On Monday October 26th, the coffee house Wake the Dead hosted an open mike night for local poets, musicians, and writers to share their Halloween oriented work. The coffee house overall was a really interesting combination of art and Tim Burton with its red and black striped walls and the local art on exhibition throughout the domain. There were a large number of attendees though only a few were dressed for Halloween and even fewer wrote for the Halloween theme. I found this somewhat disappointing and even further, that the events only went on for an hour. However, the live music, poetry and written work was very good, varying from funny to touchingly emotional and the hour really flew by with much interest. The coffee, as this is a coffee house, was excellent of course and the hazelnut chocolate cookies were amazing! Honestly, I would go back just for the cookies. Once the performances were done, most of the people crowded into the front of the building to talk and mingle and I soon found myself out the door and on my way home. As things go, the Wake the Dead open mike event was an interesting and thought provoking event with an excellent ambiance, but I don't think it was really worth the 30 minutes my friend and I spent looking for parking upon our return to campus.

***

out of 5 stars

~Kiva McFetridge

Wake the Dead

On Monday, October 26th, I went to one of the common experience events at Wake the Dead. Wake the Dead is a small coffee house that is very cozy. It is not only a coffee house, but every once in awhile, it is a place for people to go read aloud something special they have written. Monday night was called open mic night and at first, there was a really dry audience. No one wanted to get up and read anything, so I was skeptical at first whether or not I was going to stay. But a few minutes later, a young man got the courage to stand up and read aloud his poetry to the audience. After he went, a lot of people started to go up on stage and feel comfortable in front of the other people in the crowd. It was just easier to get the first person out of the way, so the others would feel more welcome. A lot of poetry and stories that were told were original pieces that people had written themselves. A few people shared works on Shakespeare, which I thought was truly interesting. I have always had a hard time understanding the words of Shakespeare, but the ones who chose to read some of his work, changed up the work and made it easier for me to comprehend. A lot of it was very beautiful and some was even emotional. Overall, I truly enjoyed myself and am definitely thinking about attending another open mic night soon.

Dan Pink

I recently watched Dan Pink talk about his book "A Whole New Mind", and it was a pretty interesting presentation he had. Alot of the stuff he talked about really made me think about life and the choice to go down the road of left brainers. Ive been a left brained person my whole life until i came to Texas State. Pink has made me think and showed me that right brainers really will rule the future because of creativity and thinking outside of the box. I thought the picture he showed us with the candle and how to use it correctly without dripping wax on the table was pretty interesting too. I probably wouldnt of figured it out without him displaying how to do it to us. I believe the career of engineering really lets right brainers shine because of the ideas you have to pull out in order to build and solve problems also looking at the big picture. My favorite thing about Dan Pink was his humor and how he could relate to us as college students. He was an overall great guy and I look forward to more of his publishing's if we can receive them for free!

Wake the Dead

Yesterday I went to the common experience event at Wake the Dead. It is this coffee house that people go to and you can write something and read it aloud there. I went to the open mic night on Monday. There were a bunch of people in a tiny room where the event was held. At first nobody wanted to get up and read something so I went and got a hot drink. When I got back someone started to read their poetry, but I had lost my spot in the room so I had to stand at the door. After the first person went the other people got up the courage to go up and share their stories. Some people shared Shakespeare, and some altered already written stories and gave them their own twist and read those aloud. They were all very creative and interesting, and I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I was going to. But there was one person who really stuck out in my mind. I can't remember his name, but he did something so original that I wish he never left the stage. I just wanted to keep listening to him. He took an older story, put it in an old western time period, and then played it on the guitar. It really intreaged me and I wanted to listen to some other stories he had, but he only did the one. After he left the stage, I stayed for a couple more poems. They just didn't compare to his put to music. I really enjoyed the open mic night and I'll will probably go back to listen to some more readings.

Daniel Pink

I saw Daniel Pink last Wednesday speak about his book, A Whole New Mind. He was a very good speaker, and was very funny, which I found surprising. I didn't think that he was going to boring, but I didn't expect him to be so personable.
I liked that he broke his book down for us into Asia, Automation, and Abundance, and then his thought process in writing the book. He backed up every one of his points with facts, and his humor added to his credibility in my opinion.
I'm glad that he wrote A Whole New Mind because I am definitely a right brained person, who has always been discouraged by that fact. I never thought that being more creative and 'big-picture' focused would be a good thing.
The thing I liked the most about Daniel Pink's speech, however, was the fact that he did not speak in a patronizing tone. He was very relaxed, and even though he was trying to fill us with a large amount of information in a relatively short amount of time, he still managed to keep a sense of humor and conversational tone the entire time.
Overall, Daniel Pink was a very good speaker and I enjoyed hearing him.

