Monthly Archives: June 2019

(Insert Awesome Concept Art Here)

Posted on by under Exhibitions, Humanities, School

Hello, Internet.

So, we just finished school for the year. That means we all survived exam season, TPoLs, and, of course, another PLP exhibition.

This year, our exhibition centred around an interesting synthesis of two themes: concept art, and the Vietnam War.

First, we learned about concept art. We started out by looking at some examples, some of which felt more like art than others. We even took a field trip to the Vancouver Art Gallery to see some examples in real life.

(Above: me interacting with some concept art)

What we learned about concept art was this: the medium of the art is little more than a means of communication for the idea, or concept, which is the more important thing. The concept could be anything, as long as the artist felt strongly enough to create art around it.

As I’m sure you’ve guessed by this point, our assignment was to create concept art about concepts related to the Vietnam War. More specifically, we looked at ethical judgements related to the war– either from a historical perspective, or from a modern perspective looking back.

In order to do this, we had to do a fair amount of research on the Vietnam War. We spent a few weeks studying some key themes such as why people went to war, how the war was fought, and what things were like in America during the war. Purely coincidentally, I ended up watching The Killing Fields and the second half of Apocalypse Now in two other classes while we were studying the Vietnam War. Although The Killing Fields is more about the Cambodian Civil War, both movies do portray events that were part of the Vietnam War, and it was interesting to see how the war was portrayed in entertainment-based media in the 70s.

Once we had done some research, we each decided what concept we wanted to present in our art. This was my artist’s statement explaining the concept behind my work:

Matchbox ‘55 (Candles and matches) – Willa Bisanz When we started researching the Vietnam War, one of the things we looked at was footage of Vietnam veterans talking about why they served in Vietnam. For some of them, they had no choice, or they were in a situation where it was difficult to get a job and were just taking whatever options they could. However, one thing that caught my attention was that a few of the soldiers mentioned wanting to be heroes for their country, or believing that the government would do them no wrong. This was also a concept that came up frequently in previous years when we studied the world wars– people went to war out of heroism or patriotism or trust in their government and their country. The idea, to me, seemed naive. However, the more I learned about the Vietnam War, the more I realized that it was only during that war that many people were able to learn just how naive it was. With the release of the Pentagon Papers revealing that the government had been lying to the public and getting themselves further entrenched in a war they didn’t believe they could win, the televised media footage of the war giving people more of an understanding of just how bad things were, and Vietnam War protesters rallying against American involvement in the war, and the patriotism and blind faith in the government began to fall apart. The concept of “American Exceptionalism”, or the belief in America’s superiority to other countries, was certainly taken down a notch– but it still lingers a little today. The candles in the middle of my art piece represent these ideas– American Exceptionalism, trusting the government and military blindly, wanting to be a hero for your country with little or no reference for what exactly was going to happen to you. As more and more inciting events happen, the candles burn down more, the trust and patriotism melting away under the fire of America’s mistakes. The matches around represent these events– things that happened during the Vietnam War, and examples of how today shades of American Exceptionalism are still around, and with it, the naivety of blind trust.

Essentially, my project used candles and matches to represent how different incidents within the Vietnam War led to the American public’s trust in their government and military melting away and being destroyed over time.

Speaking to people at the exhibition who actually remembered living through the events of the Vietnam War was very interesting, because they had a very good understanding of the historical side of the art, and were able to give really interesting insights into the concepts.

All in all, this was a fun project, and I enjoyed getting to light a bunch of candles in such a manner that pretty much everyone under the age of twenty who I spoke to asked if I was trying to summon a demon. However, I think concept art is effective only in the delivery of certain concepts, and that while it worked well for this project, it’s not a format I would want to use for projects regularly.

Toodles.

(Insert Awesome TPoL 2019 Here)

Posted on by under About Me, Humanities, mPols & tPols, School

Hello, Internet.

Also, hello those of you here in person. Welcome to another Transitional Presentation of Learning.

While I don’t want to make this too similar to my last blog post, I do want to call upon my time machine project as a reflection of what I’ve learned this year, and what I want to focus on learning next year. I also want to take a look at the goals I set for myself in my MPoL to see if I’ve achieved them.

The main goal that I set in my MPoL was to push myself in terms of using different media or techniques in my work. I think a good example of a place that I did this was the reflections we did while reading The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. A few of my reflections included creating a “piggy bank” representing how much I was being productive and making good decisions, and creating a crossword puzzle themed around the chapter of the book we had just read.

I definitely had to make a conscious effort to use these formats for my work, rather than falling back on something like writing that would have come more easily to me. Even though making a crossword isn’t necessarily something I would often do for a project, I enjoyed the challenge of trying different things and expanding my lexicon of abilities. In the case of the reflections, putting more work into something and stepping outside of my comfort zone forced me to do more actual reflecting than I would have had to do for something I was really comfortable with.

