snapshots of summertime

 it's been a time for new friends and new experiences and new places. im enjoying hyde park and chicago in a way i could not during the school year. 

the apartment life has been a transition and a true struggle at times (most of the time). 

nevertheless this place is feeling like home by now -- i know the best places to get groceries at the lowest prices, where the bus stops are, churches to go to, and there are now more neighborhoods i can find my way around without google maps. ive tried nearly all the restaurants in hyde park and am branching out to downtown. im writing now from my favorite coffee shop, plein air cafe. 

a few weeks ago i flew to seattle to visit old friends and attend job training at the amazon hq. i was truly inspired and impressed by the top leaders of amazon and its culture and the advice they gave to us. clip from my iphone notes - "holy shoot they truly love their jobs and are skilled at answering as well as dodging questions. i can learn a lot from them."

  i talked to a cool boy with cool glasses from st. louis. a girl from georgetown gave me career advice. everyone was so friendly and everyone was so beautiful, their stories more so. people want to help. people are good. i'm starting to learn that now.

with new friends i explored and fell in love with the hilly humming city. after training we wandered around pike place market and pointed out the space needle and were blown away by the chihuly glass garden and played pac man at an arcade and hopped into the water underneath the railroad tracks and hunted for makeshift swim suits for westin's pool. 

early summer goal: become the same shade as kyle 

 

professor sanderson is not only a fantastic econ teacher but also a skilled chef! he baked us a themed cake for the fourth of july.

get you a loyal friend as emotional and depressed as you that sends you artistic snaps [peep the bookmark i made for her back in the eleventh grade]

an exasperated nina at the chicago eataly.

kyle told me to "be serious" at the osaka garden, so naturally...

nothing like eating 18 rolls at shinju #hobbies #dietdamage

 converted to pineappleism and PUMPKIN JOLLY

biking to chinatown :)

snacks with jen

some days i wake up at 5 to run to the point & see the sun rise

philosophers 

#gains #weak

biking with jen/olivia to the art institute and firecakes

i learned about this piece in my 20th century art class! i feel CULTURED

pilsen trip turned into aboutta watch crazy rich asians

should probs stop eating out so much 

no one i miss more than my boi hunter

summer art 

biked over 50 miles to the indiana dunes 

result of 7 hours in the sun

no explanation needed

summer goal = achieved #darkkyle 

leafy oasis

solitary

this is a nice way of living. chicago nights are warm mostly and i take walks or drink mung bean soup or eat plain pasta and watch the sky grow dim. i spend some time reading. i spend some time listening to albums, start to finish: scorpion, ye, blonde, astroworld, camp, damn, pure heroine. and movies, too: southpaw, blue is the warmest color, to all the boys i've loved before, kill bill v1 & v2. people come in and out of our apartment, various friends and friends-of-friends. i bought paint and colored pencils from target and once in a while i sit and draw and tape my amateur art to my walls with masking tape, to make the walls a little less bare. 

Thoughts on Netflix Documentary 13th - My Stream of Consciousness

I found that Fanon’s, Fields’s, Hegel’s, and Beauvoir’s theories elucidate and further explain the material in 13th. Both Fanon’s and Fields’s idea that we should not simply examine the origins of the problem but also the society that continuously creates the dynamics continued today helps explain some of the evolving institutions in the documentary. For instance, after the abolishment of slavery, racism was perpetuated by way of Jim Crow laws. Jim Crow laws targeted at African Americans enforced racial segregation and placed restrictions on job prospects. In effect, black people could not participate fully in society like whites. After the civil rights movement and changing societal ideals rendered that illegal, it evolved into mass incarceration. Though disguised under a different name, the underlying intent is the same; the incarcerations aim at racial minorities. Restrictions placed on “criminals” also limits participation in society, whether by harming employment, housing, and education prospects, which is analogous to the days of Jim Crow. Furthermore, Nixon announced the war on crime, arguing “there can be no progress without respect for law.. Total war against the evils we see in society…” - there was a shift of viewing drugs as a crime rather than a health issue. The war on drugs became the mechanism by which minorities were thrown into prison. All of these institutions respectively recreated race as a hierarchy at different times in history. Essentially, we see a lot of the patterns repeating themselves over time, manifesting in a different form. The awareness of two people or groups, such as the whites and the minorities, the need for recognition, the struggle to obtain it, and the resulting societal structures repetitively play out in history.

