RANT: Confusion

Hey everybody! Its been awhile huh? Okay so as the title of this post suggests, I'm really quite lost with my individual pursuit. I don't really know what my passion is, and what I want to further pursue because, in all honesty, I want to learn about everything! Here I am still only fourteen years old, and I am being asked to choose something that I could potentially spend the rest of my life doing. I know for some people its really easy, and they know exactly what they want to do with their life, but I am not one of those people.

My original topic of my Arangetram is something that I am pursuing outside of school, and much later than I should have, I realized that I just couldn't spend everyday of the next nine months focusing on something that I already focus on so much outside of school. Then I tried to morph this topic into something more research-able, which really turned out to be a bust, and something my heart just wasn't into. And after all that, I tried to narrow down what I could potentially focus on for this project, I started researching both the topics mentioned in my previous post, but still some how I manage to get interested in reading a newspaper article about current events, listening to interviews from world leaders and activists learning about everything but my main topic. My biggest problem is, is I can't just focus on one thing at a time, I don't know how I can span one topic over such a long period of time. I can't figure out what to peg myself on and move forward with. However, with the negligence of my blog, I have been devoting my full attention to our current group projects. With both projects we have accomplished a lot.

Now though, what I think I am going to do is try just making this blog about everything and anything. Maybe a review on a book I just read, an interesting lesson in school today, my point-of-view on current events, problems I notice around school, things that annoy me about school and so on and so forth. I'm going to really commit to this randomness for about two weeks and see if this works for me, so if you have stuck with me this long, let me know if this is interesting, if this qualifies for a 'individual pursuit?' (Mrs.Sheehan, Mr.Leathem your feedback would be awesome:) Thanks for reading this jumbled up mess of a rant/confessionish-thing. Later alligator!

Nids (:

Change

Hey everybody! So if you have been watching my blog for some time, then you know it is pretty much dead, still, dormant, whatever you want to call it. In all honesty, its because I think that my Individual Pursuit is dead. I have been feeling incredibly lost, and uninterested by my topic. I believe this is because my original choice was something rather than to "research," was something that had to be learned and I already knew so much about it. So I tryed to develop that topic into something that I could keep along the same lines, but be able to research, and still it didn't hold my attention. I have put together a list of two things that I seemingly enjoy and would like to learn more about. I will create three posts about each topic and hopefully get some feedback (Mrs. Sheehan, and Mr, Leathem) from the public about what you feel is the most successfully excuted in terms of the posts I put up and the content. I'm giving myself two weeks to get my IP (Individual Pursuit) in order. I will post the list below:

1) Computer Programing-I have been experimenting with this the last year, year and a half, and it is one of my favorite random passtimes.

2) Art-I have always enjoyed paining as a hobby and would like to learn more about the technical aspect of it.

What are your thoughts on the topics themselves? Expect the first posts for each topic within the next three days. Thanks everyone who has bared with this project!

-Nids 

New Quarter, New Start.

Hey everybody! And those of you in this class with me....Congrats on making it through the first quarter! Okay with a new quarter, I want to consider it a new start. First things first, this time around I am going to be more attentive to my blog and am going to make it a goal to post 2-3 times a week. So in order to accomplish everything I want by the end of the quarter....here is five points that I plan to act on.

1) I want to specify my topic. It is currently extremely vague and constantly shifting. I want to have it narrowed down by Midterm.

2) I want to have three-four experts that I can contact on a regular basis for help in my research. Making it to the top always starts with connections!

3) I would like to have at least one expert that I can meet with personally in order to gain some field research.

4) Much like  our group projects, I want to have a official project of sorts to work towards in order to display my progress in my topic. I feel like this is the best way for me to keep attentive to my topic.

5) I want to start documenting on this blog various ways my topic can be applied to the real world. This is will be one posts each week, if not every other week.

So what do you think? Comment below if you have anything you think I should add, anything I should change, etc. See ya all later!

