You Get What You Pay For......Or Do You?

I am in disbelief right now. As I am trying to force myself for the third day in a row to study for the Contemporary Art midterm I have tomorrow, I am stuck focusing on one thing: my Contemporary Art teacher is a moron. 

I don't say this to be mean. I am stating it as a fact. My teacher is a first year teacher at BYU. She's never taught before, but she teaches three different subjects. She's young, and the more I'm around her I realize she has no idea what the hell she's talking about (excuse my french). Here are some examples:

1. She said Machu Picchu is in Mexico. False. It's in Peru. 
2. She referred to "Gumbi" as "gumbo". False again. Gumbi is a stretchy man and gumbo is a Southern stew or soup.
3. She was teaching us about one of Rene Magritte's paintings that says "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" underneath an image of a pipe and told us it translated to "This is not a penis." 

HUGE FALSE. It translates to "This is not a pipe", which plays off Magritte's idea of no matter how realistic a painting looks, it is not actually the object it is depicting. It looks like a pipe, but it isn't an actual pipe. I don't know how she got to teach at BYU without knowing this BASIC concept from one of the most famous artists there were during the 20th century.  He did a whole series of images based on this idea of "Ceci n'est pas.....". She's a moron. 

If she has gotten all of these things wrong in the 3 times we've had class, I can't imagine what else she has taught us that has been wrong that I haven't caught. What makes me even more mad is that I was signed up for this class for last semester with a teacher I had already had before and really liked, but the time it was conflicted with the class you have to go to before you go on a study abroad. I was gonna do that study abroad in the spring but then ended up not having enough money so I ended up having dropped it for no reason. Then this semester there was only one teacher available for this class so I signed up for it. And now I'm mad at myself, even though I had no way of knowing that my teacher would be such a moron. She is completely unorganized, scatterbrained, rude, and full of herself. She is making me hate learning about art, when normally art history classes are some of my favorite classes. I can't believe I'm paying to learn from her when all she's doing is teaching us false information. I guess this is why I'm so worried about my midterm tomorrow. I could get all the facts right but she might not know they're right so I could get a bad grade haha. But seriously. I'm having such a hard time focusing and studying cause she has given us no real direction of what to study and what is expected of us. I hate this. 

Who Knew Star Wars Could Change Your Life

Within the past week I have watched every Star Wars movie.

I watched them all in order for the first time (and by in order, I mean by order of the story, not order of how they were made). Weird thing is, I have come to some very life changing conclusions because of this. In Star Wars, Yoda says that Anakin has a lot of fear in him, and fear leads to anger, which leads to the dark side. I never thought about it that way. I mean, obviously fear and anger lead you to do bad things. If you give in to your fear and anger you move further away from what's good and closer to what's bad. Solution: when you get angry, try and figure out what you're afraid of, since all anger stems from some kind of fear. If you figure out what you're afraid of, you can try and work on not being afraid, which will help you find peace. 

2 Timothy 1:7 says: "For God has not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind."

 I also found a quote by Gandhi on my friend's facebook page that says, “There is nothing that wastes the body like worry, and one who has any faith in God should be ashamed to worry about anything whatsoever."

Worries are just fears, so it's the same principle. If you're worried or afraid, you just need to trust in God more. He knows what he's doing. I have trust issues like nobodies business, but you can always trust God. He has your best interest in mind and knows what's best for you. There is one surefire way to make God laugh, and that is to make life plans. He will think it's hilarious, and then lead you to the life you're supposed to have. That is a fact. 

Another thing I learned from Star Wars was to focus on life in the moment. Yoda tells Luke that one of his weaknesses was always looking for a future time of when he would be happy. Once he got off Tatooine he would be happy. Once he got out of where he was and started  a life somewhere else, THEN he would be happy. I have the same problem. Once I graduate, I will be happy. Once I move out of Utah, I'll be happy. Once I get a career I will be happy. Once I get married, have kids, and a cute little house with a white picket fence I will be happy. Weirdly enough, Star Wars has made me realize that you really need to just focus on living in the moment instead of wasting time thinking about a future time to fix all your sadness and/or anger. Make the most of every moment because you're lucky to have every moment you get. Life is too short to waste it wallowing in what you hate about your life. 

I read this quote on this girl's blog I follow that says, "Don’t just hang in there, enjoy yourselves. Travel, learn new skills, serve, do something that challenges you, work on making yourself a better person, and don’t worry about the rest…don’t worry about what you can’t change, but do worry about (and do something about) what you can. And be happy now…don’t wait for some event to make you happy…happiness is not some goal to be reached or destination…it’s a way of life!"

My goal is to learn and do lots of new things. For example, I'm learning how to draw those 3D chalk drawings people do on the sidewalk. I wanna take a pottery class. I wanna go fishing in a row boat on the lake. I want to hike up Timp FINALLY. I'm getting in shape. I'm saving up to move out. I will eventually get a motorcycle :) And the list goes on and on. I started a bucket list a long time ago so I will start trying to accomplish the things on my list. The future is as bright as you want to make it, and I plan on making my future a good one :) 

A Glimpse of the Past

Guess what. I love black and white photography. Obviously I like color photography as well, but I love old black and white photos. Old photos are like time machines that allow us to see what life was like back then, which I am fascinated by. Removing color turns the attention to the lighting, shapes,and composition which are sometimes overlooked when there are colors involved. Here are some of my favorite photographs in one of my photo books called The Photographers Eye by John Szarkowski. These photos are examples of why I am so passionate about photography. 

