328. Two Modifications of Opinions Article "The Living Human Guinea Pig of University Bureaucracy"

Hark! I donate my brain to society!

PDF file for second round of The Living Human Guinea Pig of University Bureaucracy:
http://stokastika2.googlepages.com/livinghumanguineapigunivbureaucracy2.pdf
I was very thankful that Hector Javkin was willing to work with me very, very late on a Thursday night to help me chop a 1200 word article into a 687 word article. He even forced me to make the edits that very night on his computer. Wow, Hector knows me well! He knows I would have procrastinated with the edits otherwise!

PDF files for the third round of The Living Human Guinea Pig of University Bureaucracy:
http://stokastika2.googlepages.com/livinghumanguineapigunivbureaucracy3.pdf
This version manifested itself last night, though I had a conversation with Nicki Arnold, the lead Opinions Editor of the paper, on Sunday night. She seemed to be very nice and upfront. She said the article was suitable for the Nexus, but that I cannot submit pieces with bold and itallics all over it. If I want to emphasize an idea, it will have to be in caps format. It seems very important to get to know the editors of the newspaper, so you know what their standards are, and what specifically they need. I am thankful for Dr. Nancy Baron for providing scientists advice on how to write Op Eds.

I find it absolutely tragically beneficial to see my mind convert over time. From last year to this year, I have transformed my value from private journal writing for self sanity to public blogging and making dramatic attempts to make my writing and artwork accessible to other people. Not that my public face is completely unfiltered. I still keep my deep dark thoughts (not that I have too many of them) to myself. I have been writing for myself and writing alone for so long that I am tired to self-amusement, and that I need to perform services to society as a writer. Hence, I have been submitting opinions columns to the Daily Nexus, Spectrum, Ecotone (literary magazine on re-imagining place, based in the East Coast), the Santa Barbara Independent. I will get rejected several times, but thankfully blogs are default guarantees of self publication. I will always have a fall-back in terms of where to place my writing.

The institutional channeling of writing is difficult and takes time. You have to develop relationships with people. Relationships with very specific people, like the editors of the newspaper. They are being chronically bombarded with emails, so it is very important to present yourself in person, to make the experience much more human. Especially since I have no institutional credentials on the tail end of my name. I am very happy thus far to have had a friendly contact with The Daily Nexus opinions editor and it is muy essential that I sign up for Daily Nexus training (again, sigh) such that I can start writing some pieces for the paper. But I think this quarter I will stick to Op Eds. After all, I am a very opinionated person! Ha ha!

313. Opinions Piece: The Living Human Guinea Pig of University Bureaucracy

Living Human Guinea Pig of University Bureaucracy. Page 1.
Living Human Guinea Pig of University Bureaucracy. Page 2.
Living Human Guinea Pig of University Bureaucracy. Page 3.

PDF File for the Article: http://stokastika2.googlepages.com/livinghumanguineapigunivbureaucracy.pdf.

I don't exactly know how this piece came out, but essentially, I had a wonderful conversation with Becca, a new grad student of Drs. Steve Gaines and Bob Warner, and afterwards, I was finally inspired to write this comical adventure of my transferring graduate schools and my vow to stay and finish at UC Santa Barbara. That night, I also had the opportunity that night to share the piece with Hector Javkin, who advised me to further elaborate the guinea pig analogy :-).

I am now starting to get into a habit of sending articles to (1) local newspapers and magazines (2) as well as a small group of family and friends.

153. Blue Horizons Continued: Posting of "World's Easiest Catch: Zen of Rock Crab" from Youtube

I have two versions of the rock crab film because one version has better audio and higher resolution than the second one (which was unfortunately the first video I uploaded to Youtube).

I guess this is an anti-climactic moment in my life. A climax-anti-climax moment. Two parallel universes in one real moment. At that time, upon completion of the rock crab film, my mind was in a state of desperation. It saw no future. It lived and thrived for the moment and did things without analyzing consequences. It was living in this moment until August 24, 2007. And then? I finished the rock crab film. Maybe you'd think this would be the end, but it was only the beginning. This is when I slowly started to see a longer-term future. This is when I started to have hope in the university and have sincere desire to return. Through the process of film, my entire mind is engaged and exercised. I no longer feel trapped in my mind. And to be surrounded by professors who support the systematic explorations of science communications? This would be the closest thing to my definition of "heaven."

It's funny to think that it took me so long to get to the point to post my rock crab film. So many layers of learning and writing and trial and error, just to get a decent 7.5 minute film? Well, it's worth it. Creating great films require lots of experiences and lots of writing. Period.

I am glad I reflected upon the Blue Horizons experience, for two reasons. First off, since it is the first year of the program, we students are the living human "guinea pig" crop of test subjects. What if some researcher from an education department finds value in our guinea-pigged-ness? Then this blog would have immense value. Secondly, I feel this experience is finally the "baseline" that I want to work with for the rest of my life experiences. I'm finally standing on the "right foot," or mostly so.

I want a sense of "completion" of a project, but I hardly feel that way. I still have future environmental multi-media blogs to post related to post-Blue Horizons issues, such as marketing and distribution of the student films. In addition, the last six months between now (March 2008) and the end of the Blue Horizons program (August 2007) has been like living the "Sixth Sense," in terms of how you have been living a certain life a certain way with a certain amount of knowledge and later you learn something crucially new that ultimately impacts the way how you interpret your experiences during a given amount of time. So, there's lots to write about.

Storytelling as a time-dependent multi-layer matrix. The time-dependency of experience and story-telling: your whole life is like a scientific experiment, some kind of fractal of mathematical thought. What you do today depends on what you did yesterday. What you will do tomorrow depends on what you will do today.