I should also touch on the work from this year that I think I could have improved. We did an entire unit on writing, which as I’ve mentioned before, is well within my comfort zone– but for something I’m usually good at, I think some of the work I did was kind of mediocre.

(Thank you Parker for this visual)

One issue may have been that I have trouble getting myself invested in work about subjects that don’t personally interest me. While I really enjoyed learning about the red scare and general fifties culture, and the Civil Rights movement, I wasn’t as entranced by the topics of the Cold War and our current subject, the Vietnam War, and I think that was reflected in my work. While I am excited about the subjects I know we’re studying next year– horror and modern history are both definite interests of mine– I also think that it’s important to be able to care about a project without caring about the subject matter.

Now, I just did a whole project reflecting on what I have and haven’t improved on this year: the time machine project, in which I created an artifact that I would have liked to have sent myself at the beginning of PGP.

The thing I think I have improved this year is procrastinating less. This has been a long term goal of mine but, unsurprisingly, I’ve never quite gotten around to achieving it. We did a whole unit on time management, and although I don’t actively use everything from that unit, I do think it helped me become better at managing my own time.

What I want to talk more about, however, is the other thing I focused on in my time machine project: the thing we looked at that I still need to improve. In The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People it’s referred to as sharpening the saw, but the more general term is just taking care of yourself.

To draw again from the book, “sharpening the saw” referred to keeping yourself healthy in four aspects: social, physical, mental, and spiritual. In the drawing above, you can see the typical level of each that I would display. Physically, I care about my health a fair amount– I’m constantly dehydrated and my diet leaves something to be desired, but I regularly exercise, get rest, eat carbs, and take care of my hygiene, and as a result I stay pretty healthy. Mentally, at least in terms of cognitive function, I always want to engage my brain and keep learning– I spend time doing things like crosswords that are a fun mental challenge, or reading the news to help stay up to date with the world around me, and it’s important to me to try and educate myself (as well as, of course, get an education in school) and be capable of comprehending and critically considering big ideas.

On the other hand, my social and “spiritual” health are on the lower side. I’m very introverted, so it doesn’t take a lot for me to feel socially drained, and although I enjoy spending time with my friends and family, being around people for too long can make me moody or exhausted, and I find it difficult to judge beforehand just how a social activity is going to affect me. I’m not a big fan of the word spiritual here, because I think of it as mostly having vague religious connotations, whereas I think the idea of “spiritual health” is actually referring more to emotional health. Like everyone, my emotional health varies, but I definitely don’t take care of it as consistently or as well as I take care of my physical and cognitive health. I have a habit of letting myself get burnt out– and then trying to push through it, rather than addressing the issue. Usually around this time of year, I’ll get anxious and stressed about school, which messes with my appetite and ability to sleep, and leads to me being sick or exhausted. When I do this, my work gets sloppier, and I find it increasingly difficult to be productive.

Recently, my physical health suffered a little bit when I came down with mononucleosis. As with emotional burnout, I typically try and push through being sick while disrupting my life as little as possible. Particularly at this time of year, I dislike missing school or work, as well as the more fun things I do in my free time. Around the second day I was sick, I went boxing with my sister, figuring I just had a cold and could mostly ignore it. Before we drove home afterwards, she asked me whether it was safe to start the car, because I looked I was about to faint, and she didn’t want to be driving if I suddenly passed out.

That and the fact that I pretty much did feel ready to pass out was enough to convince me to stay home from school the next day, but I was determined to get back on my feet as soon as possible; I went to work that night, and the next day I was back at school.

This is a picture of me with mono, outside, hanging out with friends, and generally trying to ignore how sick I felt.

That weekend I was still feeling sick, so my mum suggested going to the clinic in case it was strep throat. I figured it wouldn’t hurt, although I was still pretty convinced that it was a cold, so we went and talked to a doctor who told me that I had either strep or mono, I should get tested for both, and I should stay out of school for the next few days. The next day, I got blood drawn and tested for mono, with positive results.

Much to my chagrin, there is no treatment for mono, and I spent the next week essentially bedridden. For about five days I did little more than sleep, eat popsicles, and watch TV.

However, that was pretty much all it took. Mono is known for lasting a long time, but once I actually stayed home and got rest and took care of myself, I got over most of my symptoms in close to the minimum of time mono takes to run its course. By the following week, I was back on my feet, and despite it being a crucial time of year, I was able to pick up where I left off with school without too much trouble.

What I want to take away from this experience is that taking time to recuperate and coming back fully charged is ultimately better than trying to ignore unhealthiness– and this goes for everything, not just physical health.

