For crimes against the state
11 Aug 2011 2 Comments
in Personal, Thinking aloud Tags: human beans, religion
I apologise.
I apologise for something a fellow pointed out to me a few days ago. He, what I (may wrongly) assume to be a devout atheist, expressed his views that religion should not be a part of the public sphere. He accused “people” — that is, no-one in particular, but, by extension, everyone — of “making everything about religion.”
I try not to reveal the fact that I am what is called “religious”, mostly because I am afraid and weary of the reactions I am and yet will never be used to. I am tired of being persecuted and judged for things I have not done nor will have any part in. The term “religious” is so ambiguous that I, somewhat tragically, always hasten to explain — I do not follow the Bible on every single word, I can still support human rights and remain religious, I do not always condone of the church, I can believe in evolution and believe in God, and so on. I often only reveal this shameful trait of mine when people have known me for a while for the rational, thoughtful person I am, in the hopes that I won’t scare them away. And still, they always appear supremely surprised. I do not like to reveal my religious inclinations to my peers, for I am afraid it loses me quite a bit of respect.
I most certainly do not attempt to force my values and my beliefs on everyone, though I may grudgingly discuss them. I have often painstakingly tried to explain to some people that religion isn’t merely the belief in some supreme Creator and in life after death, but about how and why we live now — why and how I live now. I am often dismissed, for if the church is wrong in so many fundamental aspects of science and human freedom, what do the other things it does matter? If the church is causing such trouble in interfering with basic things like education, if it has caused unrest and terror throughout history (you would be surprised about how many people still refer to this argument; because everything can be judged by its history), there can certainly be no good to it, right?
I mentioned before that I do not always condone of the church. I don’t deny that there are members of “the church” who may appear deluded (however, I don’t claim that they are), and who are certainly more than glad to try to scare you into agreeing, or persecute you for disagreeing with them by any means in their disposal. The crucial distinction here is that they are people, and responsible for their actions — too often a principle is blamed for what is essentially human behavior. We don’t want to take responsibility for our own actions as a collectivity, so we find a scapegoat and pin the blame on it.
Here, the blame should be pinned on two-sided ignorance than anything; on the friction and outright, knee-jerk hate between the broad groups of believers and nonbelievers. I would beg of all of you to have patience and regard with love any and all people you meet, regardless of sex, race and religion if I had the courage for it. I would point out that individuals deserve to be judged as individuals for their own actions, and not for the label they can be filed under. And yet, I would have to hesitantly venture to claim that not even a broad label with the exclusion of sane individuals deserves so much hatred and scorn.
Still, perhaps there is some blame for me as well, for the accusation of the fellow mentioned at the start of this post wasn’t unfounded. I apologise, for I do make everything about “religion.” I apologise, because on some level, I realise that I would perhaps not have survived some of the hardest times of my life without faith. I apologise, for every day, I find joy and beauty in my life because of my religion. I apologise, for my religion is such a fundamental part of myself and my being that I cannot not make everything about it.
I apologise, for I am sane, rational and independent, and yet, I believe in God. I apologise that, even for the uses of our society, I cannot separate one from another.
Reflections of bad writing
19 Jun 2011 Leave a Comment
in Sort of a review, Thinking aloud
A few months ago, a creative writers’ club I joined (and never attended the meetings of, oops, time to fix that in semester two) was going to have a discussion on bad writing, and what it is. At that time, I was still planning on going to attend the meeting, and I was hence thinking about it — but at that time, I didn’t really seem to have any opinion on the matter. Over this weekend, my opinion has sort of solidified, and I want to share it with you guys. This post is going to be really long, because the issue I’m talking about is a bit convoluted, and the argument will most likely be unfinished and lacking in “the other side.” I’m probably going to write another post addressing this side as well. Anyway. Let’s go~
I recently re-discovered (or remembered, with simultaneous amusement and a sinking feeling) the Maradonia Saga once again. The idea behind this one is that the author triumphantly claims herself the World’s (though if I remember correctly, that word was lacking an apostrophe the last time I saw it) Youngest Author, having begun writing her first book “at the ripe age of ten” and then having been (self-)published at the age of thirteen. Among her other astonishing achievements are her ability to read “up to five different books in a week,” and to relentlessly create user profiles on various sites to praise and publicise herself. What I wonder is that why Ms Tesch, since numbers seem so very important to her, is not the World’s Youngest Mathematician instead.
