Charlie's Thoughts

I awoke early this morning to go take pictures of a brand new elementary school opening in New Haven. I must say, it was rather impressive, certainly rivaling ELHS. I sprinted back to campus (with 30 pound backpack) for German. After which, I proceeded to go to lunch, sit in my dorm for a bit, and headed to "Consumer Culture". A very interesting and extremely work heavy class I look forward to.

After my class I ran back across town to pick up some other course materials and went on another photography run. Only now have I had time to sit down and do some work (Until my theater meeting at 4:00...Light plotting starts today!). I seemed to have finally come to terms with college life now that all these activities are in full swing. When I pulled out an article from "The Chronicle of Higher Education", however, I was surprised to find why my happiness had returned...

Follow up:

The particular article, "Dwelling in Possibilities" by Mark Edmundson, outlines how the modern student has evolved into a life lover. He writes,

"They (Students) live to multiply possibilites. They're enemies of closure. For as much as they actually want to do and actually manage to do, they always strive to keep their options open, never to shut possibilities down before they have to"

He goes on to discuss one class in particular where he examined why the Internet presented such pleasure for students. It's the ability to be in muliple "places" in multiple times...IM windows, online stores, music concerts, all while sitting in the basement of Bass Library. He discovered that,

"The moment of maximum Internet pleasure was not the moment of closure...it was the moment when the choices had multiplied to the highest sum".

He uses this argument to explain a number of integral college decisions from musical selection, to party culture, to the inevitable response of "I don't know" when posed with the question of what a student are doing on a particular night.

"For students now, life is elsewhere, classes matter to them, but classes are just part of an ever-enlarging web of activities and diversions....They want to dispatch it (work), do it well and quickly, then get on to the many other things that interest them."

It was truly an interesting article, (the entire article can be found in the March 14th, 2008 Chronicle of Higher Education and reflecting upon it, I found that it took much less time to read than I had thought. Leaving me time to begin other work before heading off to yet another meeting. In fact, after reading this article I was inspired to pull out my laptop and get back to doing what I love...whatever that might be at a given moment.