-Nids

Outliers: Reflection

So today we started discussing the content found in Outliers. To start with, the one think that hit me the most was the chapter regarding 10,000 hours, which is essentially 417 total days of doing something in order to be good at it! That means you would need to do your "thing" for over a year non-stop in order for it to truly be your expertise. What I wonder is, what can a person really do in their life up to this point for so long? As I thought I about this, we started discussing how how the situation you were born into can affect what you do with your life. That got me thinking that kids like us in a public school might spent a good chunk of our lives doing something like music or dance, while those who live in poor conditions might spent all their time finding ways to help provide for a families. This was then again brought to the attention of the class about the chapter called Marita's Bargain, this showed that even in a bad situation, its do-able to reach the standard of education us public school goer's achieve. From there, I thought about how though Marita made use of the opportunity to further her education she had the stroke of luck to get the chance at that opportunity. This then kind of tied back to Gladwell's thought that some of peoples success is sheer, dumb luck. I think if there is one think I really pulled from this book its that every element of our success is tied to the events leading up to it, the random chance, the hours of work, and the situation we start in all play into that timeline.

Hopefully I will add more to this post once I get my thoughts fully sorted!
Good Night everybody!
-Nids

Thinking....

Hey everyone! Here is post #2 of this week! I think I can say I'm doing pretty well so far!

So this post is going to be a bit spontaneous. Anywhooo.....there I was doing AP Human Geography notes for Chapter 2: Population. I was taking notes on overpopulation, which occurs especially in Asia, and it made me wonder if overpopulation had anything to do with the cultural aspects of these overpopulated countries. Such as, when we were discussing this topic in class we mentioned that in Chinese culture, males are more valuable than females. So in order to control overpopulation the Chinese government will essentially kill off female babies verse male because of the value they have in Chinese society!

Interesting Right?

Well I just thought this was super interesting, what do you all think?

Good Night xx

-Nids

Reflection Time!!

Alrighty, so here is post # 1 for this week. I am currrently reading a book called Prehistoric Art and Art of the Ancient Near East by Ariane Ruskin. Before I dive into it and all its amazing-ness, I wanted to do a little "before" look.

Based on the cover of the book I think it has a bit more to with Prehistoric art. Now that I think about my topic on a wider plain I think I will be focusing alot on general cultures. Right now I have been utterly captivated by Egyptian art and traditions. The traditions of really drawn me in. Okay so nnow I am going to start reading and stop once I have ten interesting facts.

• Reading just the forward, it makes me think about just how incredible it really is, the art that was made during the ages with no technology, the detail and the realisticness done with the most basic of tools. 
• WOWZA! The first paragraph of this brings it to my attention that when we think of stone age, we think of hairy men in animal skins and wooden clubs. These prehistoric humans hunted for food, but the real point we miss is they were artists!! They could nothing more but hunt and well, draw. That makes me wonder....did they spent 10,000 drawing on cave walls, contemplating what they were going create next. I mean some of the world's most treasured art comes from the walls of the earth, in comparision humans today don't hold a candle to what thhey had created back then.
• When I sorta converted my topic ro "Cultural and Ethic Art," I reaally had no knowledge on what 'cultural art' really consisted of. This book offers a good definition for "culture," meaning the manner of making, decorating, ans using artifacts which appears to have been developed by a group and spread throughout a specific area.

Okay, so I have read all of two pages and I have a bagillion and one thoughts running through my head. I think I have aa good chunck going on here, maybe this week will be two reflection/udates/factual information instead of just one?

Well home the rest of yourr day is chipper and dandy and full of candy. (Don't bother wondering, yes I'm freaky-deaking crazyyyyy)

-Nids

Update (:

Hey everybody(: How's it going out there in cyber space? Okay I'm not going to bore you with my lame excuses about why I have been away, but make aa new mission. Hopefully from here on out, I will be posting 3 times a week. One will be new information, another will be a reflection/update and the last will be just about anything!! Lets hope this all goes well!

*crosses fingers*
-Nids