Casey's Blog

Hey it's time for school again! Woo. Unlike high school and other schools below high school I am always very excited for every quarter of college because I always meet new people and my schedule changes so my life is basically completely different every quarter. Obviously this would be a nuisance for some; for me, however, it is just fun in a bun (?).

Here is a picture of my Intro to Journalism textbook and Design Drawing textbook and my Zune 80 (christmas present) flipped over. There is like a pattern on the back... It's laser etching or whatever! It's fancy and I like it; don't mug me.

This quarter I have a fantastic class (or so far it's been fantastic). I don't have any humongous lecture classes of 250+ people and instead I have a class of 45, a class of 30, and another of about 24. Introduction to Journalism is my first class at UWB which is Monday and Wednesday at like, 8:45 to 10:30 or something. We read newspapers, study the first amendment and learn about lots of stuff basically... it's interdisciplinary and our professor is apparently some Stanford writer guy and he's all smart, intelligible and not boring (this is a biggie). He seems like an honest guy and he explains things well and many times he has reminded us that we suck at being journalists by making us take a preliminary test that some of us can't answer a single question. Literally literally literally. I said literally 3 times which means I'm not lying. Seriously seriously seriously.

Onwards! My second class is Electricity and Invention. The word invention should be enough to say that the class should be interesting. Basically we learn about who invented electricity, why that's great, how it works, what we can do, etc etc etc. Or I assume- so far. I have the same professor as before from my Motion and Mech class (which was like an intro to Physics) and basically it's going to be similar. Which is good, because I had a good time last quarter. Our professor seems stoked to teach our class many things, his enthusiasm is, well, interesting let's say. This class takes place right after the journalism class so my Monday and Wednesday mornings are spent this way.

This quarter I have a class called "Design Drawing I" over at the Seattle campus. My teacher (not professor, he's an architect- they're not professors) is a smart guy- his name is J. Crone and he explains why we must do many pointless and tedious drawing exercises. But like I said/wrote- he explains why- therefore they don't seem as pointless and tedious afterwards. I must admit that I get the feeling I'm going to "learn" something about design and drawing this quarter and that's a lot coming from me because I used to spend every hour of my life studying design and art at one point in my life- because it was fascinating and I love it. So this class has my "passion" infused into it and Mr. Crone and the other instructor, Lydia something (I'm bad with names) has specifically told us that this class will be time consuming and difficult out of every class required for architecture and that makes me super happy, not sad. Super friggin Happy because I have never felt challenged in the field of art and design in my entire life and just maybe- it will be this quarter. Be sure to return to my blog later to see if I am depressed from the realization that I am a nobody in the field of Architecture and Design. The lecture portion of this class is an hour long and it's once a week and it happens to be one of those huge 250 people classes and the instructor for that IS a professor. I think. Hmm- mystery! I really don't care though as long as they're smart people... but I guess if they're professors they're obviously smart in the field of teaching and whatnot so I should care. Alright, I care now.

You have read a lot. I am very impressed. My email address is caseyyano AT gmail DOT com. My UW email address is caseyy AT u.washington DOT edu. However that will just forward it to my gmail- so there's no such thing as priority in this case. I am not lonely; but feedback is nice.

There is a class I mentioned last week, Design Drawing I at the Seattle campus. This class is "amazing". You may be wondering what amazing means and may have looked it up in the dictionary; however I will define what amazing means for Design Drawing I.

Amazing [uh-mey-zing] adj
A college level course that is causing great surprise to the college student by bestowing large amounts of knowledge to the student, giving difficult projects with extremely limited time to work, and then explaining that you may want to drop the course if it's not in your major.

That is Design Drawing I, and it's ridiculously hard, time consuming, and expensive (if you think about the materials). But the class is great, I feel that my drawing skills and designing skills (which I taught myself) are being tested, and I like that. Apparently being an architect is hard work and the amount of pay for the amount of work isn't exactly worth it. However, I don't care.

Materials purchased so far:
Sketchbook, Pencils (4H, 2H, HB, 2B, 4B), Erasers (vinyl, kneaded, oval), balsa wood, illustration boards, tracing paper, steel rulers with cork, Ex-Acto knives, black pens, and etc etc etc. I think it's been about $100 so far? However that's actually not so bad if you consider a photography class which may cost you up to $900 as a classmate of mine has mentioned. Of course money is not important if your job is about your passion right? Right? No? I guess it depends.

Although this is a blog at the UWB site and UWB does not have ARCH classes I think I will explain why I like the idea of becoming an architect.

