Surfacing for Air

I keep saying it: I'm a terrible blogger. But wow, 3 months this time...oh how the time goes by. I'm listening to Owl City's "Hello Seattle" in...you guessed it, Seattle. Maybe it's because it hasn't rained yet, but I'm really loving the city. Well, I am now that I've been down to the Pike Street Market. It's the largest year-round market in the country, which I think is just phenomenal, not to mention its diversity of offerings in local and imported arts and crafts.

I discovered today that wearing my polka-dotted dress, Ann Taylor sweater, white costume jewelry, and funky red lipstick, while not particularly mature by my standards, has gotten me called ma'am an awful lot. Or at least that's what I attribute it to. Maybe eating and shopping alone is just considered an older person's thing to do. What I also discovered was the best panang curry I've ever had in my life, at a Thai place called Typhoon down by the water. Perfect combination of creamy, peanutty, and spicy. And the deal-sealer: it was cheap. I love a place where I can afford to be a foodee.

My presentation this morning with peer Tim Miner and Information Literacy Librarian Sarah Cohen was quite possibly the most fun I've had giving a presentation in a long while. Many of the questions we expected to be grilled with were passed off on the presenters just before us, who were paired with our session. Either way, I think we could have handled it, and our ideas were generally accepted well. Yet another day where becoming a librarian feels at least marginally feasible.

I say marginally because being here makes me realize how little I really do know about librarianship. I've done my best to get excited about the panels and contributed papers, but I just don't know what a lot of them are trying to address. That said, this is probably the friendliest community of conference goers I've met thus far, and so I at least don't feel like running out of the room when I realize I don't know much about the topics at hand.

So, one more day of the conference to go before I fly home and get back to business, which there's been quite a lot of lately. I got my first apartment, which has switched on the financial freakout flashing red light in my head, and consequently I've been becoming increasingly more nervous about securing a sustainable career in Burlington. Heck, I'm even unsure of finding a sustainable job in Burlington, let alone something that will advance my life goals. I hope my portfolio will sell my abilities as an individual, and I hope that I soon find the time to work on that portfolio more!

But enough of worries. There are plenty of things to celebrate. I'll be going to GDC for the first time in just over a week now, and I was on VPR last month talking about games and higher ed. with the fabulous Ann DeMarle and Wesley Knee. That was another fun presentation-esque experience, and yet another strange thing for me to put in my CV.

I'm seeing more and more that my life may not always be full of surprises, but it sure is full of strange things, and I think it's something to be valued. On that note, back to the conference I go!

Expansion Two: Thoughts from South Africa

Before I delve too deeply into the emotional hurricane that was the South Africa trip, I have new and exciting news (as ever). I will be going with Information Literacy Librarian Sarah Cohen to Seattle in March for the ACRL 14th National Conference, where we will be leading a speaker session based on our proposal, "Percolating the Power of Play." 230 applications were submitted this year, and only 19% were accepted. Admittedly, I have never been so thrilled to be involved in the library space. Now I only hope that the game(s) we have to show will help us prove our points!

I am still not sure I'll be able to put into words all the wonderful, beautiful, heartbreaking things I saw and experienced in Cape Town, but I will do my best to try.

Flying over and into the country, I definitely felt like I was on my first trip overseas. What I saw below me was something so different from everything I knew...I was so excited to see more. Very quickly, the economic diversity of the country began to show, as miles of townships were painted into the foreground of the picturesque Table Mountain.

Going into Langa on our first real day there, we were greeted by throngs of smiling children. They all clambered to have their pictures taken, posing for us and grabbing our hands as we walked down the streets. Some pleaded for small things that we carried, others simply wanted to say hi.

This behavior was almost scary to us - what parents would let their children run in the street with adults from another country? But we quickly found that it was due to a strong sense of community, that every pair of eyes looking out from the houses and shops might as well be the eyes of mothers and fathers, whether they actually were or not.

The feeling of communal love is something we don't often experience in our own culture. Maybe in my backwoods hometown in New Hampshire, and maybe a little bit within the community at Champlain, but in neither of those places is it so prevalent in the atmosphere as it was in the Cape Town townships.

Despite this overpowering presence, there was still sadness tearing them apart. Many things were hurting the people of these small communities: from the half-rennovated hostels that housed as many as three families in a single bedroom,

to the all-too-common poor driving that hurt this girl and kept her at home all day.

