Damn Grades

Yesterday I was studying with a friend. She was working on some projects for her drawing class, and I was reading some material for a class that I am auditing. Seeing that my energies were on this class as opposed to on classes in which I am fully enrolled, she began to yell at me to do my "real" homework.

I told her that this was stuff that I wanted to learn, whereas the material from my other classes was less interesting and engaging. 

She said,

"But you're not going to get a grade in that class."

"...get a grade..."

Grades. Damn grades. Damn them because they strip the meaning out of education. What ought to be driven by curiosity and a fundamental desire for knowledge (too idealistic?), instead is driven by the "yes" of pleasing people. The "yes" of meeting societal standards so that we can have "success."

Hypothesis: Grades have damned us to be yes-men and women if we are to have worldly success.

-nate bozarth

A Vision of Students Today 2011

When students are regularly falling asleep in classes they say waste their time, something is drastically wrong.

Adultery to the Present Moment

Over winter break I took a short trip to Haiti. The trip was very impacting, very somber, very productive, but one of the most memorable moments came upon my return...

While in Haiti, I was blessed to be without phone, computer, television, or anything having a screen. I found myself not wanting to look at any screen when I returned.

We are so entirely surrounded by technology and media that the simpleness of life is lost. In Haiti there was no problem with living in the moment, because the moment, location, people, etc. was all I had. The internet and satellites perpetually connect us in a sometimes subversively invasive way. We don't even realize how we are constantly living in adultery (as opposed to fidelity) to the present moment.

The danger of technology.

-Nate Bozarth

To muse and to fall into the clenches of bemusement

In the interest of studying how the media affects our culture...

In the pursuit of realizing how our lives are mediated in every way...

To collaborate

To make the best of the technology

To understand more completely

And, finally, to fight world suck

-nate