The final class I visited at Brown on Wednesday was called American Advertising: History and Consequences. For the lesson I sat in on, it was focused on said political ads.

The TA (the professor let her take charge on this lesson because she had done all the research for it) led us through a brief history, as well as the positive and negative comments regarding political ads.

She made it clear that these ads do reach people and do make a different. This conclusion was not incredibly shocking-after all, why would candidates spend millions of dollars from their campaign on political ads if they were useless? What was surprising though, was that negative ads have always been this dirty. A correlation can be made between the LBJ “little girl and atomic bomb” ad and Hilary Clinton’s “Who do you want to  answer the phone?” add, in the sense that they each were using scare tactics to convince citizens (consumers) to vote for a certain candidate. It worked for LBJ, but not for Clinton.

This begs the question about televion ads in general. How effective are they at convincing the consumer to buy their product? Can other areas such as art and music reach demographics that politcal ads can? Will they be actually contribute to album or art sales?

On another note, what does seeing all these terrible things about our elected or soon-to-be-elected officals have on our psyche?

Aside from meeting students, eating in the cafeteria, and getting a general feel for student life, I decided to go to four classes. I would like focus on the first.

The first class was Intro to Human Development, in which I learned and how it is difficult for students to adapt to school life especially when coming from households with limited schedules or structure. In this class, I also learned that there is a big distinction between intuitive learning (experiencing) and forced learning (schooling). I found this class to be interesting because the teacher was dynamic and often asked her students questions o keep them involved. What really surprised me about the class though, was that for the last twenty minutes we broke up into sections to do an activity based on the lecture and have a group debrief. I almost found this debrief to be as insightful as the lecture itself because I was hearing the opinions and histories of Brown students, and thus was given a wider range of perspectives. These students ranged from freshmen to seniors, and one of my favorite things about Brown, is that they all genuinely wanted to be there, which created an attentive atmosphere. The room was packed, with what I would estimate about 100 people (but I am terrible at guessing these things) and I ended up sitting on the floor in the back.

After attending this class, I reflected back to LAB and it’s teaching methods. LAB is much more group oriented than this one group breakdown, and there is little lecturing. I think that the lecture is classic in college, but I hope that there are more classes that are as interactive as the classes I take at LAB. I also feel that if I visited a smaller class, this might have been the case.

This class made me wonder about teaching styles:

How does a teacher find a way to connect with each student’s learning styles?

Do they reach out to each student individually or treat them as a mass?

How do you keep the attention of students for an hour and twenty minutes?

I also wondered how students can stay engaged for this long if the class is a lecture.

Here are a few album covers of theirs:

As you can see, they all are very colorful and expressive. It makes me wonder first of all who made them (was it someone within Of Montreal) and what specifically inspired them to create these images. On a more general scale, it would be interesting to find out the different relationships there are between album covers, album content and album artist. I think that each artist has a goal in mind when designing their album cover, so it would be interesting to look into the various motives behind such beautiful work.

It also would be a really exciting and fun job!

My connection to language immersion programs is that in my elementary school, I was part of a Spanish immersion program and it has played a part in defining my life.

In regards to writing about spanish immersion, there are many different paths and questions that can be considered. Is the non-English language that is taught the important aspect, or does it need to be a specific language, such as Spanish, that makes the difference. Also, what difference does language immersion have on an indivisual and a society? Are bilingual people truer “global citizens”? What needs to happen for this reform to take place? Is it more relevant in places such as NYC where there is a high percentange of people who don’t speak language, or is it just as important in a small town where everyone only speaks English?

Going off on that tangent, what are advertisers doing to take advantage of general social depression when winter rolls along? Also, is there any way to combat it with the exceptions moving and buying a special SAD light?

Besides this though, I really am very open on what my topic for my keystone will be, and I am definitely not sure about what I want to focus on. I feel like I have lots of topics that I am interested in, but I don’t know if they are appropriate to take to that next level of action. I also seem to get sudden bursts of inspiration and then forget them! It’s terrible!

Meanwhile, celebrity figures such as David Letterman are also having affairs and the media is loving it. It seems as if a lot of America loves to hate it. It’s like we want our leaders or celebrities to fail; to stoop to our level; to be less perfect so they can be more relateable. Maybe.

