Oh jeeze. It's the "what have I learned so far post". This is always a fun one, mainly because...
Well, ok, I'm entirely certain why exactly it fall under the category of 'fun' but it does. Maybe because I like to wax poetic about the expanding of my brain muscle. Maybe? I dunno.
We just got done reading the book The Seven Layers of Integrity (it even has theme music in my head when I say that. Sort of a daunting, powerful da-dadada! Impressive, no?), and I'll be honest, I'd never considered the world of ethics to have that much detail. Good is good, bad is bad, do the good and not the bad and you're ethical (and occasionally there a little gray area thrown in for kicks which makes for great debatings!). Ok, maybe that's a little bit of an over-simplified version of my thoughts on the concept, but the point remains: seven layers? For real?
But, it makes sense. You've got all these interconnecting bits and pieces that sort of tie in together or glance of one another in passing or completely clash and a person has to figure out what to do. Like, say, what if your job wants you to do this, but you think it's wrong? What's a person to do? That my friend, is like a 10 car pile up on the ethics super highway.
I think the chapter that I've enjoyed the most so far, and got the most out of, was the chapter on moral values. And it's not because, as I've often joked, I've sold my morals, unused, on eBay to pay for school. Actually, I liked the fact that the authors talked in plain language about how everyone has different morals and spiritual values that are going to shape their views and their actions and they didn't mince words. So often it seems like the idea of holding a set of values or personal spiritual beliefs that might clash with someone else's is so taboo that it can't even be talked about. The authors stated staight out that Bob is going to believe something completely different from Jim and Jim's got another view than Suzy, so deal with it. Ok, maybe they weren't so rude, but I'm a casual writer by nature.
But they didn't stop there. They pointed out that by having a set of ingrained moral and spiritual values, it actually set a person up for how they would respond to the other six layers, sort of like a domino effect.
Another interesting observation: Everything builds on one another, from morals on up. You can follow the letter of the law or a contract without necessarily following your morals, but if you follow your morals, you're set up for the interactions with your personal relationships, community, and on up the ladder.
I'm still trying to figure out what impact this has had on me personally, because when I get into school mode I tend to get a little cerebral and distant and don't necessarily notice if I'm actually applying things I'm learning right away. However, I can say that I found it all very interesting and I'm certain that sometime down the road I'm going to smack my forehead and go "DOI!" and realize why I changed something or adjusted a behavior pattern or something.
K
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Monday, December 14, 2009
It's beginning to look a lot like Grad School...
Name that tune.
Right. So. Grad school. Graduate School. From Middle Latin graduatus and Greek schole (which was actually defined as 'leisure employed in learning'). Talk about a head trip. Seriously, of all the places I thought I would be at 25, grad school was a hopeful 'maybe someday' on the list. But, here I am.
Dear sweet god, what am I doing?
This is probably going to be the way I'm feeling for the next six quarters of my life. And then I'll get through it, get my degree, and be like "whoa, wait. Back that train up. You mean I actually did it? Me? The fat kid from CB who had to be the funny and tough one so that no one would mess with her? Got a graduate degree? Whose dream are you living in?" And it'll take months to actually sink in. (Seriously, it hasn't even sunk in that I have my BA yet, and I got that last spring!)
But, I digress. I gather I'm supposed to be blogging about something specific here.
Oh. Right. What do I think this course will be, now that we've moved past the 'first week eee, school! honeymoon stage'?
I think I can say right off the bat that even should this class prove more difficult than the other one that I am currently taking, I think I'll like it better. The reason for this being that this class seems a bit more... I can't think how to describe it. The other class is all formal wording and professionalism and there doesn't seem to be room for creativity or freedom of expression. I'm a theater person and a writer. Having to constrain myself so much is killing me. In fact, I don't think I really managed very well this week, and will probably hear about it in feedback next week. Oh joy. **gag**
This class feels a bit more like a sonnet. (Metaphor for the win!) Seriously. To write a sonnet, for it to truly be a sonnet, you have to follow certain rules and restrictions about the form and flow. However, inside of those rules, you have complete freedom to be as creative and have as much fun as you can or want to have. This ethics class is a bit like that. There are course objectives that we have to maintain, rules for posting and replying, essays to write, etc, etc. But within all those rules, Prof. Artz is encouraging us to be creative and to think outside the box and to bring bits of ourselves to the class.
I'm not saying that there's not a place for the whole professionalism bit and writing in a formal manner. There's totally is, and I can manage to do it if I must. I'm just saying on a purely emotional level, I'm going to like this one more because I get to be 'regular Kiri' rather than 'put on a show for the locals and pretend to be respectable Kiri'.
I'm also not saying that by allowing us to be creative, Prof Artz is giving us leave to slack off or do less than stellar work. If anything, the expectation is that much higher for us to do high quality work because he is allowing us to be open and creative and that sort of thing. I'm not thinking this will be easy by any stretch of the imagination, but I don't think I'd want it to be. Anything easy isn't worth having.
And again, I think I got off topic. Whee! Tangential logic!
I think the thing that looks easiest for me is going to be this bit. The blogging. I get to write and talk and just ramble on. It may take me til the end of the week to get it done (ahem, like this week), but that's because I want to think about what I'm supposed to be saying. I like blogging and I like getting my words out there for people to read.
