User:BrentNelson

assignments
misology assignment

Round 1

Pt.1= The initial visit

My first ever visit to the sculpture garden was awesome. I was impressed before I even saw it upon learning that the grounds the garden sits on used to be a parking lot. There are a wide variety of styles of works and sculptures, many of which I found to be incredible. I definitely was digging the large scale sculptures(ie-Serra's Wake piece.) because they gave me a sense of interaction with the work. (Like the individual human experience was part of the piece.) There were however 2 artists' whose work I didn't really care for initially.(Louise Nevelson and Beverly Pepper.) After some thought, I decided that Louise Nevelson's Skyscape 1 was my least favorite. I thought it was too flimsy. The sculpture looked cheap, like it didn't belong with the rest of the sculptures. (It looks like something I'd imagine seeing adorning an unkept garden.) Pt. 2= The investigation

Going into the research part of the assignment, I wasn't sure what to expect. I had been told that every artist represented at the garden had an extensive art back round and Louise Nevelson was no exception. After looking into her other work, I instantly respected Louise much more as an artist and found some things that she has done that I really enjoy.(Such as her Sky Cathedral piece.) She does some things in a lot of her work that I appreciate, such as using "found objects" or everyday discarded materials to construct her art. Also, pieces like her Sky Cathedral piece, were very intricate and well detailed. It seemed to me that a lot of her work had things that I would notice for the first time after many viewings. I was now ready to revisit Skyscape and see if there was anything I had missed from the initial visit.

Round 2 Aka-7 days later

I returned to the cheap looking sculpture to find that although It wasn't my favorite, it was more valuable to me than it had been just a short time earlier. I also found the same to be true for Beverly Pepper's work, which was right next door to Nevelson's. In fact, I truly enjoyed Pepper's work the second go round.(I researched her work I am aware that my "back round check"  was responsible in swaying my opinion and I suspected it would. I consider myself to be a bit of an information junky and the influx of new information helped erase some of the ignorance I had around those artists.

final
Here is my final project:

By the end of this quarter, I want to: Learn where the food that I consume comes from so I can make better informed health and moral decisions.

The majority of my information came from the book "The Omnivore's Dilemma" by Michael Pollan

self assessment
I began this class in my first quarter of school after 6 years off. I came into it excited to learn and excited at the prospect of being able to go to school.(This was a much different feeling than I had had growing up, when I had felt forced to go and therefore resisting it.)During my 6 years off I had studied various things and challenged myself but not in a structured class environment. There were a few things that I was reintroduced to that will be valuable for me in the future. One of the skills I was able to brush up on was analyzing the reliability of information sources. I am unaware of anytime where I put so much thought into whether or not a source was accurate as I did after a lecture that opened up by dismantling wikipedia and followed through with an explanation of all of the resources we have available to us as students at AI and as residents of the greater Seattle area.(Seattle library.)

I thought it was cool to learn that we got to pick what we wanted to do for our final presentation. I wasn't feeling good about my overall level of health at the time so I decided that I would study food to see if I could get a better understanding of what it is that I was consuming. (With the hope that I would make some positive alterations.) I found a great book that did just that(Omnivore's Dilemma) and through the process of reading it, I could feel my distrust towards big corporations grow. My alternatives to the big corp food system was through local organic food suppliers and hunting and gathering things myself.(which I have yet to do.) I feel that I am doing a mediocre job of eating healthy even though I have a good idea of what it means to eat healthy. So in the end, I can say that I have been successful in learning things but not as successful at applying them.

I get feelings of anxiety around getting up in front of a class and presenting and unfortunately, during my time away from school, I did not change in this regard. My final presentation was on the last day of class which gave me plenty of time to prepare for it, but I didn't utilize much of that time, choosing instead to wait until the last minute to piece together my presentation. I think there is a correlation between being unprepared and being nervous in presenting, but have yet to really do much about it. I gave my presentation, nervous the whole time, and then when I was seated I asked someone sitting next to me "on a scale from 1-10, how nervous did i look up there?" to which he replied, you did fine. So, unless he was just being polite, I also have to consider that maybe everyone is a nervous wreck to some degree while presenting even when they don't appear to be.

Anyways, overall I had a good time in a class that sounded like it wouldn't be(Freshmen seminar 101 is pretty ambiguous and generic sounding.) and I was able to get an understanding of just how much is out there in terms of resources for me as a student of AI. This has been a valuable experience in terms of my education and I couldn't have been happier with the teacher I had.(I know that may sound like I am sucking up but I have asked around and it appears that there are at least 2 other teachers teaching the freshmen seminar class. From the various testimonials from various students, it appears like I got the best deal.)