What does success look like?!

Wednesday's class discussion really interested me in looking more into success, and what it looks like.  Lately I have been thinking a lot about life.  When kids are growing up all you hear them talk about is becoming a lawyer, doctor, architect, engineer, or what have you.  But where do the normal people come from?  What about our social workers, teachers, bank tellers, or mail couriers come from.  I call these filler jobs, or jobs that fill in everyday society, our NORMAL people.  How many kids do you hear growing up saying they want to be a bank teller after they graduate......not many?  Right.  But why is that?!  I have not always viewed success as doing whatever makes you happy, not content, but HAPPY!  For majority of my life I have viewed success as having an amazing home, white picket fence, wonderful family, trophy wife, and a dog named Spot.  But that can't be what makes everyone happy.  What if what makes me happy is a nice 900 sqft. apartment with bad parking, overlooking a nice local park, single, and a cat named Pepper?!  This leads me to my point!  This picture really upsets me......

I really do not agree with how easy, simple, and one-tracked they are making college admissions look.  They make it seem as if there is only one way to make it to college, by following their exact steps.  But what if there steps don't make you happy?  What if you don't like college visits?  What if you take the ACT instead of the SAT, can you still go to college?!  I really just think that everyone one has a different goal for success, and a different path of taking to get there.  In society we always tend to generalize everything and make it seem one-sided.  We now know that nothing in life is truly one-sided and a person's success cannot be defined by anyone else.

U.N.I.T.Y.

Unity?  What exactly is unity?  Togetherness.  Where do we see it?  How often does it show up?  In class we looked at different pictures in which we were asked to find something interesting, and make it seem odd, even if we knew exactly what it was.  Coincidently we got the picture from the popular movie "Freedom Writer" showing a class of students huddled together.

 

We were asked to make something odd of this picture.  Make it SEEM like something that you don't see everyday.  That was pretty easy given this picture.  How often do you see a class united like this.  No matter the age group, school, or location, you never see this happening!  I think it was interesting that Prof. Lacy put this picture in circulation asking us to find/make something strange about it.  I feel like just looking at the picture we automatically she something strange and out of the ordinary, students UNITED!  Do you all see this as being just as strange as I do, or am I doing too much?! Lol

What Elbow Thinks!

I want to talk more about Peter Elbow's writing "Coming to Know Myself as a Vernacular Intelect" and how I understood it.  When reading Elbow's writing I thought about so many events over the years that have potentially shaped or changed my experience as a writer and a student.  Elbow repeatedly calls attention to the teacher student relationship and how he views it.  Elbow says that teachers have an unfair control over their students creativity.  Teachers have the chance to tell a student if their work is right, or wrong which is solely based on the teachers discretion.  This is unfair seeing as though your teacher changes frequently.

 

Here is my daybook entry where I talk more about what interests me in Elbow's writing.  I have always thought that teachers control way to much of what students feel is right or wrong, and it's nice to know I'm not alone!