Author Archives: Sharon

City Planning and the History of Ithaca

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First off, I really appreciate Dr. Blalock stepping in to run Monday’s Table Talk. To be honest, I’ve never given city planning much thought, except perhaps when I complain about traffic bottlenecks and confusing roads when I’m driving. At the Table Talk, I learned that city planning is more than just deciding where the roads and intersections go. It’s a complicated process that has to deal with sanitation, environmental impact, education, health, and general quality of life. City planning often takes years and requires explicit objects and goals detailed in a sight plan before any construction can happen. And there are different ways to city plan; for example, a city can be split up into zones, such as residential and industrial, which have their own sets of guidelines and  restrictions to follow, or it can incorporate mixed use, where residences mesh with schools and commercial areas for convenience.

I also had a good time learning more about Ithaca’s past, from Ezra Cornell’s fortune coming from investing shares into telegraph companies which merged into what is now Western Union to how downtown Ithaca is situated on a flood plain to how Cayuga Lake connects us to the rest of the world via waterways. I did feel a little dumb for knowing next to nothing about Ithaca beforehand, but I’m glad that I’m a little more informed now. Originally, I had come to the Table Talk to learn more about how to better orient myself in a new place, which, as my freshman fall semester can attest to, I am extremely bad at. I’m a little disappointed that we didn’t end up discussing this, but, again, I did pick up new knowledge that I found intriguing, so I still found this Table Talk a positive experience.

Relating to the Characters of Intervene

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Last Thursday, I went to a seminar on bystander intervention. While I appreciate Dr. Anne Laurita coming to speak with us, I honestly didn’t feel like I got much out of the event. I think that part of this stems from a having a tough time relating to the scenarios shown in the film Intervene. Amidst the dangerous drinking, hazing, sexual harassment, and other problematic situations, the only one I felt connected to was the part regarding academic problems; I’ve been both the bystander and the person who needed help on different occasions. I’m aware that all of the other situations are seen around campus, some more frequently than others, but having never gone through myself, I felt very detached. I understand that the point of the seminar was to show ways of intervening (although we did discuss the positives and negatives of intervention, which I thought was interesting), but I feel that I would never be in a position where I would even be a bystander able to get involved. For instance, I don’t go partying or drinking, and neither do any of my friends on campus, so I have a hard time seeing myself as a bystander at a party who needs to intervene in an emergency, simply because I wouldn’t be at that party in the first place. I felt very disconnected, and so had a hard time being inspired to act.

While I didn’t feel like the seminar was very useful for me, I hope that everyone else who had come found it to be enlightening, informative, or otherwise positive in some way.

Sculpting and the Benefits of Crafting

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Last Thursday, I had the opportunity to go to the Johnson Museum and, as the event is titled, sculpt with clay. While the event coordinator, Annmarie, did show us some interesting pieces of pottery, the main activity was being able to create our own fruit- inspired sculptures. I used to craft quite a bit (although not generally with clay), and I had been looking forward to this event since GRF Magdala had mentioned it back in early March. I found the ambiance of everyone getting their hands dirty and encouraging and praising each other’s handiwork to be very relaxing, especially since that week and the previous week had been very stressful for me. It got me thinking about the benefits of crafting, whether it be knitting, sculpting, macrame, or something else entirely. After coming back, I went online and found articles stating that crafting may, among other things, protect the brain from aging, relieve stress and anxiety, and increase happiness, by putting the mind in a state similar to meditation and releasing dopamine. I’m not sure if these articles are overstating the benefits of crafts, especially since the studies are relatively new, but I certainly came out of the sculpting session much happier than I was going into it. If there are similar arts and crafts events in the future, I will be sure to sign up as soon as possible.

