portfolio

Time for possibly my last post ever on this blog. When I started, I thought this was going to be the easiest thing ever. I tend to write... a lot. What I learned was that I do a lot of creative writing, when I feel like it, and that sticking to a topic and making a point week after week, even when I didn't have any particular witty stories to accompany my post was a lot different than the type of writing I normally do. Writing this blog was incredibly hard some weeks. I was slowly learning to write without relying on my standard style of slick stories and instead trying to actually develop coherent arguments. Anyway... here's some of my favorite posts from the semester, or at least ones where I tried to do something new.

My first choice was actually the second post I wrote, and it exemplifies my early writing style well. Lots of stories. Perhaps not as smooth as all of my writing, but a lot of meta-blogging about why it wasn't. The other thing I liked about this post was it was the first time I mentioned the "systems" approach which remained a big deal for me throughout the semester. I'm definitely a "big picture" sort of girl.

A couple weeks later I wrote about truth. I think this is the first time I start talking about the struggles I sometimes had writing, at least the sort of writing that isn't purely creative. I promised here that I was going to try to include both sides of an argument a little more, and while I perhaps didn't always hit that goal, it did provide focus and structure to a lot of my later writing.

The third thing I'm including was my favorite post of the semester, one I didn't write for a prompt or a specific week, but in response to one of our class sessions. I was explicit here, about writing from two sides, while also remaining the creativity and story-telling style that I think lets me produce my best work. This post ended up being referenced by a lot of my fellow students, and (I hope?) let us understand each other a little better.

Finally, the last post I'm including is one I wrote about my learning, and how I know when it's actually occurring. One of the reasons I particularly enjoyed this post was that I felt it tied a few of my other thoughts and ideas together, and gave a little more substance and reasoning behind some of my thoughts expressed both in this blog and in class discussions.

Choosing it also allows me a neat way to end this post: Did I learn anything in this course? Well... I've certainly changed how I write a bit! And that's something that will follow me as I continue on, past graduation and to my first job.

So long for now, blog.

truly personal mastery

I didn't like myself in high school.

I was thirteen when I started realizing it, realizing that the image I had of myself in my head perhaps wasn't reality. I grew up a perfectionist at heart, taking after my dad, and striving every day to never screw up. I remember in third grade, taking a test down to the principal's office because I'd been given a 99 on it. I thought I deserved a perfect score, and more than that, I thought I needed a perfect score. I wasn't sure what happened when I came home with a grade less than perfect, but I wasn't about to find out.

i’ve regurgitated i’m sorry
more than enough for all of us
spit it out every time
that i wasn’t quite the genius
perfect, infallible, golden girl
that everyone was expecting

It was at thirteen that I realized that not only was I not perfect, I was in fact never going to be perfect. This had the demoralizing effect of shattering my heart into a million pieces that I thought could never be put back together again. A little tiny part of it was that perfection is unobtainable. The larger part of it, for me, at the time, was the fact that in my single-minded pursuit of academic excellence, I had approximately one-half of a friend. Straight A's, no friends, not exactly perfect.

So I got depressed. And wallowed in my "imperfections". It was funny though, the sadder I got about my life, the more I drove people away. Those were probably the hardest years of my life to date.

but the i’m sorrys went wasted
nobody wanted to hear them
“the self-deprecating nonsense
isn’t becoming on you”
no one has time to listen to
insistences that i’m not enough
because in fact i’m too much
too much dissatisfaction
and discontentment with a life
half a shade off of perfect

It took a few years, but I slowly started snapping out of it. These people were right, after all. I was still smart. There were other good things about me, if I took a second to stop the wallowing. It wasn't easy. (Some days it still isn't...) But it was made harder by the years of wallowing, believe it or not. Because now I had all this guilt, for all the people I'd burdened with being a crazy girl and whining for years about why, oh why could I just not get everything together and be perfect. So I stayed depressed. As I've said, I didn't really like myself in high school.

my i’m sorrys aren't really for
anyone but myself by this time
i’m sorry for being so smart
but unbelievably blind, deaf, mute
for swallowing those around me
without learning what they knew
for thinking i was so smart
about to reach the summit
of that insurmountable mountain
thinking happiness was hiding
in the sunrise at the top
all these broken metaphors
showing off my college vocab
i think i’m really something else
but i’m not the first
and won’t be the last
to write depressing poetry
about just how much i suck

It was my senior year that I was able to decide that enough was enough, that this wasn't who I wanted to be. It's been five years since then, five years where my personal goals have remained, while not always the identical, consistent in theme and tone.

When we were talking about personal mastery in class, this was what I was thinking about. The one journey in my life that I am not only currently incredibly motivated towards and invested in, but that I have been so and remained so for such a long period of time. Many things in my life have been fleeting. Goals lasted months, days, a year tops. I came to college firmly decided on a career of genetics research, which didn't even make it through two semesters.

Partly that's just who I am... I like looking for the next great adventure. Partly it's because I've always had a struggle with intrinsic motivation, and external factors don't tend to stay consistent. But my journey towards... personal mastery (as in, mastery over my person) has always been internally fueled. (I'm not sure that self-discovery and improvement could be anything but.) It's the one thing I've always wanted (if we shorten the scope of always to the last five years). It's the thing I've put before everything else. It's the one topic that I think I can safely say that I've always learned about or tried something new for on a weekly basis.

I'm not sure if this was at all what Senge was talking about. But I can't even compare it to anything else I've done in my life. When discussions about motivation come up, I have a million examples of extrinsic motivators in my life. All things that have led me to do things and try things and later drop them. I have one thing, just one, that I don't want to drop, that's always interesting, that's always hard, but always worth it, that I rarely get any concrete awards or praise from pursuing.

I know we've talked some about the effects of external motivators and whether they actually kill opportunities for growth, learning, and creativity. That's still not an question I have an answer to. I can say though, that, for me, personally, (enough commas?) the thing I have the greatest passion for has been it's own reward.

And for me, that's what Senge's personal mastery is about. A passion so great that is only further fueled by taking each step down the path.

(Poetry courtesy of Kim @ 16)

beauty | function

The final version! (I think...)

Now with music.

Beauty | Function

View more presentations from kvlcek2.

multimedia sneak peek

I've selected my images (and my music, but haven't done anything with it yet) and started putting the whole thing together... it's not done yet, and this version of the upload messed up a bit of my formatting... but here's a quick glimpse of my multimedia project coming together:

Beauty | Function

Let me know what you think!