Not sure what to put here

I saw Daniel Pink on October 21st. I went to the second speaking, about the book itself. It was actually a very good presentation. Pink seemed to know his audience well, and was very comfortable with speaking. He said some very interesting things, but remained entertaining, mostly due to his humor. One thing that bothered me was that he really did not expand upon any of the ideas in the book. He outlined it very well with his "decade of reasearch in 60 seconds" or whatever the exact amount of time was, but he never expanded on it. This is all well and good, but for those of us that actually read the book, there wasn't much to take from the first half of the presentation. These are, of course, only my personal feelings, but I don't see how anyone else to read and retained the book could've heard anything new in the beginning of the presentation. The second problem arose with the questioning portion of the presentation. Perhaps this is just me, but it seemed that if you deciphered all of the statistics, and large words, and Pink's apparent need to repeat certain words up to 4 times in a row, you would find that he didn't actually answer any of the questions posed to him. What he did was simply qualify the questions, expand upon them, and then relate them to the topic. That one guy who threw a bunch of statistics about Indians becoming Accountants and how this proves L-Directed thinkings dominance (I think. I couldn't understand that guy), simply got a regurgitation of what we had been told. Pink didn't address any of his issues directly. I would've liked to pose a question myself, but the aforementioneed lack of closure, combined with the fact that it was late and I was still looking at a substantial drive back home, prompted me to withhold my opinion. As such, I'll simply put it here and see if anyone else has other thoughts (yes, I know he put his e-mail address up and I could ask him that way, but honestly I've forgotten it, and there's still that issue of him not directly answering questions to begin with. I'm sure I would get some jargon-infested reply that would ultimately say something like "you make a good point, but you're wrong"). Anyway, I beleive that the right-brain is not going to rule the world in the future. I beleive that (and I will try to avoid sounding sexist here because I promise that I am not) with the addition of women in the workforce, the values of the right-brain are becoming more accentuated. By this, I mean to say that women are, statistically speaking, more right-brain oriented than men. This is not my opinion, it is a fact. As such, with the addition of women in the work force in the past decades, we are now beginning to see a rising of their right-brain perspective in our day-to-day lives. I recall a passage about scented candles still existing. Pink says this is strange, since one would think the invention of the light-bulb would phase out candles. He cited this as an example of Design's importance. I respectfully disagree. The reason candles still exist is because of women (again, my opinion. Not sexist). My mother loves scented candles. Has them all over the house. My father couldn't care less. I would think this is the truth for most households. Men simply don't care as much about pretty things. Function is more important to men than is design. Women are not the same. As such, women are becoming more a force in the workplace and are achieving a more equal standing in terms of monetary distribution. Basically, since women now work, women now get a say in what gets bought. Understandably, things that appeal more to the right-brain (the feminine side) are now becoming more prominent. However, I believe that this is a limited trend. These right-brain ideas have been on the rise, but they will eventually reach a point where they are no longer the driving factor because eventually the spectrum will balance out as is always has. I am not saying that the age of right-brain thinking doesn't exist or that the right-brain isn't important. I am merely saying that the age of the right-brain has passed. Or rather, it is upon us, and soon will.

Johnny Bunko

This past Wednesday evening I attended the Johnny Bunko event with author Daniel Pink as the guest speaker. He talked about his book, The Adventures of Johnny Bunko The Last Career Guide You'll Ever Need. He explained how his book is set up like a Manga comic because when he went to Japan he noticed how popular the comics are and considering how book popularity is decreasing in America, it may draw in more readers. I'm glad he cleared that up with the audience because I'm sure I wasn't the only person who thought that it was an odd approach. He was also humorous at times and tried to involve the audience when appropriate which helped keep my attention. Aside from that, I feel like the seven lessons he presented to us were points that I was already aware of. Some of those points were: don't have a plan set out, tell employers what you can do for them, having persistence, learning from your mistakes, and leaving an imprint. Overall I can say I was satisfied probably just because it was interesting to be able to hear what an author had to say about their own book.

Daniel Pink- Common Experience

On October 21st, this past Wednesday, I got the chance to see Daniel Pink, author of the common experience book A Whole New Mind, speak to the Texas State campus. Though I was sitting on the floor of the absolutely packed LBJ ballroom floor I learned much from the Skype like system that allowed us to hear and see Pink speak from Evans Auditorium just down the stairs of Alkek. With his dark colored suit and technicolor striped tie Pink looked nothing like I had envisioned and told us things that I hadn't necessarily expected from him either. For instance, he attended law school and graduated in the top 90% of his class possible (his words, not mine). He hates the phrase "A picture is worth a thousand words", not necessarily because it's wrong but because the writer in him says this is improbable. He insisted that because he is a writer he is in love with metaphors and spoke in them frequently. And while these were all interesting facts about a man that none of us had ever met and were very unlikely to in the future, it was the facts that he spouted next that weren't about himself at all that really captured my attention.
In the not so distant future India will have a larger industry than America; Ryan Daniel the accountant will face competition from Turbotax, like so many other jobs in the country being replaced with technology. While anyone who read Pink's book could have told us the same things, it was also the things that weren't in A Whole New Mind that gave us something to think about. For example, 460,000 cell phones are discarded every day. 88-89% of the world has a cellular device, a cellular device which carries around more power than existed in the entire world than when Pink's grandparents were his age. Scary but true.
All in all I enjoyed Pink's presentation. It was informative as well as creative, and his audience interaction, though in Evans rather than the LBJ ballroom , kept everyone entertained at the very least. I'd like to hear him speak again for sure.

