Thursday, January 7, 2010

32. One More Thing

There's one more very important thing that I learned in ENG101, and I'm sure I'll benefit from what I've gained, and that is producing some work on a regular basis, instead of trying to finish things in the dying seconds, panting. Credit must be given to Sonja for that, thank you.

Btw, this maybe one of the reasons why I felt a bit lost in the exam yesterday, 75 minutes cannot possibly represent 14 weeks, just as 3 hours and 15 minutes cannot decide the rest of your life, can it?

Oh, one more - I love metaphors and ironies. A reason that makes academic writings challenging maybe?

And thank you for your help as a "tavşan atlet" Sonja =)

This has been a big big semester for me. (I'm not a big big girl)

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

31. Real Self Evaluation

Retrieved from http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=2876065&id=716822197

If our previous presentations were only for practice, then the evaluation was for practice as well. I had evaluated my practice presentation before, so here I am ready to make the real one, for The Full Monty.

First of all I'm glad Hasan and I were partners. He just kept making things easier for the presentation, never was lazy, and we really could get along. I'm shocked with his comment on lagger bloggers post, but I'm proud of my partner. Everything about the presentation would be much more challenging without him. So cheers mate!

As to talk about the presentation, the thing that kills me is my fluency. I know it is a common problem (and is very very normal) among almost all of us students but still it affects the presentation. Congratulations Maude, really.

I think cutting and showing some scenes from the movie was a good idea. It helped the audience in general and made a funny atmosphere.

We could, however, talk more about the destruction of industry in Sheffield, and some more about the personal relationships, especially between Gaz and Nathe.

All in all we made a good job I think, and it certainly was a good experience.

Monday, January 4, 2010

30. Spin the Bottle

It was nice to see that Katz finished off his video documentary Tough Guise with suggestions and hope. I think those suggestions were strong and tough (yes) ones, and were probably hard for some to accept and apply immediately to real life.

I thought he had to go further, that Tough Guise couldn't be his only effort, and that he should not be alone in "educating" people. So I made a quick research about his other works and found quite an interesting one (he had others as well of course), although not directly relevanto to gender: "Spin the Bottle: Sex, Lies & Alcohol". The more interesting part is that Jackson Katz and Jane Kilbourne worked together on this documentary! Forces in unison!

I watched the trailer and figured its relevance to the gender issue and to the advertisement problem. I could write until morning about drinking and how it effects boys and girls as I had the opportunity to observe them for millions of times, but not here.

For the interested parties, here's the link of the trailer.

29. Driving Recklessly

R.I.P. by IceBone made available under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 Generic License

"What's going on in broader cultural environment that suggests driving recklessly and dangerously is cool and manly?" Jackson Katz enquires. One of the numerous issues he mentions in Tough Guise 2 is the driving attitude of men, although discussed briefly. I didn't scrutinize his resources really but he claims that statistically men cause much more drinking and driving accidents than women (86% to 14%). On the other hand, I very often hear men blaming and mocking women for their lack of driving and parking talent, but when you have the Ricky Martin driving example to follow as a man, you prove you lack much more important things than driving talent, and may experience really unfortunate incidents.

Please, please follow the link to see IceBone's comments about the accident. Bruised ego? Shit. That's what Jackson Katz is talking about.

Btw, happy 2010 everyone!