Interviews and Synthisis

Question One: How do you feel about school?

Interviewee One:
I don't like school.

Interviewee Two:
I hate school. I can't wait to be done with it. When I leave I'll miss the people in it and learning new things but school sucks.

Interviewee Three:
I love school. I love learning new things and expandidng my mind.

Interviewee Four:
I love it. It keeps my brain going and i get to study what i want. I hated 90% high school. The 10% of high school i did like was meeting [life long friends] and some teachers.

Interviewee Five:
I have mixed feelings about school. There are some good things about school and some bad things. I like learning about things but not the pressure filled environment of high school.

Question Two: How do you feel about being graded in school?

Interviewee One:
I would say the intention of grades is okay but probably not always enforced correctly by every teacher

Interviewee Two:
I hate being graded. It gets you into trouble.

Interviewee Three:
Grades are fine. They let you know how you are progressing.

Interviewee Four:
Grades keep you on your toes. They give you something to strive for and helps you set goals.

Interviewee Five:
You get graded in life and you get graded in school. There's not much of a difference.

Question Three: If you could change one aspect of school what would it be?

Interviewee One:
I would change the time school begins and ends each day.

Interviewee Two:
I would change the time school starts.

Interviewee Three:
Classes are over crowded and students aren't allowed to explore personal passions.

Interviewee Four:
The part of school I had difficulty with was not the academics but the social aspects.

Interviewee Five:
I would change that we call our teachers by there first name. It makes me feel like I know them and [there's less of the automatic respect for authority]

Question Four: How do you feel when you get to school vs. when you leave school?

Interviewee One:
I hate coming to school and I LOVE leaving school.

Interviewee Two:
[I feel sluggish. Like I have to drag myself into doing something i would rather not do. By the end of the day I feel relieved.]

Interviewee Five:
when i get to school I'm tired i don't want to be there and I'm not looking forward to the class i know i did not due the homework for. when i leave school I'm happy that i made it through another day without teachers killing me me killing teachers or [a confrontation with another student]

Question Five: How has your education prepared you for life?
Interviewee Three:
It has taught me to think critically which has allowed me to make better decisions.

Interviewee Four:
It taught me how to interact with people and basic life lessons.


Analysis:
What i concluded from my interviews was that my questions were crappy. I probably would have gotten better answers if my questions were asked in a more specific way. I also concluded that of the people i asked about high school, most of them had mixed feelings about school. For some the the social aspects of school were their favorite parts while for others the academic part of school was their favorite. The older people i asked who were reflecting back on their school experience had more of a positive view on school. The teens i asked (two were seniors while one was a sophomore) had different feelings on school. They felt pressured and stressed while the adults felt like it was a good an necessary experience.

School Unit: First Assignment

Part A:
Interesting aspects:
Grading
Relationships
Digitalization
Fashion
Popularity
Friendships
Interactions between the different social classes
Roles people play
Elevators (lack of senior privileges once you have become a senior)


Ideas:
1.) The roles some people play in school differ from the roles they play at home and other places

2.) Once you become a senior all the things you expect to change or to feel seem anticlimactic. You assume things are going to be great but they aren't.

3.) School is just a way to
a: train kids to fallow rules
b: teach kids get used to the hierarchy of society
c: keep kids set on auto-pilot

Part B
School keeps kids set on autopilot. In an automatic state so they won't have to think about real things. They are in a closed environment for a majority of their days and doing repetitive things so they are just reacting rather than processing things and coming to their own conclusions. Being in school keeps kids sheltered and unaware.

This prepares us for being unaware adults. School teaches us habits that we will carry into our adult lives subconsciously. If we are trained to think a certain way or to react to certain situations in a specific way then we will relate that to similar situations and try to handle them in the same sort of way. If we are trained to look for one solution to a problem, we will take that mentality into adulthood.

Cool Project Analysis

While making this project the original group grew but the real people in the group wrote and planned and organized how all these people would fit into a decent project and how we could organize all of our ideas into one big project. Unfortunately the entire group was never in the same place at the same time so Amanda, Amber Cindy Jenise and I worked on this video. My role in this project was the director (with Jenise). We originally had three seperate ideas and came up with one big video with three seperate parts and messages. sence our group deflated we did what we could with who we had. We wrote down our ideas and linked them through the main characters in each section of the video.

Our project was a parody of lil mama's music video for her song "Lip gloss". While her role was that of your basic "cool" girl, our main characters were not cool. The Nerds in our video went around converting kids striving to be cool into being uncool. Our video not only made fun of lil mamas idea of artificial cool but it made fun of the whole idea of changing ones self to be viewed as cool. In a way by dressing like nerds we were showing another trend which was becoming a new version of cool because people were conforming into being that way. Influencing people to once again aim to be this new accepted version of cool.

I think making art is cool. Probably because it is cool to think art is cool. Art is initially a way of showing yourself or your ideas to other people and maybe manipulating them into feeling the same way. Making art is the same as picking out certain clothes, applying a certain style of makeup and doing your hair a specific way. It is presenting an image that you call your own and portraying thoughts you believe are you thought of yourself.