blog.shimer

The Zoo

So I was looking at The Big Picture. It was the one with the zoo pictures.

Some were sad. Some were not. And some were just ridiculously adorable.

All made me want my own zoo pictures.

So I went.

Because honestly, when the zoo is free, I don't know why I don't just treat it like a coffee shop and do my reading next to some tiger friends.

Seems calmer than my average cafe experience.

Well. I guess only the captive animals would provide quiet study time.

All the others creatures would be acting all crazy and weird...

Trying to copy all the more well-behaved creatures...

At one point I thought the zoo keepers had realized they needed to contain some of the mysteriously loose animals, since I saw one in a sort of enclosure...

But that may have just been wishful thinking. Because there were way more of them totally free.

But I guess that's what you get when you go to the zoo during late morning on a weekday.

Lots of babies.

And schools trips.

I never really got over my confusion about how the zoo people decided which animals to leave out of captivity. Because seriously. Notice the crossed arms of my roommate:

And now the crossed arms of our new bear friend:

They could have switched places. No one would have known.

I think actually my roommate and I will soon move into the zoo. Perhaps someone will feed us. And we will live long and happy lives as entertainment for hordes of small children and pregnant mothers. Yes I think that is a fine plan.

We will fit in quite well.

Roar.

Midsummer Madness

So I haven't been around in a while. Like two weeks. You may ask what I was doing. 

Well the first week I was making the costumes and set for the Shimer spring play. You may have seen pictures (if not check out Meg's entry below). This Spring we attempted an abridged version of A Midsummer Night's Dream. The second week I was doing all the stuff I couldn't do because I busy making, buying, or altering the costumes. I am mostly caught up now which is good because the last day of  classes is still May 1st, this Friday. 

Now that I have a few minutes I thought I would outline some of the neat costuming things we did for the play.

So here is the first picture

Here are the Mechanicals, all played by IIT students. Since we didn't have a period for the costumes I decided on generally grubby looking work clothes. There are a few exceptions, mainly the fantastic blue pants worn by Peter Quince, and the tailcoat we designed for Robin Starveling. Robin is played by Celeste who is sitting on the bench and wearing a black hat. Here is a secret that I think will serve me very well in future Shimer productions: if you take a regular blazer and crop the front of it, then undo the back seam and lengthen those two panels with the matching pants then suddenly you have a tailcoat! If the pants and blazer come from a thrift store this can cost less than seven dollars. Since the budget on Shimer productions tends to be kind of tight I think this will be really useful in productions to come. 

Now this is a picture of Brigid (who writes here sometimes) and a very angry Pat, as Helena and Demetrius. Obviously Demetrius is annoyed. Believe it or not these two are a couple by the end of the play. Now rather than speculating about Shakespeare and realistic relationship dynamics for healthy interactions, I would like to point something out about their costumes--though, don't they look kind of different from these two?

This is Hillary (who has also written here) player Hermia with Livio an IIT grad student acting as Lysander.

See to me, their outfits go together very well. Their clothing looks kind of refined and more mature when compared to Demetrius and Helena. In contrast Demetrius and Helena look younger, a little more rustic or pastoral.  I feel like it made the couples fit together well without making it too obvious.

Just one other thing, did you notice anything about the colors?

Colors can be really important. One of the things we didn't do was match the pairs of lovers by color. Instead the wrong lovers match each other. Lysander and Helena both have cream/white as a secondary color. And Hermia and Demetrius both have pink. So while their design and taste keep them true to each other, their colors make them traitors, which is kind of funny considering the plot of the play.

I would also like to assure everyone that we did have a set for the actual performance. Those ugly black wall dividers were draped in fabric so it was simplistic, but pretty and in keeping with the general mood of the play.

That's all for now. This week we are having a lunch to discuss what kind of theatre thing we are doing next year. I hope we end up picking things that mean I can make more tailcoats.

AH, HELL WEEK!

Ah yes, it's that time of the semester again: that glorious week wherein everyone scrambles to get together all the reading, final assessments, take home tests, essays and re-writes that need to be done by Friday.  For those who are comping (more on what that means later), that means 3:00 PM Friday.  Needless to say we're all pretty busy on this end, which means not too much blogging's going to get done.  Nor will there be any next week, since that's Writing Week and we're not allowed to work then.

However, because I love you all I thought I'd at least draw a quick doodle to illustrate the Hell Week Effect. 

