blog.shimer

Ta-Da!

My last post was about the draped pillowcase we've been painting in my oil painting tutorial. Well, several steps have happened since then and it looks a bit different.

Voila:

 

 

     Until next time.

Three Students, Three Hours, Three Paintbrushes

One of the most amazing things about Shimer is the tutorial. This species of class is made up of one to three students and a facilitator. It can be on almost any topic imaginable, as long as there are works to read from and the facilitator is willing to have conversations about such things.

I lucked out this semester and got to take a truly unique tutorial with two of my classmates. Amanda Cadogan is teaching us oil painting for three hours every Friday.

We read theory and history from:

And:

We learn techniques like "grisaille" (under-painting) and sketch throughout the week to work on our artistic abilities. Today I will show you a portion of an underpainting that I've done. I'll update you over the next few weeks as to how everything is working out:

There it is, my pillowcase drapery. Perhaps not the most invigorating of subjects, but it does help me to understand tone relationships. Obviously only part of the underpainting has been done, but I hope you can get a feel for what this will eventually look like. 

I'll show you the (pretty much) finished product next week! 

The Galvin

Well hello again.

Isaac here. In my last blog post here, I mentioned the Galvin Library (more formally known as the Paul V Galvin Library), and I would like to go a little further into detail on it.

The Galvin is a resource that all enrolled IIT, VanderCook (a music education school), and Shimer students have access to. It contains books on many, many subjects (including pleasure reading, if that tickles your fancy), housed on two levels. The first, primary, floor is home to not only what I understand to be the vast majority of IIT's book collection, but also a portion of Shimer's library, which can be found in the Northwest corner of the building. On the west side of the building, there are isolated rooms with tables for private group study, with a capacity of around four people. These rooms are exceptionally useful, whether you are in a group or not, for privacy. Especially if you're working on a large project that you need room for, but don't want to pack up and take with you every time you take a short break, these rooms are invaluable.

Now we come to the use of the lower floor of the Galvin. On weekdays during the school year, it is open all night long. This means that you have access to all the referencing materials, power outlets, and vending machines you might need to feed your paper, your laptop, and yourself during a long night of paper-writing and rewriting. I would really love to say that it never comes to that point at Shimer; that we finish all of our papers weeks early, are always satisfied with them, and never have to stay up at night over them, but that is not the case. As with all humans, Shimerians have flaws and make mistakes. That sometimes means that we have too much work during the week to finalize our papers, and there is nothing to be done about that, but to buckle down for a late-night session of paper revisions. When it comes to that, though I always try to avoid it, the Gavin is my place to go, as I am sure it is for many other fellow paper-writers, Shimerians or otherwise.

Well, it seems that once more I am out of time before I need to head off to Natural Sciences 2 and discuss Jane Goodall, and her charming depictions of the chimps and apes she worked with (seriously, her writing is really endearing). Next week is spring break, so not much will be going on at Shimer, but the week after that, we go back into full swing with the founding documents of the US (Soc 2), Kafka, O'Conner, and Dostoevsky (Hum 2), finish Goodall (Nat Sci 2), and continue to look at Renga (Japanese Poetry). I really can't wait!

Sine cera
Isaac.

Well Hello There

Hello all,

My name is Isaac Marchant-Shapiro, a first year student at Shimer College. No, more than that, I am a Shimerian. I am not simply a student, a replaceable part of a couple classes; I am a member of the Shimer community, and that community is what I would like to talk to you about today. As a whole, Shimer is a very tight-knit group, and there are several factors contributing to that.

For one, Shimer is tiny. When I say "tiny," what do you imagine? One-thousand students? Two-thousand? Try about one-hundred-and-thirty students, and about fifteen facilitators (Shimer word for 'teacher'). So, when I say "tiny," you are now aware that I don't mean the 'comparatively small' kind of tiny. I mean the 'Everybody knows you, greets you, and asks how that one-thing-you-said-you-were-going-to-do went" kind of tiny. I personally consider this a strength, since if you really need to study (and get away from your classmates to do it), you can simply walk a couple hundred feet down the sidewalk to the Galvin Library where the vast majority of people are IIT (Illinois Institute of Technology) students, and study there.

