Firstly, I'm far from saying that artists aren't intelligent, I mean we take ownership over mother fucking Leonardo da Vinci. Hell, I think I heard more often he was an artist than a scientist, musician, anatomist, geologist, inventor, cartographer, writer or botanist. What I'm asking is why do people who call themselves 'artists' knock the rest of their intelligence?
My 'facts' for this 3:00am rant-essay, ransay, ranssay, essant? Essant. My 'facts' for this essant come from my classes. I've heard time and time again that 'writing is hard'. Why? Why do people who prefer to create visually automatically discount their ability to think critically? Why does it seem to be a given that just because you create that you can't question the world around you? We can critique one another and fine our faults with various eras of art history, but why do people who call themselves 'art majors' think that they can't write? Why is thinking analytically magically not something that contemporary art students think they can't do, or is that just at my school?
Looking into art history Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (the Ninja Turtle) was an engineer, poet, architect, painter and sculptor. Zhang Heng was a scholar of hiatory, poetry, philosophy, mathematics, cartography, geography and an artist. Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov was a scientist, artist, studied optics, philology and mineralogy. Thomas Jefferson was a musician, lawyer architect, naturalist, botanist and inventor. These people created and studied the sciences, why can't modern artist be analytical in ways other than creating?
I ask this because, yes, I did start college by taking biology courses, biology makes sense to me. Writing is easy, I mean look at the essants I have on this blog, they may be typo ridden, but every now and again I have a poetic turn of phrase or an interesting way to re-express an idea. It's disparaging enough as a creative who has a weird combination of vanity and low self-esteem in relation to the things I create, but I rarely doubt my true intelligence or the things I can do. I fear failing so I don't always want to go out on a limb, but I have a ton of passive-aggressive issues which still don't excuse why I haven't been more out going. I know I can write, I have few problems with writing or knowing how to write and put together a more or less cohesive idea. I think it discouraging when I hear from faculty that they don't expect their art students to be able to write.
Words are power. Having an average or even moderately above average grasp of language can help your argument, it can never hurt your argument because if you can think up you know enough below it to talk to anyone. Then there's the issue of knowing when to exercise one word or another, but that's being sociable and knowing how to read people. Having a strong grasp of vocabulary as someone who creates things and put them out for the world to see and critique is important because you have better ways to explain yourself when it comes time to hear from the artist.
I don't think that faculty should accept substandard writing from art majors. Why should someone who can throw some crap together as a sculpture, or mix some pigments together on a canvas get a pass at things outside of their educational focus? I find aspects of education to be incredibly irritating, but that doesn't mean it's a bad thing for me to try to learn something new, to push my boundaries. I have few classes I honestly didn't enjoy. I understand biology and find it to be incredible fascinating. Plants are amazing machines this planet takes for granted. Philosophy and sociology are great at finding other ways to convey a complex concept in words of iconography. History is the story of the winner, but digging deeper or to the side you can find the losers and the people stepped on in the annals of history, these give a more human connection to things that seem to have just been a government lead period of time. English and language courses give you the words, the opportunity, to connect with more people. With the little bit of Spanish I was taught (notice I said taught and not learned) I learned a bit about a different culture. How a language is used in different countries, how honorifics or person change to be respectful help me to consider different things when I'm out in the world. I may use a rude tense in Spanish every now and again, but I'll apologize because I realize I used the wrong one and cannot remember the correct one.
Having an art only education is faulty and not expecting students to know anything outside of what they want to do with their lives is a pitfall in our society. Yes, sometimes I do just want to take studio classes, get my degree and be done with school, but I am grateful for all of my classes. Having my thoughts and ideas challenged, strengthening my lexicon so I'm a more verbose person has been a good thing. I think that students in the arts should spend more time writing, looking up more words and understanding how to make language their bitch because a painting can sometimes only go so far. Words are an easy sign of intelligence, by not accepting this, you're putting you into a smaller box, making it more difficult for your point to get across.
Artists, don't fear words, make them your friends. Don't fear questioning the world around you. You're doing it already, why else would Duchamp turn a urinal on it's side, or Picasso affix handle bars to a bike seat? These are their ways of challenging convention and what people think the world should be. The Surrealists questioned perception of the world and contorted it, in their own way they were analyzing the world that could be. Every piece you make is a way of questioning the world around you, you just need to accept this and accept that you are being analytical, even if you think not.
Scientists study the world we've been given and share what they understand. Artists study the world we've been given and pus that idea further by questioning why it isn't different from what we have and show their results. Both study the world.