To make sure you all feel my pain I shall provide a glimpse into my work load:

-2 re-writes, totaling about 3 hours of work, on Hamlet and Crime and Punishment (see comics)
-5-8 page social sciences final paper on whether or not the Bill of Rights should be revised to reflect modern thought
-3 page Natural Sciences final/take home test on major concepts in chemistry
-the usual 3-ish hours of reading (Emily Dickinson, Civil Disobedience, Marie Curie...)

All that I only have until Thursday to do it because my personal life refuses to take a break.  My fault for mixing up dates.  ALAS, I must work.  Fare well!

If we shadows have offended...

It doesn't matter, because we're doing it anyway.

Indeed, with many apologies to Shakespeare, and no undue amount of hilarity, Shimer (in collaboration with IIT's 33rd Street productions) put on a badly mutilat--er, much abbreviated performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream. All photos credited to our awesome in-house photographer Señor Timm.

Myself as Puck, harassing Lysander, who doesn't know it 'cause he's asleep.

I won't give too many details of behind-the-scenes work, because that will spoil the magic of what we did. But suffice it to say that it was a great deal of fun.  We cut out all the fairy parts (except for Puck, whom I played more as a somewhat sadistic crazy person messing with all these lovers and mechanicals), which I was worried might not work because the audience would be: "Where's Oberon and Titania?" I missed them too, but overall the play worked out very nicely. We even got into a great deal of physicality (wrestling, anyone?) and Shakespeare overall lends itself to a very minimalist staging.

Lysander and Hermia, in the first scene.

Helena shocked to hear Lysander's confession of love for her. What's Hermia now, chopped liver?

Our rude mechanicals, in the palace wood...

Demetrius trying to seduce Hermia and totally failing.

Two lovers in death--our weak and idle theme.

We had a three-night run in two different venues (because someone was kind enough to schedule an event without asking us in our theater space on Saturday), and people loved it. This was the first real bit of acting (like, with line memorization and everything) that I've done in quite a while--and had fun doing it!

Next I'm going to pitch Arcadia (Tom Stoppard; if you don't know it, you should look it up, it's only one of the most amazing plays ever) as our play for next spring. Shimer's theater program is small at the moment, but the more of y'all that come, the bigger and better productions we can put on.

Habit

I like my bicycle. A lot.

Especially when it is warmish outside. Riding a bicycle in rainy, snowy, barely-livable-because-it-is-so-cold weather? Not so fun. BUT. Having ridden in rainy, snowy, barely-livable circumstances? Makes warmish biking that much better.

Hi bike.

This is where you live.

But there's this one thing that's carried over from those it's-gross-outside months. I keep my bike indoors wherever I can. This includes when babysitting, in my apartment, and Shimer. In my apartment and where I babysit I have specific permission to do this. The Shimer building, not so much.

So when my tires started getting all gunky from the dirty snow/slush, I began carrying my beautiful bicycle through the halls trying to avoid giving someone a reason to deny me this privilege. Before it got so disgusting, I rolled my bike all over tiled indoor floors. Carried it up some steps to get into buildings maybe, but once inside my good friend just rolled along beside me until we reached our destination. Now that slushy tires aren't so much of a problem, I should stop lugging the thing all over the place.
It has wheels. Carrying is unnecessary.

But I still do. And I can't bring myself to stop. I have no idea why.

So every day I'll hoist the thing up these steps...

Into the IIT Architecture floor (where they keep artsy yet geometrical things lying around for ostensibly decorative purposes)...

Around a few more architecturey corners...

Past the isolated first-floor Shimer admissions office...

Doing the opposite of what the Shimer arrows tell me to do...

Open an unnecessarily heavy door to climb a few flights of these:

Make it to this door (which is usually not so kindly propped open like this):

Round the corner and head to my bicycle's Shimer home: the weird area through the women's bathroom door but before the women's bathroom.

Since my bike doesn't have a hover option, it is inevitable that it would end up making slushy marks somewhere.

But I like to think this adds character to that weird, sparse area. Also it's not like anyone notices a few tiny tire marks right? At least that's what I tell myself.

But the threat of messy tires is over. So I don't know why I keep picking the thing up as if it doesn't roll. My arm doesn't know why either.

But, listen, arm. It's like I tell the Shimer carpet. A little discoloration adds character.

