The Tragedy Project:
In this project we created modern day tragedies after learning and going into depth about what they should include based on what the Greeks believed in. First we decided the subject that this would form from some examples are drug addictions, poverty and abortions. Once you decided what topic you wanted you would start forming the characters and ideas for the script. Lastly once the script has been finished you would create a visual component, this can range from a graphic novel, to a performance. Our scripts and visual component are based on the point of view that we have on the issue and how it can and does affect people all around the world today.
Project Reflection:
In my project I would have to say my visual component I did, which was a graphic novel, is what I am most proud of. I say this because although I struggled with this the most with it in the end I was proud of how it turned out. This was my first time making a graphic novel or anything even close to one so by accomplishing this it made me more confident in what my abilities are with these type of things. In my graphic novel I used pictures that I took of my friends acting out the characters, then added speech bubbles and slowly the pieces started to fit together. One reason I think I'm proud of this is because in the beginning I doubted that the results of this project would live up to my expectations, so when they did I was happily surprised.
When doing this project some advice to keep in mind is time management. If I could refine the way I did my project it would be how I used my time. When I first started I wasn't really thinking ahead about what I would be doing each day or where I would be at by the end of the week. Which then lead me to some late nights finishing details that I could of finished in class if I had laid out a plan for everything. In the end for me it turned out well but I'm positive that if I had been more thoughtful about my time I could of done better. Don't waste your time in class by sitting there thinking about what to do, instead right away make a game plan on what you need to do, when, how and what you need.
Personally a challenging task that I came across was staging pictures and editing them for the graphic novel. Trying to get people to pose the way you wanted and getting the lighting right I found very difficult for me and started to get behind. Finding time for everyone to take pictures was also hard because they had their own project to work on too, eventually I was able to get people on the weekend and caught up with all the photos that I needed. Then once I uploaded the pictures onto my laptop and started to edit them the internet was doing funky stuff so they wouldn't load onto it and they wouldn't move where I need them to go and this went on for a while. After many trials and errors I became much better at it and was able to finish the project in a much more timely fashion.
In my project I would have to say my visual component I did, which was a graphic novel, is what I am most proud of. I say this because although I struggled with this the most with it in the end I was proud of how it turned out. This was my first time making a graphic novel or anything even close to one so by accomplishing this it made me more confident in what my abilities are with these type of things. In my graphic novel I used pictures that I took of my friends acting out the characters, then added speech bubbles and slowly the pieces started to fit together. One reason I think I'm proud of this is because in the beginning I doubted that the results of this project would live up to my expectations, so when they did I was happily surprised.
When doing this project some advice to keep in mind is time management. If I could refine the way I did my project it would be how I used my time. When I first started I wasn't really thinking ahead about what I would be doing each day or where I would be at by the end of the week. Which then lead me to some late nights finishing details that I could of finished in class if I had laid out a plan for everything. In the end for me it turned out well but I'm positive that if I had been more thoughtful about my time I could of done better. Don't waste your time in class by sitting there thinking about what to do, instead right away make a game plan on what you need to do, when, how and what you need.
Personally a challenging task that I came across was staging pictures and editing them for the graphic novel. Trying to get people to pose the way you wanted and getting the lighting right I found very difficult for me and started to get behind. Finding time for everyone to take pictures was also hard because they had their own project to work on too, eventually I was able to get people on the weekend and caught up with all the photos that I needed. Then once I uploaded the pictures onto my laptop and started to edit them the internet was doing funky stuff so they wouldn't load onto it and they wouldn't move where I need them to go and this went on for a while. After many trials and errors I became much better at it and was able to finish the project in a much more timely fashion.
Socialization Project:
In this project we learned about what socialization is and how much it impacts us in our life. We spent roughly 1 to 2 months on learning about this and creating our final project. For the first month we focused on really going into depth to get a new understanding of what socialization is. Once we fully understood this concept we moved onto our essay, for our essay we picked two socialization identity categories and talked about our perspective on them along with how these relate to us as an individual. After this we started on our mask in which we formed to fit our faces using plaster. Once creating this base we put images, paintings, and other symbols relating to our essay and to our life.This project has really opened my eyes to how the world works and how much we, as humans, depend on each other.
They Say Nothing is Impossible You Just Have to Try, Then They Made the Expectations of Society
All over the world there is one thing that is the same, how peoples identities are formed. Socialization, the process in which both children and adults learn from social interactions and observing others, is how opinions and everything that you are is made. Although you may have been told from a young age that you choose who you want to be, you may learn that's not completely true. Many of us have not realized that from the day we were born we have been socialized into our place in society by the people around us, media and institutions, everything from your manners to what you like to wear. Countless people throughout the U.S are unaware of the amount of discrimination against the 6 identity categories, race, gender, age, sexual orientation, economic class, and ability/disability,. I too was oblivious of them and the effects they have until I realized what section in these categories I have fallen into with the inequalities and privileges that I have encountered in my life. While unknowingly being socialized to think that these things are the norms. Due to the blindfold that society has placed over us, I have been unaware of the discrimination and have fallen into the cycle of being socialized to be blind to the fact that women have been negatively stereotyped and compared to men are less of value, that unconscious racism happens every day and that in order to be accepted by everyone as women you must fit into the impossible image that society portrays.
