Ramblings of a Summer Freshman

College. It's weird to say that I'm completing my first semester, even though it was only 2 six week courses. It seems like the semester wasn't really about classes but more about discovering who I would be for the next four years; in essence my college self. I did a large amount of observing: seeing where I wanted to go, what was available to me, where I didn't want to go, who I could relate to, etc. It became somewhat of an experiment as I tested the waters in different areas of social scenes and academics.
It wasn't too difficult for me to do things on my own like laundry, making sure I had enough food, managing my responsibilities, and other single life things because I was fairly independent in high school. It was a different experience however not having anyone to turn to in times of need. Not only did I not have my good friends but I didn't have my family. Sure I could have called them but there's not many places to have privacy on a large campus.
I made it a priority to attend all of my classes, as administrators suggest but don't really see how useless some class lectures are.* In the end, I believe that it helped going to every class because there would be at least one tidbit of information that I could fine useful. My study habits are actually much better than in high school because I know what I need to do to achieve what I want in college while high school was a shot in the dark.
College was a learning experience for me and with some work I'm sure that I can truly make it, as the saying goes, "The four best years of my life." See you next semester Florida State.


*Note that I am not speaking of ENC1101.

Today

I'm quite sleepy today. I recently rediscovered craigslist, but it's different this time. Living in a college town at the end of the semester means that people are selling their things very cheap. It's like a thrift store with things that I actually want. So I was up fairly late browsing the online market that is craigslist.
I'm optimistic though as today both of my classes seem very simple. My computer class has a guest speaker who will be bringing in all sorts of games and peripherals for games and so I think that I'm going to really enjoy that later in the afternoon. I'm actually anxious to see how many people actually show up today. If it's more than 50 I will be impressed.
I'm not looking forward to finishing my essay for ENC1101 but I am sure that when I actually have it done a weight will be lifted off my shoulders. It needs revision now and it's going to need much more when I'm actually done but I hope in the end it is an entertaining piece that I can be proud of.

The College Essay Experience

When I viewed the assignments and realized that I would have to write 6-8 page papers I was less than thrilled. When I was in high school the most we ever wrote was 750 words and I had to fill those papers with tons of fluff to fulfill the paper requirement. Luckily enough the first essay prompt was all about important life experiences. It was easy for me to flesh out all of my ideas because they were critical to making me the person that I am today. The revision of that essay was more difficult because it felt like I had to cut important pieces of my life that didn't "fit" with the rest of the essay. I thought, "How can anyone truly know who I am without reading [insert experience here]?"
But I cut what I could and I fleshed out the paper with some more detail on some of the other experiences that I had in my paper and some that I didn't. At this point I was very worried about the second paper because I felt like I would have to falsify a large amount of the information. Pre-writing, although I didn't do a whole lot, was my best friend in this paper. I sat down and wrote significant experiences in my reading and writing past and then added a few points on why they were significant. I kept that as my outline while writing the second paper and the ideas seemed to flow so nicely to create a complete, well-rounded essay.
In paper three I intend to create a fiction story. While working on the last two papers I became more aware of sensory details in my writing and that is going to be immensely important in this upcoming story. I also have to keep in mind the lessons I've learned about drafting. I must keep writing and fleshing out my thoughts before I begin revision. My watcher will be shut down at all costs.

Omar A. Torres, Movie Mogul and Visionary, Dies at 86

Omar A. Torres, a noted filmmaker in all aspects and an all around upstanding citizen, died on Monday night at his home in Los Angeles, California.
In a surprising turn of events Mrs. Torres, the retired cinematographers first and only wife, passed away not half an hour later of natural causes. It seems that they were always meant to be.  
Mr. Torres died of natural causes. He was discovered by his son, also an entertainment lawyer, about an hour after his death. "It was so depressing," his son said in tears, "I will never forget my parents. They were the best parents anybody could ask for." Mr. Torres is known as a cinematographer, director, producer, writer and has even acted in a number of films all around the world. He has won multiple Oscars, although he only prides himself in winning the 100th Annual Academy Award for Cinematography.
He will always be remembered for his work and generosity to less fortunate student filmmakers.
We will miss you.

