During this week I mainly detailed and cleaned up my work. I went through and fixed up the little things and revised/edited parts that I felt were lacking. One major thing I did this week was ask those in my projected audience to read over my curation and give me feedback. I got back great responses and was able to improve my curation even more by their advise.
The most interesting element that I found was how much my select group of five that I asked to view my page really enjoyed it. They said the template I chose was very visually appealing and that I presented the information in a very trustworthy and accurate manner. They said the site looked professional and felt the information was easy to comprehend for those who already understood cancer and for those who didn't.
The biggest obstacle I need to over come is knowing when enough is enough. Since this is an on going type of assignment it's very hard for me to walk away from something that just doesn't seem finished. I constantly look at my curation and find something to fix or add. I just need to accept all the elements I have and not add too much. I don't want to overwhelm my audience on just one page, so when I find that perfect balance, then I will be able to say "okay" and finishing there.
The next three steps I need to take are:
1. Make sure I have everything listed on the rubric. I need to scan through and see that I pass all the marks, and if I'm missing something I'll edit it right away.
2. Fix my template in minor ways. The heading and some of the layouts are tricky to fix, but in class Mr. Allen taught us how to fix them so now I'll just go back in and fix those minor things to make it look as professional as possible.
3. Update my "story" and truly get at the reason why I chose this topic and why I chose the elements I have on pages.
A suggestion for making this project run a little more smoothly would be to have at least one day a week to work on your curation during class. This way you could physical check our work and see if we are heading in the right direction. Sometimes without being able to physically show you our work and ask questions it becomes hard to get the exact answer you want/need. But, overall the project has been very enjoyable and I can't wait to see what my final curation will look like on Tuesday, May 28, 2013.
My accomplishments this week included getting a lot of new information on the organizations most used for cancer research and awareness, local hospitals near by that are the best for cancer treatment, and the ratios of how many people this year will be diagnosed with cancer. I also decided to switch my curation location from prezi to google template that is similar to the humanities website.
My most interesting piece found this week was the local hospital best for cancer treatment near us was Evanston Hospital. Evanston hospital houses both Kellogg Cancer Center and the American Cancer Society. Two organizations I work and volunteer for and they are rated at the top of the list for cancer treatment. I still need to check validity on what they are rated but I know that they are up there.
The biggest obstacle I need to overcome is the validity of the statistics I use. I want to make sure I'm getting correct data and not just throwing random numbers on a web page. Each website seems to have several number similar to each other, but to make my curation as accurate as possible I may have to average all these numbers to get the data that is the most valid and up to date. Once I find these averages I'll have more confident in my work.
Some things I need to work on this week:
1. I need to average the data I've collected for accurate statistics
2. Start working on a works cited page
3. Double check my work by looking on several sites for the same information
What's not working is how I'm taking notes. I don't just want to plug the information I collect straight into my curation but I have nothing else to than just write things in my journal. I feel like I have information all over the place and I've never felt so unorganized in my life. I just wish there was a better way to collect information and then plug it into the curation.
This week I began my search for research on my topic. If you don't remember, or for those of you who don't know my topic, I'm making a curation about the story of the most up to date research on what causes what cancers and what new strategies were found successful in keeping your life cancer free. My accomplishments this week included searching for a site/web page to put my curation on and also get my toes wet with information on my topic.
The most interesting this I found this week was Prezi. I've never used the site before and the first time I heard of it was only two weeks ago. I love the site and it gives me a whole new perspective on how to present a topic to the world. I lets me use this up to date technology and makes learning fun. I'm excited to see what my final product will look like with this new tool.
The biggest obstacle I had to overcome was how to use Prezi. I'm not too technology oriented so learning how to actually use Prezi took some time, but now that I have the hang of it it is smooth sails ahead.
The next three steps I need to take to move forward is:
1. I need to make a timeline of information gathered and decide from what year to the present would I like to declare the information and research found state of the art.
2. I need to organize my work more clearly and from there get into deeper detail. Right now I feel like I only have surface information on a broad question and I rather have detailed information on a smaller sub question.
3. I have to watch the sites I get my information from and compare it to others to check its reliability. I want reliable information so my audience will be told the 100% truth, not an assumption or average.