PRSSA: Dress for Success Fashion Show.

Photo taken by June Leal

Today I helped out with the PRSSA Dress for Success Fashion Show. This fashion show was about and showed what kind of business attire you could wear to either an interview or just to your job. What I helped out with was telling the models when to go into the room where they could model the clothes. Another jobs that members of the committee for Dress For Success were opening the door for the models to exit the room where the fashion show was happening, going out to vendors and asking them if we could borrow clothes for the fashion show. Also there was a person who was the MC for fashion show, there was a DJ, there was also a bake sale going on outside of the event, and someone was there to work a spotlight for the show. This event was my favorite event out of the whole Mass Communication Week. Kendall Schmidt did an amazing job putting this event together!

June Leal

Daniel Pink

Last night I went to hear Daniel Pink speak. I found it pretty interesting and some of the stuff he said made you really think. In tooday's world we have to be aware of what is going on now and in the near future because what we do today matters. School is an example of that idea, what we study today will be out dated when it is time for us to enter the work force. Therefore we are always learning. He also talked about outsourcing, abundence, and some things. I think if you read the book it would be more interesting. I tryied to pay very close attention because i found the stuff he talks about interesting but i was frezzing and couldnt really consintrate.

Daniel Pink Johnny Bunko Event

On October 21, 2009 I attended an event at Texas State Evans Auditorium. The speaker was Best-Selling Author Daniel Pink. Pink was speaking about his latest book The Adventures of Johnny Bunko. This book is said to be the “last career guide you will ever need”. I personally do not have a specific plan of what I want to do with my life, just a few ideas I bounce around on. Pink’s lecture on his book was about what the main tips are for choosing a good career. Lucky for me, the first tip was-there is no plan. The way Pink explained this tip made perfect sense. The world does not work in a planned out way because the world is constantly changing. If you have you whole life set on one job and one firm with one office you will most likely be disappointed or have a boring life.

Another tip that related to me was make fundamental not instrumental decisions. Pink said that making instrumental decisions is for example, going to law school, even though you hate it, so that you come out of school with a job waiting. This is a bad choice because even though you have a job, you will probably hate it. However, if you make a fundamental decision and choose to do something because you love it, you will be very successful. The passion you have will cause you to be persistent, which will always trump talent. Persistence was another main tip of Pinks. The workers who are persistent will produce better things and ideas than those with talent. They will often get farther to achieving their goal as well. Deciding first what you have passion for is the hard part, and then being persistent is what will make something out of the passion.

The lecture helped me to realize that is okay, and in a way better that I do not have a clear plan with steps of how to live my life. Pink inspired me to find my true passion and use it to make an impact on the world. I will definitely be purchasing his book Johnny Bunko. Also the book is written in Japanese Manga comic artt, which is very interesting. I recommend the book to any person, not just a college freshmen, that needs a new take on life.

Taylor Francis

Student Organization Panel

Photo taken by June Leal

Today, I attended the Student Organization Panel for Mass Communication Week and it was very interesting and informative. I learned more about organizations that I didn't necessarily know about. After going to this panel I am really considering joining more organizations and possibly applying to work at the University Star and KTSW. There are many, many good opportunities that come out of joining these student organizations. They help you network with other people and also make new friends. This panel was very informative and encouraged me to get even more involved with Texas State. Overall, I really enjoyed this event today.

June Leal

Tx State Pink Out Game

This past Saturday I attended my first Texas State football game. It was definitely not what I expected and very different from all of the other college football games I’ve been to. The weather was perfect football weather; cold but not too cold. The band, Strutters, and cheerleaders did a great job leading the crowd. This particular game was the Pink Out game which was to support Breast Cancer Awareness and Education. Most everyone was wearing something pink to support the cause. The Cheerleaders wore Pink Out t-shirts, coaches wore caps with the breast cancer ribbon, football players wore pink sweat bands on their arms, and the fans had anything from pink t-shirts to pink pompoms. Although we did not win this game, it was very fun and exciting and a great way to support and raise money for Breast Cancer Awareness.

