Topic: HOW WE LIVE, HOW WE CAN LIVE BETTER

Outward Bound taught me the value of consuming less, and doing more.  I find it interesting that spending less money on everyday things can lead to improved physical and mental health.  We can survive on less food, clothing, and shelter, the 3 basic elements for survival, than we might be led to believe.  Outward Bound also taught me how much more enjoyment people can get out of life when they don’t necessarily do what others consider “normal.”  I think one step towards improving our quality of lives, is to recognize the factors in our lives and our culture that cause us to live as we do, advertising, media, tradition, ignorance, etc.  Expose those factors, and then we can hope to see improvements in how people live.

Topic: CONSUMPTION VERSUS LEISURE

This is from the website: http://adbusters.org/campaigns/bnd/

In America, Buy Nothing Day played out in some of the nation’s last remaining public spaces – its malls. Costumed groups of revelers managed to slip in and stay long enough to set up tables and suggest alternatives to heavy holiday spending such as giving to charity. Spend time with family and friends, rather than money on them, was the message. Yes it’s cliche, but, the things most worth pursuing, and exchanging – love, ritual, attention, sacrifice, freedom-are the things no-one can buy.

Lost in the breast-beating is any critical discussion of the *point* of all this economic patriotism. The goal is to boost the flagging gross domestic product. The GDP is the usual measurement of the strength of the economy, but how useful is it? Consider that whenever there’s an ecological or human disaster in the U.S., the GDP goes up, and we call it “progress.” By that logic, the crash of those jets into the Twin Towers was a good thing, because it, too, sent the GDP up (or it almost certainly would have, with new billions spent on defense and health and cleanup, had the fear factor not kicked in). The point is, we measure the goods, but we do not measure the bads – and, unchecked, it’s the bads that will bury us. (For more on this subject, check out the website of the folks at Redefining Progress in San Francisco. www.rprogress.org) Overconsumption creates long-term ecological problems that aren’t accounted for in the GDP. That’s one of the things Buy Nothing Day is all about.

There’s no right way to celebrate Buy Nothing Day. The idea is to do *something* to spark up debate, not shut it down. The shining hope for a revolution in human consciousness lies in the actions of everyday people. And so in the most profound sense, nothing has changed at all.

Buy Nothing Day just wouldn’t be the same if the networks didn’t reject our opt-not-to-shop TV uncommercial. Every season, we approach ABC, CBS and NBC to air the spot, and every year they refuse us–claiming our ad asking people not to buy anything threatens “the current economic policy of the United States.” It will be interesting to see if this year CNN Headline News, the one show that has taken our money and aired the spot (after their “Dollars and Sense” program since 1996) continues to break ranks.

Topic: THE EFFECT OF ADVERTISING ON HOW WE LIVE

Pics can be found on the website: http://adbusters.org/creativeresistance/

What do these ads mean?
What sort of problems do we see here?
What are some causes of these problems?
How can we solve these problems?
What solutions have been tried? What works, what doesn’t?
What are the origins of these problems?
How do other countries relate to these problems?
What else is there?

Picture of the day

If you’re wondering what I did to be able to take all these pictures, check out this site:
http://www.outwardbound.org/course/outdoor_leader_course_100.html

TOPIC: AN ARTICLE IN THE MAKING

AN ALUM GOES BLOGGING

           Did anybody read my last article?  Did any of the 5 articles I wrote last year, and the one I wrote for the November 19^th Student Life paper mean anything to anyone?  Did people like them, hate them, or were they indifferent to my articles.  On the website, www.studlife.com students can leave feedback on articles, but this is not common practice, and I have never got any responses.  Occasionally, somebody I knew would catch my article and respond, “Hey Dan, I saw your article.”  I averaged 1 to 2 comments per article, which was enough to motivate me to keep writing.  I figure if just 1 person acknowledges the fact that I wrote an article, it’s worth it.  The week my last article was published, I returned to St. Louis to visit old friends and get some more writing done.  I saw several people looking at my article on campus, and wished I could organize a forum or discussion to hear what people thought about what I had written.

            That same week, a professor advised me to explore the online world of blogging (a word which my computer spell check does not yet recognize) as a way to share my writing.  After searching online, I found a site called Xanga, which apparently is gaining in popularity similar to using Instant Messenger.  Within minutes of stumbling onto this site, I had created my own free online site to publish my thoughts and writings, and have people only respond as they pleased. 