Acts of an Artist

I went to an "arts" school throughout all of my high school years. Even though we went over the definition of art in my English classes and all of my arts classes, there are still so many ways to define art that no one definition ever really stuck. Art is a tangible creative form of expression that can be sold, not that it needs to be. I pride myself as a filmmaker but the art that I am actually most proud of is my work in a play entitled Acts of God by Mark Rigney.
It was a play about twelve kids who experience a devastating storm and go through the next year trying to get their lives back on track. I played a character named Jared. He was a big classic rock fan who wasn't all that bright. Each character had about the same number of lines so there was no main character but if there was it wouldn't have been me.
The reason that I consider Acts of God as my best work of art was because it dealt with serious issues and I was able to work on it with a great group of people that I ended up getting really close to (a little bit too close but that's a different story). It was a five day run and when we opened the show we didn't have many people come but we still performed with enthusiasm and put all of our rehearsal time to the test. One day we had almost nobody but teachers in the audience. It was fantastic to have all of the teachers watch how dedicated we were and how much work we put in to the show. There was a day when most of the casts parents were in the audience and the first half of the show was terrible. Before the second act the director talked to us about how we should start focusing on the characters and stop focusing on our parents. That second act was the best second act out of all five days of showings. The tears were flowing that night, in a good way.

HIM

My "Watcher" needs to be shut down before I can get any work done. He sits in my my head watching every letter be typed or written. If I don't show him his place he looks over ever single sentence over and over until before I know it I'm going back to the top of the essay trying to revise something that I realized wasn't perfect when I reached the top of the second page.
I imagine my "Watcher" as a little hunchback creature rummaging through the information in my brain trying to find the right words and the correct structure of sentences. I type something and he says, "No, no do not use that" or, "You are using the vocabulary of a fourth grader", and even, "Really? Is that how you want the sentence to read?"
In a way I have to control his volume. I want him in the room when I write, but I want him very far away. That way when the big mistakes come around I can hear him scream it from across the room.

Five Six Ace

The speech around West Palm Beach is tailored to the younger generation. If you live in West Palm Beach you're either living with your parents, a parent, or you're a retired senior citizen so teenagers basically develop they're own slang terms. The pattern that I have noted recently is that two syllable words are just to many syllables for the teenage brain. Suddenly we have to shorten older slang words like "gnarly" to "gnar" and "totally" to "tots"(said toads) to make them our own. It's like a doctor snipping loose ends of all his words to make it look nicer and then attempted to articulate his rationalization for the surgery.

Joshua

Joshua was a student in my kindergarten class at T. Harry Garrett Elementary School in Augusta, Georgia. Joshua wasn't the smartest kid in the class, in fact he was just the opposite of that. He was a heavier set student and not the most well liked. I wouldn't consider him socially awkward because he did try very hard to achieve a good standing friendship with the students in my class, but he wasn't any ones best friend. Joshua always wore these khaki shorts that were always way too uncomfortably high above his knees and a polo shirt that was too big for him. I know we had a dress code at the school but when your kid is has grown out of his clothes then it's time to go shopping for some new ones, I don't care if it gets pricey.
Joshua was the first person I ever cussed at, in school or anywhere. It was a bright sunny day of school. It was a perfect day to go out during recess and just have fun with a group of my friends, Joshua felt the need to tag-along. We didn't usually mind because we were the good group of kids. My best friend Davis' mom was one of the two P.E. teachers and, secretly, I had a crush on his big sister who was in the fourth grade at the time. My other friend, his name escapes me, was a math wiz. I remember calling him one day and his dad forced him to recite his times tables from memory, surprising for a kindergartner but really at the time I didn't care at all.
So that day we went to play in the grass like we usually did. The way our playground was set up was that there was a jungle gym and a plain of grass on top of a hill on the right side of the playground. To get to the swings, sandbox, and slides we could have just walked down the hill or taken a flight of stairs. We usually played just at the bottom of that hill in a grassy area. As kids we used our imagination to create our own world, although our world seemed much like that of the show Dragonball Z.
As the tension of battle rose and I struck down the evil Joshua with my super blast of death I realized that he did not die. "I just killed you," I screamed in anger. "No you didn't I used my special force field that protects me from your blast," he explained. After some arguing I didn't like his reasoning so...I called him an asshole. When I said it everyone stopped talking and moving. They stared at me eyes and mouths wide open. Joshua said, "I'm telling" and all the kids went to tell on me. As I tried to stop them I caught up with Joshua and threw him to the ground. Davis and the others were too quick and they met up with the teacher at the top of the stairs. I was busted.