As a country we are supposedly known to be equal yet this a term used long ago before our nation had fully taken form, it was the "Land of Opportunity" and in some ways it still is and others, such as gender equality, it is not. Since we were young we were shown that men worked and supported their family, while women would stay home, cook, and take care of their children, the normal standard set for families. In the video, Gender Roles- Interviews with Kids, this quote from it exemplifies the idea I am trying to get across, "By the age of 3 or 4 most children when asked questions about the activities appropriate for a male doll and a female doll readily give stereotypical responses."When they say "stereotypically responses" in the video they showed examples of kids saying men are stronger, women take care of babies and stay home and the men go and work. All of us from a young age are taught what we should and shouldn't do depending on our gender and as we get older we teach this to others, both the good and bad. I, personally, have never questioned and never realized that our society is patriarchal because it's all I've ever known. Then I heard about the Agta , a tribe in the northern eastern Luzon, there they share power equally which is known as egalitarianism. They believe that no gender should have more power than the other, so they share it equally. Egalitarianism is known as the prime way to share power because no one has more than the next. This kind of society relates to my home, my mom and dad, both have good jobs in order to support us. Therefore, they shared the duties in which most cases "Women" and or "Men" are expected to do. As a result, this has caused me to believe that both men and women are equal when it comes to my household. But, when it comes to the communities that we live in that isn't the case. Men are always getting away with being sexist and discriminating against women due to the way media and institutions have socialized us to believe that it is okay because this is the normal way each gender should be. It makes us feel less valued in society as if we are an object not a human. Most of us come across this idea of how each gender should be through; loved ones, media and institutions as the video Stereotyping Women In Media talked about. The media is portraying the gender roles through commercials for cleaning and cooking and are making toys for little girls to pretend clean, cook, and take care of babies. Causing men and women to stereotype the roles that each gender plays in society. Also, making me believe in these assumptions corrupting the way I think of these ideas
Everyday I and many others that are considered a "dominant race", white or Caucasian, come across these so called privileges and yet, I have never realized this until I read an article that talked about an "invisible knap sack". In this Article White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack they talk about the privileges the dominant race encounters on a daily bases and how we are blind to them: " I was taught to see racism only in individual acts of meanness, not in invisible systems conferring dominance on my group". After reading this I realized how hidden we really are from the tyrannizing issues in our society. Just like how men are taught not to recognize male privileges those of the dominant race are also not taught to see them. And even after thinking about this, it's still hard to realize and recognize them. Most people when confronted about this issue will deny it and call it absurd. Honestly I am still struggling to understand this too, since we were taught to be unaware of it, it's hard to try to change this problem of the privileges that we have handed to us due to our race while others have to work to earn them. We have no knowledge that we are advantaged people or that we have been placed into this oppressing cycle. Instead we have believed in the assumptions that are not entirely true, that America is the equal land of opportunity. Although our country has improved on this, such as the Women's Act rights and slavery has ended. Racism is still a touchy subject that we don't like to go into depth in because of our past, but this causes people to be overly sensitive mistaking certain things to be categories as racist and others to be overlooked because they don't want to address the issue. We do not realize these acts and by doing nothing we are continuing to oppress others.
I have been socialized to be oblivious to the inequality in the world and to unconsciously submit myself to medias and institutions that have formed unrealistic expectations on how women should look. For many years I always thought of America being a sheltered place where we are independent and form ourselves. When actually people, advertisements, and our surroundings do that instead and still are. Not until this year have I become fully aware of the world around me and how throughout my life I have come to be this way. In the comedy video, Fotoshop by Adobe made by Jesse Rosten, it showed that in order to fit into the roles of how you should look that society creates, you have to practically be photo chopped and made plastic. It was a good recognition of things that we are exposed too on a daily basis that have caused a negative effect on numerous amounts of people. This spoof also shows the way women think they should look and how even though women strive to fulfill these images it is impossible to succeed in satisfying this vision. Many girls and women in our nation get the message that in order to do well in life and have a high social status we have to mirror the image of what media says is beautiful. But as the caption from this video stated," This commercial isn't real, neither are society's standards of beauty" this really hit me because the wording of it got the point across to me well. We are constantly finding things we want to alter about ourselves in order to be more like what we think is beautiful, instead of just accepting and loving who we are. Many girls struggle with self image due to the impeccable stereotype of how we should look and not being able to live up to that. We think that in order to have the perfect life we have to be perfect in the eyes of everyone around us instead of in our own. Then due to this we label ourselves and others depending on what they look like calling them demining names such as; ugly, fat, stupid, not good enough, reject, and worse. I, too, find myself judging people on the ways they look and how I think that they should look and as i've gotten older I've found myself becoming more self conscious about the way I look and act. Instead of showing young minds how we should be better and how we are not good enough we should be teaching them to accept all kinds of beautiful.
