Metacognition: Jane Eyre Writing

My role in the assignment was that of the producer, which required me to have a specific angle in the process that went beyond looking at the ideas of the novel. I had to look for the 'story'. My character was searching for the conflicts, the drama, and the excitement. This sent me in a different direction than my group members, because I had to stay focused not only on abstract ideas, but how they would attract an audience. The producer is searching for subjects that relate to audiences, and that was what shaped my thought process.
This was a really interesting way of looking at a book, because I became the editor of a story that wasn't fully written. I had to pretend to be looking at a plot for a modern adaptation when we had only ideas floating around. I needed to correct and revise to 'make things work'. Searching for a story this way really put me in an interesting position I had never experienced before.
Another thing that shaped my thoughts was the idea that this was going to put a nineteenth-century novel in my generation's words. It required me to think of situations where the feelings Jane experienced would be appropriate in modern times. That prompted me to search for events based on emotions rather than carbon-copy details (I, for one, have never wandered for three days looking for food and work in a foreign village, but I have felt similar feelings of overwhelming anxiety and desperation). I had to feel my way through this generation's lifestyle to relate it back to Jane. I thought this assignment really was an interesting way to look at why classic literature matters and how it relates to us in interesting and unexpected ways.

Metacognition: Reading Jane Eyre

Nineteenth century social conventions amuse me, until I realize the cage they put you in.
The characters in Jane Eyre and the ideals they hold others to fascinated me throughout the book, and I personally found the detail with which Jane describes her thought processes more helpful than any history book could provide. I really love learning about the culture and societal norms during any one era, and this novel gave a likable heroine a chance to tell her tale and speak out against the ridiculous restrictions placed on women during her time.
At first, I was simply entertained by the strange (to me) laws that allowed one thing to be blatantly acknowledged while another unspeakable. I couldn't understand how people spoke of Jane's plainness as if it were a reassuring quality. I blew off the signs that Jane was sending about women's rights, taking for granted that jobs are open to me, that I can be an equal with men, that I can be respected for traits other than docile femininity. I just took it as part of the experience of the 19th century before I realized how much it bothered me.
I first became aware of how outrageous these social restrictions are when I noticed the obvious tension between Jane's self-respect and honor, and her desire to submit and do what her 'master' wants. Obviously in any relationship there is compromise, but Jane seemed honestly tormented, as if staying true to herself was a guilty pleasure she almost couldn't dare to do. True, her situation was an unusual case, what with social convention saying she couldn't commit adultery and social convention also saying being adamant and unrelenting was being 'ornery and unfeminine'. Regardless, it made it very clear to me what an impossible situation women were put in.
Next time I read a book and notice this topic, I'm going to try to be very attentive to it and focus on every aspect it affects. I think noticing the culture and how it impacts the characters and the plot would deepen my experience and make everything more connected and cohesive.

360 Degrees: How do we prevent Regret?

We are presented with choices and big decisions everyday. These can be as varied as what to eat for breakfast to having kids. The importance of making the right choice is becoming especially prominent as we are finishing up our sophomore year and the college race fast approaches. Earlier this week, I went to College Night and was overwhelmed with the clamoring for booth attendants' attention, by the kids with prepared questions and their top 10 most intriguing schools at the conference picked out from the list. How did these people already have an idea what schools made the first cut? What factors did they already know would make a difference in their decision?

It was hard to absorb everything happening around me without having done much prep beforehand, but the experience led me to another problem- how would I end up making my decision even after all the research? If all these colleges had the potential and opportunities they claimed, how could I possibly choose just one? How would I know I made the right choice when I never got the chance to experience the effects of any one college? Obviously, there are times you can visit campuses and look at what classes they're known for, but how will going to one college over another affect you in the longterm? How will I avoid feelings that I might have made a great choice, but not the best choice?

This got me thinking about regret. Thoughts of what could have been and what might have happened if... can easily haunt us, if we let them. If it weren't for all the extra work and the amount of time, I'm sure some people would go to college at 3 or 4 different places, just to see how that would affect their choices later and give them a more impressive group of college alums to connect with (the method of going for your doctorate at a different school than your undergrad suddenly makes a lot more sense). But what good does wasting time with what ifs do?

I'm trying to understand and respect the power of making good choices. It's a delicate balance. Considering what you want long-term, what you're interested in, and what you want now is a tricky blend to juggle. Ultimately, you have to find the best mix of opportunities and whats best for you and just go for it. Regret will come if your doing something that's 'smart' but you don't love, or if you're doing something you enjoy but are limited by.

