… 13 Reasons Why I’m The Coolest Kid on the Crescent

Ever lived on residence at university? Maybe you lived in a shared residence while at (American) College? Boarding school perhaps? Well then,here’s a handy checklist to tell whether you were the coolest kid on the crescent.

1. The select group of people I know only make out with other people in the select group of people I know.

2. It’s the funniest thing in the world when I take photos of individuals from the select group of people I know making out with each other.

3. When individuals from the select group of people I know are making out with each other, I find it hilarious to go “Woooooooooooooo!” and cheer like I’m at a bogan country football match.

4. I am currently (and always) drunk.

5. I’m really proud of the fact that I am making out with someone from the select group of people I know, even though I do this on a regular basis and am basically working my way through said group.

6. By breakfast the next morning, the select group of people I know know that I had sex the previous night with someone from the select group of people that I know.

7. Oh. Em. Gee. One of those people from the select group of people I know that I really like is making out with someone from the select group of people I know.

8. I’m going to go and bitch about this fact to a select group of the select group of people I know like I’m an idiodic school girl and this is literally the end of the world, despite the fact I left high school at least a year ago.

9. I immediately went for the gossip session option because I couldn’t think of any alternative, even though an open and honest dialogue with the individuals in question would’ve been a much better option and would’ve resulted in far less people being hurt.

10. I’m not really sure what the word “dialogue” means or involves.

11. This gossip session resolves literally nothing, even though it took three hours, and I’m basically going to go agains the advice that my friends offered, not because it is complete bulldust, but because I was always going to trust my own instincts in the matter anyway.

12. Penis (lol).

13. I only know a stupidly small selection of people.

Is your University Debt;

a. Overwhelming

b. More than overwhelming, because you keep failing subjects.

c. Not an issue, because your rich parents paid up front.

d. Thank you Government for paying giving me free education until I earn enough money in a real job to pay you back.

… Some more Uni ranting.

If you’re ever a professional, you never do research for no good reason. I mean, if you’re getting paid to investigate something, first of all well done on scoring a cushy job. But secondly and more to the point, you don’t return results which say: “Yep, everything is pretty much how people earlier have said it is. We’ve disproved any contradictory findings, but haven’t really come up with anything new ourselves.”

Essentially, that is writing a paper at university.

They tell you to go off and do a lot of research, use a lot of quotes in your essay, and come to a conclusion about the questions they’ve asked. The thing is, that is not achieving anything. It is doing absolutely nothing, except perhaps wasting young, creative minds.

Because there is no point to that. There is no reason to go and read a bunch of arguments, then go and write 3000 words on how right they were, and prove them even more right by proving the dissenters wrong.

For a start, this methodology prevents anything new ever getting created. Students are going to be referencing the same papers 40 years on. Or maybe they won’t because society will have moved way past those views, and they can’t find any supporting evidence anymore.

Essentially, we need something new to be written. And then we need to critique it and build on it. I’d even be fine if this is what happened with old papers, because people need to read things, get ideas, in order to gain experience, be influenced, figure themselves out, and be inspired to come up with new ideas.

But this isn’t how the system works at the moment. Now, Universities will probably try and tell you that isn’t the way things go. They will say that you use articles as evidence to support your argument.

They’ve been selling me that rubbish line for a year and half.

They’re going to do it for another year and half, and then give me a piece of paper which say I’m good at following instructions.

The problem: Any student will tell you that the old “argument supported by evidence” line is not how it goes down. In contrast, you go and read a lot of argument, find their points of similarity, and use that, not even to inform, but to create your argument.

You’re not arguing a point and bringing in all these heavy weights to say “hey, I’m right, and all these people agree”. (Which would be stupid and useless anyway.)

You’re not arguing a point for/against a particular view expressed elsewhere. (A little more helpful, because at least you’d be developing the argument.)

And you’re not arguing a point inspired by, or building on, a point made elsewhere. (Which, my friends, is the way to the future. Think about your everyday conversations, and realise that this is how you interact with people and eventually reach a resolution. Even if that resolution is a stalemate, at least you’ve worked it through.)

What you’re doing is creating reference document that gathers together and explains many different writings. That is the most useless document in the world. And the world doesn’t need 10,000 of them written every half year.

As I said, go out, read a whole lot, take the bits you like, the bits you hate, and do something with them. Something original, and something personal.

Otherwise we’re just stagnating, rehashing the same old stuff, stuff which might not have been any good in the first place. Hell, we might be writing papers on how it is no good. But that’s not doing anything to solve the problem, is it? It’s just noticing there is a problem, and elaborating!

Keep this whole crazy human race moving forwards, because the Gods know we need it. And don’t wait for any authority to give you permission to do it.

