Why did I come to Animas? Why do I try my hardest? What is good about Animas? I will start this off with the reason I came here. I have found that our current schooling system, is outdated and its sole purpose is to teach us how just to follow directions but at Animas, it's different, Animas has a unique style of learning where I am free to express myself through my projects. It also allows me to learn in another way I have not done before. This style of learning is called project-based learning. Project-based learning is where their main focus is on showing their work through projects rather than tests. On your projects trying your hardest can help produce amazing work which can be beneficial to help get a job or to get into a college. It also is better to do it right the first time because you will not have as many revisions the next time around but you should still take feedback and improve. Another way to say this is to have a growth mindset. A growth mindset is to produce and improve your work without giving up on it. What I find interesting is that Animas is a place where you can have the ability to advance your learning through expiration. A place where the community is kind. A place where you call the teachers by their FIRST name to connect with them more. These are a few examples of Animas and this is why I came to Animas. This is why I try my best at Anima. This is what I like about Animas.
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Artist Statement |
My mask represents the things I love to do and how it’s oppressed by dyslexia. I love space and working with computers. While I am gifted, my dyslexia overpowers that giftedness. The green goop represents my dyslexia, and how it’s a corrosive liquid that consumes me. The screen with the “Error” message represents my love for computers, and the galaxies and the stars represent my love for space and researching it. The words at the bottom represent how my giftedness is completely covered up by dyslexia. I enjoyed the process of making this mask. It was a fun challenge to figure out what I wanted to put on my mask and how I would design and execute it. I would say the final result turned out well and looks how I originally imagined it. In the end, it was a good learning process, and I liked learning about myself and representing it in a physical form.
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Mask EssayRyan Lemley
Cameron Elder Socialization and Identity Essay 18 November 2022 The Never-Ending Cycle Have you ever thought about how you have hurt people without knowing? Well, this can be explained by the Cycle of Socialization (Harro). When you are born, you are taught by your parents to think and act in certain ways. But when you get older and go to school, you hear different ideas that may conflict with what you’ve been taught by your parents. This can cause you to question your way of thinking, breaking out of the Cycle of Socialization. Breaking this cycle means not reinforcing negative stereotypes in society or adhering to them yourself. If you were to do nothing, even if you aren’t enforcing these norms onto other people, you still are sending a message reinforcing these norms based on the way you act. In this cycle, there are 2 groups: targets and agents. Agents are the common norm or the majority of people. While targets are “women; racially oppressed groups; gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered people; disabled people; Jews; elders; youth; and people living in poverty,” (Harro 3). Agent groups are considered to have more power and to suppress target groups because they are the more privileged people. I have been influenced by being a target and an agent in different ways through social media and interactions with others, including dyslexia and gender norms, conforming to these standards that I have been taught. Have you ever tried to learn something, and just not succeeded, no matter how hard you've tried? I have tried my hardest to learn how to read. I struggle with dyslexia, making me unable to read quickly. When I was little, I really blundered with getting to a higher reading level and being equal to my classmates’ reading speeds. I was aware that my peers were doing better than me, and strived to be at the same level as them. My teacher thought I was dumb and that I could never learn how to read, even though I was trying my hardest to achieve greatness; to aspire to be better at reading; to not stand out from my fellow classmates. My mom thought that I could do more. She was the first one to notice that I had dyslexia and to catch that I think differently. In 4th grade, I was diagnosed with dyslexia and I was taken out of class and put into a program that was meant to teach reading. I did not learn much because it was going over the same stuff I had learned in previous years. The program was meant to improve my reading speed but it didn’t help much. I thought the class was insulting to me because I did not feel as though the easy reading assignments were helping me or making me a better reader. A lot of these things that teachers were making me do make me feel like less of a person just because I can’t understand these simple things. Later, I started realizing that I am more gifted and brilliant than I thought. I may have not been the best at reading but I have been getting ahead in math. That dyslexia can help to think in different and new ways, and to see different things that others might have missed. I started to see how it could even be a benefit to me. I am a part of this target group that is thought of as “slow” or “unintelligent” when people with dyslexia just have their brains thinking differently. They can be more creative or can design more innovative things. When we were little, we were taught to conform to male and female gender norms. As a male you are told; you’re not supposed to have long hair; wear dresses, or cry. If you were to ask 6 or 7 year-old boys why they don’t have long hair, the majority of them would say that the other kids would laugh at them or “only girls do that,”(Gender Roles). This is an example that we are teaching our youth that they have to follow these norms or they’ll get treated like an outcast. As I grow older, I realize that a lot of these things are outrageous and shouldn’t be pushed onto kids. I think you should be free to express yourself in any way and be comfortable with wearing whatever you want or having long hair, even if you are male. I do follow these standards that are made, but I choose to be this way. This does not necessarily mean that I’m a bad person, it just means that I prefer to express myself in this manner. While for a period in my life, I had grown my hair to be long, I got many comments on whether I was a boy or a girl, and often when I went into the bathroom, I was told by men that I was in the wrong one. I felt ashamed to have long hair because it was unlike a boy to have long hair. So I eventually cut my hair to stop being asked by people. This is why we need to strive for change and be able to wear what we want. Social media has been an additional influence on how a lot of people dress and act for better or worse. I think social media has set out a lot of high standards for people. They say you need to be in shape physically for anyone to like you. Giving out false information and pushing products that make you “get in shape.” I have seen a lot of magazines with models who are either super thin or super buff on the covers implying that you have to look like them when this is not true like the New York Times. When you ask a person whether they find someone attractive, they usually don’t care about your physical shape and are more interested in your personality. I think social media is giving a false image and false standards to people who want to be more attractive. I have been affected by seeing my friends wanting to look a certain way because of social media and magazines, even though they are beautiful in their own ways and don’t need to change for anyone but themselves. Even though people aren’t specifically telling you to be this way, people are still affected by others who have changed themselves to look more like people on social media. I think you should just be yourself without considering what others think of you. In the end, I have learned a lot about the Cycle of Socialization, how media affects people, and how dyslexia can be a benefit rather than a hindrance. Breaking this cycle and striving for change has been a good chance to express myself more and get to know myself. Targets and agents are not all black and white. People who are targets can also be agents and vice versa. I think we are not that different from each other, we should not force norms down children’s throats or judge people by the way they look. I think we are all special in our own ways. You should embrace our differences and should not stay in this never ending cycle. |