Social Media: Regulate, not Remove

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When I watched the TED Talk that was assigned to this particular Table Talk, I was bothered by Dr. Cal Newport’s very uncompromising view on social media: it’s bad. Don’t use it. There’s no positive that could come out of Facebook or Twitter or any of the other social media sites. It almost felt like he was looking down on others who had these accounts, even if they used them responsibly. Coming to the Table Talk, I noticed that most people felt the same way. I particularly liked the comment that, since Dr. Newport had never used such services (as he often mentioned during the talk) he wouldn’t be able to critique social media as well as someone who had used it before. Additionally, people mentioned that social media brings them joy in the form of connecting to people who are difficult to reach otherwise, funny memes and jokes, and inspiration. That being said, he did bring up some interesting points, such as listing social media as entertainment, and its role in fragmenting our attention span. I just feel that he being far too black and white with this issue. Instead of removing social media altogether, as Dr. Newport very strongly suggests, I think it would be better for us to regulate our social media use. I personally don’t have the Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram apps on my phone, despite having accounts on all of these, and it’s helped me cut down on aimless social media scrolling simply because I didn’t have easy access to it. And if I want to use FB or Twitter during a time in which I don’t have much to do, I can open my laptop and access the desktop version. I don’t think complete cold turkey removal is necessary; it’s possible to reap the aforementioned benefits from social media while limiting its effects on productivity.

 

Resumes: A Crash Course

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Last Thursday I attended a seminar on how to create a resume. Like most, if not all, of the students attending this seminar, I was  (and still am) currently applying to summer internships, and I was looking for pointers that I hadn’t hear from anywhere else. I had known some of the items gone over in the seminar before, such as putting contact information at the top of the page, being conservative in use of fonts, and not listing soft skills. However, other things, such as using active verbs, and not including anything from high school, were new to me.

I do wish that GRF Seema had told us what we were going to do with the paper copies of our resumes that we were to bring to the seminar beforehand. I had come in with the assumption that we would be editing said resumes during the seminar, but instead we ended up switching resumes with one another. To be honest, I was embarrassed of my measly one page resume when I saw that most people around me had a lot more with them, and having to share it with someone else was nerve-wracking. In retrospect, I wish I had brought a sample resume from the internet instead.

 

Telling a Narrative through Short Stories

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My family’s had the DVD for Forrest Gump for years, but the only thing I knew prior to the viewing last Friday was the intro feather scene. Having finally watched it, I enjoyed it very much. The way that Forrest Gump was told as a series of scenes that chronicle parts of Forrest’s life was honestly more appealing than the standard beginning conflict-rising action-climax-falling action. As someone who tends to get very invested in characters, movie or otherwise, huge plot climaxes make me very apprehensive, decreasing my enjoyment of the movie. As such, I appreciated that Forrest Gump was more like the movie equivalent of a short story collection than a full on novel (even though the movie is based on a novel).

I did feel that Forrest’s luck was a little unrealistic. How could he find out his talents in running, gun dismantling, and ping pong so easily? How did the Jenny 1 survive the hurricane that destroyed every other shrimping boat? How did Lieutenant Dan know to invest in Apple? Admittedly, he’s also had some major bad luck, mostly his loved ones dying before him, but in terms of money, he gets lucky at every turn.

The Olympics and Uniting as a Country

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Despite being called the United States of America, I feel like the US has been dealing with a lot of internal conflict and division recently. With the polarization of the Trump administration, severe partisanship, and just a general lack of communication between the various different parts of America, it seems that we’re mostly just a collection of isolated communities than one large country. After the tensions and enmities that arose during the last Super Bowl, I was excited for the games, hoping that rooting for the same athletes competing in international competitions would bring some sense of camaraderie. The mission of the Olympics is to promote sports worldwide, and while sometimes sports can lead to Us vs Them mentality, it generally results in people coming together to enjoy an event together while showing off their skills.

It’s not the Summer Olympics, where the United States holds the record for the most number of trophies. The athletes competing in the games aren’t completely representative of the full US population, despite being the most diverse team that has come from the United States, according to NPR. Despite this, I hope that the Olympics can accomplish what it sets out to do, which is “find unity in diversity”.