In all seriousness, I haven’t read her books, nor do I have any intention to. Once upon a time, when I first discovered the Maradonia saga and my head stopped trying to implode, there was an excerpt of the first book on her website. Since then, I suppose she’s discovered that showing people what they’re purchasing probably hinders her sales, so she’s taken it down. If you want at least some indication of her writing, check this post here. I also remember that the books were significantly higher in price back then, so that probably gives you some indication for how all of this has been going for her. In short, and using Stephen King’s controversial words (though meant for another; I’m sure you know about this controversy): “she can’t write worth a darn.” But what’s even more than that, her ego is the size of a castle and she seems to have permanently moved to make-believe land, making websites for the production of a movie based on her series, and just generally pretending to be A Really Big Thing, healthily ignoring any criticism and countering it with the most aggressive, bad-mouthed comments (you might need to read the post above the comment to get the full context of the story).
So basically, she’s just like every other teenager ever, except that she has a specific hobby and her parents appear to have enough money to support her flights of fancy. One could perhaps even venture to say that she’s almost like every young writer ever — the only criticism she could have received on her writerly doodlings were from family and friends, meaning, of course, that she didn’t. Come on, every writer who’s sometimes had the fancy to publish and has researched it a bit has heard the advice: have someone outside your immediate circle read it, because those around you can’t take an objective stance to it. It’s just natural that Gloria thinks herself oh-so-brilliant — in a manner of speaking, in her small world, she is.
Of course, she’s in the wrong in trying to lie to her potential readers and customers with orchestrated pictures like this, and with claiming that there’s going to be a movie or that she was made an offer for a movie that clearly will never exist. But what I’m, as always, baffled about is the community’s response to this. Sure, I can’t really speak for myself, because I was fuming about it for weeks afterward and I still use the Maradonia saga to poke fun at when I’m overcome with my own, inevitable sense of entitlement, but… still. The response that arose from Gloria’s fantasy life made public was for the internet to call “bullshit”, but since pretty much everyone who had any interest in the issue were young writers ourselves, pissed about the prospect of this little kid putting no apparent work into her writing and then claiming to have been published and, essentially, implying herself the Best Writer Ever, the response was a bit more eloquent than what 4chan can achieve. We’ve been poking fun at her, tearing apart the little bit of text we got, and posting blog posts like this one about her.
What this points out, irrevocably, is that writers don’t understand what should be the first rule of the internet: Thou Shalt Not Feed the Troll.
Of course, we’re in the right. I don’t know anyone in my age group (late teenages, if someone had forgotten) who is an avid creative writer and who hasn’t been writing at least since the age of ten; we’re every bit as good as her (at least by her own measure; I’m not going to comment on any others), we know that there are millions of other people who are just as good as her, and we’re hurting that she, of all people, gives us such bad rep and tries to represent herself as something she is not. We’re fuming because, once again, some asshole brings herself to the spotlight and the people who really love what they do, the ones who really are important and who will always strive to improve, are left overshadowed by douchebaggery.
That’s fine. But I wonder, how much more quickly would Maradonia have been wiped from the face of the Earth if we had had the good sense to just look at it, have a good laugh and walk away? I suppose it was inevitable that someone point out how wrong she is, but… It’s a bit iffy. It’s the similar sort of knee-jerk hate response you see toward anyone who is inexperienced and gets published out of the blue, and whose work is perhaps not quite down to pat just yet. For more examples, see the hatred toward Stephenie Meyer, J.K. Rowling etc. There are perfectly valid reasons to criticise people’s work, but there is no real need to make it a sort of organised hatred the wide-spread dislike of some books and some authors appears to become.
This, too, makes me wonder: we hate on Gloria Tesch because of her misplaced sense of entitlement, but is our hatred toward her so strong only because in her, we see (though perhaps amplified into ugly proportions) echoes of our OWN entitlement, and our disappointment for doing exactly or more than she is doing, and for not getting nearly the same recognition?
Or perhaps I can only speak for myself.
Thoughtfulness and jellybeans and procrastination from studying for exams, everybody.
Unobtainable peace and quiet
09 Jun 2011 Leave a Comment
in Personal Tags: frustrations, future, mundane life
So, for all I’ve made resolutions to figure out the more important things in my life and not get caught up in insignificant details like the first year of university when realistically, with knowledge of my background in schooling, I could breeze through it and still get pretty good marks, I’ve fallen into that trap again. That’s why I haven’t been tweeting much recently, and that’s why I haven’t spared one more thought to this blog: for the past few weeks, it’s been survival mode for various assignments & then revision mode for exams, and in between doing those things, some mindless, though somewhat fun activity that will let me zero my brain for a while.
How long will it take for me to figure out that I’m not a robot, and that I won’t need to be? When on Earth will I understand that living my life is not about getting good grades or understanding or remembering absolutely everything I was taught in class? When will I have the courage to dare to not care for a while, and not to panic when I’m called for it, but just figure it out then and there?
It frustrates me, you know, to keep making these promises to myself and then back out every time. Well, not back out, perhaps, because this time I really feel like I was trying — trying to not worry about it too much. I’m not very good at it, and I could blame my parents and my cultural heritage for it (Finns are way too serious for their own good, you’d understand if you ever lived there for any amount of time), but my other problem is that I just can’t give myself a break.
