In all honesty, when I first heard of the mashup I waved it by as if it was the easiest assignment I had ever seen; but I had no idea of what was to come. I originally began working on the assignment in a group with two of my friends, Emily and Sebas, and we had the notion that if we took a bunch of video clips and stuck them together it would create something meaningful on the topic of individualism. But things began to change. Bombings at the Boston Marathon occurred and just a few days later I would be heading to Boston for college visits with a program hosted by my religious community. But I wasn't heading there with family, I was going there with a few teens, who like myself were irresponsible, immature, and young.
I had promised my group that I would stay in touch while I was there and work on whatever I could, on my plane ride there I scoped out a few passages in Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte (I later had to quit the group due to communication issues and lack of time). But in my quest for these passages my brain quickly made the realization that one could not be an individual without breaking the status quo or the so called "norm" of society. And how was Jane, the main character, individualistic and unique? She broke the norm, the broke the status quo. I dug deeper into that until in dawned upon my that I also had a ton of chemistry to finish by the time I got back, plus my head was hurting as my brain quickly skipped the topic of status quo and realized that feminism was the definition of one of the huge status quos Jane broke. My calculator crunched some numbers and my sore hands wrote their answers down upon a piece of paper, while my mind continuously fret yet was eager for the adventure ahead of me - I was living through history and getting a unique perspective on it; I was a Muslim teenage girl (people who were seen as suspicious yet innocent because of age) living through a rare event in Boston which terrorized people across the country.
The rest of that Thursday was bustling, getting off a flight, meeting counselors, meeting my room mates, and the kids in my day group. You may be asking yourself, "What does this have to do with the mashup?" Well, this trip gave me new viewpoints and perspectives in my own life and taught me more about myself, which I found to reflect into my mashup. Throughout the trip, due to a lockdown and packed schedules I was not able to touch my book again until the flight back in which I was more focused on studying for a few tests I would have to make up the next day. Monday night was when I was able to revisit the topic with a fresh mind and reinvigorated perspective.
For the longest time I was focused on the whole individualism and status quo perspective, which I decided I would relate back to feminism. And I realized I was spending way too much time on the topic, and I still needed to get the project done. I began fishing out some quotes which fit this vague topic, and realized that I must once more change my topic again. I personally felt that the status quo Jane was going the most against wasn't the expectation of a female with a vacuum cleaner in one hand and a sandwich in another. No, it was a class expectation. throughout the book there seemed to be a clear distinction in how the poor acted and how the rich acted. From this my mind jumped to the topic of love because of a TED video by Helen Fisher on reptilian love. It explained how reptilian love existed and that love most often occurred between people of similar class and race. The love affair between Jane and Mr. Rochester in the book was not based on social/economic status and rather it was purely love, and that is what got me thinking.
I then began to question myself, "What role does feminism have in love?" if it is all in terms of equality for the sexes, how does that change relationships and "love" in general? This led me back to the status quo idea of how feminism breaks the status quo of relationships in the 1840s which led me to the poem Bonsai Tree which we read in English class. The following is a list of a few connections I created with the poem and the book.
-Jane is expected to be neat and trimmed, that's why she's sent to Lowood
- Helen Burns is being picked on for her inefficiencies
- Mrs. Reed asks for general/un-established behaviors and polies within her home
- Rochester is attempting to speak to Jane as an equal
My topic once more changed again as my mind quickly grasped the notion after re-reading a few passages that it wasn't about love at all! Bronte was trying to get across the set of informal yet enforced "rules of society" and a girl who didn't exactly defy them yet was breaking them. I was back to status quo.
People within the book were expected to stick to the norm of their class, but in King Lear by William Shakespeare, a "Wheel of fortune" was discussed in which the status quo revolutionizes and norms can change. In Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, the status quo for the Congolese was that they were "Savages", and in Orlando by Virginia Woolf, Orlando was expected to stick to the norm of her sex. Plato's Cave Allegory helped to put it all into perspective by showing how these social norms established by society bound and chain individual till their death.
But I decided in the end to stick with individualism. I realized that contrary to what I had believed before, individualism was necessary to break the status quo: By staying true to yourself and withholding your morals and persevering, one can break the status quo and social norms, and that is exactly what Jane did. This idea of perseverance breaking the status quo was highly linked back to my trip. My counselor had talked of how he had been bullied in school for being dubbed as "stupid" but he stayed up all night studying for tests and persevered through their taunting and went to Columbia University. The norms people had set up for him were broken through his act of perseverance which was similar to Jane's.
The movie, Forrest Gump reminded me of this topic as he said, "Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're gonna get." No one chooses to be born into their norm, but it is a choice if you want to get out of it or not.
The compiling and synthesizing for me were fairly easy in comparison to the hunt for a topic. While searching for topics I had viewed a variety of sources and my mind was already beginning to see how to piece them together. I remember Jane talking about how the face of your loved one seems to be beautiful even if it is not, and related it back to how King Lear said that his eyes had seemed to see things that weren't real. How love an be a lie but yet you struggle through with it. Perseverance marks the beginning and the ending of every journey.
I've realized over time that my brain is very indecisive when it comes time to make a decision, it is not very impulsive but it is logical. This surprises me because when it comes to other things such as shopping, I am quick to say no so I can save money. I like to list the pros and cons of each idea and imagining future situations before pulling through with them. Though it took a lot of time I realized that it was for the better, it allowed me to chose the best possible topic for myself.
What I like about my thinking though is that my brain is quick to make connections, and someone once told me that all learning is, is your brain making connections to everything around you and within you. these connections allowed me to infuse my trip into the mashup , as well as my world views and personal experiences as I've said before.
