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The Future

I’m always left feeling strange at the end of a semester. I’ve been taking my time with college, but I always think I should be taking a summer class or two to speed things along. Either way, my Rock Valley College career will soon be over. Afterwards I’m intending to go to NIU, but who knows? I have a lot of friends in Dekalb, so I may end up getting a house or apartment with one of them while I’m going to school there. It may be more cost efficient to stay in the dorms, however. That may be a better decision since I won’t have as many financial responsibilities while pursuing my higher education, but I guess we’ll see. I’m still undecided on my major, too, which is somewhat problematic when the deadline to decide is drawing ever nearer. I’m thinking Sociology or Psychology as majors, but I don’t imagine there are many career options for Sociology aside from teaching and perhaps some social work - which don’t particularly interest me. The concepts associated with Sociology are very interesting but maybe I should look deeper into career paths before deciding to pursue a degree in the field. I’ve taken all the Sociology classes RVC has to offer aside from one, which I’m planning on taking next semester. RVC has allowed me to try the waters of every topic, thankfully - and I’ve learned what subjects I really enjoy and which I don’t. It’s all boiling down to whether or not I want to go into the fields of work pertaining to those subjects. I’ve had the same job at Burlington since I was 18, so my work experience doesn’t stem too far out of retail - but I think having one job for a long time may put me in a better standing than someone who’s been jumping all over with their work. I know people that’ve had more than ten different jobs in the past two years alone, and that just seems absurd to me. I imagine it would seem absurd to an employer as well, so I’m trying to be consistent with my work. Managing some businesses on the side has been helpful financially, but working the Excel spreadsheets and managing a business ledger will ideally be valuable skills I can apply to my next job. I don’t really know what the future has in store for me - all I can really do is hope for the best. 

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AI in the Workforce

For efficiency’s sake, I’m going to make my free-write assignment the foundation of my English assignment on Artificial Intelligence. Ideally it can be reviewed and I can get some good feedback. - 

Automation has been prevalent in the workplace since the Industrial Revolution started in the 1760s. New methods of production were implemented, such as power looms, ironworking, and steam power. Though these technologies were amazing advancements for society and provided simpler methods to produce goods on a large scale, the average American feared them. Working class people were fearful that these new machines would put them out of work, decrease the amount of jobs available, and decrease the value of their goods – among other things. It would seem that for the most part, developments in machinery for production has had an impact similar to what those people expected. The value of goods has gone down, some jobs have been lost (though some others were gained), and many people with layman’s skills have been put out of work. Go on nearly any marketplace website like eBay or Amazon and you can find fully functioning watches for a meager three dollars – shipped to your doorstep. Small metal parts can be mass produced by machines and sold at extremely low prices to factories for a profit, who will then create a final product and sell that for another extremely low price, and still for a profit – all thanks to machines. Consider that before these metal behemoths were around, people had to create all the components by hand. Don’t be fooled – jobs without mechanical involvement still exist, and people still craft goods by hand – but on a much smaller scale.

One could argue that the dust from the Industrial Revolution has settled, and jobs have again been dispersed in the field of production (they had to hire people to run the machines, after all), but a new and familiar threat looms in the distance. Advancements in computer science and nanotechnology are showing major promise towards the creation of an artificial intelligence. For those who may need clarification, artificial intelligence is defined by The Oxford Dictionary as “the theory and development of computer systems able to perform tasks that normally require human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making, and translation between languages.” In simple terms, artificial intelligence (from here on out referred to as A.I.) would be the existence of a robotic entity that could think and act as a human typically would. We have been designing computers, algorithms and coding for years, but recent breakthroughs have pushed the boundaries of our reality. Machines can be designed to learn. Google Search Engine is a perfect example of this, manipulating search results based on ideas it has already stored in its memory from previous searches. David Nield, a writer for ScienceAlert notes in one of his articles a detailed depiction of what Google is actually capable of, stating that  “[an] example the researchers give is a public transit system, like the London Underground. Once it's learned the basics, the DNC can figure out more complex relationships and routes without any extra help, relying on what it's already got in its memory banks.” He goes on to say, “in other words, it's functioning like a human brain, taking data from memory (like tube station positions) and figuring out new information (like how many stops to stay on for).”