How incredibly, frustratingly ironic is it that the hardest thing for me to do is to cut myself some slack in, well, everything?
Anyway. If I still have any readers left who sort of sometimes ghost around this unpredictable blog, I apologise for my absence and tentatively promise more posts in the future; it’s exam period now, but it’ll be over sooner than later, and then I’ll be on holidays for a month. I might even post about my plans for next semester, because I’m working on the whole cutting myself some slack thing, but there are some organisational problems to that that don’t depend on me and I’d like to hear an answer on before I announce anything, because otherwise it’ll be too painful if it falls apart.
See you around, guys. Bubble baths, starlit skies and peace, everyone. Especially peace; and quiet.
Variable lengths of an attention span
23 Apr 2011 Leave a Comment
in Personal Tags: frustrations, mundane life
Recently, I’ve decided that I have a really, really short attention span.
This short. Not to scale.
This revelation is a bit of a paradox to me, because at the same time, I know myself to be the sort of a person who will just randomly sit down and work on something for hours and hours and hours on end, never getting bored or tired with I’m doing. This also applies to certain modes of fun, as long as they don’t have a too great emotional involvement, mostly because emotional involvement, especially if it’s particularly heavy, makes me fidgety so that I’m not completely devastated by the full effect. But that’s kind of unrelated, and just a side product of being so damnedly sensitive.
I didn’t actually mean that last part — secretly, I’m quite proud of being as sensitive and easily emotionally swayed as I am. Sure, it causes a lot of grief to the people closest to me (as the past few days, when the waterworks only shut off to refill, have proved) — but I like to think that my uninhibited, honest, sparkly-eyed joy also makes their lives just that more pleasant to live. I mean, there’s a reason people still want to be around me even after they’ve heard me getting all sob-y and pathetic about little things, right, even if it’s out of some sort of sense of protection?
And I could kind of get into how that’s another paradox of my personality, being so easily swayed in my emotional state but still considering myself a relatively strong person, but if I got into that, we could be here all day — besides, the whole point of this post was to talk about my short attention span, rather ironically.
But what I mean with that is that recently, I feel like I start doing something, and within the next 20-35 minutes, I’m already bored by it. I have about ten (Final Fantasy VII, the Phoenix Wright series, InFamous, Spyro: Dawn of the Dragon, Dissidia, Pokémon White [though I did defeat the elite four once already; I haven't versed the Champion], Neverwinter Nights 2, Patapon, Rayman etc.) unfinished videogames going at the moment; and I’m not even playing them consecutively, it’s just like “ooh I wanna play this now, no I wanna play this; no, actually, that other one was shinier; oohh no, there’s that one I haven’t played in like ages and I really love” or then I just go out and buy a new one because I can.
But... It's just SO shiny!
Getting side-tracked a little bit — it’s actually quite funny that I’m trying to puzzle out why I have such a short attention span and that I think that it’s something out of the ordinary; if any of you have been following my blog for any amount of time, you would’ve noticed by now that I have an incredibly annoying habit of completely getting off topic and rambling about things that kind of sort of have some sort of a connection to what I was talking about before, and then just resuming like nothing happened. You can say that that’s a female trait if you like, but hey, at least I’m really good at keeping up with conversations and piecing information together, ha! Anyway, the point of this side-track-edness was to determine that I have ALWAYS had a bit of a “short attention span” if you want to classify it that way, and that there’s nothing strange about it.
Except that I think that there is. It’s a cycle, I think — I start out with planning out so many different things that I will do outside studying, going out and arranging things and starting hobbies and whatever, and for a while, I juggle all of that and start looking into them and get enthused about it, all the while keeping up with the mundane daily tasks. Then, gradually, the long-term fun stuff wears off and I go for the instant gratification instead; and eventually, even the instant gratification doesn’t appeal to me anymore, but makes me twitchy and bored and I just end up surfing the internet in most of my free time, basically… trying to somehow pass time ’til I have to go and do something.
Don’t know about you, but that doesn’t sound quite healthy to me.
But the thing is, it’s happened so, so many times before, and it continues happening all over again, and I really, really don’t know what causes it or what I can do about it. I suppose that I’m just the sort of person who needs structure (meaning a component that I do at a similar sort of time every day, or have some sort of obligation to fulfill), even in my free time, or otherwise I just end up drifting about without much purpose. Or perhaps I somehow burn myself out with my obligations and feeling of duty and in my spare time, what my brain needs is to just… drift. Perhaps I don’t rest enough.
Or perhaps it’s some sort of a hybrid of those two? Regardless, the wicked cycle is such that I never seem to have any drive to find myself that structure that I may need, at least to begin with, mostly because I’m at the stage in the cycle where I go for the instant gratification or the internet.