Just a regular group

This picture greatly represents my experience on sets. At any one time there could be two or three of us just standing behind one camera operator. Although sometimes it was considered a "professional" shoot our equipment was always very independent. We worked with a moderate sized tripod like the one shown hear and had the bags of those tripods on the floor behind us, ready for a change at a moments notice. In West Palm Beach the streets were always full of cars, or as I like to call them obstructions, that were tough to shoot around. The other crews would be in the background discussing their own issues while we were focused on our task, unfortunately we didn't always know what that was.

M-o-o-orning (Like Singin' In the Rain...get it?)

In the morning, I bike to get to English class. I usually don't bicycle to my second class because it is so close to my dorm and it would be inconvenient because I have to cross a street. Now I have to cross this same street to get to English class but it isn't as much of a hassle as it is in the afternoon to my second class. I know everyone reading this is thinking, "Big deal. You're in a college. The streets are made for students to cross all day long whenever they want." This isn't one of those streets.
I have to cross Tennessee Street. For those of you unaware of Tennessee Street, this is a main road that goes right above Florida State University. So as I get to that intersection I stand, I wait, and I stand some more. Cars come flying past me while DeGraff Hall looms overhead like a giant tower. I can look down the road to see how many cars are coming and just catch a glimpse of the sign for the club that reads "Dayglo Party". The wind hits me from every car and I can feel myself being thrust off of my bike but I hold steady so I don't look stupid to all of the other people, doing exactly what I was doing, sitting, and waiting.

Drafting A Masterpiece

Anne Lamott's "Shitty First Drafts," Lorrie Moore's "How to Become a Writer," and Gail Godwin's "The Watcher at the Gates" were all essays that encouraged writer's to continue writing past the obstacles at hand. "The Watcher at the Gates" and "Shitty First Drafts" really focused on letting go of what people, including yourself, tell you is not good or acceptable in your writing at its principle stages. Writers in their beginning stages should be attentive to getting their ideas down on paper before they worry about what people are going to say about it. If they write thinking what critics will say, it crushes their creative flow and makes it really difficult to get anything that they might really like in their final product down on paper. "How to Become a Writer" deals more with writing about whatever a writer feels like writing about. In other words, if I wanted to become a writer then I should go and write. It shouldn't matter to me how other people view my writing because in the end there are always some people who are just not going to like it. If I like it, then it is enough.

Lamott uses her life experiences to give advice on writing a first draft. She uses anecdotes to set the mood and comes off very much like a teacher or professor giving a lesson to students. She really tries to give her reader someone that they can relate to and say "Hey, she's a very smart writer and so are all of her colleagues. If they are like me with their first drafts, maybe I don't suck as much as I thought." Moore however uses her life, real or made up I'm not quite sure, to tell a story on challenges that writers will often face and have to overcome. She wants people to see the true, non glamorous life of a writer to show that if you are put down in your work you can't let it get you out of the game. Perseverance is the key in any job. Godwin writes like a informer. She wants others to realize that their creativity is being stifled by themselves, and that they can stop it. She gives helpful tips on crushing the "Watcher" and letting yourself be free of its scrutiny.