            Xanga is one of several sites that allow people to publish online journals for free.  They are able to do this by charging a small fee for premium memberships that gives people extra features to use on their sites.  However, for now cost, people can join the Xanga community that includes 1000s of real people.  I say real because online journals uniquely give anyone with a computer access to much more than a screen name, birthday, and list of hobbies.  These sites reveal people’s descriptions of their daily lives, their creative writings, feelings of despair, and visions of hope.  For example, one site I discovered brought me into the life of a mother who home schools her children, and describes at length the work and experiences of her children, as well as her beliefs and experiences involving home schooling.  Within the larger Xanga community are smaller weblogs organized by interest.  A little searching will lead you to your own community of like-minded people and writers.  Currently, there are 78 people under the Wash U webring.  At the time I’m writing this, conference rivals NYU has 676 active sites.

            Blogging could be how ideas are shared in the 21^st century.  The religious checking of people’s away messages might be supplanted with checking people’s online journals.  Writers like myself will find a place where they can expand their audience, and receive useful feedback and ideas to become better and more developed writers and thinkers.  However, the benefits to sites like this are not limited to young writers.  In addition to the reasons most people probably blog, being the therapeutic benefits of journaling and the feeling of connectedness to other people, blogging on a site like Xanga cold help make a school like Washington University a better place of learning.  Here’s how it would work:

            Students would first have to create an online journal.  This could be purely for educational purposes, separate from a personal journal, if a student had things on their site they did not feel was appropriate for class.  After each class, students would be asked to blog.  They should include things they learned, things that they didn’t understand, as well as any additional thoughts about class they had.  From time to time, students do have questions or comments that, for various reasons, they do not bring up in class, and are left ignored out of class.  By having students and professors redefine class to be a place where people learn and exchange ideas, rather than the 3 hours a week when students and teachers get together, all will benefit.  Students who want more from a class will be able to express this, and the class can help make that happen.  For students not too excited by a class, they will have unique opportunity to connect and view more aspects of the class, which has the potential to move that student to a level where they are more interested and engaged.  Finally, for students who hate a class, and have no interest or reason to be there, they can share this and hopefully teachers will find ways to help make the student experience better, or help that student get into a different setting where this might occur.

            When I said all would benefit, this referred to professors as well.  Teaching, like anything else in life requires practice and experience to become good at it.  The current system allows students to give feedback to teachers when the course is over.  Students spend only a few minutes and have just a few lines to give general feedback about the entire semester.  What if students could give specific feedback after each class, helping the professors see places for improvement in every lecture, and helping them respond to the unique individuals that comprise every class?  Couldn’t this lead to better teachers?  Of course, students would have to learn how to give good feedback, including important tools such as giving specific feedback, giving constructive feedback, as well as giving necessary feedback, rather than simply venting.

            Most opinion articles desire certain change.  Each author and article has a different measure of success, this one hoping for the increase of feedback and discussion amongst students.  The success of this one will hopefully be marked by the increased use of blogs, and discussion of this very article on my blog, www.xanga.com/dansjournal. 

Topic: JUST HOW ROUGH IS THE REAL WORLD FOR COLLEGE GRADS?

Freshman year I had an RA who looked after me, an advisor who looked after me (sort of) and parents who were all over me.  Sophomore year, junior year, senior year, there was always someone that I had to go to before making any mildly important decision.  My parents made all my flights, my classes were limited by what I was studying, or what I thought I needed to study, my meals were limited to the few campus eateries.
Then you graduate in May, (or after 2 summer school classes) and BAM, your times up.  Suddenly, you’re either completely free, or completely trapped.  Either way, you’re screwed.  If you’re completely free, then you probably have no idea what to do next, which is pretty damn stressful.  You also have no money, which means you’re probably gonna spend some time at home with mom or dad.  And if you have a job, you’re probably not doing exactly what you want to be doing, maybe you feel like pushing a pencil through your skull.  You might still be stuck at home, or you moved, but are lonely without your college friends, and it’s not easy to start again.
It’s a real dilemma, one that I’d say every college grad without fail has faced.  This doesn’t mean the problems are any larger than when we were in college.  We had pleanty of issues to deal with then too.  Nor is this to say this will be the end of our problems, as we will soon deal with the stress of being married, versus staying single, then eventually having kids versus not, mid-life crisis, and so on.  
But the thing is about being 22 and fresh out of college, is how it feels like diving into a pool ice.  It’s a complete shock to your system.  As I hear more and more stories about people being unhappy w/ post-college life, I’m trying to come up with a few reasons why, and maybe see if there aren’t solutions out there.

1) We go from living 5min. from 5 best friends, and 50 familiar faces, to being in a much lonelier situation.  For most people, living at home is a solid financial move, although it comes with the social sacrafice.  Many want to be near their family after 4 years away.  However, the reality soon surfaces that it’s hard to start from scratch in a different city than where you went to school.  And I wonder why more grads don’t look to live w/ friends from school right away.  It’s like there’s a rule out there that your lives have to separate after college.  Maybe that’s a good thing, starting from scratch, i don’t know.  But it’s worth thinking about, why so many people end up living in apartments surrounded with people they don’t know, when after 4 years of independence, we’d ideally be able to make a decision to find a common city, live like college bums a little longer, and start to build a future for ourselves.

