SFPC: Day 18 - Office Hours with Taeyoon

Today, Taeyoon had office hours from 10a-12p. I had a lot of questions. Here’s some of the feedback he gave me.

Bagels and "the Orwellian Now"

Up in the morning at 7am. Showered, packed bag, out the door. It was raining lightly - I had to go back inside and grab an umbrella.

Got a small cappucino and a bagel at Nagle’s Bagels.

On the way to the train, Brooklyn is still being built:

And on the A train, an advertisement for an app that lets you invest in multi-national defense contractors from your very own smartphone! How convenient.

I’m so comfortable in the “Orwellian now”. But for how long?

No Dogs in Manhattan

I arrived in Manhattan to find out that dogs are no longer allowed in the borough.

As I was taking this picture, a woman with her tiny dog was walking by.

“I got a better picture!”, she said continuing towards the crosswalk.
“Oh yeah, what’s that?”, I asked, genuinely curious.
“I got one of my dog peeing on it!”
“That’s amazing!”

Laughing, we continued on our opposite ways.

Apparently, my classmate Bryan, who brought his small dog from Seattle with him, took the same picture this morning.

Office Hours with Taeyoon

At 11am, I sat with Taeyoon for office hours, and showed him the 10 or so questions I’d written on the train.

We talked for about 40 minutes. Here are some things Taeyoon shared with me(I’m paraphrasing):

• Staying Focused: “Make commitments to other people. Doesn’t necessarily need to be a peer. For instance, ‘Hey Sarah, I’m working on a project and I’d like to show you a rough draft in a week.’ “
• Projects: “It’s better to do a series of small projects than to try to produce one big project.””
• Drawing and Writing: “You can use drawing and writing as a counterbalance to more technical learning. For instance, after spending an couple of hours studying Open Frameworks, spend some time writing and drawing about your learning experience and what you’re trying to accomplish.” My words: it creates a nice feedback loop between two kinds of learning, a dialectic.
• Blogging About the School: “The people are the most important thing. SFPC does not have a lot of material resources, so it’s really all about the people at the school and what they are doing. Taeyoon suggested writing and engaging with fellow students more than I have been doing.”
• Starting a(n artist-run) School: “You really just need a couple of people who are intensely interested in starting a school with you. Grassroots organizing experience is useful. It’s important to listen as closely as possible. Not everyone is going to collaborate equally(not at all times, at least). The goal of any collaboration is to work together over a long period of time.”
• On Being Someone Who Likes to Create Systems and Rules: “Maybe create systems for others to shine.”
• On Resolving Conflicts with Collaborators: “It’s okay to ask for what you think is fair. One way to do this would be to say something like, ‘Hey guys, I don’t think this collaboration is going how I would like. In the future, I’d like to see these changes made because this collaboration is important to me.’ “
• On Managing Stress: “Usually the stress is self-imposed.”
• On Moving to NYC: “It’s more beneficial to be out there and experiencing the city. Don’t let money worries keep you from connecting with New York and what it has to offer.”
• On Finding Work in NYC: “It’s important to diversify your income. Create a variety of income streams by creatively utilizing your skills. Connect with your community and offer skills that are unique to them.”

Meeting with Taeyoon was uniquely rewarding. Going forward, I will make sure to utilize office hours with each of my teachers when they’re available. I don’t know what I was expecting but I really feel a bit more focused after meeting with Taeyoon this morning.

Currently

Drinking moringa tea and working. Contemplating noise and New York City, and what those mean together. When I get stressed, I’m quite sensitive to noise.

Katrina and I had a good talk about noise the other day. We aim to examine it in our final project.

Also, SFPC has a book by Greg Hainge called, Noise Matters: Towards an Ontology of Noise, that I’ve been carrying around for the last couple of days and intend to start reading soon.

Life is noise, noise is life.

For Lunch: Dannie sauteed “holey vegetable”(what she calls it), which has a Chinese name that I can pronounce(sounds like “teh-eh”) but don’t know how to write. Bryan made brown rice. I added some microwaved boiled eggs for protein.

For Dinner: ?