Jasmine P.
Showing posts with label education. Show all posts
Showing posts with label education. Show all posts
July 6, 2011
June 15, 2010
Intelligence and Knowing You're Intelligent
Disclaimer(?): I'm not trying to sounds vain here, but this is what I've experienced from having "above 'average' intelligence" in school and the education system. Long story short, it fucks you up, or it just fucks me up, we'll see.
----
So, it's pretty common knowledge now that schools and school systems test the shit out of children every year to find out who's 'gifted and talented (GT)', to find out who has the ability for more abstract thinking than their peers, so they can put them in classes to challenge and strengthen this type of thinking. This is relatively easy to do because there are a metric shit-ton of other tests going on generally if you tell a kid they have to take a test, they'll do what you ask.
Well, this is what it was like for me 15 years ago in elementary school when more parents told their kids to sit down and shut up, as opposed to now where it's always a compromise between parent and child. Also 15 years ago when it's not like children weren't respected and spoken to on their level by their teacher, but their teachers found ways to deal with them and it was closer to 1 in 15 being on Ritalin, or something else for ADD, as opposed to 1 in 5.
This isn't about that, this is about being an 'advanced thinker' and having people acknowledge that you're not 'average.'
Yes, as a kid I was proud to learn that I was 'intelligent' enough to be put into a special class for people who understood in second grade why triangles and domes are stronger than straight lines; in a class where in fourth grade I decided to use 'queer' by it's proper dictionary definition. Only odd thing about use of 'queer' is other people in my class laughing so it showed a part of my out-of-the-loop-ness that happens every now and again because I'd only ever known queer to mean something was strange or odd and not an insult to homosexual people.
But I digress. I'm saying from a young age, what...about 8 when I started in the 'advanced' classes in second grade, I was told I was different. I was told I was smarter than my peers. This information went straight to my head, giving me my inflated ego. I mean, who at the age of 8 wouldn't be all over the fact that they were 'better' than someone else? Also, to be honest, I enjoyed the GT course for a few reasons: it got me out of regular class once a week, what we did was interesting, and I was told I was better than other people. (Aside: maybe this started my superiority complex...) Third grade I went to a different elementary school where the entire class was GT, we were doing fourth grade work. Aspects of that year sucked, not the work so much as the school, not an encouraging environment so I went back to my original elementary school. I did get to raise chicks in my third grade class, an now I'm wondering what happened to the chickens and roosters. I don't know why I never did ask that question.
I went back to my primary elementary school for my last three years and went back to a 'pull out' GT program. In middle school I was in a GT program all day, every day, except this time it was called the IBMYP- the International Baccalaureate Middle Years Program. Upper level thinking, reading, writing all the time now. I've been taught MLA citation format ever since the seventh grade started. It also introduced me to who would be in most of my classes for the next six years. Seriously, my school system didn't lock down the IB program, in high school at least, but it was fairly contained. Many people took more than one IB class so it was fairly common on the first day of class to see about 1/3 of your first period class also in your second period class. I mean, my graduating class was something around 300-350 students. Of that number I think we had about 75 get the IB diploma, and another 100 or so get one or more IB certificates for the individual IB exams they passed.
Well, I've spent much of my time chronicling my education and what it was like, kind of. We all knew each other, would cheat off of each other and had been told we were special, smart for many years. We got to read multiple banned books over the years. Hell, I think at least one of my teachers tried for everything to be banned, and not just by religious groups, but by anyone. It made for interesting reading to say the least.
As I was saying earlier, sometimes being 'smart/er' sucked. I got tired of hearing "you're too smart to be failing" or "you're smart, so if you only applied yourself..." That shit never helps, it makes it worse because I'm already irritated that I wasn't passing, I don't need to be reminded that I'm failing, generally for stupid reasons. I said I was never good in a quiet environment, and my ability to focus is a bit worse when I'm in a quiet room because then I start making my own music for entertainment instead of drifting in and out of ignoring music that's playing while I do something. Hell, I've got music playing while I write this and I'm writing alright. I was never good at tests, in testing situation because it was always unnaturally quiet. It was a forced heavy silence, like an extended pregnant silence. Since it felt uncomfortable it distracted me more than noise might have.