1. An architect requires math. The math is not too hard but it's not so easy that you're insulted.
2. Blueprints do not lie. They are like visual solutions that abide by a set of rules.
3. Creativity. Many parts of architecture require creativity such as conceptual architecture.
4. You make buildings, and those are big. After all the painful efforts it is satisfying.

This has been an explanation of my Design Drawing I class. Stay tuned for my Journalism class explanation- because that's a great class too. Oh! and pictures will come later.

Here's a quote from my Journalism teacher, David S. Goldstein, Ph. D. This quote is incorrect in sentence structure so it's actually not a quote if you think about it. It's a paraphrase really.
Interdisciplinary studies covers 80% of all jobs so although it doesn't sound like an IAS degree is important, it is more useful than most job specific degrees. And it sounds great, I want an IAS degree too. Hmm. So if you don't know what to do in your life, you may want to go for that degree since you can change your job.... to a LOT of other jobs if you end up with one you don't prefer. Oh and if you want to be a journalist, I believe that Dr. Goldstein also mentioned that experience is far more important than anything else. That's like important stuff for those who want to write write stuff and get news and all that.

This has been a rambling by Casey Yano (casey yano @ g mail . com).

I believe there are infinite little things in this world that are fascinating. We pick out these little things and they can define us. I am talking about little activities and hobbies. I have them too. In fact I feel like listing some of these little things and explain why I, Casey Yano, find these things amusing. Let's get this list started shall we... alphabetical too:

Billiards - This is that game where you hit these balls into pockets with a stick. It gives you a better understanding of the interaction between objects on the simplest scale. It requires concentration and strategy. This game can be played by anyone because it doesn't require any strength though being taller may give you a very slight advantage since it's hard to reach some places at times.

Guitar Hero - This is a game. I don't play much games. I used to, but now... not so much. What I look for in new games are very interesting control schemes and game play mechanics because new and interesting concepts feel new and interesting to me. Guitar Hero is a game played on a controller that is shaped like a guitar. I played maybe 15 hours total but I must say that it is great fun because you can play some nice songs on a plastic guitar and it makes you feel good. It does - it's not stupid. It's cool. It really is. It's a big costly if you don't have a game console though (as I have a PS2 from way back when).

Illustration Books - You know those books with lots of colorful pictures of whatever is interesting? I really don't find much illustration books in houses of my friends. Mostly schools and libraries. I guess it doesn't seem like a book to buy. They are wonderful books to buy. Especially if you spend a lot of time on computers and you have to wait for a program to load or something. Basically, having a book with pictures nearby is handy because they're nice to look at and they don't require memorization of anything. Therefore you can buy an illustration book and you keep it on your desk. Whenever you have one of those "Oh I need to wait... " moments you can flip through the book to progress through the boredom that is waiting. I recommend a book full of puppies. But that may not be your thing. It's what I read while I wait for my slow internet connection to rebuild this website once I publish this blog.

There are a lot more things like rock climbing, snowboarding, and cooking. There are some less obvious ones too like organizing your ideas in a notepad or collecting something, and whatever makes you happy. I'm sure there are great little things that I don't know about. If you feel the need to share you should send them to me or something. That would be pretty cool. Really. I'm a normal human being. I will get your email if you send it. caseyy AT u.washington DOT edu

yep.

Hey folks, it would seem I forgot my password, which is why I couldn't update on Saturday. Fortunately I found it this morning and so here I am typing this.

So this awesome class which I need to do homework for, Intro to Journalism, is quite useful for anybody planning on write anything public (like I am doing right now). The textbook we use, Journalism: who, what, when, where, why and how , is about how to write stuff without getting sued. Of course I am kidding, there is a lot more depth than that. But to find out what those things are you should purchase the book because it's better at explaining Journalism than I am. This is probably because it has a bit more text than this blog entry.

So back to explaining why the class is so awesome. Our class is set up in a very interesting way. It is not a "follow the textbook" type of course. Our professor, David S. Goldstein Ph.D. lets us discuss and ponder the many details that go into journalism and he explains the many little things that he has picked up upon his journalisming adventures as well. Apparently I need to Xerox three copies of my article for tomorrow as some peers will critique it and stuff. It's going to be fun. Did you notice how I capitalized Xerox? Yeah, you need to capitalize Xerox, Xeroxed, Xeroxing, and Xeroxified (this last one... not so sure).

So for those who believe that you can "say whatever the hell you want" in a written publication I will warn you that it is not true because you are not allowed lower the reputation of other people and such. I am not a big fan of suing and won't really sue someone because of an insult, but it's good to know that having your reputation damaged by lies is sue-able material. I've been kind of writing quickly and rewriting sentences and such so I apologize if some of this made no sense.

Thanks for reading, and hooray for education and educated minds.
-Casey Yano