Also, this documentary reminded me a lot about Wacquant’s article about hyperincarceration with relation to class, race, and geography and how concepts from Fields’s essay help explain it; social forces have generated ideologies that have driven people to incarcerate other Americans as an instrument of ethnoracial control. It’s a type of external domination that creates and furthers inequality by hiding the people who suffer most under capitalism and drawing attention away from the wealthy in the meantime. Economically, prisons are also a gigantic industry; lawmakers support it because of lobbying while the corporations force inmates to do cheap work for them. Though it’s not anything new, I’m still really shocked at how corrupt the political system can be and how the ulterior motives of aggressive incarceration are to hide the public’s attention from social problems so that they can “control” the minorities. The case of George Zimmerman and Stand Your Ground Law serves as a further example of the theory of the society that recreates the racist social dynamics. Also, it is skewed against certain populations anyways because wealth shapes the outcomes of who gets bailed out of jail; the rich and potentially guilty can escape, but the “poor and innocent” cannot. Home imprisonments also become a source of profit generation, creating devices that incarcerate people in their own communities. In line with Fanon’s thinking, this kind of racist structure captures social, cultural, political, and mental issues. Incarceration in itself must not only have devastating effects on the prisoner’s mental health and internalizes an inferior view of themselves but also damages familial relations and the family structure as well. I also think the psychological damage of prisons is interesting; it must create some sort of self-consciousness that is separate from regular self-consciousness. The prison is a world apart from the normal society and allows the incarcerated to examine themselves through different eyes. After being imprisoned for such a long time, it changes how one views the world and him/her self, and the person in the documentary was never able to fully recover, committing suicide. 

Additionally, an artwork that came to my mind while watching this documentary was David Hammons’s Injustice Case, 1970. Hammons created Injustice Case in response to the Bobby Seale Trial. Essentially, Chicago 8 defender and Black Panther leader Bobby Seale was gagged and chained to his chair during his trial in full view of the jury, charged with conspiracy of causing riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Many wondered if he received a fair trial as he rattled his chains and tried to speak through the gag.

Hammons had stated, "...I feel it my moral obligation as a black artist to try to graphically document what I feel socially." Hammons himself is black, and black bodies are rendered voiceless in the American social system. The idea of his piece responding with the flattening of the 3 dimensional body is interesting as well. A flattened person is here defined in terms of race and the set of associations and characteristics that mark them socially; identity is only skin-deep and one body can be substituted for another in the way that they are treated in the system.  In contrast with newspaper drawings of Bobby Seale as a bound dangerous criminal, Hammons depiction is that of a vulnerable victim, indexical of the reoccurring effects of the system, whether through slavery, Jim Crow laws, or other forms of oppression through the years. Field’s ideology can be used to think about the concept of a “criminal” which Seale would be considered. The ideology of a “criminal” is a social invention targeted at the subordinated members of society under the control of the master. This idea transforms someone who has broken a law to a despicable criminal even before the trial and wipes out any hope of a second chance. Kind of like Beauvoir’s myth of the woman, the myth of the criminal allows people to treat the criminals as inferior beings, which they are conditioned and shaped by, and socially constructs them as social inferiors. This is a colonization of sorts that changes the essence of the “criminals” and solidifies their occupations in society. This oppression often goes unnoticed because of the myth that the incarcerated have nothing important to say, which means they often are unable to go to trial, like in the documentary, or even if they do, this occurrence of what happened to Bobby Seale is symbolic of their constructed position in society. It is very easy to be oblivious to the systemic violence of America’s justice system due to many (unconscious) factors that perpetuate it. 

Moreover, the foreground and background of the work contribute to the tension and raise important questions of: is the body behind the flag showing what is behind the facade of American democracy or behind the white American dream? Or is the body in front of the flag, showing that African Americans are also part of the American system and should be publicly acknowledged, rather than hidden away? It appears as though bars extend through the image, reminiscent of jail bars and shedding light upon the treatment of black bodies through the justice system. I thought this piece fits in with the documentary because of how it addresses the issue of identity and argues that African Americans are hidden behind American society and that they ought to be brought to the forefront to be a part of it. 