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My Saddest Moment

               It seems odd to consider sadness an emotion of perspective. Thinking that one person can be sad about something while another cannot is a naturally dissonant thought, right? It just seems wrong. However, the world isn’t necessarily structured to accommodate the human condition. While you may be sad your dog died another person may be entirely apathetic. This is where personal relevance comes in. Your sadness is only relevant to you, generally speaking. Others can feel “sad” for you, or are also saddened due to personal impact, but most others only feel things like pity, sympathy, or empathy towards you or your situation. A very bleak perspective it may seem, but there’s actually a positive message to be taken from this. You own your sadness. Life creates emotional blockades that you have to work through, for the most part, on your own and internally. Through this process you build your own character and your personality changes. You develop as a person and better equip yourself to deal with your emotions in the future. Take your sadness for what it is and embrace it. Repression as a coping mechanism is not only unhealthy, but the lazy choice. Let yourself cry. Give yourself a day to cope - with whatever it is. I’ve found this to be effective in maintaining a positive personal perspective on life.                                                                                This will sound trivial, I know, but I experienced a breakup of sorts my freshman year of college. This “breakup” wasn’t really that, considering our relationship had formally ended months prior. It was however, an instant dissolution of a bond. A bond of friendship, attachment, and arguably - love, on both ends. I’ll spare most of the details, but lets just say that after over a year of seeing one another, staying up until 5AM on the phone, and Skyping for eight hours straight, I was abandoned. Apparently another guy had come along and become a romantic interest. After that point I think I must have lost some sort of utility, because I was quickly bumped from being a priority to being mere background noise. This is all fine and dandy, I suppose. I can’t really blame either party, or myself for this occurrence. After dealing with the troubles that came from that and fighting for my place in the spotlight, I decided it was no longer worth pursuing. I cut all ties. My feelings were hurt. Childish perhaps, but I felt it had to be done. After that there were still lingering moments of interaction. Just a few weeks ago I got a follow from this girl on my other Tumblr account. She deleted her blog a few days later, however, so I’m not totally sure what was up with that.                                                                                 I successfully coped with this experience by allowing myself to embrace my full emotional state. I’m still internally dealing with this issue, so that goes to show that it’s a process. Nevertheless, letting yourself cry, letting yourself think it trough, and contemplating the motive of your sadness can be extremely helpful in feeling better. Your number one downfall is repression. Don’t let yourself be trapped by repressive tendencies. 

