The Avatar (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} saurik) wrote,@ 2004-06-07 08:10:00 |
|
The Making of Change
Everyone wants an electronic copy of my speech, so here it is. I did end up making last minute changes and edits. I was practicing the speech in the parking lot, scratching stuff out with a fingernail clipper, when I decided "I need a pen.". I looked around. "That old woman over there... she would have a pen!" Lo and behold, I was right: she did. As I was sitting there making my additions she asked me if I was graduating, to which I responded affirmative. "Consider it your first graduation gift." She came up to the stage later before the actual ceremony to get my picture.
I added the lead-in right before while wandering the stage talking with people, and I finally got the end of one of the sentences working (one that I had just cut the night before as I didn't want to have to deal with it anymore) while I was on stage. Nothing quite like Danna, however, who apparently had a pen on stage and was scratching away at her's _during_ my speech ;P.
The version presented here includes all edits. But, seeing as I'm Jay, I can't just post something simple. I have to make a big deal out of it. So here's the "behind the scenes look at the making of change".
I was originally thinking of doing "The Building of Community". The focus would have been the building of the computer lab and how that's changed CCS over the last four years. I also wanted to mention the online communities that had been forming, such as LiveJournal. But somehow I never figured out good angles to attack that topic that didn't sound more like a news story than a graduation speech, and to get in the various sub-stories that I felt necessary would likely also have taken longer than "five to six minutes", which was my limit.
(Although as writing this I may have just gotten it. I should have talked about the physical object "The Building of Community" with 'Building' as a noun in there... to show how the CCS building itself has undergone changes throughout the years, both purposeful and makeshift, both functional and artistic, using that as a connection with the story of the lab. It would still be too long, though... I'd have to figure out the minimal subset of the point and cut out most of the meat. Oh well ;P. Maybe next life.)
I almost had a lot more on my connections with the people who were graduating (and an extended sequence starting from "a third of the people graduating" that would have paralleled my response to Mika's question to 494), but then decided to drop it. It wasn't really neccessary (as I felt it sufficient to emphasize the strong connection to the third and leave everyone else more vague) and would have wasted more time on "my story", which I felt was out of place in a graduation speech unless it _really_ showed off something that could be applied to everyone's shared mental state.
Probably most importantly (as I actually got it kicked back to me at the end as one of the few complaints about my speech from Dan), I didn't leave the audience with a strong recommendation. I was thinking about it. In "The Building of Community" I was going to recommend more people come to the online communities, especially those graduating, in order to hope that the CCS could maintain as a weird meme even as people left. I also wanted to implore people who hadn't graduated yet to spend more time at the building participating in events like Coffee Hour, if not just sitting in the hallway or randomly attending classes (which I consider the more ideal level of participation ;P).
The vague recollection I ended my speech with was only that "change can be good", that we can technically feel good about leaving, but you should probably be depressed out of your mind anyway. I don't know. I think this was the main failing of my speech. Shine's talk from last year was really, really good at this. (I just read over it again quickly now.) He managed to toy with peoples' emotions _and_ leave them with something to take home at the end.
Oh, I had also wanted to include a comment about the stereotypical Nexus person in my head and had "randomly" asked Seth if he could remember the guys name, but that effort failed. I thought it would be interesting to point out how now, my stereotypical Nexus person is Jamie, and how that change just occured gracefully without my actually noticing it at the time. It's these kinds of smooth transitions that let change occur without disrupting the whole system *thought truncated as it was about to delve into irritating economic theory on how capitalism solves a similar problem*.
Other than that question, however, I'm proud to say that I practiced the speech in front of no one and took no direct input what-so-ever. (For indirect input there were the vague grunts of "I guess that wouldn't be lame" that I'd get when I'd summarize my topic as "the ghosts that we leave behind" during the days before.)
I pretty much sequestered myself in my apartment for a few days writing this. (On Saturday I had to close all my web browsers and disconnect myself from all online chat systems to increase focus.) I think Jake was somewhat worried about it ;P. He called me on Saturday (after I had refused to come look at the Eschaton video because I was too busy working on my speech) to see if I needed any help with my speech, either writing or just a practice audience. I refused, hehe.
In general I was trying to avoid humor, but I did end up with three-and-a-half jokes. The first was the thought of me living in Room 143 to stop change from occurring. I felt it personalized the beginning of the speech for people that knew me, and connected it back with the short introduction speech I had given at last year's all-college meeting where I claimed to "hail from Room 143".
The second was the wording and cadence of the extended description of Steve. I added this because I felt it important that at least one of these people I mentioned would be appreciated on his own without even needing to know them. I got a laugh from most of the audience, so I hope it worked.
