So all of a sudden, it’s the last Thursday of the last block this semester. I don’t know how it happened, but it did. And on top of that, it’s STILL sunny. Life is good.
Identity & Perspective is pretty rad. It’s a course exploring the self through modern literature. And by modern I mean John Locke through William Faulkner. Nonetheless, we have an AMAZING book list. Check it: John Locke’s “Of Identity and Diversity,” Heidegger’s “Being and Time,” Paul Fussel’s The Great War in Modern Memory, poetry from World War I, Freud’s “Civilization and its Discontents, William Faulkner’s Go Down, Moses, Sartre’s “Existentialism is Humanism,” and 
de Beauvoir’s Second Sex. Gah, exciting. Okay, so I might be a giant literary loser, but come on. Reading is fun. If there’s one thing that I learned from LeVar Burton, it’s that I can do anything…friends to know and ways to grow, so take a look, it’s in a book.
Um, fun times… I got to write my dream paper. Now, I know what you are thinking. Wow. This girl dreams about writing papers? She is such a baller. No one can even touch her steeze. So cool. Well my sharp-lingoed friends, I’d just like to assure you that dreams really do come true. I wrote a paper to “assess the merits of Sigmund Freud’s articles using Howl by Allen Ginsberg and T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land.“ And you know what? I had a good time. Once again, it threw me off how absorbed I got into the paper… I sure hope it was worth my time, I’ll tell you that much. It was amazing getting to write about my favorite piece of literature (Howl) and talk about one of the craziest but most influential people in psychology. Whoo!!
I also had my first meeting with my advisor, Brian about my question. The ever-daunting quest that constantly looms in the future. Well, it really wasn’t that bad. In fact, I might actually be able to form my question now. I know I wanted to save the world (original, I know), but I didn’t really know how. I wanted to look at various trends all across the board, political, technological, social, economic, etc. and somehow use the trends to…get people to change. Pretty vague and disorganized. But after having a seven-minute chat with Brian, I found out that a really cool idea would be to do some type of social branding. Invent a new “image” that can be “sold” to the public. Sounds kind of manipulative. It probably is. But I want people to invest in being aware of events and situations around the world and how their own actions can impact everyone. So I would be mixing marketing, with social psychology for the betterment of the world! I also found this group that does exactly that with youth. Experiential learning option??
Anyway, I am really excited for the block to be over, so that I can get back to Denver and spend the holidays with my family…but I’m pretty sad about not being able to see my friends for a few months. We have two blocks off for the Olympics, since Quest is housing people for the Olympics. There’s a few really cool study abroad blocks, like Spanish in Argentina, evironmental studies in Borneo, fine arts in New York, and a few others. Personally, I’ll be back up in Squamish for the Olympic blocks, TAing for the French class that will up be here in January and working away. I’m pretty stoked, not going to lie. We’ll see how living up here as a faux-adult works out.
Cheers,
Isha