Showing you were smart as a kid was just as bad as failing. I have been told 'You speak good English' many times. Every time I smile and say 'thank you' while inside I respond 'you don't.' Every time. I have been called articulate many times, my cousin told me I spoke like 'white people,' but he doesn't use proper grammar or pronunciation, I think he was trying to make fun of me, not to sure though. I was a reader as a kid, I still am. I actively seek out controversial, weird or interesting things to read. When I read comics I like something that questions or critiques our culture, same goes with novels and film. I also turn around and love and appreciate much lower brow humour. I enjoy The Shawshank Redemption just as much as I enjoy Tropic Thunder or The Fifth Element. Yes, Tropic Thunder does have more to it than the explosions and the silly, but that's what people see. I like explosions and boom! I like talking and critiquing, I like getting and understanding 'smart' things and enjoying 'not-smart (?)' things.
With what I've said I still haven't quite gotten to my point. The biggest flaw in being smart if knowing that you're smart. You want to be recognized as such when you succeed and when you don't you don't want people to think too hard about it because it's salt in the wound. There are things I've realized, things I know about myself from sitting and dwelling on it. I wonder, how many people sit down and think about when they stop thinking of themselves as a kid, and actually think of themselves as an adult? I'm not talking about turning 18 or 21 and saying 'I can smoke, drink, vote and die for my country; I'm an adult.' I'm talking about how many people can actually acknowledge and articulate, to some degree, why they think of themselves now as an adult. While talking with Alex this weekend we spoke about this for a minute which drunk, but we both have come to the point in our lives where we're looking less to our parents for guidance and we both want to strike out on our own and forge our own paths. In my mind stopping and attempting to put into words a gradual change like that is a very heady thing to do, thinking and dwelling and focusing.
Being smart, intelligent, gifted has been my life in the education system. No one is more annoying than I am with myself for bad grades. When I try to explain my career plans to my family I can hear the disappointment in their voices when I say I don't want to go into science anymore. That doesn't bring me down as much as it annoys me when I say I want to work for myself, drawing my own comics. They keep trying to dissuade me thinking it's childish precociousness and it's not. They think it's about money, I'll find the money, getting money's the easy part. Working the job, the career, I really want is the hard part.
Want to know another shitty part about being smart? I know why I'm depressed almost every time. Usually it's some sort of 'I don't feel loved' bullshit. Every now and again it's about my mom being dead. Knowing I'm not at a point to forgive my father for all of his bullshit, or any of it, I know I'm not ready and I know why. He won't listen, he won't try to listen. He thinks of me as a child, I'm not a child anymore. I don't think I'm a young adult anymore, I just am an adult. I think I'm finally moving out of categorization limbo, now everyone I know needs to learn this so they don't think of me as less then I am.
See, that thought process right there, I want to be respected on my level; I want to be taken seriously on my level. Not everyone is on my level. I think ultimately that's why I drifted away from people from high school. Not just that they knew the 'old' me, but that they weren't really looking to be Adults yet, they were looking to be Young Adults. I've gone back to speaking with some of them and it seems things are leveling back out, we're reaching our next maturity level.
Jasmine P.
----
So, it's pretty common knowledge now that schools and school systems test the shit out of children every year to find out who's 'gifted and talented (GT)', to find out who has the ability for more abstract thinking than their peers, so they can put them in classes to challenge and strengthen this type of thinking. This is relatively easy to do because there are a metric shit-ton of other tests going on generally if you tell a kid they have to take a test, they'll do what you ask.
Well, this is what it was like for me 15 years ago in elementary school when more parents told their kids to sit down and shut up, as opposed to now where it's always a compromise between parent and child. Also 15 years ago when it's not like children weren't respected and spoken to on their level by their teacher, but their teachers found ways to deal with them and it was closer to 1 in 15 being on Ritalin, or something else for ADD, as opposed to 1 in 5.
This isn't about that, this is about being an 'advanced thinker' and having people acknowledge that you're not 'average.'
Yes, as a kid I was proud to learn that I was 'intelligent' enough to be put into a special class for people who understood in second grade why triangles and domes are stronger than straight lines; in a class where in fourth grade I decided to use 'queer' by it's proper dictionary definition. Only odd thing about use of 'queer' is other people in my class laughing so it showed a part of my out-of-the-loop-ness that happens every now and again because I'd only ever known queer to mean something was strange or odd and not an insult to homosexual people.