… Well played, Undergrad. Today in class we were presented with this image. I thought we could’ve skipped the whole explaining what it means thing and skip straight on to the analysis, but apparently not, because the first comment to bypass someone’s brain and echo around the room was: “Oh. I didn’t even know it was about that. I thought it was a health ad, get your heart checked or something. Like, here’s a healthy white heart, here’s an unhealthy black heart, here’s…” He trailed off on the explanation of the yellow, not because he consciously realised he was wrong, but because he couldn’t come up with a stupid reason behind the yellow heart. (I would’ve gone with “Here’s a pus filled yellow heart.”) First of all, really? REALLY? Because that is very VERY evidently three identical hearts sitting next to one another. One doesn’t look healthier than the other. They’re practically two clones of the original heart. So apparently I don’t even need to do a semiotic analysis to get an A+ in this class, I only need to correctly identify the image. Lucky I’m not blind! This could be the problem with racism. I’m not calling him or anyone else in the class who got it wrong a racist, but the fact that we’re so blind to racism, that people don’t even realise they’re doing it. Do they not see it as wrong because it doesn’t touch the conscious, logical part of their brains? Or does instinct just override? In any case, it might be as much a criticism of the ineffectiveness of the advertising as much as a criticism of human nature. Now I had high hopes for the next individual to take a crack, bless her heart. But it was all downhill from the start. “Like, (and she did actually start her academic response with “like”, I’m not characterising here) it’s interesting that the hearts are skin coloured, and not coloured the same as the words.” I’ll tell you why they didn’t do that dear; because in an ad whose point is that every one is the same regardless of race, making the hearts different colours would COMPLETELY UNDERMINE the message that there are no difference based on the colour of your skin. Semiotics is the study of meaning of a text, and then further, how that meaning is conveyed to the audience. But these students shouldn’t start with the how, or even the “why” of the message. Perhaps you should first of all try and figure out what the message is.  It’s not interesting that the hearts are all the one colour, it’s logical. It’s interesting that you think it’s interesting / that you were brave enough to voice it / that you thought I would agree / care. In order to add weight to my criticisms by dispelling the accusation that I might just be a hypocrite, here are some things that are actually interesting about the image: -          Why is the white (Caucasian) heart first in an ad about equality? -          Why did the advertisers feel it was necessary to appeal to the masses in this way in order to get their point across? -          Contradictorily, why is the “black” heart more prevalent by being in the middle? -          Why are they in that order, with “yellow” (Asians) coming “last”? -          Why are the words in black, if black is one of the colours of the heart? Why couldn’t they have used blue lettering to further promote equality? -          Why is the word “yellow” used to denote Asians when it is somewhat of a racist way to refer to people of that descent, or if not racist, the word at least has negative connotations.   So there’s just a taster of how to properly do semiotics. Enjoy your media careers, douchebags.

… Well played, Undergrad.

Today in class we were presented with this image.

I thought we could’ve skipped the whole explaining what it means thing and skip straight on to the analysis, but apparently not, because the first comment to bypass someone’s brain and echo around the room was: “Oh. I didn’t even know it was about that. I thought it was a health ad, get your heart checked or something. Like, here’s a healthy white heart, here’s an unhealthy black heart, here’s…”

He trailed off on the explanation of the yellow, not because he consciously realised he was wrong, but because he couldn’t come up with a stupid reason behind the yellow heart. (I would’ve gone with “Here’s a pus filled yellow heart.”)

First of all, really? REALLY? Because that is very VERY evidently three identical hearts sitting next to one another. One doesn’t look healthier than the other. They’re practically two clones of the original heart. So apparently I don’t even need to do a semiotic analysis to get an A+ in this class, I only need to correctly identify the image. Lucky I’m not blind!

This could be the problem with racism. I’m not calling him or anyone else in the class who got it wrong a racist, but the fact that we’re so blind to racism, that people don’t even realise they’re doing it. Do they not see it as wrong because it doesn’t touch the conscious, logical part of their brains? Or does instinct just override? In any case, it might be as much a criticism of the ineffectiveness of the advertising as much as a criticism of human nature.

Now I had high hopes for the next individual to take a crack, bless her heart. But it was all downhill from the start.

“Like, (and she did actually start her academic response with “like”, I’m not characterising here) it’s interesting that the hearts are skin coloured, and not coloured the same as the words.”

I’ll tell you why they didn’t do that dear; because in an ad whose point is that every one is the same regardless of race, making the hearts different colours would COMPLETELY UNDERMINE the message that there are no difference based on the colour of your skin.

Semiotics is the study of meaning of a text, and then further, how that meaning is conveyed to the audience. But these students shouldn’t start with the how, or even the “why” of the message. Perhaps you should first of all try and figure out what the message is.

 It’s not interesting that the hearts are all the one colour, it’s logical. It’s interesting that you think it’s interesting / that you were brave enough to voice it / that you thought I would agree / care.

In order to add weight to my criticisms by dispelling the accusation that I might just be a hypocrite, here are some things that are actually interesting about the image:

-          Why is the white (Caucasian) heart first in an ad about equality?

-          Why did the advertisers feel it was necessary to appeal to the masses in this way in order to get their point across?

-          Contradictorily, why is the “black” heart more prevalent by being in the middle?

-          Why are they in that order, with “yellow” (Asians) coming “last”?

-          Why are the words in black, if black is one of the colours of the heart? Why couldn’t they have used blue lettering to further promote equality?

-          Why is the word “yellow” used to denote Asians when it is somewhat of a racist way to refer to people of that descent, or if not racist, the word at least has negative connotations.

 

So there’s just a taster of how to properly do semiotics.

Enjoy your media careers, douchebags.