2) We take jobs that aren’t so good.  OK, let me elaborate.  We take jobs that don’t challenge our minds.  People simply weren’t made to do menial work, maybe some were, maybe lots were, but what I’m hearing from 100% of people who have jobs is there’s either nothing for them to do, they’re doing bitch work, they’re working all the time, their work is mindless.  I don’t really know if i believe in the stepping stone theory, that you have to put in your dues first.  There’s got to be opportunities to get meaningful and interesting experience.  And we’ve all seen the movie Office Space, you’d think we’d actually learn from that, that that’s the etpitome of all that we never hope to experience in our lives, yet we can’t untrain ourselves to walk away from doing it anyways.  I think part of the reason we take such jobs is the vision of our parents, owning a house, having the money to take care of us.  You know what, even I, the woodsman, might end up in a shirt and tie one day, making sacrafices so I can have a family.  But we’re 22, we’re young god-dammit.  OK, now i’m getting mad, wo-ah.

I don’t mean to be totally negative.  That’s just been the feedback I’ve been getting.  People aren’t very happy with their jobs, and with living away from their college friends that’s the sentiment I’m getting, but I’ll leave it forward anyone who’s reading that to agree or disagree or whatever else you can say about that.  Maybe share a story about being in a rut, or being out of one.

PICTURE OF THE DAY

2 food bags from Outward Bound, with crackers, cheese, canned tuna, powder something (milk?) pita, nalgene container probably containing butter, trail mix, and drink mix.

Topic: How I made it through a week in St. Louis, Outward Bound style

FOOD AND DRINK

1) Used a water bottle instead of buying drinks.  Cost nothing and stayed hydrated.
2) Ate trail mix.  Bought a box of raisins, a jar of peanuts, and a bag of chocolate chips.  Had snacks for the week.
3) Made gado-gado pasta (2 meals, under $1/meal)
—mix peanut butter and a little water, heat in a bowl, at whatever spices you want, and wa-la, your own thai style pasta.  I used salt, pepper, sugar, and top it w/ hot sauce.
4) Made manwhich pasta (2 meals, under $2/meal)
—brown 1lb. of meat, add Manwhich, serve over pasta
5) Made stir-fry veggies, rice, tortillas (I think I ate over 1000 tortillas on Outward Bound) (2 meals, under $2/meal)

LIFESTYLE

1) Turned down rides in favor of walking a mile or two into town.  No cost, relaxing, and the only exercise I got.
2) Slept on a couch (a lot more luxurious than Outward Bound, but still nomadic).

Topic: INSPIRATION AND QUOTES

My OB instructor Speed showed me a massive book he has of stories and quotes he has collected over the years.  So, I’m going to start my own by sharing a quote from Kirstin, who was also on the Outdoor Leader Course in North Carolina, although not in my group.  This was a quote she put in a letter, that I just received.

“The highest courage is to dare to be yourself in the face of adversity.  Choosing right over wrong, ethics over convenience, and truth over popularity…These are the choices that measure your life.  Travel the path of integrity without looking back, for there is never a wrong time to do the right thing.”

“For now on, walking is my beer and feeling good is my hangover.”
Homer Simpson 11/23/03

“Look at those suckers in those metal coffins.”
Homer Simpson in reference to people driving to work 11/23/03

“If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have paradise in a few years.” –Bertrand Russell

Topic: Traveling, a rite of passage

So, one of my sisters’ roommates is from Australia.  Like the majority of Australians, she has done significant traveling, 20 months at one point.  She described the experience as a “rite of passage” for Australians.  Having been abroad myself, I can understand the amazing personal growth that someone has, especially while traveling alone.  However, many college students don’t go abroad, or can’t go abroad, and all they ever know is the American way of life.  Clearly, there is something different in our culture, compared to countries like Australia, England, and South Africa, which has “gap years,” between high school and college.  These years are often marked by travel abroad, but even if one did not travel, the experience of a year off, a time to reflect, recharge, and refocus ones efforts before college, during college, or after college, is something that could help Americans open their minds to other styles of living besides the limited ones we are exposed to at home.

The Aus. girl is at a “bad taste” party tonight.  So, being the Australia lost to England today in the World Cup for rugby, I had her wear my Arsenal jersey out.

PICTURE OF THE DAY

This bag had my food for my solo.  However, after leaving it unattended, some critters decided to eat a hole through it, and left me w/ 2 m & m’s left, a half eaten orange, and bagel crumbs.  Thus, the concept of hanging your food.

TOPIC: WHY BLOG?

