Reflective Letter #3

Hey Cats and Kittens,

Just today I learned my blogging lesson of the week: Rolin's bunny peep art is better than mine. If you haven't checked out his blog recently you should do so cuz there are good things going on.

Aside from that, I've learned that making things simple is a very complex effort. In GD2 I had to find a way to make something as simple as the daily planner seem new and different. This was a complex process. Now it's just a busy one.

We also learned this with our presentation. Photoshop, on the surface, is fairly simple to use. But, once you get into how much stuff you can actually do with it, it's pretty much the most complicated thing ever. Just picking what to talk about and address as "the basics" is a task. There's an awful lot of "basics."

It reminds me that you can never knock anything as being "simple." My planner is a big foldy piece o' paper and to make more precise folds I'm using a folding bone. My friend Jeremy was like "that's unnecessary." I scoffed. Something as simple as folding can be pretty difficult. You need to think about the weight of the paper, the direction of the grain, what kind of surface you're doing it on, and be careful where you put your fingers. Also, the secondary fold/pressing is essential. I don't think any of us ponder too hard about folding a sheet of paper, but yes, there is something called a folding bone. And people who know how to use it. (btw, it made me laugh at first too).

I don't think I ever really thought too hard about this class, as far as the style of class, until that film crew came to record our class (and put boom mics in our faces). We're a self-directed class. We're a mix of face-to-face and online. We deal with the not-quite-so-fangled-anymore newfangled internet. This class addresses a current, niche trend that really has penetrated our society, but could very well be a quirky footnote hundreds of years from now. "Did you know people used to relentlessly post their lives and political affiliations online?" "Did you know that Lincoln slept with his slaves?" "Did you know etc?"

The traditionally-concerned could academic could question the validity of this class, but we're still learning things. Classes like this fit into a modern consciousness and a modern schedule. The kind where we're trying to run our lives 25/8 instead of just 24/7. It's helped me to try to keep on top of my journal, which had been otherwise left to the side cuz of all this homework nonsense. So, big woop, a class that reminds and pushes me to write about myself. It always about ourselves, but for those of us that focus our blogs on such things, is that a bad thing? Sometimes the only person who's along for our whole lives is ourselves. lol. Self-documentation is an important thing. Which is probably why I'm writing my paper on it.

Wait and see. I'll sell selfishness. For only twenty bucks a pop.