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How can change be tested?
My idea for this involves tracking work done on assignments throughout the semester. This is inspired by my Seminar in which we have a time management assignment due every week. We would create a table or chart on the wall with week # as the x axis and time spent on an assignment as the y axis. We would track each week and hopefully (if our time management skills change and improve) we will spend less time on assignments.
To make this a little more complex, we could also track how long it takes to start assignments after they are assigned, time spent on social media/ procrastinating, and how long before the due date the assignment is finished.
As time goes on, if we change for the better, the amount of time doing these things will decrease so that we can better our school work.
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Interviews
Stranger Interview:
Q: What are your needs in life?
A: Family, friends, a support group. People to love me and for me to love them back. Someone to motivate me, just a support group.
Q: What are your wants in life?
A: I want a successful future and that, for me, looks like a stable career and close connections with my family and friends to lean on if I need help with anything. I want enough money to provide for myself and others if I decide to have a family because I feel like unfortunately, money rules the world. I want to have good health and enough money in case of emergencies.
Q: What is the difference between wants and needs in your life?
A: My needs are things that I already have around me in my life that help me get through hard times. The wants are what I want continue- or what I have now that I want to have- in the future.
Q: How do you think you can make your wants become needs?
A: If I am optimistic, I think my goals will be easier to achieve. If I am always thinking about it and determined to achieve my goals, it will happen.
Friend Interview:
Q: What are your needs in life?
A: Support from others, helping others, physical connection, lots of attention, nature, and good music.
Q: What are your wants in life?
A: To be successful, adopt a dog, get married (and to keep my own last name), and have kids. I want to be reciprocated to, to be told the truth, to celebrate diversity, and to travel. Oh and have a good fashion sense. And for my family to always be there for me-but that can also be a need.
Q: What is the difference between wants and needs in your life?
A: Needs are necessary for survival, even if they aren’t tangible. If you a deprive a person of personal connection- it goes against human nature. Wants are more things you can live without. Wants are more unexpected, they are your dreams and goals in life. But needs are more important in the end, even though there is a power balance struggle between them.
Q: How do you think you can make your wants become needs?
A: It’s a matter of prioritizing. If its important- healthy or positive- you’ll change your ways of life to obtain it. Bad wants are different. You should only turn wants into needs only if they are good for you.
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Week 9 Blog
The speech I chose to cover is titled “A Story Like Mine” by Halsey at the 2018 Women’s March. The speech is in a poem format and it’s about 5 minutes long. The speech starts off with personal stories about rape, sexual assault, and overall just unjustified violent acts towards women. The first story was about accompanying a friend go to a Planned Parenthood after being raped by a teacher at school. The next story was about being sexually assaulted as a child but not knowing that it’s wrong. The last story was about dating an older man as a teenager that made her feel like she owed him sex. She says that even though she is in media and lives a very public life, men still try to assault her. She says that all her friends have stories like hers, and that change needs to happen to help stop this from happening as much. The main point to this speech is that women need to rally and listen to each other stories. All of our stories are valid and they shouldn’t have happened to us. We need to come together and rally to become a voice for all those who can’t speak up.
I think that this is a good speech. It shows her passion for the issue and she provides ways to help change happen. Being at the Women’s March, the speech was well received and is still mentioned often in media for it’s ability to relate to so many others. In a recent interview, Halsey said she felt defeated after this speech because the audience at the march was not paying attention, but the attention it received online made it seem worth it. My only critique from the video is that it ends rather abruptly saying “Lord knows there’s a war to be won.” I think I would have added on that we will win the war just to instill that hope in the audience and push them to be apart of the change.
youtube
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Week 8 Blog
I think that the chapter of the audiobook relates most closely with the “Interdependence and Decentralization” chapter in Emergent Strategy. Brown speaks about how we all are dependent on each other, even if we hate to admit it. Someone sewed the shirt you’re wearing, someone else grew the cotton used to make it. There is not one thing that humans do that is completely dependent of another person or nature. I think that Palmer speaks on this as well. There are always people willing to help, you just need to ask. I liked the example she used about needing tampon in the bathroom. She said something along the lines of “Today is your day to take the tampon, and tomorrow is your day to give one.” There are so many people willing to help, but they’ll never know you need it until you ask. I think that the story she told about how she didn’t want to borrow money from her husband is very relatable to a lot of people. People hate to ask family and friends for favors or money and feel ashamed for doing it, even though those are the people that care about you the most and want you to do your best. This story reminded me of one I experienced myself. When I was picking up my parking pass at the beginning of the semester, an upperclassman was trying to repeal a parking ticket he got because he couldn’t afford to pay it. He told the lady at the desk that he had to ask his mother to pay his car insurance this month and how embarrassing that is for people his age. In all reality, I’m sure his mother was glad to help him and would rather see him paying for school over a car. I’m sure a lot of people his age and older ask their parents and others for financial help all the time. But we put a stigma around it, as if needing somebody is inferior. Palmer’s chapter about just asking for help would be very beneficial to everybody I think, because I have never met a person that loves to ask favors of everybody.