The hardest part for me is going to be the threaded discussion bit. I have always had problems doing threaded discussions. Even when I did them for fun on AOL when I was a kid, with all my friends on the message boards, I was very, VERY nervous about puting out replies and postings. It's always been the hardest part for me, even as an undergrad, when the people I was in the online class with I also had other classes with on campus. It's really going to challenge me to be able to keep up with them and force myself to post. And I realize it doesn't make sense for someone who loves to blog and write as much as I do to be nervous about a little threaded discussion. But who ever said neuroses were supposed to make sense?
Essay writing is always a chore, but it's one that any student learns to deal with if they want to get through their academic career with their GPA intact. A dull, necessary evil.
The commercial that we'll have to create later on looks fun and daunting at the same time. The idea of trying to compile and edit images and that sort of thing gives me the jaggies. I'll manage. I always do. But that doesn't mean I won't be sweating bullets while I am. And at least it'll be a chance to be, gasp! horror!, creative. (Because I obviously am never creative on my own, nope not me.)
To summarize: This class looks like it'll be fun and educational, whereas my other class looks to be traditionally educational. It's all going to be a challenge, but some things look like they'll be fun too.
Ta!
K
Right. So. Grad school. Graduate School. From Middle Latin graduatus and Greek schole (which was actually defined as 'leisure employed in learning'). Talk about a head trip. Seriously, of all the places I thought I would be at 25, grad school was a hopeful 'maybe someday' on the list. But, here I am.
Dear sweet god, what am I doing?
This is probably going to be the way I'm feeling for the next six quarters of my life. And then I'll get through it, get my degree, and be like "whoa, wait. Back that train up. You mean I actually did it? Me? The fat kid from CB who had to be the funny and tough one so that no one would mess with her? Got a graduate degree? Whose dream are you living in?" And it'll take months to actually sink in. (Seriously, it hasn't even sunk in that I have my BA yet, and I got that last spring!)
But, I digress. I gather I'm supposed to be blogging about something specific here.
Oh. Right. What do I think this course will be, now that we've moved past the 'first week eee, school! honeymoon stage'?
I think I can say right off the bat that even should this class prove more difficult than the other one that I am currently taking, I think I'll like it better. The reason for this being that this class seems a bit more... I can't think how to describe it. The other class is all formal wording and professionalism and there doesn't seem to be room for creativity or freedom of expression. I'm a theater person and a writer. Having to constrain myself so much is killing me. In fact, I don't think I really managed very well this week, and will probably hear about it in feedback next week. Oh joy. **gag**
This class feels a bit more like a sonnet. (Metaphor for the win!) Seriously. To write a sonnet, for it to truly be a sonnet, you have to follow certain rules and restrictions about the form and flow. However, inside of those rules, you have complete freedom to be as creative and have as much fun as you can or want to have. This ethics class is a bit like that. There are course objectives that we have to maintain, rules for posting and replying, essays to write, etc, etc. But within all those rules, Prof. Artz is encouraging us to be creative and to think outside the box and to bring bits of ourselves to the class.
I'm not saying that there's not a place for the whole professionalism bit and writing in a formal manner. There's totally is, and I can manage to do it if I must. I'm just saying on a purely emotional level, I'm going to like this one more because I get to be 'regular Kiri' rather than 'put on a show for the locals and pretend to be respectable Kiri'.
I'm also not saying that by allowing us to be creative, Prof Artz is giving us leave to slack off or do less than stellar work. If anything, the expectation is that much higher for us to do high quality work because he is allowing us to be open and creative and that sort of thing. I'm not thinking this will be easy by any stretch of the imagination, but I don't think I'd want it to be. Anything easy isn't worth having.
And again, I think I got off topic. Whee! Tangential logic!
I think the thing that looks easiest for me is going to be this bit. The blogging. I get to write and talk and just ramble on. It may take me til the end of the week to get it done (ahem, like this week), but that's because I want to think about what I'm supposed to be saying. I like blogging and I like getting my words out there for people to read.
The hardest part for me is going to be the threaded discussion bit. I have always had problems doing threaded discussions. Even when I did them for fun on AOL when I was a kid, with all my friends on the message boards, I was very, VERY nervous about puting out replies and postings. It's always been the hardest part for me, even as an undergrad, when the people I was in the online class with I also had other classes with on campus. It's really going to challenge me to be able to keep up with them and force myself to post. And I realize it doesn't make sense for someone who loves to blog and write as much as I do to be nervous about a little threaded discussion. But who ever said neuroses were supposed to make sense?
Essay writing is always a chore, but it's one that any student learns to deal with if they want to get through their academic career with their GPA intact. A dull, necessary evil.
The commercial that we'll have to create later on looks fun and daunting at the same time. The idea of trying to compile and edit images and that sort of thing gives me the jaggies. I'll manage. I always do. But that doesn't mean I won't be sweating bullets while I am. And at least it'll be a chance to be, gasp! horror!, creative. (Because I obviously am never creative on my own, nope not me.)
To summarize: This class looks like it'll be fun and educational, whereas my other class looks to be traditionally educational. It's all going to be a challenge, but some things look like they'll be fun too.
Ta!
K
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