Another thing it reminded me of was those Aunt Jemima pancake marketing campaigns. Aunt Jemima, this idea of a happy slave that takes care of the master’s house, was really originally introduced as a minstrel show character during the Jim Crow era and drawn from black stereotypes. This kind of representation only draws legibility from history of imagery in line with perpetuating inequality in society. I think it is fascinating to think about how representations affect people’s unconscious perceptions of themselves and place in society and the kind of the social relationships it continuously creates in this way. Aunt Jemima is a product and reaffirmation of how Jim Crow laws create certain races as second class status. Another example is that from the documentary, the Birth of a Nation inspired a wave of KKK terrorism; more specifically the theatrical effect of the burning of the cross inspired the real-life counterpart and reenactment of this, which is honestly terrifying. Fanon’s idea that these embedded messages and psychological damage from these projections prevent people from developing a sense of identity and also creating a sense of inferiority. Therefore we see this repetitive narration of domination and submission. From these subtle/blatant racial depictions, we can see that racism is pervasive in the collective unconscious. According to Fanon, black simply wants to be recognized as human. Not as black man, but man. Like in Black Skin White Masks, we as a country need to recognize what we are doing to these communities and that we are complicit in racial problems, and need to fight the continuous iterations of pushing back against black equality whether through slavery or jim crow or imprisonment. In order to transcend the racial categories and be cured, we need to be able to see ourselves as the broken object in order to rehumanize everyone as people.

Goals for Summer 2018

 ~Goals for Summer 2018~

With my first year at UChicago coming to a close and summer steadily approaching, I’ve been thinking a lot about what I want to do this summer. I want to make this summer not only one that I will remember, but also one in which I develop personally and professionally. Hopefully, this will inspire you to have an amazing summer as well. 

For ease of reference, I have separated this into 3 categories: professional, fitness, and personal. 

Professional:

1. Learn the fundamentals of computer science and/or a coding language! 

My knowledge of computer science is virtually nonexistent at the moment. I’ve always observed my friends studying computer science type these mysterious symbols and patterns into their computers from afar. As usual, my curiosity and FOMO has gotten the best of me; I want to join in on their struggles and anguish and figure out what in the world they are doing. The world of computer science appeals to me because it seems like it is full of problem solving and interesting challenges. I am also enticed with what I will be able to build with my new skills, whether it is my own website or app. My goal is to master python by the end of September. 

2. Excel Skills

I never knew what a powerful tool Excel was until I took an introductory course online with it. This summer, I want to continue learning more of Excel’s nooks and crannies as well as learning as many shortcuts as I can in order to maximize efficiency. 

3. Interview Skills

Securing an interview has not been a barrier for me, but the interview itself has. I love talking to people and having casual conversations (shout out to sorority life), but frequently, I become tongue-tied during interviews and cannot think properly during them. Looking back, I think I allowed my nerves to get the best of me, and I was unable to let my true self shine through. Many times, I liked the company so much or wanted the position so badly that I was too afraid of making mistakes and might have come across as disinterested instead. Moving forward, I believe that additional practice and viewing the interview as a casual conversation rather than an interrogation would help with how I come across.

Fitness:

1. Lose 30 pounds

2. Go to the gym six days a week

Bench press: 95 pounds

Squat: 235 pounds

Overhead press: 75 pounds

3. Wake up at 5 a.m., go to sleep by 11 p.m.

Personal:

1. Write in my personal journal every day

2. Get rid of unnecessary stuff

Stick to the minimalistic and zen lifestyle!

3. Grow in my faith in God

how i'm doing

dang. 1^st year winter quarter has been a rollercoaster of emotions and events thus far and it's flown by so quickly. i blinked. 

it's 3:30 am and i should probably be studying for my econ final which is later today but instead i'm blogging. [insert joke about P/F]

a common thread these days is an ongoing struggle with exhaustion. for me to put in the maximum amount of work in my classes (which includes attending all lectures, taking notes, reading the textbooks, etc...) and have time to do anything else feels impossible right now. 

on top of my full course load, being part of multiple RSOs, and keeping up with career exploration, i work 4 jobs that total 25 hours a week. i feel like i am juggling so many things and trying to multitask every hour, micromanaging every waking minute of the day, so that everything gets inextricably intertwined. 

allocating my time was not the greatest challenge but walking the walk on my plans was. at least a week before, i would plan out my day by the hour but when the time came i felt too stressed or tired to actually go.

i miss home all the time. i miss my dog too. 

still, despite all the responsibilities and setbacks, there are moments that recharge my spirit and make life pretty beautiful.

i grab lunch with my friend and discipler nadiah sometimes and talk about our days and worries and faith and the bible and jesus. one crisp winter morning we trudged to a church a few blocks north of campus and chopped carrots and potatoes at the soup kitchen. she is sunshine in human form. i am so thankful for her unconditional kindness and guidance.