What's working so far is my constant work I'm putting in every night. By just taking 30 minutes to an hour a night gathering information and editing my Prezi I know my curation will turn out great and very helpful to those who will use it in the future.
This past week we had a few Ted presentations that were exceptional. The material these Ted Talks had would unlock the newest technology and opportunities for my generation. The best idea I observed was Taso's presenter. Not only did the the presenter show the coolest technology I have ever seen, but his technology was derived from the thought that our future is truly at our fingertips.
Seeing this technology before my very own eyes makes me feel hopeful and excited for the future. It makes me proud to live in a society where we never stop trying to make life easier. Taso's presenter eliminated the physical smart phone but gave you all the technology of a smart phone and more at your fingertips. This presentation connects to my own knowledge and belief by the use of the smart phone. I used my iPhone over 100 times a day easily. But being clumsy, I always find myself dropping it or better yet the battery dying. Although life has been made so easy already with the creation of the smart phone, imagine life with the technology of the smart phone but with no physical phone at all. I'm not sure about anyone else, but that is what I want and need.
Hopefully this technology will soon become sold in stores and available to everyone. If I have the money for it I would buy it and use it in my practice when I'm older. For Occupational Therapy I could use the technology to help make exercise sheets for my patients by dragging material from books and magazines onto a black piece of paper. I could easily show videos on a blank wall of how to do an exercise if they are having a hard time and I can't personally show them. But it doesn't stop there. The opportunities are endless and I can't wait for what the future has in store.
As I worked on my mashup I decided to put my thoughts on paper first. I sorted through my thoughts by listing whatever came to mind down and sorting through it later. After fifteen minutes of deep thought I then began to sort through what I had to make sense of it all. It's kind of like when you begin to draw a picture. You take the colors out first of what you'll be using, and then you make something out of those colors.
Overall I felt my strategy was successful and effective. I was able to get my mashup done in a timely matter and also feel rally confident about it. I felt that since I spent a lot of time thinking of ideas and items to put in my mashup, it made it easier for me to create the final product. If I could change one thing about my mashup it would be to find better images for love. I couldn't find images that expressed love without a story behind it. I searched for an hour for the images I had and I still wish I could have found better ones even though I like the ones I have.
What surprises me the most about my thinking is how organized and step by step it is. I had a list of tasks I made and a clear set list of ideas. I wasn't all over the place with my thoughts and made sure I went down the list of tasks instead of just jumping from one to the other. I felt that showed a lot in my final product because each step introduced the one after it. What I like about my thinking the most is this organization. I've worked hard to train myself to think this way and I'm glad it is finally coming through in my work. The one thing about my thinking I would like to improve is my timing. I want to be able to complete and think of things faster. If I could retain more information and be able to recall things a lot more easily then the timing of projects, similar to the mashup, wouldn't take me hours to complete. But even with hours of hard work I am very proud of the product I have produced.
Mashup: Love Love:One word, multiple properties 1.
2.
3.
You are so young, so much before all beginning, and I would like to beg you, dear sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now.
4.
The answer to all your questions is within you. Don't search for the questions, just follow your heart to what you think feels right. Life is short and if you're hating something in life for just a minute, that is a minute wasted. Enjoy life to the fullest and don't waste your time hating something. Learn to love what you hate. When you learn to do this your life can only prosper. Hate is such a strong word and can never positively affect someones life. But on the other hand love is such a powerful word that opens up millions of doors for your future. Stop closing doors by hating and start opening them by loving. Not only will your future be bright, but so will you.
5.
But take whatever comes, with great trust, and as long as it comes out of your will, out of some need of your innermost self, the take it upon yourself, and don't hate anything.
6.
Avoid providing material for the drama that is always stretched tight between parents and children; it uses up much of the children's strength and wastes the love of the elders, which acts and warms even if it doesn't comprehend. Don't ask for any understanding; but believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance, and have faith that in this love there is a strength and a blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it.
7.
I love my family and it's an unconditional love that will never vanish no matter the circumstances. Yes, they can upset me, but I'll never stop loving them. I'm going away to college this fall and that doesn't mean my family will stop loving me. It just means our love will grow the distance. The love my family and I have for one another is limitless. No distance can stop or lessen the love we have. Love has no limits and no matter the distance between my family and I, I will always know my family will love me the same or possibly even more than when I left.