Second, there is the Assembly, Shimer's method of shared-governance. It takes the place of a student-government, and consists of the student body, the staff, and the faculty. The Assembly is (on the most basic level) responsible for safeguarding the ethos of Shimer, and everyone involved has an equal stake in that pursuit. At its core, the Assembly stands for equality, truth, and intellectual honesty at Shimer, all of which I think lie in the hearts of Shimerians. The aforementioned pursuit is a serious matter, and I have found in my past year that taking part in it not only helps protect the ideals of the college, but also binds Assembly members together in unique ways.

Honestly, I could go on and on about other things that contribute to the closeness of the Shimer community, but I have class in fifteen minutes. Natural Sciences 2, to be exact, where I will be discussing Darwin’s The Descent of Man. Then, when I am done with that, I will be finishing up my readings for tomorrow’s classes, which will be on Rousseau and Beckett. The point is that I am out of time. It has been fun writing this, and I hope it was just as fun reading it.

'Sine cera,
Isaac.

(Editor's note: Isaac is the one standing with arms folded on the right.)

Making the Difficult Decisions

Perhaps another introduction of myself is due. It has been quite a while since I've contributed to the blog and I am a bit of a different person than the eager first-year I was when I first wrote on these internet pages.

So! My name is Alex Rosenberg. I am a third-year (sixth-semester) student at Shimer College. I am a traditionally aged college student currently taking Humanities 4, Natural Sciences 4, Film: Narrative Through Music and an Oil Painting Tutorial at Shimer as well as American Sign Language at Gage Park. I have served on several different committees at Shimer and am the Vice President of the IIT Hillel. My interests range from religious theory to feminism to video games (with much overlap) and, since a few of my most time consuming responsibilities have recently ended, I hope to write about many of these things on this blog in the upcoming months.

I currently live with two roommates, whom we will name J and H for the purpose of anonymity, in the Bridgeport area. I have been roommates with J for three years now, with H for two. Many years from now I will describe these days as those of gold and wonder and beauty (or so I believe at this point anyway). However, something monumental is about to occur in my time-line and I am preparing for everything to change.

J is graduating in just a few months and H is leaving for Oxford in the fall. Seemingly endless decisions must be made in light of these two facts. Will I find new roommates or live alone? Will I renew my lease or apartment hunt? Not to mention how my (rare) social time will be restructured.

This, however, is not the point of today's post. Today I am writing about Oxford.

Once upon a time, Oxford was a dream of mine. I thought about the joys of studying on the other side of the ocean and the prestige of the whole thing. Over the past few years I kept the idea of it in the back of my mind as I joined more groups and took on more responsibility.

Then something happened. I changed. I have always loved Shimer, but my feelings for it matured. There are no longer the butterflies in my stomach that come with first love, but an enduring sense of place that I'm not ready to give up.

I decided not to apply after all. My excitement for all of my friends who are planning to study there has grown and I feel even more delighted to be one of the few of my class still planning to be on the Chicago campus  next year. I will miss them all (especially my roommate) but I'm also anxious to exchange stories with them a little over a year from now when our paths re-converge.

This is also exciting news for you, dear reader, as it will (hopefully) make a faithful blogger out of me.

Until next time. 

Blanket Forts!

Sara here! Long time no post! Last semester was a little crazy, but I'm ready to meet this one with enthusiasm! So anyway, on to the topic at hand!

One of the things I love best about living in MSV is the programs that happen periodically in the big lounges. 

Take tonight, for instance.

I am typing this from inside a blanket fort I made with a couple of friends. It has couches in it. We're thinking of camping out all night and falling asleep in a cuddle puddle. 

