Really interesting start to the studio where we all got up and shared something we wouldn’t normally share with everyone; I talked about fishing for the first time. Adrian talked about agency and gave the example of not having the agency to say what we want (even though we like to think we do) because there are laws and rules that confine what we can and how we say things. For example, the alphabet, phonetics and grammatical rules.
True, that it restricts our agency but I think that these rules help make our choices mean more. In his example, he said a made up nonsensical word and said that you don’t have the agency to say because it’s just nonsense. With the rules of language, it guides the extent of the choice of what we want to say so that it can be understood by others and in that way allows us more choices (eg. if I had said “can I have some ice cream?” instead of “asdkcnaoien”)
Another interesting thing I got from today was “story telling” versus “communicating”. In essence, Adrian wants to help us learn how to tell a story without using a story – which he said is a “species specific” mode of communication. It just helps us humans understand things better I guess, but it’s not exactly the only way we can tell others about something. I think it’ll be hard to get out of the comfortable and easy habit of story telling, to force ourselves to change the way we think about, relay, interpret and understand information. I’m looking forward to seeing how my perspective and understanding of the world will change from this.
Did an exercise of how we predict our learning will be for this semester. I drew a line that went up in a gradual slope – I think I’ll learn and understand more and more as the semester progresses. And if not, I’ll ask questions so hopefully I won’t have bouts of not knowing what’s going on at all. My “recipe” for participation and learning is to read the assigned reading, read news and current affair articles so that I am updated and “noticing” things about the world and it’s people. I want to be able to find a ‘passion point’ before the mid semester break; it’s something that I’m interested in and passionate about that I will always want to learn more about. Because learning things in itself is interesting, but I want to choose something that will keep me focused. I also want to take notes of what I’ve learnt in class and throughout the week to practice the art of noticing what’s going on around me and see if I can find trends and explanations – perhaps to keep me accountable in actually doing this, I could share something every week of something I have learnt/noticed/am intrigued with from the past week.
And to end it all off, I set up this blog.