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Blog Week 7
One of the most important things I got out of Jung’s work was, “...security, certitude, and peace do not lead to discoveries.” I can relate this to the chapter in Adrienne Maree Brown’s book (also I was spelling her name wrong this whole time why did no one tell me) that we read about political/ social justice movements. You don’t discover something is wrong when life is going perfectly, you discover it when things are unsafe, scary, and insecure. Discoveries lead to change and you can’t change a situation that is secure, certain, and peaceful.
John Cage’s writing about nothing is very captivating. He keeps writing as though he is about to reach an epiphany, but then the piece falls back down to simply nothing. The way that he writes the piece with such silences between parts of sentences builds suspense and supports that feeling like the writing will reach something at some point. I think that is what nothing really is. Because I think there is really not a point in which nothing is happening. I think nothing is just waiting for something to happen. Ultimately, Cage’s writing talks about nothing but everything at the same time. His point in writing about nothing defeats his purpose but goes along with my idea of nothing. There is no such thing as nothing!
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September 30th, 2019
Faith is relied on heavily across the world. It is relied on in bad times that seem uncontrollable. However, every situation is controllable, based on how you and others around you react to it. Every action changes the world just a little bit. For example, leaving your house five minutes late could have saved you from traffic or even a car accident. Every single thing that happens in our lives changes it dramatically in the long run.
I like the passage Adrienne Marie Brown includes in this chapter about the flock of geese. My favorite quote from it was “Flocking is fundamentally about decentralizing the effort for safety and trusting leadership to come from any edge of the flock.” To me, this could be symbolic for faith. Trusting that leadership or guidance will come to you is what faith ultimately is.
Some find faith hard to come by. Brown explained that nature always relies on other beings (plants, animals, water, etc.) to support it in hard times. She also explains how humans are different from nature in this way. We are always competing for faith, and some can not find it in the end. Langston Hughes’ “Salvation” also shows that it can be difficult for us to find faith, even when it is right in front of you. However, this example is slightly different. Langston is dealing with internal conflict between him and his sins whereas nature is dealing with external conflict between the weather and the being. Langston tries to solve his issue by finding Jesus within himself while nature comes together to solve the issue.
What I get out of these chapters is that faith is important to have, whether it is spiritual or just in the people around you. Trees extend their roots out to each other during floods and storms to get through it. As people, some reach out to God to look for guidance to help get through their issues, while others just reach out to close family and friends around them. Having this trust provides a sense of security in our lives that will ultimately change it for the better.
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Blog #3
This chapter of Adrienne Marie Brown’s book is based on adaptation. She explains that adaptation is essential for change to occur because it is for the greater good of yourself and/or society. She also explains that most people are scared to experience change and adaptation, even when it is beneficial towards you. In Octavia Butler’s Bloodchild, Gan adapts to his environment even though he is scared of it. He made the choice that he will be the host for the Tlic’s eggs instead of his sister because he doesn’t want her to experience it. In turn, this decision ended his childhood. So, he was impregnated with the eggs in order for both the Tarrans and the Tlics to survive- the greater good. Similarly, Brown did the same. As she fearfully got older, she knew it took her longer to do tasks that could do easily before. She began arriving late to important meetings, so to change that, she planned to arrive an hour early to one of her conferences. She ended up being late to the meeting, even after planning ahead. When she arrived to the conference, everyone else was late as well. Brown learned that it is okay to mess up sometimes, and that it’s not about when you arrive to something in life, it’s about what you take out of it. This experience helped Brown feel comforted in her old age. Overall, every source of change in our lives requires adaptation for that change to benefit us.
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I like how you focused more on the science behind this chapter. Nature is a reflection on our own lives, so it is important that it is included in the chapter. I think your perception of this chapter is a lot different from a lot of ours in the class. But what you get out of the chapter is what you personally need. I also like how your blog is similar to a free-write. You spills your thoughts sporadically but still logically.
