Category: English 382

To be honest, I’ve been having a hard time with my Capstone project (I think most people have). I’ve only completed a little more than the first chapter (of 3 or possibly 4) of content, but I have my page design set up, and I have become a lot more familiar with the interface and the tools. I know that this will make drafting the rest of my content easier. Illustrator has SO many tools, it’s been hard to figure out what I should include. I thought it best to list all of the tools so that my readers could have an idea of what else they could learn, beyond what I covered in my guide. This alone was a much more tedious project than I planned. This is because I wanted to include an image of the icon for each tool. I wanted to make sure each image was the same size, and had the same format (stroke, alignment with text, etc.) This took a pretty big chunk of time, but I’m happy I did it because the process forced me to learn about tools I otherwise would have avoided or ignored. I’ve attached a sample module so that you can get a look at my page design.Module

My Capstone Project is going pretty well. Here’s my working Table of Contents. This is still changing as I learn more about Illustrator and make decisions about what is important and what order things should go in. I am also feeling that it is important to include a lot of screen captures, so my modules are coming out to be longer than I planned. A few of the modules I have completed are the Selection Tool modules and the Brush Tool modules.

Unlike other documentation I have made, I am trying to include Workspace Overview in the beginning, and an Index, Glossary, and list of common keyboard commands that work across Adobe programs in the appendix of this manual.

Besides drafting content I have been spending a lot of time on the Adobe website watching their video tutorials and taking notes.

The Introduction to Interrogationg Boundaries by Nina Lerman, Ruth Oldenziel, and Arwen Mohun discusses how technology has shaped and been shaped by gender (and vice versa).

One example that came to my mind right away was a product called a GoGirl. A GoGirl is something called a “female urination device”; basically, it’s a funnel that allows female to pee standing up. The GoGirl slogan is “don’t take life sitting down”. The description just before the fold on the right hand side of the main page says “Simply put, GoGirl is the way to stand up to crowded, disgusting, distant or non-existent bathrooms…It’s neat. It’s discreet. It’s hygienic”

Off the bat it seems that the device was designed in response to a change in feminine gender perceptions. Women have increasingly become more able to act in ways and do things that were once predominantly dominated by men or at least considered masculine (like being outdoorsy and adventurous).

At the same time, the design of the device is clearly shaped by perceptions of femininity. The device (and its webpage color-scheme) is pink. It’s marketed as “discreet”. Societal norms dictate that to a degree, men shouldn’t feel ashamed of their bodily functions, while women are encouraged to be discreet about them.

There are other technologies that shape gender, and are shaped by gender. When I was younger I had this American Girl brand alarm clock. It was purple with silver details and curvy. It had the option of displaying the time on the ceiling in the dark, surrounded by a few cute little stars. My brother also had an alarm clock with the option of displaying the time on the ceiling, but it was simplistic and plain flat black in color.

I asked a friend how he felt about this gendered alarm clock idea, and he had a similar story. His alarm clock is gray and minimalist with a militaristic alarm tone, while his sister’s alarm tone is a dolphin noise.

The more you examine the products and technology around us, the easier it is to see this connection between gender and technology. I think it is also important to mention that some people at this point in history do acknowledge how gender norms are forced upon us. One example of this is people who try to raise their kids in as much of a gender neutral way as possible by not revealing whether their child is a girl or a boy. People debate whether this practice is harmful or helpful to the child. I think I’d like to end this post with a link to a youtube video of a young progressive thinker: [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srnaXW9ZgZc[/youtube]

I am having a hard time reaching any major conclusions about my college experience that connects multiple realms of experiences. I think this is because more than once in the past few years I have felt as though I was sure of some idea, only to have my mind changed by some incident soon after. For example, after reading Descartes meditations I felt a strange sense of relief that the little things I felt anxieties about didn’t matter, and might not even really exist. In other courses, like Intro to Anthropology, and History 100, I was humbled and left the course feeling insignificant. This new found sense of insignificance was comforting. It was like no matter what mistake I made, I knew that it didn’t really matter. This in turn led to existential concerns about life.

For a while I felt really insecure about my potential to become a functioning adult with a career. I also felt as if their were so many directions (in terms of my career and lifestyle) I could choose to go in that I would never be able to make the right decision. I’ve made a lot of choices in the past few years that might seem random to most people. This includes the odd jobs I’ve had, the groups of people I’ve identified with, and the classes I’ve taken that may have ended up contributing nothing towards my academic requirements. I can truly say that I don’t regret anything.

By exploring the incredible variety of options that I have had at UMass, I’ve met so many different people with an equally vast number of perspectives, goals, and philosophies about life. It was sometimes hard to decide what was correct, what was important. The conclusion that I’ve come to from this is that people often choose their own destinies. That sounds a little more mystical than I wanted it to, but essentially what I mean is that if someone wants to be or do something enough, there is nothing that will prevent it. If a person feels that they are going to hate a class for example, they probably will. If another person feels that they will learn a lot from a class, that person usually leaves the class feeling enlightened in some way. At the very least, if things don’t work out as planned, then that can be taken as a learning experience and lead to new and better things.

I think that my anxieties about my own life intersecting with the exposure to so many different types of people has given me a lot of confidence that not only am I capable of becoming that which I choose to, but also that whatever I choose to do is okay. It doesn’t matter what other people feel about my choices, because there will always be someone who approves and who does not approve. I am now of the mindset that what is important is that I do what I feel is right. Right now, I feel strongly that I want to be a technical writer. However, I also feel confident that if this career choice does not work out in the long run, I will find another path in life that works for me.