It wasn't _intended_ as a joke (and isn't counted in my three-and-a-half), but the audience seemed to love the thought of discussing cannibalism with Morgana during coffee hour. It got a laugh, even though I hadn't intended to it (which really works anyway, as it helps the case of people not knowing Rob or Jenn in the "people who are leaving" category). I had wondered about who else I might add to this, but I ended up going for "short list". I'm sorry to the people who aren't on it ;P.
The "and-a-half" comes from the usage of the full title "Networked Virtual Environments / Real-Time Computer Graphics/Rendering" for the course of Jake and Sean's that merged into a single class. I could easily have shortened it, but thought it might be humorous to leave. I have a vague recollection of a chuckle, but I want to say I got no reaction from this.
The last was more of an easter egg than anything else. I don't remember getting any reaction from it at all. If you know of Demotivators, you've probably seen how all of their posters, no matter what about, mention "disaffectd college student" as one of their target audiences. When I was discussing replacing each person at CCS, one at a time, their replacement was "a younger, less disaffected student".
What follows is unofficially named (and thank God I was avoiding humor, as I would have _had_ to include this title somewhere and it's damned cheesy... and for some reason even slightly familiar): I See Graduated People.
I See Graduated People
There are some points in everyone's life when change is inevitable. No matter how hard you fight it, your life is going to be drastically different than it was before. Graduation, whether it be from high school or college, is one of these times.
I've been forced to accept that, even if I stay... even if I move into the CCS and live in Room 143, I can't continue to hold on to the same experiences that I've had here over the last five years. That no amount of fighting on my part will maintain this small slice of time.
Every year's commencement gets harder. More people I know and care about are lost, and more new strangers come in to replace them. I try. I go to the first year Computer Science class and play the role of a makeshift adviser, an older peer who co-teaches the class with Murat. I even go back and sit in on some of the same biology and CS classes that I've already taken two or three times before in order to meet new students. Whenever I arrive in the morning, I pop my head into the computer writing lab and do a once over of the building to see who else might be there.
But after a while, that game starts being tiring. When you look back, you see an almost endless trail of ghosts that were left behind. Specters on your mind. You hear sounds, or walk into rooms, and have expectations. Expectations of people who should be there, or activities that should be going on.
When I walk up to the building in the morning, a part of me still expects to see Roni Feldman, his shirt tied around his waist or being used as a paint rag, carrying one of his latest works to his studio from the gallery. When I go to coffee hour I still expect to see Jeff Reineke explaining quantum mechanics in analogy to anyone who would listen. Every time I see a game of Go, I wonder where Ryan Smith is to explain why every move is being played wrong. The sound of roller blades still reminds me of Anna Salamon gracefully maneuvering around classrooms. As I walk through the hall I expect to see Adria Le Boeuf hosting her improv acting club in Room 136. And I bemoan the loss of Steve Rayhawk, who would sit quietly in the corner, with an extra shirt tied into a blindfold... almost Zen-like and seemingly asleep until he would break into your conversation, predict where your argument was going, and indicate who you should consult for more information.
Sometimes the ghost is a class instead of a person. A class that was so striking that it's difficult to not reference it again and again. I continually find myself feeling sorry for someone who was unable to attend Shine Ling's The Nature of the Mind. And I don't think anyone who participated in Robert Desmond's packed Cyberpunk Literature class (a class that so completely filled room 143 that Robby stood atop the table and preached his points to us on the first day) will ever forget it. And at least among us Computer Science majors, Jake Cannell and Sean Montgomery's Networked Virtual Environments / Real-Time Computer Graphics/Rendering continues to be deferred to.
Even more memories are simply lost. Names of people I knew from years back. Experiences that I never recorded and am only left with a vague impression of. But these impressions _do_ remain, and I feel their weight during my stay at the CCS.
And now I have to ask where CCS will be next year. Without Robert Wechsler's "perpetrations" to startle students each week as they arrive at the building? Without Jennifer Osgood in the computer lab frantically maintaining her hundreds of online personae? Without Morgana Mongraw-Chaffin to discuss cannibalism with during coffee hour?
Every year the memories build, and part of me wishes it would just stop. That these punctuated points of massive change could be done away with, leaving only the gradual adjustments that occur during the rest of the year. I've thought about this a lot, wondering what situation I'd really want to be in for the remainder of my life. Do I want to find a group of people I'm happy with, and continue being with them until I die, enjoying a form of stable consistency? Or is it, in fact, _superior_ in some sense to be the only constant, where everything else in my life is in a state of continual flux... something destined to pass away into the darkness once it is done affecting me?
