Category: Topics of Study

Lessons Learned

On By MezzoSherriIn Life-Long Learning, Topics of Study1 Comment

Okay, here’s might be where I flunk out of that Coursera class.

Actually, that’s an overstatement, in my usual hyperbolic fashion. However, I do have a “capstone assignment” due tomorrow evening, in which I’m supposed to craft some creative portfolio that demonstrates everything I’ve learned, both for my own benefit and for the benefit of whatever students follow along after me. It’s the kind of project that would have benefitted from regular effort over a span of time, but my report from last night should indicate why and how that hasn’t been possible.

So, in defiance of all good habits for learning, I’ll be doing this capstone assignment in a hurried rush tonight, and, in the spirit of killing two birds with one stone (and knowing that tomorrow night is for choir and not for Coursera), I’ll be doing my “portfolio reflection” a la blogpost.

Shall we begin?

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Assorted Updates

On By MezzoSherriIn Blogging Challenges, Gratitudes and Thank Yous, Life-Long Learning, Memoir, Topics of Study2 Comments

Yeah, the most boringest of boring titles. Sometimes that’s just how things go…

Lots of different shifts and movements in areas of my life, and instead of trying to do the grand interweaving thing right now, I’m just going to scatter out some news and work on any “deeper understanding” some other night.

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Echoes and Mirrors

On By MezzoSherriIn Blogging Challenges, Flagrantly Feminist, Life-Long Learning, Topics of Study3 Comments

Now that the weekend is here, I can catch up on my Blogging 101 assignments. A few of the  assignments I haven’t posted about are “under-the-hood” ones: find new blogs, connect with people in the discussion boards, play around with the visual theme of your blog. I’ve done the first two and at some point I’ll make time to play a bit with the visual design here on JALC. During that Baltic cruise, I actually took a lot of landscape-orientation “texture” photos (things like a lacquered wood floor in The Hermitage, or a ceiling mosaic from the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood) thinking precisely of their use-value for Facebook and blog headers. Now if only I would actually take the time to download those July photos from my camera’s memory card to actually sort through them and start using them…

But one of the assignments was a post topic: the suggestion to

publish a post for your dream reader, and include a new-to-you element in it.

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Pop! Goes the Library

On By MezzoSherriIn Life-Long Learning, Stuff about Stuff, Topics of Study1 Comment

(My usual quick-like-bunny post for Wednesday night apres-rehearsal. Yes, the holiday break is over and choir season has recommenced….)

Anyone who dips into the archives here could pretty easily figure out that, however much I eschew new Year’s Resolutions, I’m all about setting various sorts of goals and structures for myself. From MOOCifying, to Blogging U challenges, to my own self-defined structures (five by five!) — there’s something I enjoy about having these regular sorts of goals and checklists to help me track my efforts and progress in various realms of my life.

So when my friend J. started gathering a group of friends together in Facebook to take on Popsugar’sReading Challenge 2015, you can probably guess what happened next.

I signed on.

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NaMo: Yes, No, Maybe So?

On By MezzoSherriIn Blogging Challenges, Meta-Blogging, Pop Goes the Culture, Topics of Study1 Comment

Mr. Mezzo has been spending the last week making preparations for his imminent descent in NaNoWriMo. For anyone unfamiliar with the concept, NaNoWriMo is a (mostly) virtual event in which a bunch of writers band together and pledge to write a 50,000 word novel during the course of November. (Hence the name: NAtional NOvel WRIting MOnth.* This will be the second time he’s done it, and I’m wondering if I should maybe do something of my own in solidarity.

Now, I’m not crazy enough to do NaNoWriMo. For starters, there’s the fact that I live in a Newtonian universe where time and energy are finite resources. I still have those two classes I’m finishing up, plus choir, plus the fact that I’m just now beginning to pull myself out of the black hole I recently fell into. More importantly than those practicalities is the fact that I don’t currently have a strong idea for a book. I know I’ll write one someday — but this day is not that day. (Or “this month is not that month.” Something like that.)