While I would like to avoid wherever possible things like missing a week of school, on a smaller scale I think it would improve my ability to do work well to try and avoid getting burnt out. Not procrastinating and having good time management is an important skill for this one. Doing things early rather than letting them pile up or leaving them to the last minute will help decrease the amount of stress I’m feeling. Being able to time block both time to be productive and time to rest can help me find a balance. Another thing that will help is being proactive– assessing a situation ahead of time and making a call that if I go out with friends the day before I do a big test, I’m not going to be able to do as well as if I get some rest so I have the energy to be productive the next day (this is assuming that in both scenarios I’ve studied and prepared).

While I think learning to sharpen the saw is important and will really help with my productivity and the quality of my work, and it is something we discussed in PGP, I realize this isn’t strictly an academic goal. However, for me, feeling stressed or overworked emotionally or physically is consistently school related, and school is one of the most important things it affects, so when I was setting this goal I was largely considering how it would play into my academic life. I think it’s somewhere between a personal and academic goal, but with an academic focus.

So, on the more academic side, my goal for next year is to focus on finding a way to get invested in my work regardless of how much I care about the subject matter. On the somewhat less academic, but more personally important, side, my goal is to be proactive and manage my time in a way that allows me to take care of myself in all aspects so I can be as productive as possible.

Toodles.

(Insert Awesome Time Machine Here)

Posted on by under About Me, Humanities, School

Hello, Internet.

So, we’re approaching the end of the year, and that means it’s time to start reflecting on what we’ve actually been doing for the past several months. In the case of PGP specifically, we’ve been asked to do this by creating an artifact that represents the learning we wish we could give to ourselves at the beginning of this year.

For my artefact, I decided to design several different screens from a game about PGP and the learning I’ve done this year. To start, I did a rough sketch of what I wanted to include.

I wanted to represent all of the learning I did in PLP, with a specific focus on the thing I think I improved most– being more productive and procrastinating less– and the thing I want to work on improving now– sharpening the saw and taking care of my own health both mentally and physically.

The first screen that I designed was just an opening screen with the name of the game, Personal Growth Plan, and a start button. In this screen, and in the background of every screen, I added a grid effect that was reminiscent of a calendar, to represent time management and time blocking.

The next screen I designed was about time management, and specifically focused on the concept of “time vampires”, or things that suck up your time. I gave some of the options that we learned for fighting time vampires: time blocking, doing a weekly review, and using the app Things.

My next screen was based around the idea of goal setting. This wasn’t an area that I wanted to focus on, but I had a lot of fun doing the visuals. This level was based around snakes and ladders, drawing on a visual representation of “goal ladders”, and with a sword representing the idea of smart goals and planning.

Next, I did a screen based on the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. The seven habits are essentially tools that can be used throughout life, so for this level I did a store where you can buy items. These items can actually be seen better in the inventory than the store itself. You can get a map, representing the first three habits (be proactive, begin with the end in mind, put first things first), because a map is used for planning, knowing where you’re going, and being prepared for the future. You can get a cell phone, representing the fourth-sixth habits (think win-win, seek first to understand then to be understood, synergize), which are all centred around working with other people and being cooperative and interdependent. For the last habit, I added a health potion, because habit seven (sharpen the saw) is all about taking care of yourself, but I also added a sharpened saw, as a more literal interpretation of the name of the habit.

As well as the above items, the inventory contains a calendar– representing time blocking and time management– and the SMART sword from the goal setting level. It also includes a document entitled PGP, meant to represent my actual PGP, which would act in-game as a mission statement.

I also did a character screen for myself. This includes a couple of different hat options– a lumberjack one, based around the idea of sharpening a saw, a knight helmet, to go with the SMART sword, and one mode where I have a pencil tucked behind my ear, and am holding a calendar. Aside from that, the screen shows stats about my character. Drawing on ideas from The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, it has both a personal a relationship bank account, with different amounts of money in them. Instead of health, it has general saw sharpness, which is then further broken down into the four categories of health discussed in the chapter about the seventh habit: social, mental, physical, and spiritual. In my case, the social and spiritual bars are very low because I am not a very social or spiritual person, whereas the mental and physical bars are relatively high because those are areas I usually focus on. There are also some stats showing my strengths and weaknesses, based on what I learned this year, and what I still need to improve on. Productivity and time management, which I feel I’ve really improved on, have positive stats, whereas interpersonal skills, which have always been something I’ve been less good at, has a negative stat.

To finish, I made all the screens into gifs (although I’m having trouble getting them to work as gifs in the post) to animate them and make them feel more like part of a game.

I really enjoyed doing this project and reflecting on what I’ve learned in PGP this year. I am hoping to carry forward what I’ve learned in this course as I keep growing as a learner.

Toodles,

– Willa

 

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