Year Long Reflective Essay

            I believe I’ve really made a lot of inroads this year as a Cyborg student.  I guess I’ve really lucked out because I ended up with an awesome professor.  It’s the truth too, all year, I’ve heard about the other Cyborg professors.  Not to be down on anybody, but they were either really easy on their kids (not enough work) or weren’t as interesting as this one.  There was a tradeoff though, and Professor Dillon drove our Cyborg class hard.  We went through the entire three terms in two, and on top of that, spent our spring term working on numerous projects.  People have always been warning me about procrastinating.  But it seems like, when you’re working very hard, and there’s tons of deadlines abound, knowing that you’re doing this faster/better than other people justifies the breakneck pace we went through.  I’ve learned that it’s easier to be ahead of the game than behind.  And that it’s alright to have a little fun while you’re at it.

            At the Cyborg End Of Year Celebration, I noticed how serious the other classes’ projects were.  There was no Cyborg Hotties or Austin Powers music playing in the other videos.  It makes me wonder, were these other classes drained from working too hard?  Or was it just way too serious?  This is just freshman inquiry.  I thought we were suppose to have a little fun, be a little wild and flirt with our creative sides.  Obviously the other professors adopted “professional” academic standards.  They went so far as to bar any Cyborg class from winning more than one award in each category (such as videos, websites)!  How politically correct is that? 

            I have changed.  It used to be all that was going on in my head was what I was supposed to be doing.  This was the way it was meant to be done, and I did it.  No questions.  But I’ve finally found the confidence to really push the limits.  You don’t know how good you can become, or what to make out of a (otherwise lame) project unless you think outside the box and enjoy yourself a little.  That’s where Cyborg Hotties came along.  Why make it look like all the other bland e-portfolios?  Honestly, if an employer wanted to see what you could do, giving them something of the ordinary would certainly put you ahead of the pack?  Come on now.  And when Mick and VK presented the porno idea, I just had to take it up.  Somebody had to do it.

            One of my goals is now to become larger than life.  You see all these people running around, building tiny lives and idolizing all the people who seem to be it all/have it all.  I want to be the latter.  So when it came time to present my oral talk story, I had to spice it up a little bit.  I made it so you didn’t know where I was going, and I made sure the people watching knew I was having fun.  It’s okay to laugh too.  I read a “The Edge” column a few weeks ago; it talked about how children laugh hundreds (or was it over a thousand?) times a day, where as adults laugh less than a hundred times a day.  Laughing is human, it means we’re enjoying ourselves.  Since we’re here, why not enjoy it?  I did the same thing with our first group presentation and the second one (running in with Baywatch playing in the background and shaking everybody’s hands).  I’m sure nobody remembered what I talked about, or what other people talked about, heck I’m not sure even I remember what I talked about; what people do remember is that stupid song and me running around with a stupid grin on my face.  We only remember the interesting and the extraordinary.  I’ve come to the point in my life where I want to give people that.  So much of time, all we hear about is how terrible things really are, how much work there is to get done.  Well I’m sorry, I can only think one thought at a time and I’m working hard to make each one positive.

            This year, Professor Dillon has really stressed the importance of including controversy in our papers and in our presentations.  We were told to assume that the audience already knows about the subject and I thought it was a terrific idea.  Many a times, the papers we write and the things we present get bogged down in the simple b.s. that everyone who is the very least interested should know.  It has been like a chain was released.  Although I have to admit that I am not quite up to the ability needed to write an all-encompassing paper. 

            Although far more difficult than writing a simple research paper, adding controversy has been a boom and a challenge.  In many situations, we just want to get the dang thing over with and finding controversy just equates to more time.  But it does help.  It helps when you’re stuck, you can always look back to the emotion that started your paper (such as my fiction essay on “We See Things Differently”).  People do not read papers to be bored.  They want to be excited, scared, angered, in short, they want to be entertained.  In this sense, I truly feel empathy towards professors, for they put up with so much mundane reading.

            The controversy stems from Professor Dillon.  Through her numerous instigations in spontaneous class discussions, I have grown fond of her wild side.  Sure, we get off track, but it shows the human element of our beloved professor.  No one likes a bore.  And certainly, we all aren’t angels.  It feels good to know that someone has gone through what we go through and isn’t afraid to admit what’s on our minds.  In that I am thankful. 

            I am also quite thankful to Professor Dillon for recommending me to become an Orientation Leader.  Without her, I would never known about the position.  Thanks to her, I’ve now become even a more part of the campus.  I understand the services available and know more of the stories behind Portland State University . 

            For my final and ending paragraph, I would like to discuss our final reading, The Diamond Age.  In it, Constable Moore talks to Nell about life.  In life, there are two groups of people.  Those who are educated and those who are intelligent.  The ones who are educated believe in the system because that’s what they were brought into, and that’s all they know.  But for those who are intelligent. . .life is gray.  Unlike academia, a significant portion of life has no right or wrong answers.  Rarely is there less than three choices.  The truly intelligent people are the ones that can deal with life’s ambiguities.  They’re the ones who look through the gray and become concerned when it isn’t.  It’s been a while, but most of my life, I’ve spent as educated.  I couldn’t apply the things I learned in class to the outside world.  And the more time I spend in school, the more I see that the things I learn here will never be used outside.  What is important is not the things that are being lectured on, but the messages behind them. 

            You see, I have no specific, superior reason why I am here.  I just am.  It’s ambiguous.  It’s controversial.  Somebody else should be here instead of me.  But I am anyways.  I just am.