castles made of sand

There’s often something that seems to be increasingly unfair. Whenever someone goes to a choir concert, band performance, or a theatre production, it’s understood that these are the work of students. You don’t compare those performances with those of professionals, who have spent their lives working on their craft. You realize that these are students who are constantly learning about their art, and as such, may not display the quality of high ended performances. We don’t compare the student cafeteria with a five star restaurant, we don’t compare the basketball and baseball teams with professionals, and we don’t expect students in the medical field to perform surgery.

So why then is the student run newspaper critiqued so fiercely? The Independent is a student learning project and collaboration that gives students an introduction into the field of journalism. You can’t expect every story you read or they write to be Pulitzer worthy. These are students learning how to write, student who are using the college paper to find out what works and what doesn’t work in their writing. Trial and Error.

Despite this, the student newspaper is constantly berated with people pointing out our faults and laughing at our mistakes. They hold the work of students to unfair standards with high-minded superiority, with so rarely offering constructive criticism.

Think for a minute, if you would like your English 102 paper critiqued publicly on a weekly basis. How many students would join the theatre productions if they knew their audience would judge them so harshly? How many people would sing, or play their instrument, or compete if they thought that their every mistake would be highlighted, and their success would be buried.

The point of student participating in programs at Clark, a community college, is so that we can try out different things before devoting the rest of our college life on it. We constantly learn new things about how our field works and what we can do to make it better. Given the response I’ve heard from friends, peers, and even teachers, I’ve come to expect that if I want to continue in this field, I should get comfortable with being ridiculed and critiqued on a daily basis. I should come to love the sneer and disdain that even my friends have for my field. I should, in all probability, find something else that’s not so universally reviled. The faculty and student body actively alienates a group of students who are still learning. So much for the ‘next step’.

People in this culture don’t make eye contact. When you try, they seem to become immediately fascinated by their fingernails or a new development on their shoes. I wonder why this is? I spent a bit of time on the balcony outside the ASCC, the one above the entrance to Archer Gallery. I kept trying to make eye contact with the people below who were looking up, but every time I made a connection, they broke off.

I’ll be the first to admit being far too introspective, but we’ve lost the ability to make connections with people. I don’t know how, I can only guess. One of my theories has to do with our mode of entertainment. We don’t need to go out to the movie theater or the bookstore to be entertained. We can get all of that information, that culture, from home. We don’t even need to leave our homes to eat or work. We can do that all from the comforts of our homes. Maybe this is why our social muscle has atrophied.

Another theory that I have is that people’s aversion to eye contact has nothing to do with our culture, but more to the point our personality; what we think is normal. We betray so much of our emotion and thought through our eyes. We can be read in an instant by one single, actual glance into our eyes. This aversion to eye contact then becomes a self-defense mechanism. We avert our gaze so that other people can’t look at us, look into us.

But this begs another question, why do we fear being understood? If my life, the lives of my friends, and my family are any indication, the average person in this country is relatively good, if a little misguided. Great acts of evil, shame, and guilt are rare, but we all carry this perceived weight on our shoulders, as if we’re ashamed at being alive. These little transgressions that we make in our daily lives are small, but we enlarge them and punish ourselves for them by carrying the weight. We as a people need to learn how to forgive each other, and how to live without turning our heads away from each other.

But while we’re demanding the impossible, I’d like a helicopter, a tropical island with a pirate fortress, and an education that won’t put me into debt for the rest of my life.

During psychology yesterday, we conducted a small experiment that exhibits the characteristics of group think. The professor had a bottle of what she said was the essence of what they add to natural gas to make it smell like rotten eggs. She said she was going to open the bottle and we were going to raise our hands when we detected it. She opened it and stepped back quickly, after about 30 seconds, I thought I smelt something, so I raised my hand. One other person near my also raised his hand.

As it turns out, there was nothing in that bottle but water, which she demonstrated by spraying me with. I’m not so upset about being sprayed as learning of my susceptibility to suggestion. In social situations, I’ve always brandished my charisma around and mostly got people to do as I want, but I never thought that I’m just as easily swayed.

So, I’ve decided I’m going to be (or try) to be completely self-reliant. I’m going to depend on my own senses and my own logic rather than allow others to influence me. This is sort of funny/hypocritical, as this decision was influenced by my psychology professor and her little social experiment.

I got my Washington State Primary ballot in the mail yesterday after I got back from classes. So, after I put all my shit down and had a cup of tea, I went through my mail, ballot first. This isn’t the first time the State of Washington has sent my one of these things, a while ago I got a ballot for Clark County Elections and that went okay. All the set pieces were the same, but the only thing new was a green envelope that was on the bottom of the letter. I’ll get to that latter.

Washington’s primaries are held on Feb. 19, putting it with the other laggers that don’t jump in with the rest of the crowd on Super Tuesday. Oregon’s come later, but whatever. The first thing I noticed was that every single candidate who’d ever even considered nomination apparently was on the ticket. I wasn’t surprised to still see Guiliani and Edwards, but even Richardson was still on there.

So, while I’m considering whether I’ll vote for Obama or Paul (Basically, between the Democratic and Republican parties), I notice the back part. It said that I must pledge that I will only vote for the party whose candidate I choose is ascribed. In essence, pledge myself to be a loyal Democrat or Republican. This is bullshit. I’m not voting for the party, I’m voting for the person, regardless of their political affiliations. So, explain to me why I have to pledge myself to a political party?

I’m not really concerned about not being able to vote Republican, Libertarian, Green Party, etc. What I’m worried about is that somewhere in Washington’s voters records that my name will be included in a list of Democrats or vice versa. But, while this is rather alienating, I get the reasoning behind it. It’s not the state that’s having the election, it’s the parties. So, since I doubt I’m going to reconcile this, I don’t think I’m going to vote in our primaries. I think this is rather moot anyway, as Washington State only has 9 electoral votes .

This sort of brings me to my next point as well. I can’t decide that if I do decide to vote in these pre-elections, who am I going to go for, Obama or Paul? At this point, Barrack Obama needs all the votes he can get in order to defeat Hillary Clinton. But on the other hand, Ron Paul needs more voting supporters.

But I have time. Super Tuesday is today, and I think that most of the decisions will be made today. Once this day is over, I might have a clearer vision of who to vote for, if I vote at all.