And the saddest thing? I don’t really mostly even feel like trying to figure something out.
Love and longer attention spans, everybody.
Inspired about inspiration
14 Apr 2011 Leave a Comment
in Creative writing, Personal, Thinking aloud Tags: how curious, pseudo-philosophising, writing
I’ve been thinking about writing, recently; more specifically, I’ve been thinking about inspiration.
I’m not sure I’ve advertised this very clearly (because I’m aware that I can be relatively obscure at times; and even if I’m very clear about it, one can very easily get lost in my run-on sentences), so I’ll just put it plainly: I haven’t really written anything creatively for a very, very long while. And with “written anything”, I mean creative pieces of writing that are more than 500 words in length, and that have more of a subject matter than just “she”, which kinda not-very-obscurely most obviously refers to me. *coughcoughgetthereferencecoughcough?*
Anyway. Most of the time, I haven’t written anything because I simply don’t have the time for it, or when I do have the time, I’m too busy staring a wall and drooling because my allocated intelligence for that day (and that week; usually, and rather tragically, happens on a thursday) has been totally used up. Sometimes, however, I’m feeling as awake as anything that feels very awake, as full of energy as anything that feels full of energy (shut up, it’s thursday), and then I sit down and try to write and… nothing comes out.
It’s not that I don’t have ideas, either — I have plenty of ideas. I usually have about 5-10 “what if” scenarios running in my head, alongside a lesser amount of “ooh, that would be SO COOL to write about” sort of ideas. I have characters that I have used for text roleplaying before simply sitting around in the dusty corners of my brain, probably kicking stuff around, bored, that I could use for a variety of stories — and still, when I sit down to write, even with a specific idea in my mind, it just doesn’t come out right. No matter how hard I try, how many times I furiously delete the two or three paragraphs I laboriously type out and re-type them, it just doesn’t seem right. There’s no life into what I write, and sometimes, in some of the cases, it just ends up sounding plain dumb — like something I would’ve written when I was a ten-year-old (though I was a pretty good writer for a ten-year-old).
Most of the time, I’m too busy to really think or worry about it, but when I do have time, and in between study sessions and writing up lab reports in a really scientific style or simply writing a blogpost like this, I kind of wistfully think back to when I was writing my novel or some amazing short story I now read with my eyes wide and go “how the hell did I manage that?”. And then, when I sit down to write and nothing comes out, I wonder — what is it that I’m missing?
Recently, I’ve started to think that it’s inspiration. Writing was never simply a method of telling stories for me — it was a manner of expressing myself, expressing my more violent feelings, the ones that were gnawing my heart and I couldn’t express in other ways, in the fear of scaring other people away. And it wasn’t just that, either — it was my craft, it was my art; because you can’t express feelings adequately if you don’t have the skill for it. I had both the skill, and the drive, and the results, though I say so myself, were pretty spectacular.
I can say for sure that I haven’t lost my craft; I can still write, as is apparent from these blogposts, and the frequent tweeting that I do. Is it, then, that I have lost my drive? I wouldn’t think so, because I still feel as deeply as I ever have, and have as few ways to express it as ever. True, I now have a few more outlets than I have not had before, but I don’t think that that’s such a significant factor in writing. Writing is abstract, writing is personal — when I create, I create things I’m mostly afraid to imagine, myself.
So what is it that I’m missing?
I think what I’m missing is a catalyst. I have all the material — all the experiences, the new information, the feelings that I can turn into a story, but there is no spark. And without a spark, there is no fire. That spark, in creative writing terms, would be inspiration.
I don’t think “inspiration” is equal to simply “having an idea.” Inspiration is when you have an idea, and suddenly it grows in your mind to proportions you can’t really put your finger on — not simply an idea, a starting point, after everything that will happen is blank and left for you to decide, but a cobweb of interconnected, though mostly unvoiced ideas — of possibilities that are endless and can take you anywhere on your journey from your starting point. I have the craft and I have the ideas, but I don’t have the inspiration.
Just as a small side-note — this isn’t particularly problematic to me, at the moment; because being inspired also requires a great amount of capacity for thought and energy, for which I am particularly short at the moment. I hope that the blood pathology I get results for next week will give some insight into why this is, but as of now, I don’t feel particularly worried. I think that when I get my energy back, and I’m more lively again, the flashes of feverish inspiration will return. I can wait. Furthermore, I don’t think this problem would be as… inhibiting as it is currently, if I had kept on writing during the summer, and hadn’t stopped for most of last year. It’s always harder to start than it is to continue, and it requires more energy — which comes back in a circle.
On another, more abstract note — while I was thinking about how I don’t seem to have the inspiration, I started wondering about how other writers do it. Is writers’ block the lack of inspiration? Do other people get inspired out of the blue like I do? What exactly is inspiration?
I don’t have any answers for this yet, but it’d be nice to think on it.