No matter what age you are we are being socialized with the good and bad, usually more bad then good, qualities of our community. It is an endless cycle of oppression the exact thing people are trying to stop. As the Cycle Of Socialization says, "we need to take a stand, reframe our understandings, question the status quo, and begin a critical transformation that can break down this cycle of socialization and start a new cycle leading to liberation for all." If we come together and manage to change the ways we think of each other we will be able to solve the issues in society that we have so long been trying to fix. People say to be individual and follow your own path, yet when we do this we are shot down for doing so. We need to be able to fully address this issue in order to stop it. Instead of discriminating the people who have accepted themselves and aren't scared to be unique we need to embrace their qualities of who they are. We are constantly being grouped and categorized together, we think we have control of how we are, but we're being molded to the expectations of how we should be and those who rebel are tossed to the side. No man left behind, right? In order to ever end this cycle we must all work together and put our differences aside for the better good, to right the wrongs. All of us, right now, who are doing nothing against this are allowing society to continue down this path, so take a step back and think what can you do to change this? As the Cycle of socialization also states " We can change the world"
My mask represents how I have been socialized and also how so much of who we are is made by others. This is why I took photos from when I was younger and cut them out into puzzle pieces forming my mask. On top of that I put the words, "Insert Image Here", this stands for our self interpretation, image, and labels we receive from society. Also, it represents how right from the start we are being told how to be and are constantly being formed to societies approval. I cut out the letters from magazines in order to show that what is influencing us in both the negative and positive ways is the media. When I was in the process of creating my mask I was contemplating whether I should put lips on my mask and in the end I decided not to cause it symbolizes more. I left out the mouth because of how society blocks our voice so we can't to rebel and stand out This mask as a whole exhibits who I am as an individual and the perspective of how I see the issues that are blocking are way to breaking the cycle of socialization.
Project Reflection
1. Mask: What are you most proud about your mask?
What I'm most proud of about my mask is that it turned out how I wanted it to. A lot of times my ideas get to elaborate and I'm not satisfied about the way it turned out, but this time I was proud of the way it looks and how it shows the point that I went over in my essay. I took my time and tried to put my best work into it and am pleased with the way it looks. Although, there is one part that I like the most and that is the puzzle pieces. When we were looking at pictures of other peoples mask I saw one that had puzzle pieces on it and I thought that was cool. But, I didn't want to copy their idea so in order to make it individualized I refined the idea. I took pictures from when I was younger with things that impacted me, soccer, friends, family and others. Then I cut them out into the shapes of a puzzle pieces fitting together symbolizing how these events have created who I am as a person and how I'm still figuring out who I am.
2. Quote: Quote the section of your essay that you are most proud of and describe, in detail, why you are most proud of it.
"Due to the blindfold that society has placed over us, I have been unaware of the discrimination and have fallen into the cycle of being socialized to be blind to the fact that women have been negatively stereotyped and compared to men are less of value, that unconscious racism happens every day and that in order to be accepted by everyone as women you must fit into the impossible image that society portrays." This part of my essay that I quoted is actually my thesis. I chose this because it summed up all in one what exactly my perspective that all my paragraphs are based on. I'm proud of the way I described things and how it symbolizes a lot like how we are "blind folded" by society.
3. Biggest Take-Away: What will you remember from this project? Why?
From this project I will remember how much it opened my eyes about the world around me, both the good and the bad. Before this project I was practically oblivious about all the oppressing issues in society that we face today. This realization has made me think more about how I treat, talk, and act around others and have made me think twice before judging someone on the way that they are. I realize now how no one can really be the perfect person that everyone has so long tried to be and to just instead be myself.
4. Habits of Heart and Mind: Which habit of heart and mind do you need to work on in your next project to get better at Project Based Learning? Why do you need to improve and how that Habit of Heart and Mind will help you?
In my next project one of the habits of heart and mind that I need to work on to get better at project based learning is refinement. I need to improve on this because although I refined my Essay a lot I didn't refine my mask and just stuck to my original idea. I think that if I did refine it, it would've symbolized more and people would understand more about the meaning of my essay. This habits of heart and mind will help me to take a step a back and really think of my project and how I can make it better to reflect what I am trying to suceed.