Building it was an adventure. We had access to a ton of blankets and all the furniture in the lounge. Our third try was the victor! We pushed a tall table in between a couple of couches, put tall chairs at either end, and tossed the blankets on top! It's a lot like a tent, and people keep stopping and peering inside to see what it's like. We can't fit as many people in it as the neighboring blanket fort, which is a bunch of blankets draped over tall chairs, but ours is more comfy. We even managed a game of Apples to Apples in here, depsite not having a level surface!

It's this sort of thing that makes living on campus totally worthwhile. Classes haven't started yet, but future programs will certainly provide a welcome break from studying. For example, next week there will be free canvas painting! Fun times in the dorms! I am looking forward to what fun nights the rest of the semester brings!

Back in the Whir

Stephanie Fong, Zachary Fazio, Landis Masnor, and Renee Meschi are Shimer students participating in the Shimer Summer Internship Program.  They regularly post updates about their internship experiences. 

This post is from Renee Meschi, who is studying entomology and international business at the Montezuma Bed & Breakfast and Butterfly Garden in Costa Rica.


The first thing I notice now that I am back in an urban setting is the constancy of the pace at which life moves. I adjusted so quickly and so thoroughly to life in Costa Rica, and I am finding the transition back to life in Chicago challenging, to say the least. The best way I can describe the difference is to liken it between songs by minimalist composers Steve Reich and Arvo Pärt. Steve Reich’s compositions tend to take on a sort of ‘face-melt’ rhythm, with constant beats and sounds that tend to melt together and are conducive to daydreaming or an otherwise absent minded state; it has been described as meditative, but in the way a trance might be, which invariably alienates one from the body.

In contrast, Pärt’s music snakes around one central theme, offering reoccurring respites of silence and stillness in which the listener can reflect on what was just heard. Fratres is a great example; the song is divided into 9 sections, each padded at both the beginning and the end with a melodically still drone.

In this analogy, Reich is Chicago and Pärt is Costa Rica. Interestingly, where Reich might use a wide range of notes in a piece, Pärt’s tend to oscillate around one triad, exploring harmonic possiblities but still remaining within the simplicity of those three notes. I find that this directly relates to the sun and its course in both countries; in Chicago, the days have different lengths at different times of year, whereas the Costa Rican sun is so close to the equator, many locals will look at the sky when you ask them what time it is, and are confident in their answer. It remains fixed and constant in its path across the sky.

What struck me at once when I began my internship was that Costa Rican life seems to rest on the rhythms of days and seasons. Life, at times, seemed to move rather slow, each event or moment encapsulated in silence with ample time for reflection. There were no street lights, and when it got dark every night at 6pm, the day was over, and a deep, dark silence entered the wilderness around the town. At sunrise the next morning, people would awaken and begin their day; alarm clocks were not necessary, as when the sun rose, so did I.

Almost everything seems to move seasonally in Costa Rica. There’s the rainy season and the dry season, further divided by multiple little seasons in which some sort of wildlife takes the center stage. When I arrived it was, as Josh called it, “ridiculously huge spider season.” The next month was “monkey season,” where we had to keep close watch of the breakfast veranda lest a capuchin monkey were to steal the table’s butter and sugar packets. A little after that began “snake season.”

What this points to is rhythm; the rhythm of the day, the rhythm of the seasons, the rhythm of the moon in the form of the tide; all of these work as the metronome of daily life in Montezuma. That is when I realized that even at our most still and most silent, there is still rhythm beneath it all. We still breathe, our hearts beat, we are born, and we die. These cycles are the stillest we can ever be.

On the plane on the way back to Chicago, I read about an artificial heart that scientists had recently successfully recreated. The scientists felt triumphant, saying that it was even more efficient than the biological heart, and had no reason to ever break down. The new heart works by by unceasingly spinning blood through its chambers, so that the heart’s owner had not a pulse, but a constant whir.