Looking back West (sort of)

Being so far from home, I tend to miss my lil Oregon a lot. But even more than my state of birth, I miss my family a lot. I've always been extra super close to my mom and dad, and growing up, my sister Maura and I were joined at the hip. Even my brother  Sam and I get along crazy well. Granted, there were some epic fights when we were all in elementary, middle, and high school, but we've all sort of gone on from that point. Sam moved out when he started college, and of course, I'm no longer at home. Maura is still a junior in high school and currently the only kid left at home, but the distance has done our relationship good. This coming photo is the whole family a couple Easters ago. I'm the one in the pretty yellow vintage dress.

Anywho, how does one deal with being so far from their beloved family? Lots of phone calls, lots of texting, and tons of Skype video chat. Sometimes I kind of hate technology, but when it comes to keeping in touch, I couldn't be more grateful for all the newfangled advances out there. Today my sister and talked on Skype for a little over an hour, discussing her college plans and such. And today my mom and I had a nice talk on the phone in which we caught each other up on the weather, family events, school progress, etc. I send my brother good-luck texts any time he has a surfing competition, and without my cell phone, I wouldn't have been able to explain my views on feminism to my father last night. I think talking on Skype is my favorite though. Enter the screen shot.

Probably the best part of being so far away from home is the spectacularness one experiences when a family member visits. Maura made her way to Chicago during her Spring Break a few weeks ago. We had the most amazing time. I loved that she was able to experience the city I've fallen in love with, and get to know all my incredibly new Shimer friends. She even sat in on two of my classes, and was completely wowed by how involved yet relaxed all the students were during discussion. And now for some pictures of my amazing Chicago adventures with my sister.

This is Maura bonding with Jack and Abby, two of my fellow Shimer freshman.

At Tribune Tower. I had to show off my favorite building in the city.

Maura and Abby enjoying some Shimer celebrating.

My sister and myself, shopping the Mag Mile. 

So yes, being far away from home is tough, but it makes seeing my family when I do that much sweeter. The best part? Maura went home from Chicago, raving to my parents about the school and the city, and proving that the tuition and plane tickets are entirely worth it. Such are the wonders of Shimer College.

Shimer gives you the capacity to have your mind blown on a regular basis.

I was asked recently what my favorite books are in the Shimer curriculum. Of course, that's as easy a question to answer as: So, have you stopped beating your wife yet? (Just try answering that yes or no.) But I have given the matter some thought, and after a lot of painful agonizing and trying to ignore sighs and indignant yells of other titles on my bookshelf, I've come up with a top five list.

This is entirely subject to change of opinion, time, experience, etc.

1. Godel's Proof. This is the culmination of Integrative Studies 2, and, I would argue, one of the most important books you'll ever read at Shimer. It refuted the idea of absolute mathematical truths and essentially proved that you could not have a non-axiomatic system. I translate that in practical terms to say that you will always have assumptions in an argument; you cannot prove everything. It's a challenging read, even the summary of it that we do cover (the full proof is too complex to get into in the amount of time that we have to read it), but I feel its implications appeal even to the non-mathematically minded. I have been thinking of things in terms of systems and axioms ever since I read this. It applies to any analysis of reading that I care to do.

2. Ulysses and Mrs. Dalloway. One James Joyce and one Virginia Woolf, I include these together because they were both parts of an elective that I took last year. My mind exploded with implications for fiction and literature after I read both of these. They've inspired thoughts about how human minds work, and how, as an author, I can communicate this in literary characters. Both novels do stupendous jobs of chronicling one day of ordinary life in such a way as to celebrate that; as much as we as human beings strive for something "special," often our day-to-day life is fuller than any extraordinary event we can possibly imagine.

3. What Is Life? and Mind and Matter. This is part of the Natural Sciences 4 course, and you read it towards the end of the class. Erwin Schrodinger is an amazingly readable scientific author, and while I enjoyed reading his explanations of cellular processes as connected to chemistry (part of What is Life? and the only thing we were actually supposed to read), I found his writing in Mind and Matter to be absolutely brain-blowing. He talks about the separation of mind and body as the inherent assumption in modern science--and how that doesn't exist, and what the implications of that are in terms of how we approach the world and the ideal of "objectivity" in science. It's the best reading I ever read by accident as I thought it was assigned.

4. The Chimpanzees of Gombe. Another Natural Sciences reading, this one from Nat Sci 2. Maybe it seems odd to have Jane Goodall on my top five list, but the study of chimpanzees for me holds a lot of clues as to how we evolved into the human beings we are today. It fits for me the way Shimer studies ideas from the past in order to understand the present; I feel I gained insight into possible interpretations of human nature from reading about chimpanzees. The most interesting speculation I had, that Goodall mentions at the end, is that it was primarily war that caused chimps to evolve into human beings: the chimps that were better-organized and more able to fight and kill off rivals were the ones that survived. If human beings evolved by conflict, what does that say about our current course, and what we can do in the future?

