the dump

A place to keep track of info, links, and my thoughts on composition and rhetoric, teaching and learning, and life in general, while I work on my PhD at the University of South Florida.

Comments on Garden State

 

I got this link to an article off Zach's Garden State blog and thought I'd put it here to keep track of things. It is astounding how many comments he is getting on every post and how people are opening up on his blog.

posted by: akjon78 at 04:16 | link | comments |

TEACHING

Well another semesters started, I've got a another new book to teach from, and another syllabus to follow.  It's kind of amazing since I started teaching at USF, I've taught Composition 1 three times and haven't used the same book yet, not including summer school.

Changing Topic in 3...2...1...Now.

I'm trying to work out a different way to present punctuation and grammar to the class.  I'm sick of the ridiculously dull and overly complex rules and the mind-numbing exercises.  My mind is numb just thinking about it or maybe it's the lack of sleep.  I don't see why grammar has to be explained with wordy explanations. My goal is to work on a trully different approach to explaining punctuation.  I think if people got what punctuation marks are meant to do, they'd get how to use them in their sentences.

posted by: akjon78 at 04:01 | link | comments (2) |

TOTALLY SCREWED UP

As the title suggests, yes I totally screwed up. I have no idea why, but since the end of the spring semester I was convinced that my teaching schedule was Monday/Wednesday not Tuesday/Thursday. So after going to Disney World yesterday and a friend's going away party Saturday, I did the impossible and woke up at 6-ish AM to teach my 8:00 AM class, which as it turns out --not on Monday or Wednesday. If I could swing my leg around and kick myself in the ass, I would. I should still be asleep right now.

posted by: akjon78 at 23:05 | link | comments (1) |

GARDEN STATE BLOG

I know I haven't been posting lately. I'm getting further and further away it sometimes feels. But anyways, I saw the movie Garden State on Friday, and it actually gave me one of those aesthetic experiences all those philosophers were always on about. I know I had some specific ascethetic philosophies in mind, but I don't remember their names and my battered aesthetic textbook from undergrad is sitting on a shelf in my parents' home in Houston. Bit of a drive for me to pick it up. Of course part of the reason Ioved the film is the soundtrack combined with the visual design, but the cool thing, though, is that Zach Braff has a blog to go with the movie.

It'll be interesting to see how long this blogs shelf life will last, since it is being used to by the filmmaker to reach his audience beyond the viewing event. Interestingly enough, since he actually reads his blog and allows commenting his audience is also reaching him, which Braff certainly seems to recognize. He mentions in his blog: "I feel so lucky to have this blog; it feels like I have direct contact with the film's audience every single day. It's a very unique experience for me and I'm so glad I listened to the web guys when they said that people would actually be interested in reading my posts." But it is definitely worth keeping tabs on to see how online mediums are used to continue an aesthetic experience.

Perhaps this intersection between art and the propagation of art through online mediums is where my interests lie. Probably not, but maybe I'd actually write an article about that instead avoinding the academic career I'm muddling through.

posted by: akjon78 at 22:26 | link | comments (1) |

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