Sunday, November 29, 2009

learning journal number.. i have lost count

well i have learned how to deal with a book on reserve and use the photocopy room/get a photocopy card! i feel like these are useful skills. i have also come to realise that perhaps learning about pirates will be hard because i think that all of the information in our books comes from the 1700s, history is so hard to study because its subjective, we will never know what really happened, we can only speculate. this is frustrating but i also still love pirates as a topic just a little frustrated with the research, this is to be expected.
that is all.

Sunday, November 22, 2009

guys...

What I love most about rivers is:
You can't step in the same river twice
The water's always changing, always flowing
But people, I guess, can't live like that
We all must pay a price
To be safe, we lose our chance of ever knowing
What's around the riverbend
Waiting just around the riverbend.

THIS IS LIKE AQUINAS, WE NEED TO JUST SEE WHATS AROUND THE RIVERBEND AND IT WILL BE OK.

Should I choose the smoothest course?
Steady as the beating drum?
Should I marry Kocoum?
Is all my dreaming at an end?
Or do you still wait for me, Dream Giver
Just around the riverbend?

Ignore the should I marry Kocoum thing.. but we shouldn't take the smoothest course!

Sunday, November 8, 2009

Learning 8 bebe

PIRATES. pirates pirates pirates pirates.
I think this is the best thing that has ever happened to me. Thus far, I have learned a little bit about Bartholomew Roberts, and much more about how to use EBSCO and research tools, I'm trying to research about women pirates and have been at it for like 3 hours now, proving to be a challange. EBSCO WHY CAN'T YOU GIVE ME WHAT I WANT? anyway thats what I have learned for now!

Monday, November 2, 2009

Midterm Learning Reflection

Kelsey Butler
Truth in Society
Reflecting on Learning

As I'm looking back on my first learning journals, I have come to realize that I have experienced exactly what I had hoped for in the beginning- learning on my own, experiencing movies, plays, articles, texts without someone telling me how I should feel or what I should expect. I don't think that I ever really noticed until now, until I was told to look at what I have learned and before I get into the individual subjects I just want to say that I have learned the proper way of learning, through myself first, then listening to others opinions, then re examining my own again and again.

When studying religion, I think it is important to be able to let go of ones beliefs (not completely obviously) and try to see through other lens', like the interpretive lens' described by William Paden. I feel like it would be hard to learn if we didn't know how to “let go” and experience these religions through another view other than our own. I feel as if I've learned how to do this. I found the lens' were specifically useful when studying the Tibetan Book of the Dead, and when we were trying to understand the beliefs and practices of Tibetan Buddhism. The notion of reincarnation may not really “hit home” for all of us it might not make sense but we have to force ourselves to see how to a Tibetan Buddhist it makes perfect sense, especially the notion of reincarnation being a bad thing. I feel as if we all had this notion of reincarnation being good and it is hard for us to see how living again and again can be bad but to a Tibetan Buddhist- it is. Using these lens' can prove to be a hard thing to do because in the back of your mind your own beliefs and faith can never truly disappear. However, these lens' helped me when I attended the lecture by David Adams Richards about 'God Is'. It's the same kind of thing, by trying to see faith the way that he did I could understand where his notion of faith came from and why he has it. I may not really agree with him but at least I can begin to understand. I haven't encountered something where the lens' prove to be irrelevant or useless. I don't know if they can even be considered useless- no matter what the subject if you can push yourself to see things the way other people see them you will have a better understanding of the world and how it works, why it works and why people do the things that they do-- why people come to believe the things that they do.

The study we have done around Doubt has actually taught me so many things- no matter how much we thought we were killing it. Like I said in one of my learning journals Doubt is apart of the circle of life and no matter how much we hate it we can never escape it. So I would just like to say that I don't hate Doubt but have learned to appreciate it. I think that Doubt has definitely shown me what text can be for and what it can do. I have never re thought one text so many times in my whole life. It has shown me how by re examining parts of a play can have an effect on my interpretation and how I see it. I have come to understand why I see things the way I do when I read something and how if I had different beliefs I would see it another way, and I have watched my peers reactions change and shift with their own beliefs. Doubt became so much more interesting once we learned about the author, once I understood that John Patrick Shanley didn't know whether or not Father Flynn was guilty it shifted my beliefs about the play and about the writing. I think the relationship between author and reader is very delicate because once a reader knows what the author was thinking or what might have influenced the author to write certain things- this can change the readers interpretation and that's exactly what happened to me. Even though I thought Father Flynn was innocent with all my heart.. once I knew that a member of Shanley's family was molested I was convinced he was guilty even though Shanley has claimed many times not to know himself. Research has helped me to understand everything I know about Shanley and Catholicism at the time that the play was based. If we didn't have research, our interpretations and opinions might never change and we might not be able to see past what our original reaction to the play was. I think the most valuable thing I have learned in English besides everything about is just actually about doubt, not to be corny or anything. I never saw or thought about doubt the way that Shanley presented it through the play. I always saw doubt as a bad thing but I really don't think that you can escape it and maybe we do just need to learn to live with some sort of doubt creeping in the back of our minds no matter how certain we are. Maybe it's just apart of life.

Before Journalism, I really had no idea how to write an article, what role journalism played in our society or why it matters. I feel as if I have learned (to some extent) all of these things. Opening the class with a reading of King of Silence was the perfect way to get me interested in journalism because I never really thought about the kind of power and freedom we have and how journalism gives us this. I think that journalism benefits everyone because its a source of news and information. Journalists that write for a newspaper are critical because they write about news that is relevant to the people living in the town, opposed to news stations that are nation wide. On the other side, contemporary journalism is important to, this was illustrated to me through the documentary College Days College Nights. Journalism like this is very important because it can bring many different experiences surrounding the same aspect, in this case college. I feel like I have learned a great deal about how journalists write, I was really scared taking a Journalism course because I had no clue how to write like a journalist. I learned about jargon and how to write simply without making it fluffy and verbose. After this first section of journalism I feel more confident in with my writing.

I feel like these three separate disciplines mean more and go deeper through the Aquinas program, they all focus on the central theme of truth in society and I can link them together through this. I can link belief systems, faith, truth, interpretation and perception to all of them. Journalism is a means of media, it in a way shapes our belief of the world because it tells us what is happening, and the article in turn is shaped by the person who wrote it who is influenced by their own beliefs and interpretations which shape ours. Religious Studies is all about what you believe and why you believe it because religions are something that we believe in, something we have faith in and we all have our own truths that are shaped by our perceptions of the world and our interpretation of it. The way we interpret a text in English is shaped by our belief system and then again by our perception and assumptions about life and situations. Everything is subjective and interchangeable. Truth in Society has also forced me to experience things I might not have through occasions, and I don't mean force like its a bad thing. By going to lectures and plays and elections I have experienced different atmospheres, opinions, beliefs and I have come to realize that my interpretations of them are shaped by events in my life and through my own personal lens. I think its neat that I am now beginning to understand how events in my life actually control and shape my opinions, even if I think that I can take a completely unbiased stance on a subject I never really can because everything in my life plays a part in my thought process.