8.
i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)
9.
Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether is has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write.
10.
Think for just a minute about something you couldn't live without. That something you just thought about is surrounded by love. You love doing that one thing enough that if you don't do it your happiness no longer exists. Everyone wants to be happy in life and get a job that brings in money but that's not all. If you aren't doing something that you love, how in the world will you ever be happy? The key to happiness is love. The two correlate together in every way possible. If you wish to have a happy future seek a career in something you love. By making this choice you'll never be sad, because how could you possible be sad when all your surrounded by is love?
11.
Don't torment them with your doubts and don't frighten them with your faith or joy, which they wouldn't be able to comprehend. Seek out some simple and true feelings of what you have in common with them, which doesn't necessarily have to alter when you yourself change again and again; when you see them, love life in a form that is not your own.
12.
After they had been inseparable-Beulah's health went into a rapid decline. She died in a Seattle hospital room, the blind man sitting beside the bed and holding on to her hand. They'd married, lived lived and worked together, slept together-had sex, sure-and then the blind man had to bury her. All this without his having ever seen what the g-ddamned woman looked like.
13.
Love is the best antidepressant—but many of our ideas about it are wrong. The less love you have, the more depressed you are likely to feel.
Love is as critical for your mind and body as oxygen. It's not negotiable. The more connected you are, the healthier you will be both physically and emotionally. The less connected you are, the more you are at risk.
It is also true that the less love you have, the more depression you are likely to experience in your life. Love is probably the best antidepressant there is because one of the most common sources of depression is feeling unloved. Most depressed people don't love themselves and they do not feel loved by others. They also are very self-focused, making them less attractive to others and depriving them of opportunities to learn the skills of love.
There is a mythology in our culture that love just happens. As a result, the depressed often sit around passively waiting for someone to love them. But love doesn't work that way. To get love and keep love you have to go out and be active and learn a variety of specific skills.
Most of us get our ideas of love from popular culture. We come to believe that love is something that sweeps us off our feet. But the pop-culture ideal of love consists of unrealistic images created for entertainment, which is one reason so many of us are set up to be depressed. It's part of our national vulnerability, like eating junk food, constantly stimulated by images of instant gratification. We think it is love when it's simply distraction and infatuation.
One consequence is that when we hit real love we become upset and disappointed because there are many things that do not fit the cultural ideal. Some of us get demanding and controlling, wanting someone else to do what we think our ideal of romance should be, without realizing our ideal is misplaced.
It is not only possible but necessary to change one's approach to love to ward off depression. Follow these action strategies to get more of what you want out of life—to love and be loved.
Recognize the difference between limerance and love. Limerance is the psychological state of deep infatuation. It feels good but rarely lasts. Limerance is that first stage of mad attraction whereby all the hormones are flowing and things feel so right. Limerance lasts, on average, six months. It can progress to love. Love mostly starts out as limerance, but limerance doesn't always evolve into love.
Know that love is a learned skill, not something that comes from hormones or emotion particularly. Erich Fromm called it "an act of will." If you don't learn the skills of love you virtually guarantee that you will be depressed, not only because you will not be connected enough but because you will have many failure experiences.
Learn good communication skills. They are a means by which you develop trust and intensify connection. The more you can communicate the less depressed you will be because you will feel known and understood.
There are always core differences between two people, no matter how good or close you are, and if the relationship is going right those differences surface. The issue then is to identify the differences and negotiate them so that they don't distance you or kill the relationship.
You do that by understanding where the other person is coming from, who that person is, and by being able to represent yourself. When the differences are known you must be able to negotiate and compromise on them until you find a common ground that works for both.
Focus on the other person. Rather than focus on what you are getting and how you are being treated, read your partner's need. What does this person really need for his/her own well-being? This is a very tough skill for people to learn in our narcissistic culture. Of course, you don't lose yourself in the process; you make sure you're also doing enough self-care.
Help someone else. Depression keeps people so focused on themselves they don't get outside themselves enough to be able to learn to love. The more you can focus on others and learn to respond and meet their needs, the better you are going to do in love.
