Stuck on "Stuckness"

Last week in class, we worked through an excerpt from Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance in an effort to more fully engage with the Quality part of the Quality Project. I readily admit that it's taken me several years of rereading those three pages to really start to internalize and practice living and working with Quality, being at the "leading edge of experience", the "zero moment of consciousness". What about you?

Spend a paragraph and comment on this post? What did you think about the excerpt? Did it make sense to you? What did you take away? How did you apply the ideas to your work on your own project? Or other parts of your life? Be specific.

Quintessence

As you know, most of our class time is set aside for independent work on your Quality Project. But each cycle, we spend one class reading, thinking, and talking about an element of Quality that, when applied to your own project, will lead to more depth and breadth of thinking and work. Last cycle, we talked about our responsibility to others. This cycle, we're talking about Quintessence.

Your task:

1. Follow along with the examples I show you from this page. Look at more on your own.

2. Visit soph student blogs of the past (links from our class blog) and check out even more Quintessence posts.

3. Choose an item, find a picture (cite it in your post), and describe the particular qualities of your item that give it its Quintessence.

4. Share


My example:

Moleskine: The Quintessential Notebook
As I know you know, with prolonged use, most notebooks end up in shambles. There's no way you'd be able to revisit and reflect on thinking and writing from several years past. That's not to mention that danger of puncture wounds from the wily spiraled metal or the choking hazard from those little flakes of paper left after extracting a page. With the Moleskine, none of these risks exist. Bullet-proof binding keeps your notes intact for a lifetime, why else would great writers like Ernest Hemingway trust Moleskine with their poetry, prose, and innovative ideas. With the Moleskine, a scholar is not limited by horizontal lines. If you have an artist's inclination, get blank pages, or, if you're like me and think in all directions, get the graphed pages, begging for brainstorms, lists, diagrams, sketches, and well-crafted sentences. Finally, perfectly weighted paper holds the ink and/or lead of any pen or pencil without letting your ideas bleed.

Creativity, Compassion, and You

So, you should be well on your way with your Quality Projects. As I've said several times in class, you're all going to be moving in different directions, but each cycle I'm to have a big question that relates to developing your project and includes something to read together.

This cycle, I gave you Zell Kravinsky's "The Gift," which, I think, we could make a lot of comparisons to Kristof's NYTimes piece from last cycle. Let's do that. But that's a pretty easy comparison. I want to crank it up a notch: here's something to watch.

After viewing the talk, comment on this post with:

1. In your own words, what is Zell's thesis, and what is Sir Ken's thesis?
2. How and where do they connect and intersect?
3. What are the applications to your project?

Two Birds With One Essay: Final Poisonwood Assignment

I don't like to think of a final assignment/test/project/paper as an ending. I like to think of it as a bridge or transition to whatever's next, as well as an opportunity to deepen and extend our thinking about the big questions/ideas/concepts. So you're going to plan and compose and SAT-style essay (timed and about an ethical question), based on The Poisonwood Bible and a short, NYTimes Op-Ed piece that I think you'll find interesting. Here are the details:

* Plan and compose an SAT-style essay comparing PWB and "What Could You Live Without," in the context of our essential questions: what kind of world is this and how should we live in it?
o If you need a more direct prompt, here it is:
+ With privilege comes great responsibility to self and others. Is it more effective and ethical to try to change others or to try to change yourself? What are the implications and effects of both? Use specific examples/quotes from both PWB and "WCYLW."

This is timed, so use whatever works most efficiently for you: Paper, word-processor, blog. The blog would be nice because then we can all read each others essays. Also, keep in mind that you're writing on command for time, I do not have an expectation of perfection.

Finding a Reference Point for Quality

Today in class I've given you some time to look at past Quality Projects. The idea is not that you should do something exactly like these projects or that these projects represent perfection. Instead, I want you to think about and discuss where and why parts of these project represent Quality.

Your assignment:

1. Look through as many projects as you can.
2. Add a comment to this post describing a project and how you think an element of it represents Quality.
3. Respond to other comments.

Quality with a Capitol "Q"

Here we are: fourth quarter, almos' pau with The Poisonwood Bible. And we all know what's next: The Quality Project!

In this post, I want to do two things:

1. Give you an overview of how I'm going to schedule class activities, work days, supplemental readings, individual conferences for the rest of the quarter. This might sound logistical, but what I'm really talking about here is not a schedule of days but a purposeful and exploratory learning process.

Process:
Cycle 22: Passions and Proposals
Cycle 23: Another Brick in the Wall - Lit Reviews and Ethical Questions
Cycle 24: Universal Standards and Quality
Cycle 25: Meat and Potatoes of Project
Cycle 26: Meat and Potatoes of Project
Cycle 27: Sharing and Celebrating Successes
Cycle 28: Reflections


2. Provide you a framework for your project proposal, really it's a framework for the entire project. Really, it's a framework for all academic/scholarly inquiry and work. Really, it's a framework for anything you intend to do well in life.

-Guiding questions
-What will you read?
-What will you write?
-What will you do?
-How will you share?
-Who will you serve?
-What do you hope to learn?
-What do you hope to contribute?

Poison Onion

...because onions have multiple layers and so do characters, perspectives, ideas, and questions. Today, you're working on a cycle paper that explores the way characters in The Poisonwood Bible answer our essential questions:

What kind of world is this?

How should I live in it?

The next layer of this exploration is to identify the assumptions underlying these particular perspectives and your own agreement/disagreement with these perspectives. See Moodle for the specifics of the cycle paper.

Post to your blog

Due today!