But the most fascinating question is — does anyone have genuine inspiration? Like, sit in a dark room with no stimulus whatsoever, no prior experiences, nothing to colour their perception — are they still inspired? Is it possible to be inspired if there is nothing to “be inspired about” (if you get what I mean; if you don’t then go ahead and ask)?
Love, inspiration and thoughtfulness, lovelies.
p.s. I don’t necessarily agree with how romanticised and “limited” (heh, putting quotation marks around everything solves my problems and makes me seem ambiguous and thoughtful) inspiration is (if you’re confused about what I’m talking about, write “inspiration” into google images. Can I hab wine with mah cheesiness pls?). Anyone can be inspired about absolutely anything, as long as they keep an open mind, I think.
Big things are made of little things
14 Apr 2011 Leave a Comment
in Personal Tags: optimism, pseudo-philosophising
Earlier, I started writing a blogpost about why I haven’t been blogposting for the past month and a half (short answer: university didn’t only eat my soul, it ate me; additionally, some health problems that may or may not be just inside my head, waiting for results on that one), but it started on a pretty (unintendedly — even though that’s not a word) depressing note, since that’s what my life kind of seems like, at the moment. But then, I realised that that’s something I don’t really want to blog about — sure, the major scale of my life isn’t exactly how I had envisioned it, right now, and there are things that I want to change and that I wish were different, but on a smaller, day-to-day scale, I’m not actually unhappy at all. In fact, I find that I’m feeling very contented (though tired, relatedly to them health problems) and even cheerful, most of the days.
I find that you have to remember that it’s the little things that count; and on that note, I am soooo overdue for a “things I love post.” So now, after having half a bag of popcorn and most of a cider, when I’m all mellow and relaxed, I’m going to write one of those. Behold!
Things that I love
using public transport. I love sitting on a train or a bus, even when I’m too tired to really care about the people around me. Simply listening to my music almost as loud as I can, staring out of the window and at the trees and buildings and people. When I’m inside a moving vehicle, I always get a strangely detached from the world — like I’m an observer, unaffected by life around me. And at the same time, if I’m in a right mood, riding on a bus or catching a train can give me the strongest feeling of belonging; I’m a human being amongst other remarkable, individual, lovely human beings, all living in the same world.
listening to music. Though someone once said that there isn’t a happy song on my iPod (which I suppose is true, if you take the shallowest meaning of ”happy”), there surely is one for every other emotion you can think of. I find that on different days, I feel subtly different, even though the overall emotion might be the same — and I always have a song for each of those subtle feelings. Music gives me strength; it amplifies my own emotions and gives me a way to solidify some smaller feelings that kind of nibble at my soul but never become pronounced. Through music, I can explore feelings that I will never be able to put into words, and that is why the precise music I listen to is very important — a song will always have its own, individual feeling.
writing, in any manner, style or format. I like writing blogposts, because they explore what’s on my rational mind; I like writing in my special, orange diary, because that explores the deeply hidden things that I might find shameful or would want to hide were they exposed to daylight; I like writing fiction, because it gives me an outlet of emotion or a crazy, idealistic concept that I know wouldn’t be well-received in any other medium; I like writing poems, because who doesn’t want to be abstract every now and again; I like writing assignments, purely for the sake of being able to express myself coherently and to be confident in the knowledge that I can.
wearing colourful clothing. It always makes me feel more cheerful, awake and alive than I do if I’m wearing some of the darker, blend-in colours that fashion deems appropriate for autumn and winter (though, don’t get me wrong, if you match those well, it gives exactly the same effect). In fact, I like wearing anything that I think I look hot/beautiful/pretty in, because it boosts my confidence and makes me feel so much better about myself. I like looking at myself in the mirror and saying: ”you’re stunning.” I like wearing what I like, no matter the weird looks I might get for it. The same principle can be extended to my hairdo and other related aspects. Call me superficial, but wearing something nice really makes me feel confident — and it’s not that often that I feel that confident in myself (really. No, really really. I know you don’t believe it, but…!)
feeling accomplished. I admit, I’m more than a bit of a workaholic and a perfectionist, and I set my goals way too high for myself, meaning that I feel disappointed and panicked and guilty during most of my free time, since I expect myself to do something more productive than I’m doing just right then. It comes with a trade-off, though — when I do meet my goals, and when I manage to achieve something I’ve worked hard for, and especially when I’m praised for something like that… There’s just nothing better in the world than receiving thanks for all the hard work you’ve put into something.
nicknames. My first name, Anna, has always been way too short and way too easy to say for anyone to come up with proper nicknames for me as I was a child — my parents and their odd habits of calling me weird names excluded. Oh, and my sister’s attempt to call be ”banana” as an insult. Anyway. Whenever someone sticks a specific nickname to me, and calls me by it consistently, I’m their friend forever. Promise.