And then my thoughts turn to the staff here at CCS. I think of Frank, and Leslie, and how they have to deal with these same issues every year, and have been since they've arrived. Do they find themselves skipping a year occasionally, taking a break from learning new faces, new life stories, in order to break the monotony of change? Bill always likes to joke that Frank is the collective memory of the CCS, having been here longer than anyone else. Does this mean that the specters haunt him even greater? Does he look at each of us and find a weak impersonation of someone he already knew?
I think the core issue comes back to the age-old question, "How much of something can you take away, and still preserve the essential essence of what was there?". Can the CCS still be the CCS without all of these people? Can any class still be the same class if it.s taught by a different professor before a different audience? If we were to go through all of the people attending CCS and replace them, one at a time, with a younger, less disaffected student, at what point do we need to come up with a new name for the college?
Obviously the replacement of even one piece makes the whole different, but that doesn't have to take away its identity. From another viewpoint, the CCS is the embodiment of a set of ideals. It's a mindset unique to it's participants that gets passed on from class to class, and only changes slightly in the retelling.
This ideal _can_ live on, even when a fourth of the students are replaced, and even when that happens four times. But what I really want to say here is that in a way it's _necessary_ that this replacement occurs. The CCS is about having a place where Creativity can flourish. Without the infusion of new blood, groups stagnate. The same concepts come up time and time again. You start being able to predict what is going to happen on a day to day basis. And without outside checks, local cultures tend to quickly run away to intellectual dead-ends. This fact is so important that it is embodied in the very principles of our college, being one of the reasons why we don't keep our own select clique of permanent faculty, instead borrowing from the other colleges.
For me, at least, this year comes as a sort of culmination. Every year the feeling of loss at the time of commencement has been getting worse: I always feel like I'm losing even more than the year before. This year about a third of the people graduating are people I consider part of my everyday life. These are the people I live with and the people I care about. I not only spend my in-class time with them, I spend most of my out-of-class time with them as well. And now, I find myself part of the celebration. Here I am on the same stage where I've lost most everyone else I've known for the last five years. In a way, I'm losing myself.
And the CCS will be different without me, without us. But I can rejoice knowing that it just as important that we leave as that we were here, and that the CCS will continue.
Everyone wants an electronic copy of my speech, so here it is. I did end up making last minute changes and edits. I was practicing the speech in the parking lot, scratching stuff out with a fingernail clipper, when I decided "I need a pen.". I looked around. "That old woman over there... she would have a pen!" Lo and behold, I was right: she did. As I was sitting there making my additions she asked me if I was graduating, to which I responded affirmative. "Consider it your first graduation gift." She came up to the stage later before the actual ceremony to get my picture.
I added the lead-in right before while wandering the stage talking with people, and I finally got the end of one of the sentences working (one that I had just cut the night before as I didn't want to have to deal with it anymore) while I was on stage. Nothing quite like Danna, however, who apparently had a pen on stage and was scratching away at her's _during_ my speech ;P.
The version presented here includes all edits. But, seeing as I'm Jay, I can't just post something simple. I have to make a big deal out of it. So here's the "behind the scenes look at the making of change".
I was originally thinking of doing "The Building of Community". The focus would have been the building of the computer lab and how that's changed CCS over the last four years. I also wanted to mention the online communities that had been forming, such as LiveJournal. But somehow I never figured out good angles to attack that topic that didn't sound more like a news story than a graduation speech, and to get in the various sub-stories that I felt necessary would likely also have taken longer than "five to six minutes", which was my limit.
(Although as writing this I may have just gotten it. I should have talked about the physical object "The Building of Community" with 'Building' as a noun in there... to show how the CCS building itself has undergone changes throughout the years, both purposeful and makeshift, both functional and artistic, using that as a connection with the story of the lab. It would still be too long, though... I'd have to figure out the minimal subset of the point and cut out most of the meat. Oh well ;P. Maybe next life.)
I almost had a lot more on my connections with the people who were graduating (and an extended sequence starting from "a third of the people graduating" that would have paralleled my response to Mika's question to 494), but then decided to drop it. It wasn't really neccessary (as I felt it sufficient to emphasize the strong connection to the third and leave everyone else more vague) and would have wasted more time on "my story", which I felt was out of place in a graduation speech unless it _really_ showed off something that could be applied to everyone's shared mental state.