Next time I do a project like this I wish I had more time to work on it (after I returned I became very sick so my thoughts were a bit hazy), and to perfect and polish my mashup. Also having another person to work with would be nice so as to get as many perspectives in on the topic as the limits possibly allowed to allow myself to learn better as well as completely fulfill the topic. But all in all I learned more about the topic and the abilities of the human mind so I feel quite accomplished.
I had promised my group that I would stay in touch while I was there and work on whatever I could, on my plane ride there I scoped out a few passages in Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte (I later had to quit the group due to communication issues and lack of time). But in my quest for these passages my brain quickly made the realization that one could not be an individual without breaking the status quo or the so called "norm" of society. And how was Jane, the main character, individualistic and unique? She broke the norm, the broke the status quo. I dug deeper into that until in dawned upon my that I also had a ton of chemistry to finish by the time I got back, plus my head was hurting as my brain quickly skipped the topic of status quo and realized that feminism was the definition of one of the huge status quos Jane broke. My calculator crunched some numbers and my sore hands wrote their answers down upon a piece of paper, while my mind continuously fret yet was eager for the adventure ahead of me - I was living through history and getting a unique perspective on it; I was a Muslim teenage girl (people who were seen as suspicious yet innocent because of age) living through a rare event in Boston which terrorized people across the country.
The rest of that Thursday was bustling, getting off a flight, meeting counselors, meeting my room mates, and the kids in my day group. You may be asking yourself, "What does this have to do with the mashup?" Well, this trip gave me new viewpoints and perspectives in my own life and taught me more about myself, which I found to reflect into my mashup. Throughout the trip, due to a lockdown and packed schedules I was not able to touch my book again until the flight back in which I was more focused on studying for a few tests I would have to make up the next day. Monday night was when I was able to revisit the topic with a fresh mind and reinvigorated perspective.
For the longest time I was focused on the whole individualism and status quo perspective, which I decided I would relate back to feminism. And I realized I was spending way too much time on the topic, and I still needed to get the project done. I began fishing out some quotes which fit this vague topic, and realized that I must once more change my topic again. I personally felt that the status quo Jane was going the most against wasn't the expectation of a female with a vacuum cleaner in one hand and a sandwich in another. No, it was a class expectation. throughout the book there seemed to be a clear distinction in how the poor acted and how the rich acted. From this my mind jumped to the topic of love because of a TED video by Helen Fisher on reptilian love. It explained how reptilian love existed and that love most often occurred between people of similar class and race. The love affair between Jane and Mr. Rochester in the book was not based on social/economic status and rather it was purely love, and that is what got me thinking.
I then began to question myself, "What role does feminism have in love?" if it is all in terms of equality for the sexes, how does that change relationships and "love" in general? This led me back to the status quo idea of how feminism breaks the status quo of relationships in the 1840s which led me to the poem Bonsai Tree which we read in English class. The following is a list of a few connections I created with the poem and the book.
-Jane is expected to be neat and trimmed, that's why she's sent to Lowood
- Helen Burns is being picked on for her inefficiencies
- Mrs. Reed asks for general/un-established behaviors and polies within her home
- Rochester is attempting to speak to Jane as an equal
My topic once more changed again as my mind quickly grasped the notion after re-reading a few passages that it wasn't about love at all! Bronte was trying to get across the set of informal yet enforced "rules of society" and a girl who didn't exactly defy them yet was breaking them. I was back to status quo.
People within the book were expected to stick to the norm of their class, but in King Lear by William Shakespeare, a "Wheel of fortune" was discussed in which the status quo revolutionizes and norms can change. In Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, the status quo for the Congolese was that they were "Savages", and in Orlando by Virginia Woolf, Orlando was expected to stick to the norm of her sex. Plato's Cave Allegory helped to put it all into perspective by showing how these social norms established by society bound and chain individual till their death.
But I decided in the end to stick with individualism. I realized that contrary to what I had believed before, individualism was necessary to break the status quo: By staying true to yourself and withholding your morals and persevering, one can break the status quo and social norms, and that is exactly what Jane did. This idea of perseverance breaking the status quo was highly linked back to my trip. My counselor had talked of how he had been bullied in school for being dubbed as "stupid" but he stayed up all night studying for tests and persevered through their taunting and went to Columbia University. The norms people had set up for him were broken through his act of perseverance which was similar to Jane's.
The movie, Forrest Gump reminded me of this topic as he said, "Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're gonna get." No one chooses to be born into their norm, but it is a choice if you want to get out of it or not.
The compiling and synthesizing for me were fairly easy in comparison to the hunt for a topic. While searching for topics I had viewed a variety of sources and my mind was already beginning to see how to piece them together. I remember Jane talking about how the face of your loved one seems to be beautiful even if it is not, and related it back to how King Lear said that his eyes had seemed to see things that weren't real. How love an be a lie but yet you struggle through with it. Perseverance marks the beginning and the ending of every journey.
I've realized over time that my brain is very indecisive when it comes time to make a decision, it is not very impulsive but it is logical. This surprises me because when it comes to other things such as shopping, I am quick to say no so I can save money. I like to list the pros and cons of each idea and imagining future situations before pulling through with them. Though it took a lot of time I realized that it was for the better, it allowed me to chose the best possible topic for myself.
What I like about my thinking though is that my brain is quick to make connections, and someone once told me that all learning is, is your brain making connections to everything around you and within you. these connections allowed me to infuse my trip into the mashup , as well as my world views and personal experiences as I've said before.
Next time I do a project like this I wish I had more time to work on it (after I returned I became very sick so my thoughts were a bit hazy), and to perfect and polish my mashup. Also having another person to work with would be nice so as to get as many perspectives in on the topic as the limits possibly allowed to allow myself to learn better as well as completely fulfill the topic. But all in all I learned more about the topic and the abilities of the human mind so I feel quite accomplished.
