Senioritis

I guess I should mention that I’m keeping a blog this quarter of my progress on my final project for Evergreen: a senior thesis that encompasses my four years of academic learning and experience in the Cooper Point Journal student group. It’s off to a slow start, but the idea is that I’m writing on tons of different topics related to my learning inside and out of the CPJ, and at the end of the quarter I will compile it into a magazine format to share with future members of the CPJ and to include in my transcript.

The idea behind it is really to justify the amount of time I’ve spent at the CPJ– I have been involved with it for four years now, and I feel confident in saying that I have learned at least as much in the CPJ as I have over four years of academic work. And that’s not out-of-the-ordinary for anyone involved in the CPJ.

But it’s difficult to convey that on a transcript. Without explicitly conveying what I have learned at the CPJ, my transcript looks like a seemingly random collection of academic experiences: literature, writing, linguistics, France, France, France, musicology, psychology, journalism, web design… and really what ties all those things together is the CPJ, which isn’t mentioned at all.

By doing this contract and writing about what I’ve learned at the CPJ and how I’ve tied in academics, someone who looks at my transcript can (hopefully) plainly see an organized path of learning and how I’ve grown as a leader and communicator.

I’m pretty excited about this. It makes me feel a lot more confident about my transcript AND it fills the writing void I’ve had in my life for quite some time.

Here’s the blog!

Learner.

My next-to-last quarter at Evergreen is drawing to a close, and in addition to the crippling senioritis I’ve contracted, I’ve also started to get a pretty bittersweet feeling about graduating and about the time I’ve spent at Evergreen.

At the end of every quarter, we write page-long self evaluations about the work we’ve done and what we’ve learned during the quarter. Mine tend to wax philosophic about how I’ve changed and grown personally, and about learning styles, and about how Evergreen is different, and what it’s teaching us to be (or what it’s enabling us to be). I have an enormous amount of respect for Evergreen.

Anyway, I started out writing that same narrative at the beginning of this quarter’s self evaluation, but it seemed more appropriate for a different setting–maybe my final summative self evaluation. In the meantime, I’m posting it here. [Taken from a Tumblr blog that belongs to me!]

I’ve had several epiphanies this quarter about my learning style and ability (or lack thereof) to do work. I have been overwhelmed by what I have learned about myself as a person and as a learner.

It’s taken me a long time at Evergreen to see that sort of statement (which I tend to make in nearly every self evaluation I write) not as a cop-out, but as a reflection on the overall purpose of this school. In this instance, what I’m clearly saying is, “yeah, I did very little of the work and didn’t learn all of what I set out to learn, and I’m disappointed by that– but wait! I did learn some stuff; it just wasn’t on the contract… does that count?”

That’s not a legitimate justification for credits. And maybe I’m just getting philosophical because it’s starting to sink in that I have only 3 months left of undergrad life. And I understand that this was a web design contract and I am delaying the analysis of the actual work I did(n’t) do or things I did(n’t) learn. But I do truly believe that’s what Evergreen is all about– there’s a difference between a student and a learner, and Evergreen teaches us to be learners, not students.

I have a pattern of needing to do this lengthy preamble to self evaluations because I definitely have this love affair with Evergreen, and with nearly every class/program/contract I do, this love affair grows. And I know it has been a successful quarter, at least in some respects, if that happens.

In other aspects of life, too, I feel most self-assured and successful the more I learn. It doesn’t matter if an experience is downright catastrophic– if I learn from it, I come out feeling pretty victorious, even if it takes me a little while to recognize and appreciate that feeling. At the student newspaper, the Cooper Point Journal, we go through a month of leadership training before school starts. One of the games we play to help identify and develop leadership qualities is an auction where we are all bidding on character traits of a “good” leader. The idea is to bid on items that you believe you lack or need in order to become a better leader. There are the usual things you’d expect: organized, respectful, confident, responsible, etc… and then there’s “Lifelong Learner.” I always bid on that one, even though I don’t think I need it: I couldn’t stop learning if I tried.

And trust me, this quarter any observer would pretty much believe that’s exactly what I was doing.

You’ve got this thing about you that keeps me on the edge of my seat.

I cannot tell you how amazing my life is. I’m a pretty happy person, but lately I have just been pumped. All. The. Time.

My birthday is in a week, and nearly all of my friends will be there helping me ring it in.

I have fucking awesome friends.

I listen to good music all the time.

The student newspaper’s website is better than ever.