Probably most importantly (as I actually got it kicked back to me at the end as one of the few complaints about my speech from Dan), I didn't leave the audience with a strong recommendation. I was thinking about it. In "The Building of Community" I was going to recommend more people come to the online communities, especially those graduating, in order to hope that the CCS could maintain as a weird meme even as people left. I also wanted to implore people who hadn't graduated yet to spend more time at the building participating in events like Coffee Hour, if not just sitting in the hallway or randomly attending classes (which I consider the more ideal level of participation ;P).
The vague recollection I ended my speech with was only that "change can be good", that we can technically feel good about leaving, but you should probably be depressed out of your mind anyway. I don't know. I think this was the main failing of my speech. Shine's talk from last year was really, really good at this. (I just read over it again quickly now.) He managed to toy with peoples' emotions _and_ leave them with something to take home at the end.
Oh, I had also wanted to include a comment about the stereotypical Nexus person in my head and had "randomly" asked Seth if he could remember the guys name, but that effort failed. I thought it would be interesting to point out how now, my stereotypical Nexus person is Jamie, and how that change just occured gracefully without my actually noticing it at the time. It's these kinds of smooth transitions that let change occur without disrupting the whole system *thought truncated as it was about to delve into irritating economic theory on how capitalism solves a similar problem*.
Other than that question, however, I'm proud to say that I practiced the speech in front of no one and took no direct input what-so-ever. (For indirect input there were the vague grunts of "I guess that wouldn't be lame" that I'd get when I'd summarize my topic as "the ghosts that we leave behind" during the days before.)
I pretty much sequestered myself in my apartment for a few days writing this. (On Saturday I had to close all my web browsers and disconnect myself from all online chat systems to increase focus.) I think Jake was somewhat worried about it ;P. He called me on Saturday (after I had refused to come look at the Eschaton video because I was too busy working on my speech) to see if I needed any help with my speech, either writing or just a practice audience. I refused, hehe.
In general I was trying to avoid humor, but I did end up with three-and-a-half jokes. The first was the thought of me living in Room 143 to stop change from occurring. I felt it personalized the beginning of the speech for people that knew me, and connected it back with the short introduction speech I had given at last year's all-college meeting where I claimed to "hail from Room 143".
The second was the wording and cadence of the extended description of Steve. I added this because I felt it important that at least one of these people I mentioned would be appreciated on his own without even needing to know them. I got a laugh from most of the audience, so I hope it worked.
It wasn't _intended_ as a joke (and isn't counted in my three-and-a-half), but the audience seemed to love the thought of discussing cannibalism with Morgana during coffee hour. It got a laugh, even though I hadn't intended to it (which really works anyway, as it helps the case of people not knowing Rob or Jenn in the "people who are leaving" category). I had wondered about who else I might add to this, but I ended up going for "short list". I'm sorry to the people who aren't on it ;P.
The "and-a-half" comes from the usage of the full title "Networked Virtual Environments / Real-Time Computer Graphics/Rendering" for the course of Jake and Sean's that merged into a single class. I could easily have shortened it, but thought it might be humorous to leave. I have a vague recollection of a chuckle, but I want to say I got no reaction from this.
The last was more of an easter egg than anything else. I don't remember getting any reaction from it at all. If you know of Demotivators, you've probably seen how all of their posters, no matter what about, mention "disaffectd college student" as one of their target audiences. When I was discussing replacing each person at CCS, one at a time, their replacement was "a younger, less disaffected student".
What follows is unofficially named (and thank God I was avoiding humor, as I would have _had_ to include this title somewhere and it's damned cheesy... and for some reason even slightly familiar): I See Graduated People.
I See Graduated People
There are some points in everyone's life when change is inevitable. No matter how hard you fight it, your life is going to be drastically different than it was before. Graduation, whether it be from high school or college, is one of these times.
I've been forced to accept that, even if I stay... even if I move into the CCS and live in Room 143, I can't continue to hold on to the same experiences that I've had here over the last five years. That no amount of fighting on my part will maintain this small slice of time.
Every year's commencement gets harder. More people I know and care about are lost, and more new strangers come in to replace them. I try. I go to the first year Computer Science class and play the role of a makeshift adviser, an older peer who co-teaches the class with Murat. I even go back and sit in on some of the same biology and CS classes that I've already taken two or three times before in order to meet new students. Whenever I arrive in the morning, I pop my head into the computer writing lab and do a once over of the building to see who else might be there.
But after a while, that game starts being tiring. When you look back, you see an almost endless trail of ghosts that were left behind. Specters on your mind. You hear sounds, or walk into rooms, and have expectations. Expectations of people who should be there, or activities that should be going on.
