For class today, we were asked to read Thannha Lai’s Inside Out and Back Again. I remember passing by the book in my school’s library when I was in elementary school, but I never really had the urge to read it. Poems were short and confusing, while books like Harry Potter were long and fantastical …
Category Archives: Courses
Adventures in investigative reporting, or the physical manifestation of a bad simile
Investigative journalism can be a lot like foraging for mushrooms. As the book Shaking the Foundations points out, journalists pick up the spoor of a story in a multitude of ways: an anonymous tip, an overheard rumor, an overlooked piece of information anywhere. A healthy sense of skepticism leads a reporter to think— hey, something …
AI Week 2: Coding Netflix?
We survived the first week of AI online but the second week felt much more daunting and I was honestly starting to feel pretty overwhelmed. My favorite thing about Computer Science on the block plan is how collaborative it is. We, as a class, are constantly working together to understand new material and finish our …
Artificial Intelligence Online: Week 1
Artificial Intelligence sounds scary in itself, but when you add on the online portion it sounds far too intimidating. While I was hesitant to take this class once it was moved to online, I decided to continue with it because it was something I had been looking forward to learning all year. The first day …
The Documentation of War
The dominant narrative tells and shows us that war looks like… WW1. WW2. Vietnam War. Bombs. Guns. Men. Death. Enemies. Tension. Glory. Honor. Power. Protection. National security. Memorials. Veterans. Social Mobility. Beyond the romanticized documentation of war, war is scary as it affects everyone and all aspects of life. The US is an empire that …
Asian American in the Time of Coronavirus
tw//death and violence Last month, an Asian American family, including a two year old and a six year old, were stabbed in a Sam’s Club because they were thought to be carriers of the coronavirus. I remember reading the news and shaking it fear, realizing just how bad it was going to get from here …
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Week 3: Above or Below
Our last week of Women in Film revolved around films’ relationships to metaphors, meaning, and truth, as well as the division between those work above or below the line within the film industry. Through analyzing Maya Deren’s Statement of Principles, we interacted with the idea that what makes humans different from other animals is the ways …
Art and Math – a perfect pair
I attended an arts school for 7 years before college. Starting in the 6th grade, I spent an hour-and-a-half every day honing my skills as a filmmaker on top of taking my other classes for the normal middle/high school core curriculum. My peers were all artists as well, each focusing on one of 11 different …
Do White People Suck at Irony?
As we enter the third week of class, a pattern I’ve noticed in our discussions of white consumerism in hip hop is a consistent misconstruing of the racial navigation of white artists. I understand that’s a mouthful. To put this issue in context, let’s go back to 1986. It’s November. Artists such as the Sugar …
Week 2: Women Auteurs Moving Beyond Transnational Boundaries
Our focus for week two was looking at women auteurs, or women film creators who are considered the authors of their films and have injected their style into the works, whose films have moved beyond transnational boundaries. Our primary films for this week were Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, Věra Chytilová’s Daisies, Agnès Varda’s Faces Places, and Nadine Labaki’s Caramel. Each one of …
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