more. I am allowed a space to roll out new material and talk about it. The experience breathes new life into the dusty corners of my creative brain, letting me enter again into a balmy equilibrium.
It is obviously harder to come by when I am taking completely reading courses and am lodged in books, but I value those experiences too. The writer's greatest pastime is to read, of course.

In short, I am torn about how to feel in academia as a creative person. so I am turning it over to anyone who finds themselves wanting to create in an academic setting: does academia stifle or liberate you? Do you feel like there is room for both the creative and academic states of mind? Are there ways they can combine or do you keep them totally separate? Let me know in your comments.

You may also be interested in reading my opinion piece Single Sex Education for Women and Girls.
You can also take a look at my writing.

Stuck in Transit

As the teacher's strike barrels into the end of its second week, people are starting to frustrate me to no end.
After hearing all the different opinions from either side, I went to the open meeting at Samammish to listen to people speak their grievances and the board to explain themselves [which they didn't do much of, frankly]. We were crammed into the theater and then into the cafeteria with a tiny screen because there was so many people. We watched from inside and outside, and our captains started writing a speech to go up for number 62 [which they cut off at 56, which sucked]. The worst part to me was that people who didn't seem to understand everything about the strike got to speak their piece. Obviously we are all affected, but parents don't know the inner workings of the classroom. And, equally, students probably don't have the qualifications to know about what a fair pay raise is. People were saying their part, which I commend, but a lot of it was very selfish and towards themselves. Our speech may have been the same, but we are the ones most affected. Parents with their kids in daycare and problems with free and reduced lunch I understand their plight, but there were people that were far removed from the situation - like a nurse that was speaking about how she would love to have three months vacation and a parent speaking of her student's band camp being cancelled. I believe that these are not issues of importance necessary to be brought up when they are minor things to lose. That nurse was aligning her position to that of a teacher, and they are just not the same. And band camp for one year is probably not as affecting as having teachers move on in the curriculum based off of a robot web decision. Particularly cagey were the board members, who were doing the classic talk-around-the-issue political style. They were asked very direct questions of what would happen to teachers who didn't obey curriculum web and if there was money to give by rechecking the books - they answered everything but these questions.
However, I guess from the email that we received, we actually did get a little leeway. There are now going to be round-the-clock discussions, a new mediator, and no injunction to force teachers back to school. But we're still not rid of the word 'occassionally' or at the right price range. I don't believe much in the pay being as important, but at least focus on your students' livelihoods by allowing teachers the freedom to think outside the box.