But I digress. I'm saying from a young age, what...about 8 when I started in the 'advanced' classes in second grade, I was told I was different. I was told I was smarter than my peers. This information went straight to my head, giving me my inflated ego. I mean, who at the age of 8 wouldn't be all over the fact that they were 'better' than someone else? Also, to be honest, I enjoyed the GT course for a few reasons: it got me out of regular class once a week, what we did was interesting, and I was told I was better than other people. (Aside: maybe this started my superiority complex...) Third grade I went to a different elementary school where the entire class was GT, we were doing fourth grade work. Aspects of that year sucked, not the work so much as the school, not an encouraging environment so I went back to my original elementary school. I did get to raise chicks in my third grade class, an now I'm wondering what happened to the chickens and roosters. I don't know why I never did ask that question.
I went back to my primary elementary school for my last three years and went back to a 'pull out' GT program. In middle school I was in a GT program all day, every day, except this time it was called the IBMYP- the International Baccalaureate Middle Years Program. Upper level thinking, reading, writing all the time now. I've been taught MLA citation format ever since the seventh grade started. It also introduced me to who would be in most of my classes for the next six years. Seriously, my school system didn't lock down the IB program, in high school at least, but it was fairly contained. Many people took more than one IB class so it was fairly common on the first day of class to see about 1/3 of your first period class also in your second period class. I mean, my graduating class was something around 300-350 students. Of that number I think we had about 75 get the IB diploma, and another 100 or so get one or more IB certificates for the individual IB exams they passed.
Well, I've spent much of my time chronicling my education and what it was like, kind of. We all knew each other, would cheat off of each other and had been told we were special, smart for many years. We got to read multiple banned books over the years. Hell, I think at least one of my teachers tried for everything to be banned, and not just by religious groups, but by anyone. It made for interesting reading to say the least.
As I was saying earlier, sometimes being 'smart/er' sucked. I got tired of hearing "you're too smart to be failing" or "you're smart, so if you only applied yourself..." That shit never helps, it makes it worse because I'm already irritated that I wasn't passing, I don't need to be reminded that I'm failing, generally for stupid reasons. I said I was never good in a quiet environment, and my ability to focus is a bit worse when I'm in a quiet room because then I start making my own music for entertainment instead of drifting in and out of ignoring music that's playing while I do something. Hell, I've got music playing while I write this and I'm writing alright. I was never good at tests, in testing situation because it was always unnaturally quiet. It was a forced heavy silence, like an extended pregnant silence. Since it felt uncomfortable it distracted me more than noise might have.
Showing you were smart as a kid was just as bad as failing. I have been told 'You speak good English' many times. Every time I smile and say 'thank you' while inside I respond 'you don't.' Every time. I have been called articulate many times, my cousin told me I spoke like 'white people,' but he doesn't use proper grammar or pronunciation, I think he was trying to make fun of me, not to sure though. I was a reader as a kid, I still am. I actively seek out controversial, weird or interesting things to read. When I read comics I like something that questions or critiques our culture, same goes with novels and film. I also turn around and love and appreciate much lower brow humour. I enjoy The Shawshank Redemption just as much as I enjoy Tropic Thunder or The Fifth Element. Yes, Tropic Thunder does have more to it than the explosions and the silly, but that's what people see. I like explosions and boom! I like talking and critiquing, I like getting and understanding 'smart' things and enjoying 'not-smart (?)' things.
With what I've said I still haven't quite gotten to my point. The biggest flaw in being smart if knowing that you're smart. You want to be recognized as such when you succeed and when you don't you don't want people to think too hard about it because it's salt in the wound. There are things I've realized, things I know about myself from sitting and dwelling on it. I wonder, how many people sit down and think about when they stop thinking of themselves as a kid, and actually think of themselves as an adult? I'm not talking about turning 18 or 21 and saying 'I can smoke, drink, vote and die for my country; I'm an adult.' I'm talking about how many people can actually acknowledge and articulate, to some degree, why they think of themselves now as an adult. While talking with Alex this weekend we spoke about this for a minute which drunk, but we both have come to the point in our lives where we're looking less to our parents for guidance and we both want to strike out on our own and forge our own paths. In my mind stopping and attempting to put into words a gradual change like that is a very heady thing to do, thinking and dwelling and focusing.
Being smart, intelligent, gifted has been my life in the education system. No one is more annoying than I am with myself for bad grades. When I try to explain my career plans to my family I can hear the disappointment in their voices when I say I don't want to go into science anymore. That doesn't bring me down as much as it annoys me when I say I want to work for myself, drawing my own comics. They keep trying to dissuade me thinking it's childish precociousness and it's not. They think it's about money, I'll find the money, getting money's the easy part. Working the job, the career, I really want is the hard part.