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Walker Street

I opened my eyes and all I could see was pavement. I was lying in the middle of Walker Street, face-down. I couldn’t roll over for some reason. In fact, the only reason I even knew I was lying on cement was because my nose was ground so far into rock that I thought I could smell groundwater. I could feel cars zooming around me, but I couldn’t hear them. My ears were ringing like crazy. I tried to focus. On moving, hearing... trying to move my eyes in just the right way that I could get a peripheral view of something... anything. I was awake for what I would say was close to two minutes, frantically trying to regain some aspect of spatial awareness. All I knew is that I was on Walker, and I was in the road. I hadn’t the slightest clue as to how long I’d been there before waking up, and I was even more concerned that no one was stopping to help me. After being conscious for those few minutes, watching probably twenty or so cars veer around me, one finally stopped. A young woman got out, probably in her early 20′s, and ran towards me, sticking her face about as close to mine as she could have without knocking herself unconscious on the ground. I think she was checking to see if I was alive. To this day I still don’t have the slightest clue as to what she was checking for, or why she had to get so close - I couldn’t hear a word she was saying. After frantically observing me for a few seconds, she finally flipped me over and I could see a world aside from the street. I remembered the sky being blue, it was the middle of the day last I remembered, but this sky was a gloomy grey. Not like a rainy spring day, but like a tornado just passed through and tossed everything about. There were some debris floating around, dancing every which way as even more cars swerved around this lady, her car, and I. I tried saying something. I don’t know what, for all I know I was just making groaning noises - I couldn’t hear myself. The woman looked puzzled, probably because I was unresponsive to whatever she was saying, and just babbling who knows what back at her. She grabbed my arm and threw it around her shoulder, hoisting me up as she stood. She walked me to the sidewalk, which was covered in soot and tried to sit me down. My body didn’t feel like being cooperative, and I wouldn’t sit upright, so she ended up lying me on my back before getting back in her car and cruising. I could see her mouthing the word “sorry” over and over before going. I knew I was helpless, unable to move, but I didn’t feel the way you’d expect. It was calm, mostly. I knew chaos was ensuing around me, but it didn’t really matter. It was like my helplessness made me let go of any fear. At this point it was out of my hands, which I couldn’t move anyways. I started a checklist of my body parts, trying to make sure I still had everything. The woman picked me up by my arms, so I knew those were still attached. I could see the bright green tops of my shoes pointing up, so I knew I had my legs. It didn’t really make sense what was going on. I wondered if I hadn’t been hit by a car and my spine snapped. I didn’t feel numb, but I didn’t have a full sensation of touch either. I was in some physical purgatory. After what felt like forever I noticed myself regaining some movement. It started with my fingers, then I could shimmy my elbow a bit. While I was having a recoup of movement, cars were still zooming past me. A few people running down the other side of the street, too. Some of them were carrying kids, some of them may as well have been dragging kids behind them. Some were covered in dust, some weren’t. Same with the cars. I remembered footage of 9/11, when the buildings collapsed and giant plumes of who knows what chased and enveloped hundreds of people in the street. It looked dire, but the constant ringing in my ears drown out any screams or sirens that I could have used to make sense of the situation. Slowly but surely I could feel the blood rushing back through my legs. It took a bit longer than my arms, but eventually I could bend my knees. I imagine I looked like a turtle turned on its shell, the way I was lying on the sidewalk with my elbows bent and knees sticking up. Eventually I was able to sit myself upright. I could move my legs, but very slowly, so I grabbed them and crossed them so I was sitting Indian-style. I figured I’d give myself a few more minutes before trying to stand since I was essentially paralyzed just moments before. I began noticing things about the commotion. Everyone was going in the same direction - no cars were heading the opposite direction of the herd. The debris that littered the sky was paper. Most of it was ember, but you could look at the ground and see fragments of sentences. By the time I mustered the courage to stand, an ambulance made its way up the street. Two paramedics hopped out and ran over to me. As far as I could tell I wasn’t bleeding. I didn’t think I looked any worse than the rest of the people running down the street, but I guess I didn’t have a mirror either. So these two guys come running up to me freaking out. They’re talking really fast, and I’m just staring at them - confused. I couldn’t hear a word of what they were saying, and they were talking so quickly I couldn’t keep up with anything. After a good minute they just looked at each other, nodded, and picked me up. After they loaded me into the ambulance and took off, the siren went on. That’s when I noticed I was regaining some hearing. Usually those drawn out wee-woos are the most annoying things in the world, but I took some comfort in hearing these ones. The paramedics gave me a clipboard with a medical chart and a pen. One of them had written “what’s your name???” on the paper. I wrote down “ADAM” and handed it back. Then there were a bunch of routine medical questions that we passed back and forth. Once they were done asking me about my potential allergies and symptoms, they put the clipboard on one of those stainless steel tables fastened to the inside of the ambulance. I pointed to have them hand it back, with the pen. I wrote, “what happened?” very quickly. The guys looked at one another again, exchanged a few words, then back at me. One guy pulled his iPhone out of his pocket and tapped around for a second before handing it to me. It was a news article. Apparently one of the gas stations in the neighborhood was being robbed when an off-duty officer stepped in. The robber shot a few rounds off into the lot and something exploded underground. I guess it was one big chain reaction starting there, because next the boiler room in the public library went. From there another gas station. The city was being evacuated because no one knew what would be next. There was no estimation on casualties yet, but apparently I was almost one of them, considering Walker Street is just around the corner from the library. I suppose being that close to the blast is what knocked me out and messed up my hearing...

