Captured Thought: My generation's future

                Since listening to all of the TED presentations in class these last few weeks, I have started thinking about how my future, and my whole generation’s future, is going to be so different from those of previous generations.  While each generation has had their own unique challenges, it seems that my generation and those of the future will deal with the results of humankind’s tendency to ignore developing problems until it is too late.

               One problem that becoming more and more obvious is that the rate at which humans use the Earth’s natural resources is completely unsustainable. There are starting to be shortages many natural resources including: clean water, oil, minerals, and even food. Because there has not been a problem accessing these resources in the past, people got used to using too much and wasting, and are not willing to change their lifestyles.  But now, if we don’t stop wasting and overusing our natural resources they really will completely disappear in the future. I think a lot of more people need to realize this is a real problem that needs to be solved.  With these devastating consequences awaiting us, this generation is responsible for coming up with many new ideas and solutions to save the Earth from ourselves.  

                This idea does not only apply to natural resources, there are many other Earth related issues that are starting to really take a toll.  There are so many problems to be concerned about that it’s pretty overwhelming. The overuse of cars and fossil fuels has caused trouble for the Earth through global warming and even desertification, something I had never heard of before listening to a TED presentation about it. I learned that if the climate continues to get warmer and dryer, and land continues to be overused the way that it is now, there may not be enough land to plant our food crops on in the future.  Another land problem we face is where our garbage goes after we throw it out. Garbage takes up a lot of Earth’s space, and with a rapidly rising population, we don’t have any room to waste. Constant updates in technology have added on to the garbage problem; electronic waste (E-waste) is becoming a huge issue as well.

                While all of this might sound really negative, I’m really not pessimistic about my generation’s future. Sure, we are going to face many challenges as these issues play out in the coming years, but it also gives us the chance to be creative, change our lifestyles for the better, and even join together in order to solve these problems. Thankfully for this generation, there are many great minds already working to find solutions, and these people have TED talks. This generation needs to listen up, do what these people suggest, and be just as inspired as them to help save our planet. And of course, there are many other people with great ideas who are not on TED, and these people’s work should be noted as well. If everyone does their part to change the path that the Earth is currently heading, then we could save our planet before it’s too late.

Metacognition: Letters to a Young Poet Mashup

              The first thing that I did to start the Letters mashup was decide on a theme. This helped me to focus during the element searching process. I started this search in the Letters to a Young Poet book, since that’s what the mashup was based on. I ended up basically rereading the book to do this, while marking each quote that had to do with patience or waiting, and a few that I just liked. I ended up collecting more than 10 possible passages, and narrowed it down based on how well they “fit”. This was a good method to use because I know I didn’t miss any usable quotes, and I got a better understanding of the book by reviewing it after our class discussions.

            Now that I had some ideas of what aspects of patience I wanted to touch on after looking in the book (such as patience: with self, with creations, and with others) I started looking for the other elements from the Humanities curriculum. This part took some thinking, and was probably the most challenging part of making this mashup. Since I did not know where to look first for these passages, I just pulled out all the stories, articles, and other readings that we have discussed this semester.

            Next I looked them all over and tried to figure out which ones would have mentioned anything about patience or waiting. I normally would not have expected the article about Grit to have anything about patience in it, but after skimming it again I realized that in order to have grit, that you must have the patience to stick with your goal; and I was able to find a quote that ‘went with’ the theme of patience with your creations and work. Before even looking through the story Cathedral I thought there would be a passage about having patience with others, since patience and understanding is what it took for the two men in the story to get along in the end. Another source from the Humanities curriculum that I thought of and reviewed for this mashup was the book Einstein’s Dreams, since its main theme is time. I was able to find a good passage from it that I thought described perfect patience. I collected a few more passages from elements of the Humanities curriculum, but these three made the best connections with the other elements that I had already decided to use.

            My next task was to figure out what elements to use from outside of the Humanities curriculum. Through the whole mashup process I was already thinking of lyrics, quotes, and other books that would have something to say about patience, but now I was really collecting and considering many sources. Much like I did with the elements from within the Humanities curriculum, I narrowed these options down based on how well they went with the passages from the Letters to a Young Poet book.

            After some critical thinking and making the final decisions on the passages in all three of these categories that I had collected from, I typed the ones I had chosen up on a word document. This made it easier to come up with a good sequence for them, since I could copy and paste the elements easily.  Even though I anticipated the ordering process to be very challenging, it ended up being easier than I thought since all of the elements that I had chosen went so well together. I started by matching up some quotes that ‘spoke’ to each other. Then I just had to figure out in which order would create a deeper meaning / progression. This process took quite a bit of time, thought, and rereading in different possible orders. I felt like I was creating a poem from mixed sources, because this process was similar to the process I went through when I used to write a lot of poetry; I would usually come up with a theme and few good lines I wanted to include, and created the rest based on these things.

            After coming up with a good order for the passages, it was time to add my own reflections to the mashup. Luckily, my reflections fit in well with the other elements in my mashup, and even served as transitions between elements. I liked that we could include some elements that were in our own words because I was able to explain my interpretation of the ideas that Rilke was trying to get across in Letters to a Young Poet. I think these reflections made my mashup much more personal.

            This project reminded me a lot of the final from last semester, because we were required to use so many different sources, but this process was more relaxed because the elements are able to speak for themselves, if placed in the right order. I’m really glad that I took time in the beginning to create a big inventory of elements, because it ended up saving me a lot of time in the end. First of all, I did not have to go through my sources more than once, because I collected all the passages that I could need the first time around. Secondly, since I had so many possible elements, that it was easy to swap passages if I figured out something I had picked before did not fit. I did not have to waste any time trying to force a passage to fit in my mashup, because I could just pick a new one from my inventory. Also, I am very glad that I did this mashup in little parts at a time, because the process didn’t end up being stressful or rushed.