The more I read the discussion posts in webct, the more I become disillusioned with the M.I.T program. Maybe not the whole program in general, but the people who are taking it. Everyone goes out of their way to appear intelligent (obviously because we're being graded on participation), but it seems like they are also pretending that every reading we do provides them with some sort of revelation. "Wow, capitalist society is playing me for a fool ... I can't believe I bought into it all. Now that I know, I'm going to be more aware and stop feeding the 'cool hunters'" Yeah, right! Why are these people in M.I.T to begin with? Most of them WANT to work in the 'industry' they're learning about. They may sit in class and dissect culture and realize they're being played like fiddles, but when they're done with M.I.T and have their degrees in hand, there is a 99% chance that they're going to be fighting over the jobs that they were trying to appear above in their postings.

Good luck future 'cool hunters'. Your practice in hypocrisy will serve you well in the future.

Wow, that sounds insanely cynical and bitter. I'm not above it. I'm sure I will be singing a different tune tomorrow.

Today in tutorial my TA was discussing how one of her students last year had a nervous breakdown after watching "Merchant's Of Cool" because she realized she was a 'midriff' dating a 'mook'. Although what I learned about myself through the documentary was troubling, it wasn't troubling enough to cause a nervous breakdown ... but it should.

I have always bought into the smoke and mirrors of the 'industry'. In the clip, the producers used the rise of Sprite as the new cola of cool to show how teenagers are influenced. I dislike Sprite (maybe its because I don't care for hip hop/urban music?), but when Vanilla Coke came out I was one of the first people on the bandwagon. I averaged about a case a week. When I went to restaurants and requested it I would lecture the serving staff when they didn't have it, on how it was imperative that they start to supply it because it was what everyone wanted. Vanilla Coke tastes awful, but I loved it, because I loved the ad campaigns.

I am now aware of myself as a consumer that the industry is sucking the life out of. But that's not why I should be having a nervous breakdown right now. I should be kicking myself because not only am I aware of it ... I DON'T CARE. We are all on the same train, whether we like it or not, and it will keep going with or without us. I'm just one among the millions, and me trying to fight the system by depriving myself of things I think I want is not going to make any difference in the end, because there will still be thousands, if not millions of other young adults out there to lay out the cash anyways.

Although the reading about "thick" thinking still baffles me, I think I may have a slight grasp on the main concept. Today I was thinking about how so many people relate to music, and how when you attend a concert, for the most part the audience tends to sing along because they have something personal invested in it. They obviously didn't write the song, but it has some sort of meaning to them, and for everyone it is different. So although everyone is singing the same words, the meaning varies from person to person.

I hope the only idea I was supposed to take from the Stuart Hall reading was that culture study is biographical, or else I just wasted a nice chunk of time that I could have used to catch up on English.

I guess when you think about it, it makes sense. The way I interpret and analyze is different from the way someone who belonged to a different set of cultures would. It doesn't mean either of our musings on the world are wrong, it just means that we're coming into it with dissimilar backgrounds that would influence our opinions.

I love comic books. I love the fact that we had to read an article about comic books. If I had to pick what the highlight of Tim Blackmore's 025 course for me was last year, it would be reading Batman and Maus and getting credit for it. Comics are so much more than simple representations of reality. When read in depth they contain so many messages and meanings. Granted, my first exposure to comics was in the form of the Archie Digests, but still, I have learned to appreciate X-Men, Spiderman, and all the more "complex" comics around.

Although I enjoyed Miller's "Contesting Understanding Comics", I find myself meandering through most of what is written in the Cultural Studies Reader. It might be that I prefer to read articles that are straight forward and simplified, but I find that the messages that the readings are trying to convey get lost in all the elevated language that is used.

Sometimes I feel like I'm not even writing in English; today is one of those times. Actually, I've been stuck in this funk for the last two weeks. I really need to get with the program if I have any hope of passing this course.

It is peculiar how sometimes I don't understand one concept until I'm well into learning about another. I think after reading one girl's discussion post from my tutorial message board that I finally have a firm grasp on the whole idea of "imagined communities". She talked about her summer camp experience and how everyone who goes to camp is similar in the respect that when they are at camp they feel like a different person, more confident, etc. I finally was able to relate this theory to my own personal life.

I am a music fanatic. I will see any band (at least once), anywhere. I've gotten to the point where I can't even name all the musicians I've met or seen because I've averaged about 12 concerts a month for the last 7 years. I was always out and about, and often came into contact with other people like myself (I refuse to use the word groupies because of all the negative connotations associated with it). As we submerged ourselves deeper and deeper into the concert world we began to lose touch with our other aquaintances from school/work. We became like our own little elite community. We even inspired the key line for MTV's Diary series ... "You think you know, but you have no idea." We used to think that the reason we became so close, so fast was because no one else understood us and our passions. Although geography works against us (some of my best friends live in NYC, Boston, Ohio, and even California), we still keep in touch everyday. I definitely belong to an "imagined community".

Apparantly keeping up with this journal is vital for the final assignment so here is my attempt to keep ahead in at least one of my subjects. Tutorial today was enlightening. The essays ARE 10-12 pages and the internet readings are required (for some reason I thought they would be optional, secondary readings). I never realized how many other students were in the combined program. It makes me feel much less sorry for myself because of my inability to take all of the electives that make M.I.T the popular program it is. For some reason I've been having such a hard time articulating my thoughts today, and this is no different. You'd think I had Nintendo music playing in the background as the soundtrack to my life :o)

Anyways, there is not much else I have to add except for the fact that the only thing that I'm looking forward to this whole year is the fact that John Mayer is actually playing at John Labatt. When did I think that he would ever play London? Of course I'll make the trip to see him in Toronto as well, just because he's John Mayer and I can't NOT go.

Well, I'm kind of confused as to what exactly I'm supposed to be writing about in this journal. Hopefully, as time progresses and I attend more lectures I will actually understand this assignment, as well as the rest of the assignments for this class. I have no idea whether I zoned out when she was explaining our essay assignments, but I was under the impression that both of them were supposed to be 10 - 12 pages in length, but listed under the assignments in webct, they say the maximum that they should be is 1200 - 1300 words. Some uniformity (is that a word?) would be nice. I know I'm not the only one who can't wrap their head around what is going on in this class; leave it to us MITers, who seem like smart slackers, spending more time with our radios and guitars, than actual scholars (at least that's the impression I received from living on an MIT floor last year) to zone out at the most inopportune times.

I don't know whether to be upset or elated that Lara Croft was chosen to analyze in this class over "The Great Gatsby", because apparantly most people have not read it. It quite amusing how we had to work our asses off in high school studying English, History, and Calculus in order to achieve the 90% (this years supposed cut off average for MIT) to get into this program, so that we could be dissecting comic books, video games, and movies instead.