Emergent Strategy
So far with how much I have read. It all begins with the idea of emergence. Emergence to AMB is not an abstract concept from information science. She draws instead from nature – her examples include roaches, ants, deer, fungi, bacteria, viruses, bamboo, squirrels, vultures, mice, mosquitos, and dandelions. She studies how mycelium grow underground in thread-like formations, gaining strength by connecting their roots to one another. She admires how ants and starlings are able to coordinate in large numbers and react to their environment by following simple, local rules. Ferns and their fractal patterns are the inspiration to look for small-scale solutions that propagate outward and impact the whole environment. Dandelions are admired for their extreme resilience, that they can thrive and spread despite being uprooted and trampled on. I have noticed these main factors that She draws on in her book.Change is constant (Be like water). Invest in your capacity to adapt, expecting your work and your life to change, instead of trying to prevent them from changing.There is always enough time for the right work. There is a conversation in the room that only these people at this moment can have. Find it.Never a failure, always a lesson.Every experience you have is fuel for creative inspiration. The bigger the failure, the better the fuel.Trust the People (If you trust the people, they become trustworthy).Move at the speed of trust.How fast you can move is determined by how much trust you have. And people won’t trust you unless you are vulnerable with them. Focus on critical connections more than critical mass—build resilience by building the relationships. Less prep, more presence. Preparation has diminishing returns after a while, while presence has exponential returns. The sooner you move from preparing to being present, the better your results will be.
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September 16th, 2019
This section of Emergent Strategy was all about how and when change happens. Adrienne Marie Brown states that change is constantly happening around us and is inevitable. She explains that Fractals are the Relationship Between Small and Large, Adaptive is How We Change, Interdependence and Decentralization is Who We Are and How We Share, Non-linear and Iterative is The Pace and Pathways of Change, Resilience and Transformative Justice is How We Recover and Transform, and Creating More Responsibilities is How We Move Towards Life. Specifically in this chapter, she talks about fractals and change are intertwined. Fractals are caused by “repeating a simple process over and over in an ongoing feedback loop.” Change can be caused the same way. Change can simply be caused by switching a step in your routine or more difficultly by having the legislative branch of the government review a proposed bill numerous times until it gets passed. Change is still change no matter how big or small it is. Adrienne Marie Brown says that “the same spirals on sea shells can be found in the shape of galaxies.” To me this means that the small changes that we make in our own lives can ultimately make a change in the world. I think this can be backed up by Grace’s quote, “Transform yourself to transform the world.”
Another smaller important part of this chapter was how Brown talked about living life to the fullest. She explains that you control your own life and how you live it, so you need to take action and live everyday on purpose. I think this is important for all of us to remember in our daily lives so that we don’t feel so lost in our infinite universe.
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Ursula Le Guin
Le Guin was the author of 21 novels, 11 volumes of short stories, 12 children’s books, four volumes of essays, and six volumes of poetry. She wrote mainly science fiction but included topics such as feminism and gender roles in her works. Le Guin’s “The Left Hand of Darkness,” was based in a world where gender did not exist. She also wrote about moral development and coming of age in her book “A Wizard of Earthsea.” Le Guin also wrote about political systems in “The Disposseded” and “Always Coming Home.” She talked about these topics because no one else really was. When she first began writing, women were not respected in the writing community. She did not care about the criticism she received and continued to write. She ended up winning many awards and paving the way for other female authors. She won a Newbury Medal in 1972, the Hugo Award for Best Novelette in 1988, and the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award in 2003. So, Ursula Le Guin was very influential in many ways. She brought up topics that others were scared to talk about. She opened the conversation about feminism, gender roles, gender ambiguity, utopian societies, anarchy, etc. She also helped women in literature squash their unfair reputation and make names for themselves. I imagine that Brown likes Ursula Le Guin because she did so much. She began conservations that facilitated change. My favorite quote from Ursula Le Guin has to be, “You cannot buy the revolution. You cannot make the revolution. You can only be the revolution. It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere.” Ursula Le Guin knew that change had to start with yourself in order for you to change something else. I think that Adrienne Marie Brown would like that quote as well.
https://www.ursulaklegui.n.com/home/
https://www.azquotes.com/author/6003-Ursula_K_Le_Guin
https://www.npr.org/2018/01/24/580107623/the-influence-of-ursula-k-le-guin
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