Right. I think that’s enough for today, just so that I don’t inundate you with random gushing over things that are way too awesome. There are sooo many more things that I love, and I can’t even guarantee that those are the most important ones (especially not nicknames — but honestly, I have way too few of them). I’m sure, though, that you’ll hear more about the remaining ones later. Now, because I’ve promised to give you illustrations so that there’s not just pure text in my blogposts, have an illustration:
Because big things are made of little things, no matter how badly the big things fuck me over, as long as I have enough little things to love -- I'm going to be just as happy as this little kitteh.
Peace and things to love, you guys.
Standing up for science
06 Mar 2011 2 Comments
in Thinking aloud Tags: human beans, ponderings, rant, science
I can totally see you (translates to hello), and a happy beginning of March to everybody~
Have some tips on how to have the touchy-feeliest month possible. Click for full view, since I shamelessly stole it off the internets again.
Be sure to enjoy it, because next year (I think — I’m going solely based on something I remember, so feel free to prove me wrong), February will be a whole day longer and you’ll have to wait for it…! Speaking of waiting for it, Pokémon Black & White (and Dragon Age 2, but since I haven’t gotten around to playing the first one yet either, I’m not really excited about this one yet. I did make a funny joke about it being a jrpg because you can’t choose your character race/class, but that’s sort of obscure, and if you got that joke, please to leave a comment) are coming out this week, so if I disappear completely from the blogosphere, it’s simply because I’ve become so addicted with the game that I can’t properly function in this society anymore, except maybe to trade Pokémon. Also, I like brackets. Get used to it.
Just to start things off (or continue, since I kinda rambled), I’ve been noticing that there’s been a SLIGHT increase in traffic on my blog — which either means that more people are reading it, or the same people are reading it more times. Regardless — if you ever have anything at all to say about something I write about, even if it’s simply “I totally disagree with you because of x (in which x can be anything from “you’re a woman [though I can't guarantee the reception for that one will be very good]” to “you smell funny” and everything in between and beyond)” or “hey, why don’t you write about y (in which y can be something like “your toes” or something equally or less important),” please, please, please, PLEASE leave me a comment! Don’t get me wrong — I like writing this blog and whether or not you respond in any way isn’t actually going to keep me (from) writing, but still… It’d be nice to know what you guys think, because you obviously have a most impeccable taste.
So anyway. I’ve most obviously survived my first week at university, including that lab I was freaking out about. It wasn’t too bad, once I did the pre-reading for it and everything — though I haven’t received marks for it yet, so I shouldn’t celebrate before that. But since I’m not a pessimist, what the hell. Also, I seem to have caught a cold from the new environment, one that’s left me pretty much disabled this weekend. Damn you, study that piles up on me while I’m incapable to do anything but sniffle and sneeze! Damn you!
Damn you!
Ahhem. I don’t seem to get over this rambly phase of mine… The whole transition to the subject of university was supposed to lend me with a gateway to talk about some of the things one of my lecturer taught us about the scientific method and how we should be skeptical about the things even our own lecturers tell us and how information changes and everything, and how I felt kind of like my study is not very much my own responsibility, and that it’s not really even study anymore, it seems more like the basis for research — and from there, I was supposed to head to the topic of today’s post. But since I’ve already rambled far too much about my sneezing and about Pokémon, I’ll skip this bit about the lecturer and go straight to my topic, and I’ll start it with an illustrative picture:
To those of you who can’t quite fathom what this picture is supposed to represent — it’s the differences between the left & right brain. If you’re still confused, then the main premise is that the left brain controls, among other things, your linguistic centre, and most logic-driven mechanisms, whereas the right lobe governs art and music and all that sort of “creative” stuff. While, in premise, that’s all good and dandy — I don’t know specifically how a brain works, perhaps all the “boring” bits happen in your left brain and the “fun” bits happen in the right (if you know more about this than I do, feel free to tell me) — it’s the representation of it that drives me absolutely crazy and berserk to the point where I could explode onto the walls of my room to decorate them a pretty white. In that picture that’s currently above this text, there’s the left brain with its grey cubicles and people with their down-bent heads, and on the right, there’s the colourful, green meadows and the people painting and lazing about and playing music and just enjoying life. Search for “left brain & right brain” on google, and you’ll find lots of similar representations — the grey left part and the colourful right one.
I’m going to delve into the why of all this in a minute, but before I do that, I’d like to give some more background information on all of this. This representation of the brain is very similar to the way in which lots of the people in my school who only did the art-oriented subjects viewed science and math. Very often I heard in conversations that math is “methodical” and “formulaic”, whereas art gives you free range of expression in emotion; that it allows you to experience life in a much more full way than dusty math and science ever would. Who would want to sit inside and read a book and learn all these useless physics theorems when you can go outside and paint a sunset? Science and logic aren’t important to experiencing life. The irony here is that a lot of the time, these art subjects also taught the history of the art or a specific style, to which I could (though I never did, since then I wouldn’t have a right to complain) reply that why would you want to learn about its history and the great artists of old, if you’re simply doing your own thing? Developing the style, you say? But the point is to explore a single moment… and so on.