In the end, with college anyway, I think it's important for someone to make a choice and not wallow in ifs later. If you look at the opportunities presented somewhere, you're bound to find something your choice offers that puts you ahead in some way. Your small college might have an alum who is CEO of a Fortune 500 company. Your Ivy-league school might have an incredible number of clubs that teach you leadership you can use in the future. Regret will generally hide in the corner until you let it in. But I'm going to choose not to encourage it.

This goes for other choices in life too. I'm going to work on the process of weighing my options and looking thoroughly at what appeals to me and what my gut tells me I wouldn't like before making a decision. If I save impulse for fun decisions and reserve careful research for more serious long-term impact, I'll have a balance that will allow me to live and enjoy the environment I choose.

An Inconvenient Truth: Superficiality

The week during break, my family went to visit some friends in South Carolina. The experience of meeting people who live so differently from me and seeing the diversity of America was fun, but I was struck by how people judge each other in an instant for so many trivial reasons. I'm not the first or last person to judge someone based on looks, but I think the fact that we make so many snap decisions about people needs to be taken under consideration. It's becoming less important who you are and how you connect with someone. More important now is what you seem like based on the superficial, be it your attractiveness, your apparent wealth, what town you live in, or the color of your skin.

When we were passing through some run-down areas on our trip, I talked with people of all types at gas stations, restaurants, anywhere we stopped to take a break from our long drive. There was a different kind of interaction with everyone, and I formulated the manner I talked with people from the start. I found myself subconsciously choosing to avoid this person or identifying that person as 'nice'. My decisions had nothing to do with past experiences, obviously. It was all based off of appearance, from which I extrapolated characteristics that I had no right to create.

This made me realize how much we set ourselves up to prejudge other human beings. What right do we have to play the role of jury in deciding what kind of a person someone is, when we know nothing about their life?

We encourage this with sites like Facebook, where people associate you with a bunch of photos and carefully crafted statements and posts. True, people can find out your Favorite Music (really the music you think is cool to post up as your favorite) and see what your friends are saying, but how much of that is you? How much more of you cannot be represented by a profile? Only face to face can we make huge decisions about character, but the internet is tempting us to make these determinations through a computer screen.

I need to make more efforts to get to know someone as a person with wants and needs and reasoning before I file them away under a title and a final verdict. Everyone warns about 'not judging a book by its cover', but how hard is it not to? Isn't it comforting to immediately know who's ok and not ok, and then not bother with it again? Yes, it's easy, but it's not right.

Dialectics: Technology and Dependence

I can’t remember the last time I went to the library to check out books for a project. In middle school, when there was a course on researching techniques and checking the credibility of your source, the section on selecting books was useful. Now, the idea of combing through a long article without a find key seems tedious. For pleasure and studying literature, books are still the way to go. But selecting sources through the internet is a quicker, more reliable way of finding what you’re looking for… if you’re willing to sift through a few sites who claim that the Indian caste system was a result of Miley Cyrus’ (terrible) music.
I use the internet for the majority of my studies, and I’ve learned to sift through the junk that comes with the freedom to upload. However useful of a tool it may be, it comes with a cost: our time. Now that computers can get us information with a click, making researching faster than ever before, people want to find other things to do with their time. So computers are being made sleeker, quicker, and equipped to do more things on the internet to entice people to stay online. We’ve found ourselves communicating through our desktops (and phones and laptops) instead of face to face. When more stuff gets done, we find more to do. And mostly likely, we’re finding our entertainment on the internet.
Isn’t it ironic that we’re saving time, just to spend it with the object that gave us the extra minutes in the first place? That we’re dependent on the thing that frees us? Shouldn’t we spend the time we would have been researching without the internet with our families and enjoy the easiness technology brings?
We are also being trained to crave instant gratification. No longer are we tortured by that fact we can’t remember, there’s Google for that. Want to hear a song? Youtube it. We have become so reliant on the search engine that remembering information for ourselves is a nicety except in school and on game shows. And as internet is quickly being adapted to phones, we can take our computers anywhere. We are training ourselves to feel unprepared and incapable without a keyboard under our fingers and only our brains to rely on.
Of course, there are other ways we are dependent on technology. We use cars to get everywhere, and as a result the idea of walking a mile is met with a sigh worthy of a martyr. We use cell phones, and are always connected, so your workplace becomes portable on vacation, and you can use a tool of communication as an excuse to avoid conversations around you. It’s strange to think that we’re taking advantage of our time to further isolate ourselves in artificial interaction.
It’s interesting to think that we are becoming so attached to machines. If we could just step back for a moment and turn off the computer after our jobs are done, I think we’d find ourselves more relaxed because we would finally stop taking our breaks and working in the same place… the computer chair.