Want to know another shitty part about being smart? I know why I'm depressed almost every time. Usually it's some sort of 'I don't feel loved' bullshit. Every now and again it's about my mom being dead. Knowing I'm not at a point to forgive my father for all of his bullshit, or any of it, I know I'm not ready and I know why. He won't listen, he won't try to listen. He thinks of me as a child, I'm not a child anymore. I don't think I'm a young adult anymore, I just am an adult. I think I'm finally moving out of categorization limbo, now everyone I know needs to learn this so they don't think of me as less then I am.
See, that thought process right there, I want to be respected on my level; I want to be taken seriously on my level. Not everyone is on my level. I think ultimately that's why I drifted away from people from high school. Not just that they knew the 'old' me, but that they weren't really looking to be Adults yet, they were looking to be Young Adults. I've gone back to speaking with some of them and it seems things are leveling back out, we're reaching our next maturity level.
Jasmine P.
September 13, 2009
Higher Education
I don't understand why people complain about where they've ended up for college. It doesn't make me doubt choosing ODU, but I question why other people 'settle' for it. I'm in one of the computer labs on campus and I can hear people complaining about choosing to attend this school. Saying it's 'where you go when you don't get accepted into any other school in Virginia.' What the hell is with that sentiment. If you're not happy here, go the fuck somewhere else. I have had a mostly fantastic experience here. The few short comings have been with my dormitory roommates, and a few faculty members who have made keeping an extra-curricular activity running smoothly on the difficult side.
What I mean is, I was accepted to every school I applied to. I was accepted to Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond and chose not to attend there. I was accepted to George Mason University in Fairfax County, that was too close to home for me. I was also accepted to Hampton University and too turned that school down. I turned down three relatively prestigious schools to come to the not as well known Old Dominion University.
Well, for one, it is a 'university' we have the means to grant students graduate degrees which is pretty fucking special in my mine. This school is apparently a really good school for dentistry. I've had questions about the dental program from my dentist and the technician every time I've gone to get my teeth worked on just about, since I told them I was attending ODU once I graduated from South Lakes HS. I mean, yeah, I ragged on SLHS when I was there, but it was a good school. I was challenged by my International Baccalaureate courses, I enjoyed my environment, but I did overall enjoy SLHS.
Why complain when you did make it somewhere? Be satisfied and transfer if you hate the school so much. I'm in no means saying there are a lot of things I 'love' about ODU, there are plenty of things I find irritating, but I really wouldn't want to be in a different school. I I wasn't at ODU I'd have no Borjo, I might not be fencing, I'd have no Local Heroes, I might not be as into Western comics as I currently am, I'd be an entirely different person. I've also met some awesome people in and around the campus area. But It kind of comes down to I really don't think I'd be happy elsewhere. Maybe that's their issue, they're not happy.They need to find a better coping mechanism than bitching. I mean, when I wrote this we were just barely through our second week of classes, and I think those bitching were freshmen. Not positive on that though.
Jasmine P.
What I mean is, I was accepted to every school I applied to. I was accepted to Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond and chose not to attend there. I was accepted to George Mason University in Fairfax County, that was too close to home for me. I was also accepted to Hampton University and too turned that school down. I turned down three relatively prestigious schools to come to the not as well known Old Dominion University.
Well, for one, it is a 'university' we have the means to grant students graduate degrees which is pretty fucking special in my mine. This school is apparently a really good school for dentistry. I've had questions about the dental program from my dentist and the technician every time I've gone to get my teeth worked on just about, since I told them I was attending ODU once I graduated from South Lakes HS. I mean, yeah, I ragged on SLHS when I was there, but it was a good school. I was challenged by my International Baccalaureate courses, I enjoyed my environment, but I did overall enjoy SLHS.
Why complain when you did make it somewhere? Be satisfied and transfer if you hate the school so much. I'm in no means saying there are a lot of things I 'love' about ODU, there are plenty of things I find irritating, but I really wouldn't want to be in a different school. I I wasn't at ODU I'd have no Borjo, I might not be fencing, I'd have no Local Heroes, I might not be as into Western comics as I currently am, I'd be an entirely different person. I've also met some awesome people in and around the campus area. But It kind of comes down to I really don't think I'd be happy elsewhere. Maybe that's their issue, they're not happy.They need to find a better coping mechanism than bitching. I mean, when I wrote this we were just barely through our second week of classes, and I think those bitching were freshmen. Not positive on that though.
Jasmine P.
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