Semester Assessment

Now that grades are in and I’ve had suf­fi­cient time to wind down, I’m assess­ing the last three months of work in order to claim my vic­to­ries and cut my losses.

The Victories

The Ful­bright appli­ca­tion was moti­vat­ing and instruc­tional.  My lib­eral arts pro­fes­sors are usu­ally con­tent with my writ­ing, give me good grades, and leave it at that.  Given the more con­crete goal of get­ting the grant, oth­er­wise cheer­ful pro­fes­sors were nit-picky and opin­ion­ated about every aspect of my writ­ing.  This was intel­lec­tu­ally stim­u­lat­ing and served to iden­tify pre­vi­ously over­looked weak­nesses in my style.  Regard­less of weather I get the grant, the time was well spent, and I’m grate­ful to every­one who helped.

My his­tory class on Cold War Media and Tech­nol­ogy was a daz­zling con­glom­er­a­tion of cold war pol­i­tics, fem­i­nist sen­si­bil­ity, and new media the­ory.  And all from a his­tor­i­cal per­spec­tive! Not so much a vic­tory as an enthralling start, this was one of those classes that opened up a dizzy­ing array of val­i­dat­ing and dis­ori­ent­ing avenues for exploration.

Uni­ver­sity Stu­dent Sen­ate (USS) has been a broil­ing mess of activ­ity this past semes­ter.  Under the lead­er­ship of Peter Cum­mings, we pushed for­ward ini­ti­ates around sus­tain­abil­ity prac­tices and minor­ity ser­vices in the midst of pol­i­tick­ing by the uni­ver­sity and stu­dents alike.  Activ­i­ties across the uni­ver­sity to con­front the neg­a­tive ram­i­fi­ca­tions of Bob Kerrey’s pres­i­dency pro­vided vital open­ings for these ini­tia­tives to become school pol­icy.  Despite advice from my advis­ers that I shouldn’t be involved in stu­dent gov­ern­ment and focus on the­sis work instead, I chose to con­tinue on as a USS rep­re­sen­ta­tive this year.  Sus­tained involve­ment has broad­ened my per­spec­tive on imple­ment­ing the ini­tia­tives and refreshed my orga­niz­ing skills first devel­oped in grass­roots media projects before college.

In Sep­tem­ber, I started work­ing with Michael Shaw at BAG­news­Notes to pro­duce online salons where aca­d­e­mics, pho­tog­ra­phers, and blog read­ers dis­cuss visual pol­i­tics.  The more time I spend on this project, the more I enjoy it.  The Bag’s polit­i­cal analy­sis of images tests my some­times over-academic approach to visual lit­er­acy.  I’m required to get spe­cific and prac­ti­cal in order to pro­duce a cli­mate for con­ver­sa­tion around a set of pho­tographs.  This intro­duc­tion to the inner work­ings of a polit­i­cal blog has me stoked to work with the social and dis­cur­sive poten­tial of online dig­i­tal venues.  The next Salon is in two Sundays.

The Losses (to Put it Harshly)

The two major losses involve res­o­lu­tion about not fol­low­ing my pro­fes­sors’ advice in two areas.

Since I got to the Design&Technology depart­ment, and even before with many of my pro­fes­sors in Pho­tog­ra­phy, peo­ple have been pres­sur­ing me to do video work.  I took two video classes, the most recent this past semes­ter.  The expe­ri­ence has been largely frus­trat­ing and unsat­is­fy­ing.  I’m not sure if I should chalk this up to the moody (if insight­ful) nature of my video pro­fes­sors, the abom­inable sit­u­a­tion of equip­ment rental at The New School, or some­thing more directly involv­ing my pro­cliv­i­ties and inter­ests.  Maybe some day I will do seri­ous video work.  For now, I throw in my hat.

Pro­fes­sors also push me to work on my graphic design skills.  This is not because they think I could be good at it but because I’m just plain bad at it, at least by Par­sons stan­dards.  I’ve read typog­ra­phy books dur­ing the semes­ter and sat in on a few visual design courses.  My appre­ci­a­tion for the art has deep­ened, and I am famil­iar with the con­tours of my own igno­rance.  I intend to leave it at that.

So Now What?

In panic over the­sis class, where I felt unable to effec­tively com­mu­ni­cate my inter­ests and goals to the pro­fes­sor, I looked out­side school for ground­ing and inspi­ra­tion.  These efforts landed me a win­ter intern­ship at Local Projects, a design stu­dio that focuses on col­lab­o­ra­tive story telling and inter­ac­tive media.  While my friends chide me for being freak­ishly over­achiev­ing (Their chid­ing is a sign of love.  I appre­ci­ate it, really.), col­leagues light up with enthu­si­asm con­vinced that this is a per­fect fit.  Back­ground research for the areas I will be work­ing on at Local Project in Jan­u­ary is stok­ing my excite­ment for their approach to nar­ra­tive and inter­ac­tiv­ity that should cap­i­tal­ize on my diverse expe­ri­ence in his­tory, pho­tog­ra­phy, and design tech­nol­ogy.  I start Tuesday.

Catch Me While You Can!

Busy semes­ter, right?  I should have more down time than usual in the com­ing weeks, so I encour­age neglected friends and col­leagues to get in touch.  I’d love to see you and catch up!