http://etc.usf.edu/clipart/33600/33654/nclock-01-00_33654_lg.gif
"Here's the couch, and there's the piano, and the window with the view of the tower, and oh look, there goes Lauren!"
Really, I don't know what this lobby will do without me next year. It might actually be *GASP* empty at 4 in the morning.
Oh, the horror!
ANYHOW, I've been sitting here for an hour, staring at my computer screen with my itunes on shuffle not because I didn't see the connections Siddhartha has with our course goals and P4 but because I was having a hard time figuring out where to start.
Some random persons Itunes on shuffle.
http://images.macworld.com/images/legacy/2007/02/images/content/partytime.jpg
I've decided though. Really, this should have been a no-brainer. When in doubt, what does Lauren Acosta do? BE RANDOM! So random order it is! I think the professionals call it stream of consciousness, but I'm just gonna go with random so none of the literarilly savvy people of the word who may run across this entry eat me alive for my lack of AP English Exam term knowledge.
Let's start with my favorite quote from the P4 instructions: "If you can make thorough and meaningful connections with ACADEMICS and your leadership vision you will then have more motivation and a greater sense of purpose for your college experience. If you can not make such connections you need to seriously consider dropping out at least temporarily until you can make them (P4 Instructions)."
I've written about this before, multiple times, but what it boils down to is I COMPLETELY AGREE. Well. Maybe not completely. I don't necessarily think you should drop out, but I do think you should branch out in the classes your taking, try to find your passion and transform that into a leadership vision. Kind of like Siddhartha did. He left his father, became a Samana, listened to the Buddha, became a rich merchant, then a ferryman and a father, and it was only at the end of this long road that he found his peace and leadership role. Siddhartha says that "when someone is searching... then it can easily happen that the only thing his eyes see is that for which he is searching. He is then unable to... let any thought enter his mind because he always thinks of nothing but the object of his search" (Hesse, 130). This also connects to our P4, where we're supposed to evaluate our required classes and talk about which ones seem like they would be more of an obstacle then an asset in attaining our leadership vision. I think it's important to look at each class and try to see how it relates to your vision, but some classes will relate more than others, and if you're only looking at that one "object of [your] search" (Hesse, 13), then if the class doesn't relate perfectly you might get stuck only seeing it's negative aspects. I think you should also look at a class for it's own individual merit, so you don't get disillusioned if it doesn't match up completely with your leadership vision.
Moving on to the goals for this class. The first thing I thought of was listening, since part of our immediate practical goals is learning "how to listen" (Course Goals). Siddhartha seems to put a lot of emphasis on this too, as he has to learn how to "the polyphonic song of the river" (Hesse, 125) before truly finding peace. Obviously digital literacy wasn't big in Siddhartha, but there was still that idea of finding better ways to communicate a lesson, which in this class we do by practicing "active, experiential and discovery learning" (Course Goals). I think leadership was also a big part of Siddhartha, but more in the sense of knowing when to lead and when to follow. Siddhartha was a leader to Govinda in the first part of the novel, and after Govinda left Siddhartha kept trying to lead, but eventually he had to realize that it was sort of his time to follow, and though he wasn't a follower in the sense that he did listened to everything the ferryman said without question, he did sort of adopt his lifestyle. They worked together as equals, but there had to be a point where Siddhartha was in a sense the student of Vasudeva's way of life.
https://www.instrumentalworship.com/store/images/listen_CD.jpg
What I took from Siddhartha was the value of floating. It's good to be driven, but that doesn't mean that you can't stop every once in a while and smell the begonias, because you might meet someone in that little patch of flowers you paused at that drastically and positively changes your life.
No comments:
Post a Comment