Big Love

I just came back from a Texas State play called Big Love. I wasnt sure what to expect or what it was even about. When I was waiting for the play to start I read the program and it said fifty brides and fifty grooms but not all will make it to the altar. From that it doesnt really explain what its about. I soon found out there were 50 sisters had an arranged marrage to 50 of their cousins. All the guys were set on marrying the girls, but the girls wanted nothing to do with them. They didnt know what to do so they ran away from Greece to Italy. The play was very dramatic. They stomped and yelled alot to show their frustration with the arranged marriage. Finally they all agreed to marry the cousins but on the weadding night no man would survive. But one of the 50 sisters had fallen in love with their husband to be. That night the only husband that survived was that one girls husband. All the other sisters were mad that she broke her promise but came to realize that unconditional love trumps all. The overall play was very good and funny. I really enjoyed it.

In The Company of Sinners and Saints

Last Monday i attended the Sinners and Saints play. Coming in i had low expectations for the play because plays usually bore me to death. After a little of the play went by i was pretty into it and the comedy was pretty funnny, i especially liked the Video Store guy he was a real character. The music of the play was a little repetitive which i didnt really like but all in all it was an ok play. The main points i learned from the play were picking the right friends. Lucy makes the mistake of listening to Alex which only gets her deeper in the hole because Alex convinces her to throw up in order to lose weight, and only when students start noticing Lucy’s bold fashion choices Alex becomes jealous and puts fake pictures up on Facebook to embarrass Lucy. Trusting Connor and St. Lucy were wise choices because they were always there for Lucy and didn’t backstab her only for fame and glory.

Happiness Is a Warm Facebook Comment

To start off this post, I won't beat around the bush.

In the Company of Sinners and Saints did not provide me with the experience I was expecting.

Yet, truth be told - I wasn't exactly sure what I was expecting. The idea of a play dealing with the dangers of the internet and social networks does seem like an interesting idea, but could it work? Debating wether or not it could, I decided the best approach was to decenter myself from my thoughts and focus primarily on what the play had to offer.

It is important to note that the play is still in the stages of development. It is still a work in progress. The following words I write are meant to be constructive (not destructive) criticisms to this fledging play. I will focus on larger picture issues with the play rather than nitpick away with pointless criticism.

The first thing I noticed was that the play borrowed a plot tool used by the successful CW show, "Gossip Girl," the idea of a gossip blog playing an increasingly important role in the key character's lives. Was this intentional or unintentional? I'm not sure. Perhaps the writer, Monica Michell knew this connection could increase interest in the audience while providing a strong backbone for the tone of the play. Yet, the use of the "Sinners and Saints" blog in the play seems to have faired unfavorably with many I questioned about the play. Some felt the blog aspect was sort of bolted on to play already dealing with a large topic. I too felt the blog added more weight to the play and perhaps could have been handled in "lighter" fashion. Also of note, I found the revelation of who the author of the blog was to be quite predictable.

Along the same lines as the blog plot point, is the use of purgatory in the play. My own bias against the whole "Five People You Meet in Heaven" story arch might explain why I didn't enjoy this part of the play - but it is hard to ignore the fact that this idea has been used many times (especially the 8os) in pop culture, and seems stale. This of course is personal opinion, and I have spoken with many who disagree with me. Yet I do feel it is a fair request that perhaps an even "fresher" approach to this part of the play be explored. I feel the play would highly benefit.

I found the music for the play to be very well written, yet I can't help but agree with many peers who thought the use of it became far too distracting. The main song, although good does not seem to lend itself to repeat play. Perhaps the music could be played less and thus providing deeper and longer lasting emotional connections with the audience when it is played.

Some of the blog posts i've read have also mentioned the problem of length in certain parts of the play. Sitting in the audience, I have to agree. It was hard to ignore the chit chat and bored looking faces during longer parts of the play. It's not that the audience was rude, many of them returned back to the play with full attention once the play picked up again, it's that the length of certain scenes just dragged for far too long. The intro car scene did not need to be as lengthy as it was.

A classic warning story the play did have large portions that were perhaps better suited for a PSA . This is what hurt the play the most. Of course in any story that pushes awareness there has to be some aspect of PSA , even soapbox, but the play relied too heavily on this. The story is strong enough to stand on its own. There really is no need for the video guy (including his rap sheet), the accident, much less the coma. The stories between the two friends, the mother and her daughter, and the main character and the employer are enough to support the play. More importantly these parts of the play are also the most relatable for the audience. If these parts of the story were focused on more it would prove much more successful for the play.

Even if I didn't quite enjoy the play, I still think it was a valiant effort. Please note that a play dealing with such important issues is very important. Thus this play will be and is important. Certain aspects are still requiring tweaks and tuning, but the basic idea is loud and clear. And everyone can agree that's a good thing.