JACQUES HENRI LARTIGUE: Beach at Villerville, 1908

(My favorite part about this is the boat on the left)

WILLIAM SMITH: View across Chain Bridge, Washington, D.C., c. 1863. The Library of Congress

CLARENCE JOHN LAUGHLIN: The Fierce-Eyed Building, 1938

HARRY CALLAHAN: Detroit, 1943

MATTHEW B. BRADY or staff: Conspirator Payne, 1865. The Library of Congress

BILL BRANDT: No. 43 from Perspective of Nudes, 1957

MANUEL ALVAREZ BRAVO: Eating Place, c. 1940

GARRY WINOGRAND: Untitled, 1963

"There is a terrible truthfulness about photography. The ordinary academician gets hold of a pretty model, paints her as well as he can, calls her Juliet, and puts a nice verse from Shakespeare underneath, and the picture is admired beyond measure. The photographer finds the same pretty girl, he dresses her up and photographs her, and calls her Juliet, but somehow it is no good--it is still Miss Wilkins, the model. It is too true to be Juliet."

                                                            -George Bernard Shaw

MAX BURCHARTZ: Eye of Lotte, 1930. Otto Steinert, Essen, Germany

RICHARD AVEDON: Ezra Pound, 1958. Made for Harper's Bazaar

ROBERT FRANK: Parade, Hoboken, New Jersey, 1955, from The Americans

CHARLES NEGRE: Henry Le Secq at Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris, 1851. Calotype. 

ELLIOT ERWITT: Fontainebleau Hotel, Miami Beach, 1962

HENRI CARTIER-BRESSON: Children Playing in Ruins, Seville, Spain, 1933

JACQUES HENRI LARTIGUE: Glider Constructed by Maurice Lartigue, Chateau Rouzat, 1909

EDWARD STEICHEN: Sunday Papers: West 86th Street, New York, c. 1922

There Is No [wh]Y in Happiness

Today has been a sick day. I don't mind sick days as long as they are only once in a while. It forces people to rest and take care of themselves, which many people can't afford to do on a regular basis, depending on their job, school, or family situation. Or a combination of two or all of them. Anyway, sick days give me a lot of time to think. The things I see, read, hear, or do provoke a more intensive, deep thought process than they normally would. That may be a side effect of whatever type of meds I take for that particular problem, but I like to think it's more of my brain being more active and compensating for when my body has to be  more inactive. I have read a few things today that really caught my attention.


Number One: I ordered a fitness DVD called BBX Hardcore that finally arrived in the mail. It comes with a booklet with an entire 90 day meal plan, recipes, life coaching, stuff like that. One part that hit me said:

"You can't focus on the negative. You can't dwell on the wrong that you have done, or what other people have done to you; how crappy you feel, or how bad you think you look, or how nothing ever goes right for you. By focusing on the negative, you keep yourself there and so continues a very vicious cycle. Change begins with, ends with, and can only happen within you." -Dede Barbantts

Pretty deep for a fitness DVD huh?

Number Two: I started reading this book called "Broken for You" by Stephanie Kallos. I am only 34 pages into it, but it has already got me thinking. One part talks about how one of the characters read a book about writing down affirmations and says:

"If Wanda felt like writing, 'Nobody will ever love me again,' which, according to the book's author, was a lie, she wrote instead, 'A loving relationship awaits me.' If Wanda felt like writing, 'All men are [messed up jerks] who deserve to die,' she forced her hand into a steady calmness and wrote instead, 'There are good men in the world, somewhere.' If she felt like writing, '[Screw] the survival of the species. The world would be better off if humans became extinct,' she wrote, 'Save the whales.' And if she felt her spooks coming on, those familiar voices that said, 'You're going to die alone. People started leaving you when you were six years old and they're going to keep leaving you, so why bother?' she would print, as if she were competing for a penmanship prize, 'I love myself. I. Love. Myself. I do not need another person's love to make me whole.'"

Stephanie Kallos used relationships in that particular part of the book to describe affirmations, but I think it is actually a useful technique that can be applied to any situation. If you constantly tell yourself you are going to fail or that you are going nowhere, then that it what will happen to you. If you tell yourself you amazing and will succeed at whatever it is you put your mind to, then you will. I firmly believe we are our greatest roadblocks in life. We are the only thing holding ourselves back from reaching our full potential. We can spend all our time blaming God or the people around us, but in the end, deep down we all know that the blame really falls on us. 

Number Three: I was watching Community since I ran out of other things to watch and the character Jeff, played by Joel McHale said:

"He has nothing to prove or disprove about himself or to himself. He has no shame because he didn't care if you knew. We can't keep going to each other until we learn to go to ourselves. We need to stop turning our hatred of ourselves into someones else's job and just stop hating ourselves."

Now, taken out of context it doesn't make tons of sense. And granted, Community is about stupid humor and being sarcastic most of the time. But what I got from it was that the reason we sometimes hate ourselves is because we feel like we have to prove ourselves in comparison to those around us. We constantly compare our shortcomings to other people's strengths and beat ourselves up for NO GOOD REASON. I read somewhere once something along the lines of, "Would you be friends with someone who talked to you the way you talk to yourself." Essentially, if someone criticized you and was as hard on you as you are on yourself, you probably wouldn't want to be around them. We should all cut ourselves some slack every now and then. Nobody is perfect. Everyone makes mistakes, and everyone has room for improvement, no matter how old they are. We should all try to be more positive and nicer to ourselves and the people around us. I think that is one thing that could help us all in the pursuit of happiness. And as Will Smith says ON The Pursuit of Happyness,

"There is no [wh]Y in happiness."