What’s most important for you in the essay you’re writing?

The ability to inform readers of new perspectives and give them a wider scope
about a topic. I think it’s given me more to think about in terms of my
relationship with the films I watch. Looking at how solitude, isolation,
independence, and loneliness differ in important ways, for the individuals and
the worlds in which those individuals live.

The connection between “no named” individuals and criminals. How losing one’s
name makes one a suspect or a pariah; how deeply our names are tied in with our
humanity and individuality. What are the motives for the authorities to
dehumanize certain people? How does authority sometimes blow out of
proportion “ordinary mistakes”? What’s the purpose of such punishments and
penalties? One purpose—a sinister one—is to somehow preserve the natural
imbalance of a particular system, so that the advantaged stay on top. Maintaining
the status quo at a terrible human cost. I’m Not the God of Medicine, a film about
doctors exporting medication illegally, weighs the ethics of laws punishing
smugglers who are trying to get affordable medicine for their patients.

There’s something I recognize about Andre Aciman—how am I almost an exile?

How does he make me think of exile in a metaphorical way: for example, what
happens when one feels like an exile not toward their country, but to language
they speak?
The empty space theory that Cole talks about haunts me. Excluding humans from
photographic might cause us to feel more empathy. Overexposure to graphic
violence not only desensitizes us; maybe it causes us to forget that complex
human lives are involved in these objects and places, whether they are pictured or
not. The daily order and balance of the domestic can get overturned in an instant;
there’s something eerie and troubling about seeing the disastrous and the
domestic exist alongside each other, as though this is perfectly normal. It reminds
me how essential it is to live in the moment. Why is it important to leave a
likeness behind? Not a photograph, but a portrait or likeness—what’s so
important about moving past that copying distance and collaborating? Maybe we
don’t need to be painters or photographers to do this; we can convey this not only
through our objects, but through actions that show our alertness, our attention,
our collaboration with other human beings to share in, and survive, whatever the
moment brings.

10/2 Reflection on essay 1

I haven’t written anything serious essay since the application season so my writing
skill has become rusty. But the result of my first essay turns out to be a huge surprise.
One of my biggest problem of writing essay, as I’ve acknowledged for a long time, is that
I have trouble visualize or externalized my thoughts and arrange them into a logical and
coherent writing piece. I see some similar pattern in this essay too, but the symptom is
less severe. Looking back at my essay, I could see the embedded logic in it. However, I
did not feel that way while writing it. Don’t know why. Good thing I saw in this process
is that I’m capable of brainstorming one idea and branching it out to other ideology I’ve
heard or seen in my life.
 One thing I might find hard to let go is the essence of my essay, existentialism. It’s
a really fascinating and vague ideology. Sometimes why I don’t want to get into thinking
about this is because I might over-think and it definitely drain my energy and make me
somewhat cynical. I would sometimes look at things in a rather detached fashion, and it
takes efforts to bring my mindset back to the normal life.

11/13 Reflection on Progression #2

One mistake I made during this progression is that I haven’t paid enough attention
on representation, which is the whole point of the essay. I feel like i would easily wander
off topic and write about something else instead of focusing on the main text. I don’t
know why but I feel like maybe it’s because the time I spent on this essay is fractioned.
For example, I might spend two hours a day for four days instead of eight hours a day.
And that discontinuity in writing and thinking hindered me back a lot. What I feel like I
did better this time is how I connect different texts and thoughts together. Still, sometimes
the connection and brainstormed went way too far to go back to the main source. Also, i
might have wrote too much about personal experience instead of really analyzing
the text and expand it to something bigger (social impact for example).

PROMPT:

Writing due today: On your laptops, please prepare a metatext letter to me of

about 250 words (a few good paragraphs) naming the activities and moments
that stood out for you from this semester, in class and in the writing you did on
your own. Some questions to consider: what aspects of writing craft, inspiration,
thinking, analyzing evidence, peer-response and argument-making will you
continue to use, as you go forward in your academic and artistic lives? What was
more difficult than you imagined, or easier? What breakthroughs and takeaways
seem important to recognize now?