I was sitting on the bus from LaGuardia to my sister’s apartment in NYC, and noticed this guy occasionally looking towards me.  I wasn’t nervous, more interested.  Who is this guy?  I didn’t say anything to him, partly because I went out till 5am last night and thus fell asleep on the bus, but the other reason is, how do you talk to a stranger?  As kids, we all grow up being told to never talk to strangers.  Then, we spend out adult lives trying to figure out how to do what we’d been told not to do, how to make friends with strangers. 

On my Outward Bound trip, I was placed with 9 other strangers, and 2 more strangers who were my instructors.  The result was amazing teamwork, friendships, and learning.  We walk around this world keeping mostly to ourselves.  When we do share our ideas and thoughts, we see amazing things develop into realities. 

I wonder, how much classroom learning is lost because people hold back thoughts, assuming that what they are thinking might not matter.  I think blogging could reduce this problem.  Imagine a class where every student was required to blog daily, to write and share with other students and professors what they had learned that day, what was confusing, and any other thoughts on their mind about the class.  Imagine a system where students learned how to give good and honest feedback, and could openly give feedback about their own professors.  I think this could be beneficial for both the students, who would learn how to express themselves in constructive ways, as well as the teachers, who would have the opportunity to alter their teaching to better meet the needs of all their students.

PICTURE OF THE DAY

I’ve spent the past hour or so looking at other people’s sites, and it’s just amazing to read them.  People probably date for years and don’t get to see these sides of people.  The amazing thing about my Outward Bound trip was that living w/ people for 45-days, 24hrs a day, you really got a chance to pick at someone’s brain, the types of conversations that you don’t easily find.  I still think people are having a hard time grasping what I’m doing with my life.  For those of you who don’t know, my last semester of college, I took 2 classes and failed them both.  I had reached my limits w/ mind-numbing classes, and all I could think about was traveling, meeting people, playing in the outdoors.  I think people were worried about me, which is a good thing, and shows i have great friends, but ultimately, what I was doing was trying to break free free, to follow what I wanted to do.  And I know everyone reading this has experienced the same thing, only most people either choose to ignore it, get used to it, or complain about it.  I’ll admit, it’s a tough situation to deal with, but right now, I’m the happiest I’ve ever been in my whole life, and that’s how I’ve felt every day that I’ve woken up since I walked out of my last college class.  I wrote some articles that received little feedback about doing more of the things you love, instead of what you’re expected to do.  Right now, I’m living that way, and it’s amazing.  I spent months working at an amazing summer camp, had some time off at home, then Outward Bound, some down time now, then South Africa, back to camp, hopefully with 2 of my best friends from college now, and then who knows.  And I write all this not to brag, but hopefully to inspire, as I know it has and some people have told me.  But I would be naiive to think I am unique, I’m sure there’s 1000s of other Dan’s out there, doing more interesting and inspiring things out there, but I feel like there’s a lack of connection between us, so maybe this Xanga thing will help bring together those who really do want to have a fun and meaningful life, instead of just dreaming about it.

For those of you who don’t think i’m crazy, but are thinking, this isn’t quite the Dan I know, trust me, I’m still here.  I still think the Giants should be 10-0, I still think all-you-can-eat brunch after a night of drinking is one of the greatest inventions in the world, I’m still fairly unorganized and would lose my head were it not attached, and Wayne’s World will probably be my most quoted movie forever.   

“Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The trouble-makers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules, and they have no respect for the status-quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify, or vilify them. But the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”

If you’ve made it this far, you probably followed the link I sent.  Hopefully, I won’t have to send out any more mass e-mails, and will just use my blog to keep everyone updated w/ the life of Dan.

Day #2 of blogging, such a funny word.

So, I spent part of this week handing out surveys to people around Washington University, having people rate their college educational experience.  I think the format of my survey wasn’t the best because I was hoping to get certain results to prove some point, but that didn’t completely happen and I realized the questions were pretty limiting.

However, at the end where I asked for general comments about people’s college experiences, I got some occassionally good stuff.  Here’s some excerpts:

“Overall a good learning experience…however, often feel as if education has become more about grades and less about the actual knowledge you graduate with.”

“I feel that by attending a prestigious college, I will have a better chance at success after college.  However, I think this has more to do with the fact I attended the college, not what I learned.”

“[College] gets in the way of learning about the real world.  Lack of relevancy.  Outside the classroom is where most of the learning gets done in terms of personal growth.”

“I always thought college would be more interactive and I haven’t found that in classes.  I was able to be much more creative in high school.  College has suppressed, in fact, my creativity in academics.

And my favorite:

“Too expensive.  Hounded by money.  Inadequate career prep.  Indifferent professors.  Grub was good.”

So, there you have it, well, a little bit.  Hopefully I will be able to use this blog as a forum to do more open ended surveys, because I think it’s worth hearing things such as above.