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Showing posts from September, 2021

Journal Entry 1 Part 5

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The Struggles of Contextualising Personal Life  The 2 objects I chose to write about in this blog were very personal items. One being a photo of my parents at my brothers football game, the second being the summer camp I grew up going to and where I worked the last 2 summers. At a glance I thought the items would be too hard to properly contextualise within history since we were advised that personal items might be a harder to place within the confines of history.      However the more time I spent thinking about them and working through the previous blog post the more I believe the objects became easier to place. According to  the Atlantic  millenials and gen z state that their biggest struggle is feeling lost and anxious due to the world around them and feel crippled by technology addiction. Camp fixes the latter of those problems by providing an environment that drowns out technologies influences.    This picture shows a dozen teenage...

Journal Entry 1 part 4

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 Summer Camp, The Product of the Technological Revolution. And What it Means To me.  In my Original post regarding Woodlands camp, the summer camp I have spent most summers of my life at, I mentioned the benefits of summer camp on a broad scale. In this post, i'll aim to explain why the concept of summer camp describes a broader experience I have enjoyed in the world.      In my previous post on this subject I discussed the reason Woodlands camp exist and what goals its strives to achieve in the lives of this generation, you can visit that post  here . In this post I will describe my experience as a staff member working at woodlands, and why it is a microcosm for many of my broader experiences in life.  Here is a photo of the Summer staff I worked with during summer 2021   It may be hard to decipher, but in that picture there are 125 college students from all over the country. Gathered together to work as a ...

Journal Entry 1 part 3

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          Earlier today, as I was brainstorming my next blog post idea, my original object, this picture kept coming to mind. You see, in my original post I failed to discuss two very crucial aspects of this photo that make it mean so much to me. Those factors being the photos location and the people that make up the event.  Forsyth county Georgia is a place that on the surface is a typical suburb of the north Atlanta area, but beneath the new growth and shiny surface lies a bloody past. Racial violence and segregation were common place in Forsyth county well into the 1980s. A story that is told in great detail by one of Forsyths sons in this New York Times acclaimed novel.    Growing up in Forsyth, this is a story I was not even aware of until my 8th grade year, when my teacher showed  this  video of the Oprah Winfrey show that contained interviews and stories from forsyth during that time. At first I was embarrassed that it h...

Journal Entry 1 Part 2

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    The above picture is a photo I took from Woodlands Camp in Cleveland Georgia. This is a place that means a lot to me and tells a large part of my personal story.  I first visited Woodlands as a camper the summer I turned 8, June 2008. It was the first time I would be away from my parents and home for anything more than a sleepover with a family friend or a relative. I remember fighting back tears as I watched my mom pull away from the parking lot. My memory from that first summer at Woodlands is blurry, I remember nothing other than my counselors name and how I was made to feel at woodlands. Maya Angelou once said "they'll forget what you said, they’ll forget what you did, but they will never forget how they made you feel", and that quote almost exactly describes what the place in the picture means to me.  Woodlands is a place with organizational values that places people first, a place that strives to make every single camper and guest feel at home. Woodlands al...

Journal Entry 1

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  The Photo above is a picture of my parents at my brothers football game, just a few weeks ago.  The reason this photo means so much to me lies within its context.      Football has always been a part of my life. My dad played when he was in high school and I picked it up around the 6th grade.  Football in the south  is a microcosm for southern life itself. An event that unites the town or state around a spectacle of an event.  This photo was taken during the first quarter of my brothers first football game of the 2021 season. My parents both work hard as volunteers for the team and are responsible for a lot of the behind the scene work necessary for a season to happen. This year, of all years, the crowds, bands and assembly simply means more to people. As we all know the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic has caused the dissipation of beloved moments such as these. We as a nation have given up our cherished pastimes from Broadway, Lambeau Field, Yan...