Journal Entry 1 Part 5

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 teenagers enjoying time without their phones and social medias but still having a great time socializing and. exercising, something some teens dont find enjoyable. With the context of history and the struggles of this generation it became clear why camp was so important to include as an object in my blog. The skills of living in community and becoming a healthy extrovert were developed by my time at camp, and this is why it played such a big role in my life. 

If you have ever seen the movie Grease you know what a small town, close nit high school community looks like. And that picture, which is displayed perfectly in that movie is exactly what comes to mind when I think of what my high school is. A place where generations gather and countless dozens of friends meet and begin networks that carry them through life. All adding up to help combat the stereotypically unfriendly time high school is. I found the manny connections made through the symbolic angle of that picture, which includes my high school and my parents easy to place within the context of history. In the symbolism of the location, the school football field where I played and my brother is now playing, and the crowd being full of a diverse body of fans in Forsyth county I found an exception to the expected challenge of working with a personal photo in this project. 

This photo is a mash up of the face of my high school through the years.  I feel it will help drive home the history and family roots tied up here....

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Journal Entry 1

Image
  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...
Read more

Journal Entry 1 part 4

Image
 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 ...
Read more

Journal Entry 1 Part 2

Image
    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...
Read more