METATEXTS:

At the beginning of the semester I used to try to explain everything in any way
possible: throughout the course I learned the importance of letting something
implicit and triggering for the reader. If I were to be asked “what is an essay?”
now, I wouldn’t necessarily have the right answer, but for sure a clearer idea to
propose: as I was getting inspired by the essays I read throughout the semester,
grasping any possible good concept, puzzle or idea, I realized how I should have
done the same for further readers of my own essays. I discovered a certain
circularity in the exercises I was asked to do: it is a process that never ends,
because as I was inspired by Jeanette Winterson, John Berger or Woody Allen to
write a text, someone else, one day, might find themselves triggered by what I
wrote, and so on. The circle never ends!
Also, I learned how to use vivid images to support the abstract ideas I have in my
mind: an essay necessarily comes from a thought or a reflection that, initially,
does not have a shape, and trying to find one is a further stimulation to get
clearer and more solid.
*
I think I found some really strong opinions as well as strong ways to represent
those opinions while writing my essay. To hold on to a specific subject and to get
deeper and deeper till the connections with other sources create many different
images and noticeable appearances made me feel powerful as an essayist. The
freedom I had within the limitations of expectations actually helped me control
where my essay is going and motivated me to be more creative. This progression
empowered me as a writer as well as a thinker. The ideas and the conclusions I
gained within this progression are new, unfamiliar yet eternal. I like metaphors
and I like connecting ideas, these are some practices I will most definitely will
continue to use. Although I feel like I did a good job connecting the ideas, I
struggled with writing what’s in my mind in a good state of clarity and so failed in
connecting some sentences and representing some of my major opinions. I
believe this progression, as well as the first one, transformed me. I started to ask
questions to myself and correct myself which, I suppose, is a great development.
I’m looking forward to the changes third progression will bring with it.

*
Without a doubt a highlight of the class was the field trip to Christopher Park.
Being there to scrutinize the artwork in person, as well as being able to talk about
it with everyone else made for an insightful experience, especially because they
picked up on a lot of things I didn’t notice about the statue. Other moments that
stood out were the peer reviews of my essay, because they gave me new artworks
and points to use.
I definitely learned the value of peer response this semester through the
activities we did. Using evidence and sources has a lot more depth to it than I first
thought, especially how some seemingly unrelated sources can be used to provide
an extra layer to your essay and give the readers something else to think about. It
was much harder to go really deep into my sources than I thought, since there’s a
huge amount of ways to use a source.
Examining an essay from different angles and seeing what works can be
really surprising and helpful. These new angles could help me develop my
argument in a better way, add more depth to my essay, or even help me come up
with a new thesis. I think it’s very hard to create an inductive essay, especially
since most essays I’ve had to write before this class were deductive, but I have a
general idea of what to do now.

7 May 2017

This class was very special and there were many things that remained and I think
will remain with me for a very long time… I think that the most interesting and
inspiring activity was probably the field trip to Christopher Park, because it was
so unusual to go out of the classroom and to actually have the experience of
observing an artwork in real life instead of just talking or writing about it, and
because it is such a beautiful place and when we got there it was exactly the
perfect time of the day - it was almost the sunset - and the sun was perfectly
perpendicular to the center of the park. Another special moment was when we
read the poem Torso of Apollo by Rilke - I thought that the visual language and
the word choice were beautiful. Finally… I’m not sure whether I should include
this or not because technically it wasn’t a real activity, but there was a moment
during one of our classes when you showed us some color palettes from movies.
I’m not sure about how that relates to writing but it was just wonderful to see
those movie frames “deconstructed” in their fundamental colors. I liked the way
that we used a variety of different sources to search for things like the “structure”
of our essays or just for inspiration. I also remember when you told me to use the
different critical sources in my essay in a way that actually makes them
communicate with each other; you used the similitude of dancing, and later on,
while I was thinking about it, I thought about the concept of polyphony and the
way that those different “critical voices” can come together in my writing like
different voices or instruments in a musical piece… that really made me consider
the process of writing an essay from a different perspective. I wish that the
process of writing itself had been less painful at times… there were moments in
which I just felt lost and it took me a while to understand the direction that I
wanted to take.
There is one last thing, even though it’s not from this semester but from the fall:
the day that you showed us the installation Follow the leaders by Isaac Cordal;
even now I keep thinking about it. It makes me think of the Council of Ministers
of the European Union.