The thing that struck me most, though, was that talking about violence, abuse, and gender inequality was not necessarily casual, but it wasn't taboo as we might have expected. It was spoken of as if these things were just a part of life, to be accepted and to submit to. There was no sense of power in the bright young individuals, and even in some of the sharp-witted adults, that we met each day. There was no feeling of empowerment, independence, strength of voice, strength of choice. These young adults were intelligent, expressive, creative, complex, and completely helpless in their own minds to change anything about the world around them.

We found some points of inspiration, some nodes of empowerment in each community. But there is not enough support for them, and there are not enough of them to change every young man and woman's life, to keep the majority of kids off the street and out of crime. It is easy to see why they perceive change as something impossible, because their numbers are so small.

But change has to start with one person, always. Someone has to be willing to speak out, no matter the consequences. They are fortunate that they have such a powerful role model as Nelson Mandela in their recent history. They have fought so much already, and I can see in their faces that they have the strength to fight onward. The only question is if they have the time...

We met so many of what we would call "broken families," without parents and with young girls and boys taking charge of households before they were even out of school themselves. We saw classrooms without teachers, we heard stories of people calling desperately for the police and receiving help hours later, if at all. And we saw the other side of the coin: rich young children, unaware of the tragedy just outside their neighborhood, ignorant of the conditions, more interested in games than even the people sitting next to them. In a word, familiar: more like us, too much like us.

Going into this trip, I expected to find answers, but I didn't expect to fall in love. There was something so simple about the beauty of Cape Town. No matter what troubles littered the city streets, it was so easy to look up to Table Mountain, to see the beauty of the world and pull it closer to your heart. But there's only so much that a pretty reminder can do for you. It's nice, but it's not enough, nowhere near enough for those wonderful, fortunate but unfortunate people. They need more, and if it's something I can give them, I'd like to try. I don't think I'll forget what I saw there for the rest of my life, for even a day or a moment. If I do, I'll spend the rest of my life trying to remember it again.

Thoughts on a Year

This is rather belated, but I can't help thinking about everything that's happened in this past year, emotionally and mentally. In some ways, it was a terrible year. I started getting scared of graduation. I questioned what I was going to do with my life. I was worked to my breaking point. I had my heart broken. Three times in a row. And my cat died. But looking at the other side of the coin...WOW!

I mean really, let's sum things up. Last summer, I first started working with Ann and the EMC as an RA for GIVIT. As the school year started, the promise of jobs with the EMC emerged. I applied and was told that I was desperately wanted for the Info Lit project (all because of my love for librarians over the previous two years), and I was offered the chance to go to Learning 2007 in Orlando. A week or so after getting back from Florida, I got to go to the CIMIT Innovation Congress in Boston. Just after that, I participated in a summit for the local aquarium, ECHO. I continued to work on the Info Lit project throughout, and also began work at the end of my fall semester on the Game Tomorrow project with IBM Fellow John Cohn. Somewhere in there, I also attended a dinner for BYOBiz kids to present their work to the college trustees.

Second semester shot off like a rocket, with the Info Lit project turning over completely (and my concept getting the thumbs up to move forward), work on the IBM project grinding along, and preparations for the trip to MPI's Meet Different conference in Houston. IBM concluded in the weeks following the Texas trip, and EMC work-study time started to feel like a vacation for a few months. I was interviewed twice, with accompanying photo-shoots, and participated in a mini-challenge with my peers to apply for a Team Excellence award given out by the college. We still haven't used our gift certificate for that!

I can't remember much of anything else happening in the month of March, but the school year definitely closed beautifully. I received three awards, including the Team Excellence Award, at the annual CCM Division Academic Excellence Dinner. The other two awards were an award in undergraduate Game Design and an EMC Interstellar Award, complete with photo album and laser-cut wooden plaque. If anything could have made me cry, that was it. And if anything could have made me squeal with delight, it was the trip that started the day finals ended. Wes and I went to another conference in Orlando, where we got to "relax" and simply take part in the discussions going on. We still made an impression, I think, as to what Champlain College students can do, and then we actually got to spend a day in Epcot. I restrained myself from completely raiding the Japan store, but we closed the night off with a dinner in the Japanese restaurant, watching musically synchronized fireworks over the water. Just perfect.