I feel as if humanity feels similarly triumphant over nighttime due to the advent of electricity. As soon as the sun goes down in Chicago, the lights turn on. As soon as the temperature becomes cold, buildings are heated. As soon as it becomes too hot, air is “conditioned.” People can (and do!) work 24 hours a day; life no longer has a set rhythm, it is just a constant whir. This is why it is always important to know what time it is in the city: we’ve removed all other indicators. In Costa Rica, 6:30pm has a flavor. It just feels like 6:30pm; the air becomes softer, the temperature breaks, and the sun starts to settle behind the mountains. In Chicago, when I’m sitting inside a fluorescently lit building with piped-in air, it could be any time. I have no concept, no feeling for it; because of this, it is important for me to assign alienated numbers to hours and to remain vigilant of the way in which they move. I can’t rely on my internal sense for these things because all sensory input has been removed and replaced with artificial constancy. The number matters here; time itself matters in Montezuma.

Needless to say, I’ve been having trouble getting readjusted to life in the whir. It is not entirely bad; just different...a different way of approaching life. The most important skill I hope to keep from my experiences in Costa Rica is the skill of reflection, metabolizing what happens in life and honoring my need for negative space to contrast the busyness.

My Other Readings

Like several other Shimer students, I at nearly all times am under an obligation to finish two sets of readings: those enjoined upon me by my classes and those enjoined upon me by my classmates.  At present, I have four books lent me by my fellow Shimerians:

I) V for Vendetta, by Alan Moore and David Lloyd.  Lender: Joe Bradshaw.  Reason for Lending: I'm not really sure, to tell the truth.  I suppose Joe thought my life would improve were I to punctuate my philosophical studies with a few comic books.  (Incidentally, I have returned Joe's compliment and foisted upon him no fewer than three volumes of my own: Sense and Sensibilia, by J. L. Austin; Intention, by G. E. M. Anscombe; and Virtues and Vices, by Philippa Foot.)

II) Institution and Passivity, by Maurice Merleau-Ponty.  Lender: Ben Bornstein.  Reason for Lending: I think I mentioned to Ben that, while I enjoyed reading Edmund Husserl, I was sadly ill-versed in later phenomenologists, Merleau-Ponty specifically.  He was kind enough to offer me a remedy for this ignorance.

III) Common Morality, by Bernard Gert.  Lender: Chris Roberts (okay, not really a Shimerian: he's a student worker at the IIT library, which I am wont to patronise).  Reason for Lending: Chris, a science journalism major, knows me to be a.) inclined towards subjects philosophical and b.) much enamoured of clarity in philosophical writing.  Having taken an ethics course in which he read Common Morality and found it to satisfy both of those preferences, he thoughtfully let me borrow a copy and asked for my comments once finished.

IV) The Book of Mormon, Pearl of Great Price, and Doctrines and Covenants (Scriptures acknowledged by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints).  Lender: Isaac Coda Marchant-Shapiro.  Reason for Lending: I'm not entirely clear about the significance of this episode, but Isaac (himself a Mormon) gave it to me saying that he had sworn he would lend it to a practising Catholic should ever he meet one.  I suppose this oath will make more sense after reading the books.

The Shimer Rationalists

Shimer, as Sam Sandmel has already noted, attracts all sorts.  Being a Great Books college, however, I should venture to say that its diversity of greatest note would be, not necessarily one of culture or of interests in general, but rather one of books.  Shimer attracts the avid readers of any number of different genres, from fans of post-structuralism, to Jacques Lacan aficionados, and, yes, even to dogmatic Aristotle/Aquinas-types.  A perk of this diversity in literary taste is that, no matter your interests and despite the tiny student population, you can probably find someone at Shimer to meet with on a regular basis to talk over a text you're interested in.

 
Our Analytic group's sourcebook

My first experience with such a reading group is thanks to Joe Bradshaw (now in his fourth year at Shimer), who kindly did the student population a favour in hosting an analytic philosophy reading group once every week or so at his apartment.  Analytic philosophy (the philosophical school that dominates philosophy departments in the Anglophone world) is not much read in the Shimer core, nor are electives often offered with a major analytic component  in their reading requirements, so I am grateful to Joe for providing an opportunity I shall perhaps never see again: a discussion of Frege, Russell, and the early Wittgenstein with other Shimerians.  Whether or not discussion-based classes foster skills applicable to the whole of life, they certainly teach one how to get to the meaning of a text with the assistance of others.  I never would have caught half of what I learned from the writings we discussed together had I read them on my own, so it was with a distinct pleasure that I attended the meetings with Joe and friends to talk over the obscurer points of that week's reading.  Schoolwork, alas, eventually put a stop to our fun, but not before some of us devised a means of continuing our bookish past-time into the summer.

 
Our Rationalist group's first sourcebook

During one of our last meetings, one among us (I believe Sam Elalouf, a fellow second year) suggested that, over the summer, we organise a similar book club, now with a different philosophical theme so as to attract other students.  Sam, Joe, and myself decided, after throwing around some ideas, to dedicate the book club to the early modern rationalists: René Descartes, Benedictus de Spinoza, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, and their quasi-rationalist successor, Immanual Kant.  Of the four, only two (Descartes and Kant) were represented in the core, and even in their cases, a second reading never hurt anybody; moreover, each of us had read at least one of the authors before, so we would have someone each session who would be less than completely in the dark about the reading.  All in all, therefore, ours seemed a good selection, and quickly enough we had compiled a reading list and schedule for the group.  Sam helpfully placed notices for our first meeting around the Shimer floor, and he and I both spread news of the group by word of mouth.

 
Our Rationalist group's second sourcebook

After a few initial hitches, the group was set in motion: every week we would meet at Sam's place, hang out, possibly have dinner or engage in some other social activity, and sit in a circle around a (non-octagonal) coffee table to work through any problems, questions, interpretations, etc. we had concerning the text of the week.  It was easily my favourite part of the summer: relaxing on a large couch with a list of questions about Spinoza's views on immortality, the prospect of a long, illuminating conversation to follow, with the further prospect of dinner, ice cream, or a movie beyond that.  And I know of nowhere outside Shimer where I might have had the chance to enjoy it.

 

Week in Kada, Micro Post

Stephanie Fong, Zachary Fazio, Landis Masnor, and Renee Meschi are Shimer students participating in the Shimer Summer Internship Program.    They regularly post updates about their internship experiences.

This post is from Landis Masnor who is interning with CLM, an NGO dedicated to eradicating extreme poverty in central Haiti.

I recently travelled to a CLM base in a town called Kada located in Tit Montay.  I spent about 5 days there entering data (400 files) from CLM’s poverty scorecard, Kat Evalyasyon, into a program on my computer.  CLM uses the poverty scorecard to illustrate a household's poverty prior to working with CLM.  Kat Evalyasyon asks questions about the condition of the members house, what their toilet situation is like, where their income/ food comes from, and how many profitable animals they own.  This information is initially used to ensure that candidates qualify for CLM, that they’re the poorest of the poor.  The data can be used secondarily as a way to quantitatively measure how members’ financial and food security has strengthened. 

Attempting to cut down extra weight added by my laptop and imagining a week of Kreyol data entry as less than photogenic, I decided to leave my camera in Sodo.   Huge mistake.   I may as well have ridden that donkey into the promised land.

I found a partially constructed school, a tin roof with benches and a desk, under which I worked throughout the week.  My office space had no walls and it looked out on to a broad green hill, thick with tall grass and limestone outcroppings.  Restricted by daylight, I began work early and could often watch the moon sink into the ridge of the peak.  To my left was a view of the entire mountain valley, the plain, and the river I crossed to get there.  Last summer I was doing data entry also, but inside of an air conditioned cubicle for a gulf coast oil company.  Data entry is never fun but my week in Kada had a special blend of peaceful contemplation, familiar computer-screen boredom, and utter enchantment.  

The rain came every afternoon as the temperature began to cool.  I enjoyed working in the rain with the tin roof over my head.  Afterwards the water vapor from the valley rolls up the mountain and over the peak. 

During the morning return trip I walked into a cloud.

I will post photos (taken with my camera and laptop) here when I have the bandwidth to do so.