Just a short disclaimer here — I’m not trying to attack the artistic community in any way with this post. I’m simply tageting what I hope is a very marginal group of people with a sense of being “different” and being somehow more entitled to life or to certain things because they have decided that what they do is right and what others do is not. It’s just an example of what a closed mind can do — the scientific community can probably shrug at art, going “what do you need that for”, and I’d be happy for someone art-oriented to lecture them about that. But! The point here is that I can’t stand the fact that science and logic are labelled methodical and formulaic and boring — like the science and art ways of thinking are completely separate entities and the only people who could possibly elect to study science are those old and wrinkled people and the ones whose parents told them to or who desire stable careers in their lives. Some people fail to understand that science is, essentially, delving even further into the mechanics of our world and our current state of being than art ever can. Sure, you can paint a sunset or compose a song about it, but will you ever understand just the brilliance of how it all works? Will you ever wrap your head around the fact that it’s truly a miracle that we’re even able to exist at this time — that human life depends on such specific conditions that it baffles your mind? People need to understand that science isn’t just something that’s existed forever — someone has thought of all these things. Someone has to have dreamt and imagined that our understanding of the world is actually wrong — but they haven’t left it there, exploring their thoughts in works of art, but instead, they’ve investigated the phenomenon and allowed a platform for more innovationa and creation of theories. Science is full of imagination and experience of the here and the now!
Just as a comparison — I recently read a friend’s tumblr, where they had posted a picture of a pack of wolves. The caption was very short and sweet, something about how wolves are simplistic creatures and that being one would probably be very nice every now and then. I, on the other hand, was slightly taken aback by this statement. Simplistic creatures? Has this person not thought of the way the wolf operates — both in terms of how it functions within its own environment, with its packs, the intricacies of the social hierarchy, and in terms of how the actual animal has come into being, through evolution and changing times? How is it possible to call the smallest of creatures in this world “simplistic”? Consider that, you art-oriented people, when you next time accuse science of being difficult and bookish — sure, there’s a lot you need to learn in the basics before you can go any further, but it’s all in the endeavor to give us more insight into the world and the times we live in, and to form our own crazy theories on how everything came to being. Science involves a great deal of imagination — ever heard of quantum physics? Wave-particle duality? The fact that the entire premise of the birth of the universe revolves around matter we have yet to find?
If you want to take home anything more than my hatred for lumping science with dry, grey cubicles, take this: don’t ever assume that something that you don’t understand or have no desire to understand is any lesser in any quality that you possess. If you don’t know anything about it, you can’t make judgements, right? It is essential for every one of us to endeavor to understand the other, and not to pick sides — like the left-brained against the right-brained. It’s alright to have pre-conceptions on things, as long as it doesn’t make you completely blind to what the reality of everything is. That, too, is why science is so great — it encourages research, and the expansion of knowledge; science is ever-changing. I believe that everyone has a right to those critical-thinking skills that science provides you with; it makes basic human interaction much more equal, for science does not make presumptions before it is provided with evidence — and when provided with evidence to the contrary of what had been proposed before, science changes. Now, there’s a whole other post I could write about bad scientists who stick to their theory when it has pretty much been proven false, but that’s for another time — just keep in mind that those who do science are also human beings.
By the way, I’m still a creative writer, so I love and respect art and think it’s extremely important for human survival in an every day life. Just for the record.
Atoms and electrons and pre-historic animals, lovelies. And peace and love, of course.
Survival 101
28 Feb 2011 Leave a Comment
in Personal Tags: enthusiastic rambling, optimism, ponderings, study
Hey guys, guys, I just survived my first day of university! 
… Yeah, I know the title of this post isn’t necessarily the most clever one I’ve ever come up with, but who asked for your opinion anyway?
*cough* Moving on: my survival. Granted, it wasn’t much of a survival, because I only had three lectures and no labs/tutorials/pracs whatsoever. But! Still! Though this is kind of looking to be a sort of “dear diary” entry that I usually loath to publish, I think I’m going to have to share this experience with you. So bear with me while I share my thoughts related to studying and my plans in life.
Before I start delving in detail into how I feel about everything and what I’ve liked so far and what not, I suppose I should provide you with some detail about what I actually study and where. I may have mentioned this before, in passing, but I think a re-iteration should take place, to put all the information in one place. I study at Monash University, Clayton campus, in Melbourne. From what I can gather, this is one of the (if not the) best universities in Australia to study science at. This comes from the testimonies of a couple of acquaintances, recent monetary grants from the government to the university and the claims of the faculty representatives themselves — and from the feeling I get when I listen to any science orientation lecture. And yeah, as you can gather, I study science — but also biomedical sciences, because at the last minute to change applications, I foolishly added a double degree as my first preference, instead of just running with my original plans, which was just to do a single bachelor of science, instead of this double degree that I’m enrolled to at the moment.