I’m setting up my own contract this quarter and I’ve picked out all my reading materials.

I’ve been flexing my editing muscles and I LOVE IT.

Oh god, do I fucking love it.

No one can rain on my parade. (Though the Olympia weather is trying its hardest.)

(Title of post from “Teeth,” by The Ettes)

EIC App Essay #2: Personal Assessment

For the Editor in Chief application, I had to write two essays. This is the second one. I thought it would be ok to post it here, because soon it will be on the Cooper Point Journal website and publicly visible anyway. Enjoy…

____________________

Regardless of my skills and previous experience, I expect and intend to be challenged by every responsibility I hold. Though I believe it’s important to have a healthy amount of confidence, I also think that the ability to recognize any situation or task as daunting enables one to self-reflect, think critically, and problem solve (in that order).

In general, I foresee that one of my biggest challenges will be developing and maintaining a relationship with the new advisor. Helping him or her familiarize himself with the organization will be very difficult, considering how long it takes for general members to understand the purpose of the organization, its goals and objectives, and the difference between the organization and the publication. I intend to make myself available to the new advisor over the summer and beginning of the year as a resource to help in whatever ways I am able. To that end, I would like to research more about the history of the organization and publication, and also come to a greater understanding of the past advisors’ role in both.

I expect that in regard to cooperpointjournal.com, one of the major challenges will be outreach for the purpose of making the general student population aware of the website and generate interest in contributing content, especially multimedia content. Hopefully, making the website available in multiple different mediums (like the iPhone app and more interfacing with social networking sites) will aid in those efforts.

As co-coordinator, I am fairly confident in my ability to organize and lead meetings, because I have been successful in doing so in the past. Leading a seminar-like discussion and consensus-based decision making session in 2010 about the future of the print edition was one of my most stressful times, but also probably my most rewarding experience as a managing editor last year. As print managing editor, someone who was intimately familiar with and involved with the production of the print edition, it was difficult to turn my attention to web, let alone support the decision of moving completely to a web publication. I had to be able to overcome my personal biases and comprehensively advocate for a solution to which most members seemed opposed.

Last year I also attended a Regional Northwest Leadership Conference in Portland, OR. That experience was fundamental to me in developing skills that have helped me manage a group of individuals, and I have been able to use those skills for the specific purpose of better organizing production of the publication. With some more concentrated efforts in focusing those skills on the website, I will be more confident in creating a workflow that works to the advantage of the publication and the individuals working on it.

EIC App Essay #1: Motivation

For the Editor in Chief application, I had to write two essays. This is the first one. I thought it would be ok to post it here, because soon it will be on the Cooper Point Journal website and publicly visible anyway. Enjoy…

______________________

The best way to articulate the many reasons I would like to hold the position of co-coordinator of the Cooper Point Journal organization and Editor in Chief of the CPJ publication is to say that I have many goals for both the organization and the publication, and I would like to see those goals through. I would like to see the organization thrive, in the sense that it has a felt presence in the community and a diverse membership. And I would like to see the publication thrive, in that it has readership and in that the community recognizes the publication’s importance as a forum for student expression and participates in that forum, using it to its full multimedia potential.

I would like to be the co-coordinator of the student group in order to better communicate with other student groups and better integrate myself personally, as well as the organization, into Student Activities. As co-coordinator, I would also like to learn more about leadership styles and techniques in order to better manage and organize membership as a whole, and better communicate with members on a more individual level.

As Editor in Chief, I would like to incorporate journalism more into the publication—not for the purpose or consideration of making the publication “professional,” but so as to recognize and journalistically represent important stories and issues on campus that affect students. To me, that means taking a more formal and organized approach to finding stories, interviewing, gathering information, and presenting the information in the most appropriate way, taking advantage of multimedia capabilities whenever possible.

In both the role of co-coordinator and Editor in Chief, it will be necessary to develop at least a decent working relationship with the new advisor of the CPJ. I would consider it my responsibility, as well as the responsibility of the other co-coordinator/ business manager to make sure that the advisor not only understands the difference between the CPJ organization and the CPJ publication, but also comprehends the necessity and reasoning behind the imminent and complete shift to a solely web-based publication.

I see great potential in cooperpointjournal.com. I would like to be able to explore not only the website’s inherent capabilities, but also our use of that potential; that is, I would like to answer the question, What can we do to best make use of our website, that also best serves and informs the Evergreen community? Furthermore, I would like to explore how better to garner an obvious, collective community interest in cooperpointjournal.com and its content.