Develop the ability to accommodate simultaneous reality. The loved one's reality is as important as your own, and you need to be as aware of it as of your own. What are they really saying, what are they really needing? Depressed people think the only reality is their own depressed reality.
Actively dispute your internal messages of inadequacy. Sensitivity to rejection is a cardinal feature of depression. As a consequence of low self-esteem, every relationship blip is interpreted far too personally as evidence of inadequacy. Quick to feel rejected by a partner, you then believe it is the treatment you fundamentally deserve. But the rejection really originates in you, and the feelings of inadequacy are the depression speaking.
Recognize that the internal voice is strong but it's not real. Talk back to it. "I'm not really being rejected, this isn't really evidence of inadequacy. I made a mistake." Or "this isn't about me, this is something I just didn't know how to do and now I'll learn." When you reframe the situation to something more adequate, you can act again in an effective way and you can find and keep the love that you need.
14.
15.
Love is gray. You can chose whatever you want to do with it in your life. Many people consider love to be a sexual relationship between two people, meanwhile; others see love as a statement meaning I would risk my life for you. You need to distinguish for yourself what love means to you. Love can mean many different things for people and not everyone is the same when it comes to love. You may find that the word love has no sexual meaning but better yet a promise. Adventure into your life and find out for yourself where love falls in your life. Who knows, it could be right in front of you.
16.
With a mindset that the glass is always half full there is more to love. Not everything in life is easily attainable. Everyone has their advantages and disadvantages but you must train yourself to put that all behind. Focus on the possible moments in life. These moments are where you'll fall in love. With success love is around the corner. When people succeed in a task they begin to love doing it. Find what you're good at and simply let go and fall in love. Once you release all the unnecessary negatives all that will be left is positives. Fall into love with success.
17.
stand with your lover on the ending earth-
and while a (huge by which huger than
huge) whoing sea leaps to greenly hurl snow, suppose we could not love, dear; imagine
ourselves like living neither nor dead these
(or many thousands hearts which don’t and dream
or many million minds which sleep and move)
blind sand, at pitiless the mercy of
time time time time time
how fortunate are you and I, whose home
is timelessness: we who have wandered down
from fragrant mountains of eternal now
to frolic in such mysteries as birth
and death a day (or maybe even less)
18.
It is also good to love: because love is difficult. For one human being to love another human being: that is perhaps the most difficult task that has been entrusted to us, the ultimate task, the final test and proof, the work for which all other work is merely preparation. That is why young people, who are beginners in everything, are not yet capable of love: it is something they must learn. With their whole being, with all their forces, gathered around their solitary, anxious, upward-beating heart, they must learn to love.
19.
Works Cited
1. Together. Google Search
2. "What Does Love Mean To You?" YouTube. YouTube, 14 Feb. 2007. Web. 18 Apr. 2013.
3. Rilke, Rainer Maria, and Franz Xaver Kappus. Letters to a Young Poet. New York: Norton,
1954. Print. (34)
4. Personal Reflection
5. Rilke, Rainer Maria. (35)
6. Rilke, Rainer Maria. (43)
7. Personal Reflection
8. Cummings, E.e. "[i Carry Your Heart with Me(i Carry It In]." By E. E. Cummings : The Poetry
In class we are currently working on the Frank Gehry project. A project where we have been given the task by our teacher to create a given building from scratch and make it exactly as the teacher requests. If I had not seen the film about Frank Gehry, I would have assumed this project came with a lot of rules. When doing something for a customer the worker must always work to please them and only do as they say. But, after watching the film about Frank Gehry, I realized his philosophy about breaking the rules. Frank Gehry thinks outside of the box and tends to break the rules or the "status quo" when building these amazing buildings he is known for.
Growing up in the suburbs we are always surrounded by these cookie cutter houses. We have such a strong status quo that when broken the community is in utter shock. But what if we broke from this status quo and began making up our own rules? What would happen to the community? The major question here is does it make you a bad person if you break the rules? Frank Gehry constantly breaks the rules of architecture and creates these beautiful and memorial buildings we all have seen today, but does that mean the same for us? Will good come out of our rule breaking, or will we be shunned for trying something new. In a community where every person is just like the next we need to learn to loosen up and break the rules because who know what will happen, we may be the next Frank Gehry.