5. The Norton Anthology of Poetry. This choice is equal parts pleasure as much as impact on my thought. It's the first thing you read in Humanities 2, and you spend a week or two discussing selected poems from the anthology. I wish we read more poetry, but this part of Hum 2 was blissful for me. While it's all western poetry, of course, it's got a huge range of authors and dates (including a lot of modern poetry), and we picked from all over the spectrum. I believe in poetry as much as expository writing as a mode of communicating philosophy. But unlike exposition, poetry deliberately lends itself to a wide variety of interpretations, and in a way stimulates the thought in a way that straight-out philosophical prose does not.

These are what I've read so far that have either blown my mind away or changed the way I think. I am always up for discussion on any of these.

Sandy Escapades

It's getting to be beach time. I live for beach time. At this temperature post-summer, I'm bundling up and shutting windows. But now? Now it's skimpy clothes, and cross-ventilation as I relish the ebbing of those gruesome winter months. And I go to the beach.  Because campus is one mile away.  From the beach.  Love it.

But I'm still in school and locked to a great books curriculum. So I took some great books.
At first only a few Chicagoans were on the same page concerning the beach. I had one friend join me early on.

We were the hard-core beach goers who stayed all day. Us and a seagull or two.

Okay there were a lot of seagulls.

But then others caught on.

Some brave souls even decided to swim.

Well. One really eager (and presumably really cold) little girl anyway. Although a few other adventuring kids ran around sans shirt.

But I guess if I decided to lug heavy pieces of driftwood from one side of the beach to the other for no reason at all... I'd be pretty warm myself.

The kids were pretty much the least of all concerned with the fact that April in Chicago doesn't really mean summer clothes. Or no clothes...

But you know? Sometimes you do have to act like it's summer even when it's not. Because if you don't? And you have a skin disease where your eyelids are devoid of pigment? And you decide to lay on the beach all day long?

Well. Let's just say sometimes being cooped up in winter has its advantages.

We're College Students, Really.

A Hello Kitty coloring book and a box of 64 Crayola crayons. A brand new Barbie doll. Debating whether or not we needed colorful streamers.

Yeah, it totally sounds like we were shopping for a college student's surprise birthday party, doesn't it?

Brigid and I decided that since our friend Michaela, who is an IIT student, was turning twenty, we needed to throw her a party. A surprise one, of course. Because that's just kinda what we do.

Michaela had mentioned in passing that she'd always wanted a Barbie cake. You know, the kind that has a Barbie stuck in it and the cake looks like a dress? One of those. 

Guess who has a mother who used to work in a bakery and made specialty cakes for people? Guess who spent her childhood watching how it was done? Guess who likes to bake? Oh, and guess who got the task of making this cake.

Yup. Me. 

I was rather ecstatic at the prospect. So I borrowed cake pans from Meg (as mine is mysteriously missing) and baked some cakes, threw them together, and loaded them with icing. I even decorated! I'd never done it before, but it turned out well. See?

Baking that cake reminded how much I love having kitchens in the dorms. It's really nice to have the proper facilities to make such a surprise for your friends.

She loved the cake, by the way. And Brigid very much enjoyed getting to saw the legs off the Barbie with a bread knife so we could get it in the cake. 

Keyed

Mad. That's what I was when I pulled my laundry out of the drier one Tuesday. Not immediately. In fact. I quite enjoy pulling laundry out of the drier. That freshly dried laundry smell? Not much beats it, you know?

But the brief happiness encountered when opening the drier door was not enough to shroud my annoyance when I saw my gray camisole. The poor thing was helplessly entangled in the confines of my favorite comfy t-shirt. Twisted were those previously perfect cotton straps. I realized immediately the damage would be irreparable.

Look at those straps! Do you see how the one on the right is grossly out of proportion? I do. Originally I was merely mad at myself for not having the foresight to hang dry the strappy portions of my wardrobe. But then I started untwisting... And soon found a happy little scapegoat for my laundry woes...

How could this happen?? I immediately checked my keys, since the most logical explanation would be that at some point my own room key was dropped among the clothes. But I had my key. All of them, in fact. So the question was, who did not have all of their keys?

Aha! The culprit. 809. My floor. Shimer students even. Figures. Read all the great books you want, but it won't do a thing to prevent losing keys in driers.