When I walk up to the building in the morning, a part of me still expects to see Roni Feldman, his shirt tied around his waist or being used as a paint rag, carrying one of his latest works to his studio from the gallery. When I go to coffee hour I still expect to see Jeff Reineke explaining quantum mechanics in analogy to anyone who would listen. Every time I see a game of Go, I wonder where Ryan Smith is to explain why every move is being played wrong. The sound of roller blades still reminds me of Anna Salamon gracefully maneuvering around classrooms. As I walk through the hall I expect to see Adria Le Boeuf hosting her improv acting club in Room 136. And I bemoan the loss of Steve Rayhawk, who would sit quietly in the corner, with an extra shirt tied into a blindfold... almost Zen-like and seemingly asleep until he would break into your conversation, predict where your argument was going, and indicate who you should consult for more information.
Sometimes the ghost is a class instead of a person. A class that was so striking that it's difficult to not reference it again and again. I continually find myself feeling sorry for someone who was unable to attend Shine Ling's The Nature of the Mind. And I don't think anyone who participated in Robert Desmond's packed Cyberpunk Literature class (a class that so completely filled room 143 that Robby stood atop the table and preached his points to us on the first day) will ever forget it. And at least among us Computer Science majors, Jake Cannell and Sean Montgomery's Networked Virtual Environments / Real-Time Computer Graphics/Rendering continues to be deferred to.
Even more memories are simply lost. Names of people I knew from years back. Experiences that I never recorded and am only left with a vague impression of. But these impressions _do_ remain, and I feel their weight during my stay at the CCS.
And now I have to ask where CCS will be next year. Without Robert Wechsler's "perpetrations" to startle students each week as they arrive at the building? Without Jennifer Osgood in the computer lab frantically maintaining her hundreds of online personae? Without Morgana Mongraw-Chaffin to discuss cannibalism with during coffee hour?
Every year the memories build, and part of me wishes it would just stop. That these punctuated points of massive change could be done away with, leaving only the gradual adjustments that occur during the rest of the year. I've thought about this a lot, wondering what situation I'd really want to be in for the remainder of my life. Do I want to find a group of people I'm happy with, and continue being with them until I die, enjoying a form of stable consistency? Or is it, in fact, _superior_ in some sense to be the only constant, where everything else in my life is in a state of continual flux... something destined to pass away into the darkness once it is done affecting me?
And then my thoughts turn to the staff here at CCS. I think of Frank, and Leslie, and how they have to deal with these same issues every year, and have been since they've arrived. Do they find themselves skipping a year occasionally, taking a break from learning new faces, new life stories, in order to break the monotony of change? Bill always likes to joke that Frank is the collective memory of the CCS, having been here longer than anyone else. Does this mean that the specters haunt him even greater? Does he look at each of us and find a weak impersonation of someone he already knew?
I think the core issue comes back to the age-old question, "How much of something can you take away, and still preserve the essential essence of what was there?". Can the CCS still be the CCS without all of these people? Can any class still be the same class if it.s taught by a different professor before a different audience? If we were to go through all of the people attending CCS and replace them, one at a time, with a younger, less disaffected student, at what point do we need to come up with a new name for the college?
Obviously the replacement of even one piece makes the whole different, but that doesn't have to take away its identity. From another viewpoint, the CCS is the embodiment of a set of ideals. It's a mindset unique to it's participants that gets passed on from class to class, and only changes slightly in the retelling.
This ideal _can_ live on, even when a fourth of the students are replaced, and even when that happens four times. But what I really want to say here is that in a way it's _necessary_ that this replacement occurs. The CCS is about having a place where Creativity can flourish. Without the infusion of new blood, groups stagnate. The same concepts come up time and time again. You start being able to predict what is going to happen on a day to day basis. And without outside checks, local cultures tend to quickly run away to intellectual dead-ends. This fact is so important that it is embodied in the very principles of our college, being one of the reasons why we don't keep our own select clique of permanent faculty, instead borrowing from the other colleges.
For me, at least, this year comes as a sort of culmination. Every year the feeling of loss at the time of commencement has been getting worse: I always feel like I'm losing even more than the year before. This year about a third of the people graduating are people I consider part of my everyday life. These are the people I live with and the people I care about. I not only spend my in-class time with them, I spend most of my out-of-class time with them as well. And now, I find myself part of the celebration. Here I am on the same stage where I've lost most everyone else I've known for the last five years. In a way, I'm losing myself.
And the CCS will be different without me, without us. But I can rejoice knowing that it just as important that we leave as that we were here, and that the CCS will continue.