But NaBloPoMo? That’s a entirely different kettle of tea.

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Expanding My Horizons

On By MezzoSherriIn Life-Long Learning, Memoir, Self-Acceptance, Topics of Study1 Comment

My decision to keep the Comics class out of the rest of my Coursera options isn’t just about the pop culture/high culture divide. It’s also a class where I have a very particular learning goal in mind. I’ve read comics and graphic novels intermittently throughout my life, but I am very aware of the ways that my reading has always been focused more on language, plot, and characterization — the things I’m good at and was trained for in grad school. This approach has always given immense short shrift to the visual content of comix.*

So by taking this class, and by choosing this particular class as the one to stay with, I’m hoping very precisely to strengthen my understanding of the visual elements of comix, and how to read them as visual documents.

Now, there’s no stakes, really, if you take a MOOC course and do it only halfway — watch only part of the lectures, or watch all the lectures while skipping the assignments. But I’m enough a believer in active learning that I usually try to do all the lectures and “homework” in the MOOC courses I take. This is part of why I try to be thoughtful about not overloading my schedule.

What I hadn’t counted on with this class is one of the main homework assignments: drawing your own mini-comic book!

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The Ethics of Looking, Part 3

On By MezzoSherriIn Flagrantly Feminist, Pop Goes the Culture, Topics of StudyLeave a comment

A shorter post than usual — Wednesday is choir night, after all.

I’m following up on previous musings regarding the topic-cluster of domestic violence, NFL culture, media news vultures and Ray and Janay Rice. Here are parts 1 (soapbox mode) and 2 (my own complicity).

Let’s call Part 3, “When ethics cause inconvenience; or: walking the walk.”

Apparently, John Stewart had some very insightful, incisive and funny things to say on The Daily Show last week about how the NFL handled Ray Rice’s February assault on his wife (then fiancee) — or, one could say, how they didn’t handle the incident.

I wouldn’t know. Or at least, I wouldn’t know past the 30-second mark, ‘cos that’s when the first frame from TMZ showed up.*

Continue reading “The Ethics of Looking, Part 3” →

In Medias Manifesto

On By MezzoSherriIn Blogging Challenges, Flagrantly Feminist, Life-Long Learning, Meta-Blogging, Practicing in the Heart, Self-Acceptance, Spirituality, Topics of Study2 Comments

Because I have decided that 5 hours of sleep per weeknight is just too much of a luxury, I have decided to enroll in another challenge over at WordPress’s Blogging U. Blogging 101 is intended for individuals right in the start-up phases of bloggy creation. This invitation to register articulates the deliverables in this fashion:

On Day 30, you’ll have six (or more!) published posts and a handful of drafts, a customized theme that reflects your personality, a small but growing audience, a good grasp of blogging etiquette — and a bunch of new online friends.

So, considering that I first founded JALC some 5 years ago, and revived it more than 6 months ago, I am either well behind the times or way ahead of the game on this one. Still, I think it’ll be a good exercise for me.

I’ve been in recent conversations about the value of design thinking, and the ways that taking the time to step back and question your automatic habits and questions can be a good way to unlock a more intentional creativity. I see the Blogging 101 container as a way for me to foster that sort of intentionality here on JALC.

So, here we go…

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Judging Dread

On By MezzoSherriIn Life-Long Learning, Memoir, Self-Acceptance, Topics of StudyLeave a comment

Turns out that, as with dancing, sports are a thing that I greatly enjoy to watch, even though I don’t have any particular talent — or any talent at all, really — for doing those things with my own body. Now, it’s not like I’m a rabid sports fan that must find something live and sportsy to watch whenever I have a free minute:

But I do follow a few of the “big” sports casually — baseball, football, a little hockey (a more recent addition from when my nephew started playing it). And I’ve always been a huge fan of the Olympics and Grand Slam tennis.

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