Blogging around with Pat and Alex!

Pat: Cathedral and Intimacy

Pat's post centered around the concept of intimacy (and the lack of it) in the short story Cathedral. He talked about the lack of names in the story and explores the relationships with the wife in the story.

Although a lot of people have touched on this intimacy topic in their blogs, I found the way you described it to be really accurate and capture the 'void' that Carver paints into the story. You made a really good point when you said that the wife was almost like an axis that her husband and ex-employer revolve around. She makes intimacy apparent both in its presence (with Robert) and in its absence (with her husband). The void of intimacy really made the story, and you did a great job of explaining why.

Alex: The Lie that Wasn't a Lie

Alex's blog entry explored the very ending of the book, when Marlow met the Intended. Her post went through her original interpretation of Marlow's 'lie', and what made her change her mind.

Ok, I had so much trouble finding someone who didn't agree that 'the horror' wasn't the intended. I didn't believe that she was the force behind Kurtz's destruction and evil either. I can't imagine that someone he loved (and the fact that he loved her could also be debated) could inspire such hatred and manipulation is hard for me to comprehend. However, this left me with no concrete idea of what this Intended meant to Kurtz. Your idea makes so much sense! I think that Kurtz, in his last moments, was enlightened to 'the horror' of the havoc he wrecked on the people of the Congo. In that sense, he wasn't referring to his Intended at all. But when Marlow comforts her and convinces her that she was on Kurtz's last breath, he brings out another truth, which you pointed out- he may have been disgusted with the way he manipulated a girl's heart as well.

Best of Week: What's in a name?

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet".
~Romeo and Juliet

What Juliet says may be true, but you still have to call it something. It has to be distinguished from "the flower" or "the plant".

In class we discussed the idea of bestowing names to demonstrate intimacy. In "Cathedral", we noticed that the wife and husband never refer to each other by name. Actually, we don't find out either of their names during the course of the story. However, both (the wife especially) refer t0 the blind man often by his name, Robert. I took this to mean that the relationships in the story were primarily represented by the use of a person's name.

This is an interesting way to show intimacy in a story, because although the wife and husband never have to say anything, the tension is apparent and is demonstrated by what they omit. The husband talks of how he waited to hear his wife mention him in her history, yet she didn't talk about how they met or anything like that, and he wasn't reassured that she cared for him. Their relationship is very strained- she didn't seem to care if he loved her or not, as long as he respected her friend, and they seemed almost to be polite strangers. It's certain that by the end of the story the husband and wife were closer to Robert than they had been to each other in a long time.

Names represent attention and care in this story, but I'm sure the principle works in other situations as well. Think about how often you use someone's name when you talk to them or ask them for something. It shows you're focused on them and the conversation you're having. Although I'm not suggesting this story is meant to be advice on how to treat someone, it's definitely an interesting thought- could your use of a name convince someone they're loved?

And if it did work that way, couldn't a lot of problems and doubts be solved?

Connection: Immorality and... Respect?

Because sometimes they go together, but they shouldn't.

Marlow in Heart of Darkness has a molotov cocktail of emotions regarding Kurtz, but the two that I had the most trouble connecting were hatred and respect. He seemed disgusted by those callous, business-obsessed characters like the Manager, yet even as he condemns Kurtz's life he assures us that he was "a remarkable man", speaking with a sense of awe and reverence. Why does he link these two ideas that, for all intents and purposes, should be kept seperate?

I think Marlow has been duped by progress. The horror of Kurtz is so blatent that the fact he wasn't trying to hide it is almost impressive. Kurtz might have been able to get respect for being bold, but Marlow also can't help but be impressed by what Kurtz had accomplished, and our culture supports those who get things done. These two combined created an unbelievable man whose myths strived to live up to the real guy.