This being said, it makes me nervous that through all of this publicity and almost constant bombardment of sex scandals, that the general public might become more open, or at least less critical of infidelity. In the same way that kids start smoking because they see it in the movies, people who admired certain politicians (or at least their lifestyle) may have a few affairs of their own in order to mentally bring them closer to the politician.

If this is the case, is this true for all things? Is it that the more we are exposed to something, the more we learn to tolerate it? Are tolerance and acceptance the same in the public eye? At the same time, I want to know how the media has such powerful influence over the American people, their actions, and their beliefs.

Admittedly, I was a little confused at first, but after about the first 15 seconds I realized what it was for.

Where the Wild Things Are, written by Maurice Sendak, was one of my favorite books growing up, and I was both terrified and thrilled to see that Spike Jones was making it in to a movie. Seeing the trailer made me remember elementary school, a time when I didn’t have to worry about the stress of college applications and mountains of school work.  I then journey back to the days of kindergarden and preschool, thinking about nap time in particular.

Thinking about naptime made me wonder why we don’t have a high school equivalent to reenergize. After all, we spend a lot more time in school, doing much more stressful work, and often while sleep deprived. So why not have a scheduled block in time during the day for recovery? Yes, lunch is nice, but that time is used more to eat, first of all, and talk more freely. But for those of us who have clubs nearly every day, our brains still have to be firing at full force, and when your school day ends at 4PM, that’s almost eight straight hours. Therefore, it would be interesting to see how students performed in these two environments and compare their energy, quality of work and level of stress. 

The image below depicts a girl who is flying over the wall between Palestine and Israel.

I think this image is incredibly powerful because it reflects the notion of “the grass is greener on the other side.” It makes one stop and think about the two sides of the conflict and how the other is perceived by each side. This image seems to suggest that Palestinians believe that life on the other side of the wall is more peaceful and fruitful, without considering their own stance in life.

Banksy, as a example of both a contemporary artist and a street artists, makes me wonder about how art can influence society. Do spray-painted images such as the one above really make people stop and reflect on the issues it addresses? In terms of a topic, I may want to learn more about contemporary street art and it’s impact on society. It would also be interesting to focus on Banksy as an example of an activist who is trying to bring about change through a medium we have not looked at yet-art.

Both bands I adore, so I definitely came into the experience with high expectations as well as a bias of sorts about already being a fan of the music.

Passion Pit was the opening act, and from my perspective at least, they played great. Especially when one considers that they are a somewhat electronic-esque band, their live performance matched the excellence present on their albums. Unfortunately, the audience didn’t seem as into Passion Pit as I was (which was evident by my enthusiastic dancing), but the atmosphere was pleasant.

And then Phoenix took the stage. Almost immediately, the crowd lit up as the band members filled on stage, bright blue lights at the backs, waiting to open with the song “Listomania.” The was a surge of movement forward, everyone trying to get as close as possible to Phoenix, but the squishing was not too severe. Bodies were moving, voices were singing, music filled our ears.  Every songs they played they amplified to the next level of excellence, from fusing “Funky Squaredance” in to the middle of “Rome,” or adding an extra bridge. Each song felt fresh but familiar. All in all, they put on a fantastic show.

After the show, it made me wonder about the type of people who go to concerts and how their experiences are shaped based on what they actually do at the show. I tend to enjoy myself the most when I feel like I can break it down and everyone around me has the same idea. Other people seem to like shows best when they get really drunk and push their way to the front (the token asshole). And then they’re are a few people who literally light up during shows (this tends to be at more outdoor shows though) and don’t remember it at all. Besides listening to live music, what are their motivations to be there? Are they familiar with the band beforehand or are they trying to discover new music?  Also, what does the venue do to make sure that the show run smoothly and that the audience enjoys itself? Do they even care if the audience has a good time (probably, because if they didn’t they may not return to the venue)?

Upon reflection, it made me want to learn more about the concert experience from all perspectives. It also makes me want to interview or at least get people’s reactions after shows. Maybe I’ll do that next time…