I recently got home from Oregon as part of a field school for PLP, and this post is intended to serve as a reflection as well as a record of the project. Anyway, I’ve put off writing this for a bit too long now, so I guess I’m just going to start this post now.

now.

Part 1: Seycove

Okay, enough of that. Let’s get into it. First off, let me talk about why we went to Oregon in the first place. The main reason is that our current project in the humanities is on advertising and how companies use it to influence us. So, rather than just teaching us about advertising, we actually made advertisements, and of course, we couldn’t just do them for a local business; instead, we did them for businesses 400 or so kilometres away.

Before anyone left for Oregon, we still had some stuff to learn about. I mean, it is school after all, so the first thing we learned was pretty much the minimum needed to understand the rest of what we were learning.

First off, we learned what media is, what advertising is, and some fun terms like “the consumer”, “mass media” and “target audience”. Once we had a hat on that, we started looking at actual ads and looking at the concepts and ideas used in them, and finally, after learning the concepts behind advertising, we did a little thing where we answered some questions about how advertising and branding affect us, got another person to answer them too, and wrote a paragraph on the question “What is media”. That pretty much wraps up Keystone One, and that meant that Oregon Group 1 would be leaving.

So, after the first group left for Oregon and the rest of us moved onto Keystone 2, which was like Number 1, but this time we were learning about techniques used in advertisements, I’ll get through this Keystone fast because there is a lot of stuff. First off is demographics, which is sort of like a group of people that ads could be targeted at. Next, we looked at specific techniques that people use in advertising, so basically, there are a lot of fancy terms for different things that an advertisement has. On the topic of fancy words, we also talked about pathos, logos, and ethos, which are fancy Greek words that are basically different ways advertisements can try to persuade you, with pathos appealing to people’s emotions, logos to logic (a pretty easy one to remember), and ethos to credibility.

Once we got all that down, we finally combined this new knowledge with what we already learned in Keystone 1 to analyse ads and the techniques they used, and that was Keystone 2.

Part 2, oregon.

So, the first trip came back, and we had one day together. They shared their favourite part of the trip, and a favourite was ziplining (foreshadowing). That day was more or less chaos, though, so there isn’t much to say about it. Anyway, the second group was going to be leaving on Saturday, so I’ll talk about that.

So on Sunday, (tthis is the part where you say, “Wait, Finn, didn’t you say you were going to talk about Saturday?” and I reply, “Well, of course, but because of a scheduling issue, the kids in band would have to leave on Sunday because of the caberet?” And then you would respond, “Well, can I hear about the band concert?” And I would oblige. Fine, on Saturday I did the band concert, which went fairly well, but it was rather disappointing that we couldn’t watch anyone else perform because they were serving alcohol, which apparently makes it so you can’t let anyone under 18 into the gym (except when we are performing, I guess).

After that, I went home and then received the news that I would not be leaving at the predetermined time but rather at some unknown time. This, of course, caused disproportionate amounts of stress, which lasted into Sunday. We did eventually leave on Sunday at 12, and this put us very behind schedule, so we ended up missing two days of the field school, including ziplining, which was said to be quite fun. must have been nice. must have been reeeeal nice.

Anyway, all that aside, once we got to Oregon, things went relativly well. It was cool actually being somewhere that isn’t Seycove with PLP.

There were a lot of fun things we did in Oregon, starting out with the Columbia River Maritime Museum, which was cool because we got to learn the history of that area, but it did seem pretty rushed. The same day we went to pig and pancake, Canon Beach, and Tillamook Creamery. Out of the three, I preferred Canon Beach; pig and pancake was good, but the hour-long wait was a bit boring; and Tillamook was interesting in terms of seeing the machines working, but the yoghurt and ice cream weren’t my favourites. After that, we got to where we would be spending the majority of the nights and went to bed in our yurts at the “campground name” campground.

The next day we headed to the marine discovery tours, where we boarded a boat and spent 2 hours on it. My favourite part was when we were out in the open ocean and there were waves that rocked the boat a tonne. We also spent a while by the bay and river. although that was less interesting. After that, I had my interview, which went well but I feel like it could have been longer. After that, we did a quest, which was medium-rare chaotic. After that, we had lunch and went to Hatfield Marine Science Centre. After a lesson on crab racing and another on shrimp slurping and measuring (and citing science, but that’s probably not important), we were let free into the visitor centre, which was once again a bit rushed but pretty neat. There was a boat captain simulator, but nobody in our group got to use it because people from the group before us ate into our time. After the visitors centre, we went for dinner at a buffet, which was uneventful and therefore completely undeserving of this mention.

The next day we went back to Hatfield Marine Science Centre and made ROVs (underwater remotely operated vehicles), which was really fun. After that, it was the worst quest out of all of them, with none of the teams getting more than one clue. Moving swiftly on, we then went to Yaquina Head, first to the interpretive centre, which was, you guessed it, kind of rushed. And then went down to the beach, which was amazing. It was all stones, and it had tide pools that were full of sea life; I even saw part of an octopus (it was hiding under a rock). After that was the easiest quest of the trip, with an amazing view as well.

After that, we had probably the best dinner on the trip at Kam Meng and went back to the campground. Later at night, we went for a walk down to the beach, and I got some really amazing photos.

The next day was breakfast and then a long drive to Bullwinkle’s, which is like a “fun park or somethingTM,” which happens to be named after a character from an old cartoon. As a result of this, when we were having lunch, there were four TVs playing old cartoons. I know it was supposed to be something, but without audio, those old cartoons just gave off a kind of dystopian or propaganda vibe, and the four screens definitely didn’t help. The actual activities were pretty fun; I played a riveting round of mini golf and somehow didn’t cause an accident in go karting, among other things.

After another long drive, a dinner, and another long drive, we arrived at a hotel that provided the best sleep of the entire trip and the best breakfast of the entire trip, because as good as nutella croissants are, actual protein is better.

The final day of the trip held Wolf Haven, my favourite stop. It was incredible to see wolves, as well as just walking out through the field to the funky tree, by far the best stop.

After that, not much happened; we went to a mall; it was alright; then we had another very long drive, crossed the border, and drove back to Seycove.

Impressions

Overall, the Oregon trip was fine, but it was pretty stressful, especially with the change of departure times, and missing ziplining was kind of a bummer, but we went to a lot of cool places and did some neat things, so I guess it sort of balances out. One thing is for sure: “picnics” aren’t what you think they are.

Now that I’m back at home, I can look back at this and think, “I feel like it wasn’t only about interviewing the people, and if it was, then that was a giant waste of time.” That’s my blog post.

Oh yeah, here’s my Oregon journal: