Purpose of Design

There is and will always be a constant struggle between the essences of form and function. Something beautiful may not always be the most functional and something with pure purpose often times doesn't have the best looks.

Why? Why can't form and function coexist? Well they can. They exist in those tools or things in our lives that are successful. Take the iPhone for example. It has the power of the entire Internet and still fits in your pocket and has an appealing design, which leads to its success. Now the same can not be said about school. The typical school is based on rectangles, cutting off the outside, and security; and this leads to a place resembling a prison, making students and even teachers not even feel wanted. The very place they spend their days, seems like it doesn't want them their. How is learning supposed to happen if students can't feel comfortable enough to open up to new ideas. Although we can't change the literal structure of the school, we can change how we see it. We can solve the issue of isolation by going outside, boring shapes by arranging desks in new and interesting ways to stimulate student collaboration, and security by...... Well the high fences have no remedy, but it could help to know that they are only there for your safety.

Everybody has their favorite place to work and study, so why not add elements of those places to the classroom. Classes should have maybe couches, or an area outside to read or write. The schools of the future will need to literally be a home away from home so that students are comfortable enough with their surroundings to open up to see what the curriculum has to offer.

Five Steps

1. Apply what I learned at Cal Poly
2. Work with fellow students
3. Design a space of my own
4. Do further research
5. Connect with college students

Learning Space of the Future

This past Wednesday (4/16) I traveled with a few fellow students interested in Architecture up to Cal Poly for about 4 hours of collaboration and team work with real 3rd year Architecture students. It was a really amazing and eye opening experience of both college life and what really goes on in their studio. Coming in, I already felt welcome and like a fellow colleague. Also, I came with the assumption that it would just be another class with the typical student relationships, but I couldn't be more wrong. They are truly one big family. I could sense just how connected they were with each other because it is similar to being on a team, spending the bulk of your day together. They would tell us about how much fun they have in the studio even when they are hard at work at 2 in the morning, with other classes in just 6 hours.

How to Raise a Moral Child

There is absolutely no doubt that children are impressionable upon their parents or other forms of parents and role models. All too often a child's behavior is reflective upon their parents, usually focusing on one of the two; the one they identify with most. These behaviors can be good or bad and a child's social life can be determined by how their parents are. It's simple science and psychology really. When a baby (animal or human) is born, it has a natural instinct to find out how to survive from its parents or other figures they see as role models, and this is a root problem of peer pressure as well; they identify with the group, so they yearn to be like them.

One of these fundamental behaviors is cooperation and team work as it is natural in the wild; a necessity for survival many times. And from this interaction comes a symptom of generosity and morality. Having an understanding that doing good things, is a good thing. But how does a child know what is a good deed to be repeated and what is a lapse of good judgement that should be avoided?

The Crossroads Between Should and Must

One of my life long themes is that everything happens for a reason. Every little event and choice made accumulates at the present time to make you the person you are, in the situation you are in. Novels capitalize on the eternal theme of "good vs evil" or following your dream despite what others say or even just being yourself.

Look at My Brain

Today in class, Shane Cheverez defined intelligence as the ability to learn and to solve problems using critical thinking, which is exactly how I would have defined. This is a sign of hope to all of the high schoolers in despair feeling they have low intelligence just because they don't get straight A's, but that is a whole-nother conversation.
I digress.
Anyway, how does my work in this class show my creativity, ability to collaborate and think critically? Well coming into this class, I hadn't really put a lot of serious effort into finding what I had wanted for a future career. I just began to listen in on everybody else's conversations on this, and they were in the same boat as I was. All we knew was what we liked to do and a couple of possible general fields, but with no way to really connect our passions to a definite career.

Through trial by fire, the Expository Composition program has helped us to finally find our home. A place to put our passions and talents to work. I had a general idea too, and when I found on that a few other students had the same one, it got me excited for it, and it was exciting to see everybody start to come out of their shells. We collaborated by feeding off of each other's energy. We thought critically by thinking for the future. We problem solved by using a combination of the two. Our inner thinking is best stimulated by sharing.

Preview of Coming Attractions

Today we talked in our groups about what we wanted to do for our final project, and there is a consensus that it has to have something to do with our big questions, paths of inquiry, and all of our resources. Basically we will have to show case how we have found ourselves through this course, which for a lot of us, will be difficult due to our abstract ideas.

Mine are pretty concrete though. Child Psychology and Engineering are two broad areas, but they can be made easily understandable with the right explanation.

Needless to say, I will pride myself on just how well I show the class that nothing in school is pointless. Everything has its purpose in the real world; be it learning how to grind out a boring work day, or to prepare yourself for that big meeting. Even dealing with teachers you hate translates as well into kissing ass to your future boss whom everyone hates, but depends on. Everything in nature has its place, just like everything in our human world.