my insane pal gillian keeps me sane. her energy is unbridled and incredibly contagious. every time i run into her my day instantly gets better. we talk about anything and everything, from getting ripped to 20th century art to appreciating culture.

additionally i got to experience the true definition of zero friction on an iced over sidewalk, resulting in myself meeting the ground outside of the back of my dorm max palevsky. it was made even better by the fact that during my ever so graceful fall to the ground, my wallet flew out of pocket closer to the group walking towards me so i had to get even closer to my audience to retrieve it.

during those bliss times i have a free night, i've been walking alone to the point about a mile east of the school. there's a small garden a bit off the road. it's always quiet. there is nobody there except me, the greenery stretched out ahead of me, the spindly trees, and the stars. sometimes i put my bag down and sit there for a time, thinking about nothing in particular. thinking about how nice it is here. 

ramen san with elizabeth

 snowy uchicago

lisa's birthday

pretty houses

soup kitchen!

I love Nighthawks

I will use visual analysis to back up my interpretation of Hopper’s Nighthawks. Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks is fairly simple, illustrating a snapshot of a moment in time at a late-night diner in the city, and yet, it speaks volumes. The painting’s well-lit diner sits on an empty street corner, featuring four figures within. While this succinctly describes the painting, upon a deeper examination, one realizes Hopper utilizes an assortment of artistic techniques in order to convey the full emotion of the scene. In Nighthawks, Edward Hopper’s treatment of line elements and organization of forms in the painting both directs movement and builds tension and a sense of instability, resulting in a mysterious object onto which one can project one’s own reality. In addition, Hopper employs areas of light and contrasting colors as a means of constructing the scene that captures the mood of alienation and conveys a sense of timelessness.

First, the piece is separated into two different sections; the right side of the work is accentuated due to Hopper’s conduct of line elements and containment of the most activity in terms of subject matter. Visually, Nighthawks consists of dark zig-zagging bands of negative space that underscore the bright portions of positive space. The diagonal lines in the two buildings point to two different vanishing points, signifying a tension in the scene. Because of this, the painting fails to contain the standard formal aspects of one or two-point perspective; each building claims its own vanishing point, but they do not seem to lie on the same horizon line. The lines themselves lend to the feeling of tension. Despite the aura of isolation, commonly depicted with choppy lines, all of the lines are long and clear, painted confidently. The most prominent lines include those outlining the bar and the bottom of the front of the diner, yet again returning to the notion of tension. They draw the eye to the figures while simultaneously leading away from them, almost as if Hopper desires for them to be perceived, but not focused on.

Moreover, the long, insistent diagonal of the diner, commencing from the right side of the painting, leads the eye to the empty street sweeping in from the left, which ultimately turns the viewer’s attention right again, to the red-haired lady in the red dress sitting at the bar. These implied lines establish the focal point and movement in the painting. The observers’ focus is directed towards the lady, but the point on which the composition hinges rests elsewhere. While the woman serves as the focal point, the plane of the street which crosses the plane of the diner, an area defined by the light grey ray in the corner, is where the picture emerges from. This particular framework in which the woman is separated from the compositional center unnervingly introduces a sense of instability, further emphasizing her isolation and contributing to Nighthawks’s overall stark sentiment of seclusion.

Additionally, the positioning of the viewer as well as the organization of the forms contribute to the tense solitude and ambiguity of the scene that permits him to insert his own interpretation. The painting’s size, 2.75 feet by 5 feet, allows one to comfortably peer into the work, neither overwhelming his space nor losing himself in it. Hopper sets the scene on a corner isolated from the rest of the city and surrounds the diner with glass, creating an internal frame within a frame and granting viewers a window into the inside from the viewpoint of a passerby outside the diner. Despite the immediate accessibility of the subject matter, Hopper manages to distance the viewer from the four figures framed within the diner. He chooses a selective angle for the point of view, one that excludes any sight of an entryway; thus, onlookers can observe the scene at their leisure but are barred from entering, and accordingly, the four subjects appear trapped within the glass walls, specimens of the viewer’s imagination.