Look, I know I’m being judgmental, since I’ve not even fully begun studying, but there’s so much to the whole degree than just the subjects matters of the units I’m enrolled in. There’s the feeling I get when I’m around people doing biomed, and in any contact with the organisational body of my degree, the lecturers of the biomed units… I just don’t feel like I belong there at all. However, I don’t think that the subject matter itself is going to be a problem for me to study — the two biomed units that I’m doing this semester are a biology equivalent (which scares the hell out of me, since I haven’t done any biology since year 9, and I already feel like I’m light-years behind; the fact that my first lab/prac/tute is a lab for this unit really, really, really doesn’t help — I’ll come back to this a bit later) and biochemistry, for which I haven’t even had my introductory lecture yet. They’re a bit out of my depth, true, but that’s exactly the thing I had in mind when I enrolled into a double degree — to expand my horizons and try out as many things as I could. Maybe I’m not as excited about studying these two subjects as I could be, but hey, at least I’m not overly apprehensive — except maybe against my fellow students.
What I am excited about, though, are my two science units: geosciences, and chemistry. Chemistry, as some of you may know/have gathered, is pretty much my thing — the thing I rave about and love and am good at. My lecturer for this unit is great, too, very inspiring and an energetic fellow. He moves pretty fast, though, or at least he did today — I’ll have to work through the same things a bit slower when I’m alone, just to get a good hang of them. Geosciences excites me as well, though I’ve never really done anything of the kind: you can see from the enrollment of about 400 people that it’s one of the popular & exciting units, where we study things like dinosaurs and plate tectonics and volcanos. The lecturer for this unit is pretty damn cool as well — just as excitable as my chemistry lecturer, and very attuned with the present time. She also seems to have a sort of geeky mindset that really, really appeals to me — and as she said earlier today, she believes in teaching in pretty pictures.
Like this.
Hell yeah.
Anyway. Universally, I’m already relatively in love with the whole study system of university. Admittedly, it kind of feels like they’re expecting us to get into the whole system as fast as possible (though they ARE providing us with the appropriate resources & help classes and everything), but I venture forth with an intelligent guess that they won’t really be as hard on us as I’m fearing. So, the good side of having to figure things out is the freedom that I now have. I already adore lectures. I was never worried that I wouldn’t be able to learn in that method — a few of my teachers, in fact, those that I liked the best already used this format in high school. And even better than that, in high school the teachers expected a little proactivity of their students, instead of just sitting & listening & taking notes and learning — and now I’m free to be in my small, private learning bubble as much as I want. Ah! The only problem I MAY come to have with this is how to organise my notes — but as of now, I’m formulating some sort of system where I just jot everything down that I may need, and then later compile them into an electronic form in the manner of revision. A similar method worked out relatively well for me last year in chemistry, so.
The only thing I’m genuinely worried about at this point in time is labs/pracs/tutes, mostly, though, because I’m unfamiliar with the concept of learning through doing. Forever when doing science, I remember I hated pracs, mostly because we were always given the answers as to what the things we were experimenting upon were supposed to do, instead of learning through hands-on activity. It is possible that that will change, so that excites me a little bit… But I’m still a more book-based learner than anything else. Coming out of my study bubble isn’t fun for me. But! Should be brave and venture forth and that sort of thing; wouldn’t be much of a scientist in the future if I didn’t, right? Though, like I mentioned before, it really doesn’t help my fears that upon receiving our unit guide for my biology class, my first lab (which takes place on wednesday, so I only have tomorrow to prepare) was outlined and there was really not much that I understood in this outline. Gotta stay positive and think that it’s the first one, we’ll be fine… Right? *chews on nails*
Ok, I think that’s basically all I came to say. In lots of words. However, feel reassured, because I’ve challenged myself to, from now on, include at least one illustrative picture (that I will very often shamelessly steal off the internets)
Like this one. Here, have a completely pointless diagram. For illustrative purposes, see?
in each of my posts for those of you with short attention spans when it comes to my long (though hopefully vaguely exciting/interesting) drawls about… stuff. Generally.
Soooo, that’s it for me, folks! I’ll go arrange my diary (that’s something that happens a lot) and go read LOTR (almost finished Fellowship!) and play Phoenix Wright (if you don’t know that which I speak of, I both shun you and encourage you to find out right now — they’re possibly the most awesome games made for the ds, and I’m a fan of pokemon) or other videogames. So many videogames, so little time!
Peace and love and awesome videyagames, everyone.