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My Top 5 Tracks

This top 5 list won’t be in any particular order, meaning that there won’t be a “#1 Greatest Song of All Time!!!” in this blog post... I’m just not that decisive. Instead I’ll be listing my 5 favorite songs arbitrarily. I’ve hyperlinked all song titles with a direct link to YouTube, as Tumblr is somewhat limited when posting multiple video/audio clips in a single post - typically only allowing one feature in a post. 

#1. Clint Eastwood by Gorillaz (released 2001)

This song was released on Gorillaz’ self-titled album, and was a huge hit in the U.K. and The States alike. This song is particularly important for a few reasons. Firstly, it has a music video. You might be asking yourself, “why is that important? lots of songs have music videos.” Well, this particular band isn’t represented by its band-mates, but by virtual characters. Gorillaz was initially a side project by Damon Albarn, the frontman of Blur, and their story is told exclusively through animation - so every video helps develop the plot. Secondly, the song features Del the Funky Homosapien, an American underground hip-hop MC, represented by a blue phantom in the video. This was the first Gorillaz song written with musical collaboration in mind, and set the stage for the rest of their albums. 

#2. Stronger by Kanye West (2007) 

Now, I know what you’re thinking... And don’t get me wrong, I’m just as ashamed with myself as you are. This song makes the cut because it’s iconic, and it’s been stuck in my head ever since its release. You might listen to this one and think it sounds oddly familiar, and with good reason. This song was surrounded in controversy due to its similarities with “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger” by Daft Punk (released in 2001). YouTube was flooded with “Daft Punk did it better” comments, but now boasts a whopping 227 million views. 

#3. Get Home by Bastille (2013)

Get Home is the 12th song on Bastille’s first album, Bad Blood. This song holds great meaning to me not exclusively because its a meaningful song, but because I’ve got a bit of history with it. I featured this song in a documentary I produced my senior year of high school. The documentary was focused on the stories of WWII survivors our class had the privilege of interviewing. I used this song because it really hit home with the topic. Paired with footage from the war, I think it created an outstanding emotional display. 

#4. Lofticries by Purity Ring (2012)

Purity Ring is a Canadian electronic band that I’ve taken a heavy interest in. I haven’t gone into a full investigation myself, but apparently all the lyrical meaning of their songs can be tracked (ha) back to heroin use. A good handful of artists have songs about heroin; Pink Floyd, Blue October, and The Velvet Underground are just a few examples, but apparently Purity Ring takes it a few steps farther in that regard. Almost on par with Half Moon Run, I’d say.

#5. Youth by Daughter (2013) 

Ending on a sad note, it seems. This song makes the list because it’s one of the most moving pieces of music I’ve ever listed to. the words are very quiet, kind of making you listen and absorb the lyrics - which WILL hurt you. Don’t go alone - cry with a friend. 

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This is the Funniest Clip on the Internet

I honestly couldn’t say why, but every time this video gets me. It doesn’t even really make sense - it’s just one of those videos that’re so inexplicably dumb that you catch yourself laughing. There’s whole channels dedicated to making videos in this format, too, so it seems people receive these videos well despite their unorthodox animation style and lack of dialog. Maybe there’s just some universal of humor that makes people laugh at these. 

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Why am I going to College?

Throughout my time enrolled, I’ve somewhat shifted my reason for attending college. At first it was primarily for my own personal growth, with a degree coming at the end as a bonus. From there I’d head to a university and continue my education, again, with a degree coming in as a bonus. This reasoning is still true, as I’m still placing a heavy priority on personal growth and gaining a global understanding of many topics through my course selection - but, I’ve recently realized that the degree is much more significant than I once believed. This semester I’ve placed a focus on completing required courses rather than electives. 

An associates degree alone will put you a tier above those with only a high school diploma, increasing your chances of getting a job in general - though an associates won’t do you much good for high paying career placement. I work retail (starting minimum wage) with plenty of people who have their associates. It’s impertinent to note, however, that a bachelors degree will get you much farther - and you can’t earn a bachelors without first earning an associates. 

I suppose what I’ve realized is that I need to start focusing more on creating a balanced schedule - one that helps me keep interest in courses, but also helps me complete what’s required to make my work worthwhile. College is too expensive just to go for fun, yaknow?