The interactions, or otherwise lack of, forge a narrative rife with possibilities. The man and woman in the background hunch over the cherry wood counter, their faces gaunt. The woman examines her fingernails, seemingly oblivious to the man next to her. The man in the foreground sits apart from the rest, a mystery with his back turned and partially obscured from the light. The waiter links them, appearing trapped within the confines of the counter. Even within a shared space, the characters do not touch. Though they sit together, they are still alone. Viewers are left to wonder about the character’s lives, pointing at its timeless quality. The scene depicted is evocative and endures through time by conjuring the imagination and invoking feelings that people will always be able to relate to based upon their subjective experience.

Finally, Hopper’s use of contrasting colors and areas of light helps him capture the bleak mood and timeless significance. Tension between light and shadow, specifically the contrast of the mute colors of night and harsh fluorescent glare of the diner lights, marks a dark mood and immediately guides the eyes in the composition. The street’s murky browns and deep blues hint at an undercurrent of desperation. The richest, most distinctive color is the red of the woman’s lips, dress, and hair, directing the viewers’ attention and further confirming her as the focal point. Despite this emphasis, nobody in the painting looks at her, adding to the sense of unease. The colors echo one another more intently the further from the woman they are. For instance, the man at the edge of the bar wears clothing with colors that closely resemble the darker shades outside the diner. Hopper’s use of color illustrates the desire for separation from the darkness because the people are clustered in the light, but they are incapable of achieving this since the colors from the outside world echo those within the diner. Though most of the painting is muted, the select times of bright colors contrast with the muted tone to create the controlled dynamic tension so integral to the painting’s ambiguity, meaning, and ambiance.

Hopper meticulously crafted Nighthawks paying close attention to organization of forms, colors, lines, and other elements in order to connect the audience with the situation in the painting and realistically portray the atmosphere of alienation associated with it. This atmosphere in itself frees viewers to interpret the work based upon their own realities and renders the piece timeless, an unmistakable work relatable to by anybody.

Fresh (as hell) man

from orientation week to taking classes to meeting fellow students to exploring the city, quarter one was a thrilling introduction to uchicago. 

the house system is a good way to meet others. i was especially nervous because i did not know a single person here and was worried i wouldn't be able to make any friends but quickly realized there was a niche for everyone. there were introverts and extroverts, gamers and history buffs, and classic music and edm lovers alike, and everyone in between. luckily woodward house in max p made it easy to feel at home, and i met two of my best friends from this community, denisse and nina. as i was surrounded by such brilliant people, i felt the imposter syndrome creeping in often but brushed it away as i do with all my emotions ;) 

professors are quirky and kind and sometimes savage. dining hall food ranges from muy terible to pretty darn great depending on which of the three you decide to go to. there is also this lifesaver thing called "fourth" meal, a great way to push back delta epsilon proofs and eat food during pre-midnight hours instead. the gothic architecture and staircases everywhere make me feel like a first year at hogwarts. everything sounds so shiny and new to the point that i can't imagine the magic of this place ever going away for me. this is a place i could only dream of all my life and deep inside of me pervades a rare form of happiness i've been waiting to feel for a very long time. 

jumping into lake michigan on the first day of classes

erin and i were having the end of summer 17 existential crisis so we drove 30 minutes for some cheese curds

a warm welcome

crashed a philosophy grad student party but they had la croix, so

kiyannnnn playing pool!!!! <3

botany pond with denisse 

venturing downtown

museum of science and industry

doing laundry for the first time in my life! #housewife

2 AM drying my hair with a t shirt on my head in public AKA committing social suicide on my second week

LAX bro practice

sorority recruitment 

happens every time but i always come back

the queue for study break

should've seen the look on my roommate's face

Halloween orchestra performance - talented denisse & neena

Nadiah and the Med

native foods with denisse! i personally believe that imitation meat should NOT be a thing

could not stop crying after my talented friend's phenomenal performance

what else would we be doing?

acclimating to a new place- one with no familiar faces, a place i had little knowledge of- was uncomfortable, but i'm so glad i came to uchicago.

i came away from my first quarter with friends that made me enthusiastic to come back to hyde park, that took care of me when life was harsh and inspire me to live with kindness and to be a better person. 

i can't wait to return for winter quarter. here's to the weird af conversations, spying on the xc boys at the reg, sneaking into north's fifteenth floor to gaze out at the skyline at midnight, stuffing my face with insomnia cookies every night, and skipping social events to chill with face masks with my roommate instead. 

..

Damn. I really came full circle. I fought to be in charge of my life, and even though i’ve reached a certain position it’s very frustrating to still feel like i have no more control than i used to.