This week was the week before Festival del Sol, and as usual, it was very stressful. What I am used to at this time of year, and what I found myself doing in the beginning, is frantic listing of all of the things I need to do, but then spending so much time stressing about or not wanting to do the work that the list only grows. Something I found, however, is that certain work, while frustrating, can also be very peaceful or meditative. I really enjoyed working on my stencil and essay because I got into a zone. My mom used to describe this to me and tell me that I would know I had found a passion when I was able to do things in this frame of mind. For example, if a passionate rock climber explains what it feels like to think about and choose every hand and foothold as they climb to move higher and higher, they will not tell you about the experience as an long chain of events, they will explain a feeling. Even though there is a constant change in where they are reaching, there is stress from not knowing if they will make it all the way up before the sun is down, and there is a lot of work ahead of them, the rhythm is what keeps them calm. This is what I felt when making my stencil and when writing. I was in a very focused state where I could work for hours without even thinking about all of the thought that was going into the refinements I was constantly making. Something I have realized about myself is that the hardest thing for me is starting. Once I am in the right headspace, I can do anything.
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This week was the epitome of High Tech High. Exhibition is drawing near, projects are heating up, and we got tons of time to work on whatever we prioritized as needing to get done. In my personal experience, this is what I have found to be the closest school experience to a real workplace. When I worked at WorldLink or the ACLU as an intern, I had things I needed to get done. For WorldLink I needed to do research on gender based violence and write abstracts. We would only meet once a week in the Institute for Peace and Justice, the rest of the week I had to balance between having my Freshman summer and getting all of the work and reading I needed done, doing my part to move the organization toward the eventual goal of having a Youth Town Meeting. For the ACLU, most of my work stayed within the office. I had times where I had a specific task, like shadowing one on one meetings between Gracie, a community organizer for the Southeast San Diego region, and the community members who she hoped to support, or setting up for a volunteer night. However, I also had hours where I knew what I needed to complete but had to manage myself. This is especially the case at my current job at Allegro Music Studio. My boss even told me that a good portion of my job will be anticipating the needs of the workplace. I do the important things first like managing the daily settlement reports, uploading new students or payments into our computer system, or answering to customers in person or over the phone. Those things usually take me about an hour, the rest of the time I work on whatever I see fit. I really like how my school has trained me to do this. Instead of micromanaging us or having the teacher always direct what we work on, we are given goals and the freedom to achieve them however we need.
After a long day of workshopping our social justice topics and launching the project, we got the chance to meet a panel of activists from all different fields. They introduced themselves and immediately I fell in love with Ms. Patricia. She represented, for the most part, exactly the kind of person I hope to grow up to be. She was intelligent, powerful, eloquent, and kick ass. She shared about her youth in South East San Diego and how she was exposed to many things that people in higher income neighborhoods never experience. This got her politically motivated and pushed her to become the executive director of the Sherman Heights community center. At the center, she devotes time to her community by teaching art and Chicano studies. As someone who is very passionate about the Ethnic Studies movement, it makes me so happy to hear that empowering leaders are sharing their knowledge with their community and helping people to uncover the strength of their roots. However, there was more to what made me love her. When the teachers asked what the activists do to take care of themselves, Ms. Patricia said that she plans days where all she does is sit on the couch from morning until night. She told us about how in order to continue the work without burning out, we need to heal ourselves. Otherwise, our problems will eventually catch up to us and we will end up unable to continue serving others. I consider myself an activist and I know that I have a very hard time with taking care of myself. Hearing this from her was very important to me because it showed me that even kick ass people take time to do the things that make them happy.
I fell in love with the artwork hung on the museum’s walls not because it was particularly beautiful, but because it was powerful. The Museum of Contemporary Art’s current exhibition, “Memories of Underdevelopment” highlights the imperialism and westernization that burned throughout America Latina in the 1960s. I saw all sorts of different mediums used to display the hunger for freedom, true freedom, of artists, political activists, and average humans. But if I would have entered this room a year ago, I would have been bored. Many of the art pieces were letters or newspapers. Some were posters. There was an interesting piece that included a live anaconda. This is all I would have seen. In biology, I have developed an important skill: observation. In this case, it translated to visual literacy.
Visual literacy is when a person has the ability to gather visual evidence from an image and then translate it into a deeper meaning. For example, the art with the anaconda had little to do with reptiles. Below the snake was a map of South America, mainly focused around Chile. It was filled in with crayon, all warm colors, many of them reddish tones. Not knowing the full historical context, I was still able to make a few assumptions. There was some sort of predator that, like the anaconda, seemed to constrict Chile. With the previously described colors, I thought that because of this predator, Chile was pushed to become more communist. This was partially correct. It turned out that the predator was a copper mining company actually named Anaconda. The reddish tones were probably representative of the copper, but from what I know about Chile in the 60s, I think that the leftists usually came from those same mines. I wouldn’t have been anywhere close to understanding this, however, if it weren’t for our extensive work on observations in class. Thanks to biology, I was able to find evidence of what I was seeing, ask questions about it to understand deeper meanings, and draw conclusions based on those curiosities. |
What is this?Hi everyone! This is my junior year blog. Here you will find weekly reflections up until the completion of my junior internship. I hope you enjoy this inside look on my learning! Archives
June 2018
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