The settling of Africa was viewed as a general improvement, with some 'sacrifices'. Sacrifices? Repressing thousands of people and killing thousands of others is not a minimal issue. It got me thinking- how much are we willing to overlook in our opinion of a person? Can we truly respect someone who goes against everything we stand for? I'm not sure. I think that our respect for those who are successful is more of an enchantment than a genuine conviction that the person is someone worth admiring. We manage to fool ourselves into thinking its respect.

Respect has a meaning of a role model or someone you look up to. How could the African natives be so enthralled with Kurtz even as he enslaved them, took their lifestyles and freedom away, and killed to set examples? I don't believe their admiration can be considered respect, more of a terror they had convinced themselves was mere shame at being so 'low' compared to him. The fact that his partners were also willing to overlook this, even those with a higher moral conscience such as Marlow, is a key into the way our minds work. We truly are a world blinded by dazzling gems and strong personalities.

Connection: Intentions and Actions

"The conquest of the earth... is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much" (Conrad 7).

The intention of one people to civilize another is something I look at with suspicion. Inevitably, the power that the conquering leaders attain is too great to give up, and these forces have trouble letting go of their prey, however civilized they manage to become. While occasionally one might go in with good intentions, authority proves to be a powerful drug. The reason behind its potency is the fact that even the best people consider themselves above corruption until they are actually in a seat of power.

I found the official mission of King Leopold's forays into Africa similar to the inevitable corruption of communism, which we learned about in history as well as in Sophie's World. If we assume that the European countries' outward goal (civilizing and bettering natives/ their society) was in fact the primary reason for going to Africa, then they seem to have the same positive end result that communism offered. However, we know that the results of both were quite different from their original objectives.

Communism is an ideal that would have provided a better life, in theory, to the working/peasant classes in Europe in the 1900's. However, once put into action, the government style crumbled under those who gained power in the new regime. It was easier to say everyone deserves bread than to actually scale down your own feast to provide for others. If everyone else lives in a shack, it counts as shelter, so who cares if your 'shack' happens to be a three story mansion? The equality balance was quickly thrown off by those who found new opportunities to cheat the system.

The Europeans who were sent to Africa also took advantage of the power they asserted over the natives. If their goal was to bring civilization to Africa, were they really leading the Africans to establish their own developed communities, or were they trying to assure that the Africans would be the machines and slaves behind a European culture? That this trend can be found in so many other instances in history worries me.

The lure of power and prestige is certainly not a new idea. The fact that it is present in many different places in the world, and the fact that the rise of one human being now means the suppression or failure of another, is something we need to fix. We need to make sure that the aims of an endeavor are meant to improve people's lives, not just materially satisfy some C.E.O. sitting in an office in New York.

It's so essential that we give credit to actions, rather than assume the typed-up press statement a company sends out will be honored. As we learned in Heart of Darkness, the 'honorable' mission King Leopold was commissioning was not what the European citizens were proud of and admiring. The true mission was a monetary scheme covered up by an appeal to human nature. When we learn to separate the good ideas that will work day-to-day from the ones that only work on the surface, we will become a better functioning society.

Metacognition: This Semester

I've gained something important this year- the ability to put my 'raw' ideas out into a discussion. I always used to refine my thoughts before I shared them, and while that definately keeps me from embarassing myself, I also think there's a quality about a developing idea that's intriguing. When I have a point to make during a discussion, I try to write it down and I can build off of it later as I think of support for the main idea. That way, when I actually share my thoughts with the class, I have the barebones of my idea laid out in front of me, and I can elaborate as I go.My raw ideas also can be interpreted in more than one way, which I think is helpful during a discussion. This new way of recording during class has really helped me when I'm trying to write an essay, etc. later in the unit, because then I have what I was thinking about during the unit right in front of me.

I believe that learning to think both objectively and more 'presentation-oriented' has helped me branch out and think in different ways. I need to keep thinking creatively, but at the same time I want insights I can use later. Writing down notes provides a balance between off-the-top-of-my-head ideas that might need some rethinking and ideas that have been so reworked they lose some of their original meaning. Also, it helps me stay more focused during a discussion, and the energy I have invested in whatever we're talking about is used to listen to other people as well as connect their ideas to my own and elaborate on them. Writing definately ties me down (in a positive way). It keeps me centered and focused. Although I always knew that reading and writing is the easiest way for me to learn, I truly underestimated the power it would have in shaping my thoughts. I think this revelation is the single most important thing I have learned this semester about myself.