Be the Light
The truth is always deep beneath the surface level of the words. It is the silent, peaceful knowing that is infectious. This feeling of peace is beyond measure, beyond reason and certainly beyond words. Many years ago the communication scholar, Marshall McLuhan, famously coined the phrase “the medium is the message.” In other words, McLuhan understood “medium” in the broadest sense. He used the example of the light bulb to describe his theory. A light bulb does not have content in the way that a newspaper has articles or a television has programs, yet it is a medium that has a profound effect on the environment. A light bulb creates an environment by its mere presence. Similar to the light bulb, the life of every individual in their every thought,…
On the Distinction Between Love and Desire
Feelings of love can sometimes seamlessly merge with feelings of desire. Culturally this connection is continuously reinforced by the media, by conversation, by our understanding of modes of expression. But, in truth, love and desire are distinct from one another. Certainly, expressing our love in a physical way can be meaningful and enjoyable. But it is not necessarily a required parallel action to be pursued every time we feel the stirrings of love deep in our heart. This is not a judgment. It is simply a reflection that is often overlooked in our hyper-sexualized culture.
College for Creative Studies News
We were recently featured on the College for Creative Studies’ news and events page in an article titled, Short film explores game-changing CCS sociology course that helps students tap creative potential. We’re honored to be recognized and look forward to future semesters of “Consciousness, Creativity and Identity”. “If you walked into Molly Beauregard’s classroom toward the end of each session, you’d find the room swathed in stillness and calm. You’d see every student sitting face forward, eyes closed, deep in silent meditation. The scene wouldn’t strike you as particularly unusual if this were a wellness room or a yoga class, but it’s not. It may well be, however, the first academic course of its kind at an American college. For more than 15 years, Beauregard has taught sociology — mostly,…
Moving Beyond the Grading Rubric
The directive to “know thyself” permeates much of the American university experience. As professors and mentors, advisors and guidance counselors, we frequently tell our students to follow their passions and ambitions—to act upon what they “know” those inner strivings to be—and yet we too often ignore the role of reflection in the classroom. We ask our students to trust and follow their intuitions without teaching them to tap into intuition in the first place. We assume our students’ self-knowledge even as we eliminate the pursuit of it at almost every turn. The truth is that all reference to the “spiritual” in the college classroom has been eradicated—a process that’s taken place over the course of many generations. As far back as one hundred years ago, the advent of the modern industrial age demanded an increased emphasis…
a poem
There is an inherent sadness in humanity, this particular kind of turmoil that spurs our uncertainty, from uncertainty. It causes conventional men and women to cling recklessly to their egos and self proclaimed artists to drown in their identity, desperate to be clever, as if wit can do anything but breed with itself when it lacks the concept of compassion. My limbo generation slides in and out of consciousness, with their standards distorted and excuses within reach. Meanwhile a vast and endless universe opens its doors to anyone, anything willing to be a part of it. You may feel on top of the world but in reality you are floating, only a speck, in everything, and I wish you could see how beautiful you are. Rachel Pendergrass
The Essential Rumi
August 2015 Book of the Month It’s that time of year again, and you may not want to dip into a novel right now. This should be a time of reflection and getting ready for the semester ahead. So we thought you might enjoy a book of poems by Rumi. Our favorite method of reading a book of poems is to just pick it up and open to any page. The poem below is what we opened up to today. Sure seems fitting! A Cleared Site The presence rolling through again clears the shelves and shuts down shops. Friend of the soul, enemy of the soul, why do you want mine? Bring tribute from the village. But the village is gone in your flood. That cleared site is what I…
Community is Shared
I am a sociologist by training. I love to think about culture, people, interactions, identity issues and patterns. Emile Durkheim, the famous French father of all things sociological, argued that one must treat ‘social facts as things’. These “facts” become the subject of study for sociologists. Further, Durkheim believed that collective phenomenon is not merely reducible to the individual actor. Society, he believed, is more than the sum of its many parts. It is a system formed by the association of individuals that come together to constitute a reality with its own distinctive characteristics. Let me think of an example: how about language? Language pre-exists our birth and it continues after our death. Perhaps some of us will have the honor of inventing some new recognizable slang (LOL, duh),…
Angie Foster | Cutting Room Floor
One of our favorite past times is catching up with old friends. Angie Foster is a 2013 graduate of the Tuning the Student Mind program at the College for Creative Studies. She now lives and works in NYC. Take it away Angie: I moved to Brooklyn from Detroit last August. So far it has been adventurous, sweaty, lovely, hilarious, intimidating, ambitious, and perfectly imperfect in every way. I never know what I am going to see or do, but I just feel this pull that I am moving in the right direction. Within a few months of random freelance work when I moved here, I got my foot in the door of Pentagram, pretty much my dream job. A two-week freelance gig turned into a 9 month freelance-turned-internship with some great people and…
What Makes a Good Teacher
I filmed this interview at Molly’s house in May of 2013. I remember telling her over tea and through petting her dogs that we were just going to have a conversation about why she enjoys teaching. She was a little nervous as she brushed her hair out of her face and reminisced about me sitting in her classroom just a few short years before. Naturally, Molly quickly forgot about the camera and discussed her love of teaching in the most sincere of ways. Here is one of my favorite moments from that interview: Chelsea: What makes a good teacher? Molly: I think really, ultimately what makes a great teacher is just being comfortable in your own skin and being authentic. Kids remember way less about what it is that you want to teach them then…
Introducing the Cutting Room Floor
A common discussion among filmmakers is the ratio between the total duration of footage created for possible use in a project and that which actually appears in its final cut. This is known as the “shooting ratio”. Truth is, sometimes the best stuff ends up getting cut – random jokes, funny accidents, things that are just too intimate to share with a large audience… We thought it might be fun to share some “lost” conversations from our transcripts. So, we’ve created a whole new blog category, “Cutting Room Floor”. We hope you love reading them as much as we loathed cutting them from the Tuning the Student Mind film!