The year came full circle with another round of GIVIT this past June, during which I also gave my first speech! As part of the 50 years on the Hill celebration of Champlain, I attended a dinner with 150 trustees, honorary trustees, alumni from Champlain's first year on the hill, and other honored guests. I spoke about at least a few of the things I've done, and it felt great to sing Ann's praises for once to people who should really hear it. I also got to announce a few things to come. Learning 2008 is just around the corner, as is the next CIMIT Innovation Congress; but the best and brightest news for me is that I'll be lead designer on a team funded by the UN to create a game addressing violence against women in South Africa. Again...WOW.

My fingers are crossed to have a good team right now - I've never had my stomach do so many flips on account of someone else's uncertain position on a project. Once the teams are settled, I'm sure time will start to fly by again. We'll be coming back from South Africa just in time for the year to start. I'll be starting up other work as a peer advisor and a Japanese Writing Lab assistant, and I'm already bubbling with anticipation for my senior project with Wes. He's already got concept art in Maya that looks better than anything I would have hoped for...cuz he's that good. =)

I guess the thing that's been sitting in my mind a lot lately is the fact that my life is just getting started, and it rocks. I used to think about the distant future and hope it would rush towards me without hesitation. But lately, I want to slow time down as much as possible and enjoy every hectic, unexpected moment of my year, week, and day. Life after college is still pretty scary, but only because life in college is turning out to be so amazing.

From Work to Warhammer, Wii, and The World...

I've been too tired to blog lately. It's a bit sad. Despite the fact that I only had to work one night this week, I feel as if my evenings have been remarkably full. Considering none of the nightly events were the same, I view this in a good light. However, I hope to get in some more time for thinking. Perhaps it will become a function of the weekend.

The project I've been working on is an interesting one. It's funny, but I feel as if being in charge of a group of people makes you realize where your own interests truly lie. Going into this project, I was ready to facilitate a massive brainstorming symphony for a few weeks before deciding on a game plan and moving ahead. I've loved collaboration in the past, and I figured that adding more people to the process would only make it better. This theory may still hold to be true, but it seems not to be the case with the individuals I've got my hands on. As long as they consult with each other in small groups, I'm relatively accepting of the situation, but even that has fallen to bits. I feel as if I've said this before, and it's very likely that I have.

The new development is that I have a designer on my team who is struggling terribly with the entire process. He lacks the communications skills to effectively offer criticism or make a point without attacking or insulting others, and he is incapable of expressing his own ideas in a succinct fashion that allows others to provide feedback. Whether out of frustration or as a normal mechanism, he has taken to asking me lists of questions regarding clarification of either the design of the project or the structure of the design document. Were I the lead designer on the project, I would gladly oblige and do my best to guide him. Given that I am a producer, and perhaps creative director at best, feelings have welled up within me geared towards distancing myself from the whole documentation process.

I feel more and more as if I would like to be a conceptual designer, if anything. I enjoy the bouncing around of ideas far too much, and the writing of elaborate stories and the minutia of mechanics nowhere near enough. Second to this desire is one to code. I'm coming out and saying it. As much as I love game concepts, I feel that anyone can have a steady hand in it if they can communicate properly. I would much rather have my hands in the network that runs it, if only I were better educated for it. Perhaps in the years to come, I'll manage to get that education somehow.

The moral of the story is that I'm still finding my place in the world, as I should be, and that I hope it does not come at the sacrifice of my team's cohesion and my love for cultivating ideas.

On an unrelated note, I've started measuring my laughter count for the week in bruises. It's becoming habit for me to be violently tickled into giggling fits, and I've rarely escaped without banging some part of my body against something unpleasantly hard, or simply suffering bruises from the intense act of tickling. The aftereffects are certainly unhealthy, but the remembrance of such a pure, spontaneous sound of joy is one that continues to warm my heart through the day. It's a good feeling to be forced to laugh when you'd rather sulk, though I enjoy the everyday laughter that fills my life voluntarily as well.

Continuing the chain of tangents, I've become re-excited about Warhammer Online, thanks to Wes and Mike. I don't foresee myself ever getting into an MMO hardcore, but the potential for group play and experimentation with a new system is appealing to me to an extent that few games have been able to entice me recently. Next on my rental list is Opoona, a Wii game that looks mildly unique, and The World Ends with You, a DS game inspired by modern Japanese culture. If anyone has any better suggestions, chime in!

Chugga Chugga

Well, work is definitely leaving me tired out. I'm not sure if it's because half of it consists of uninteresting tasks that anyone with opposable thumbs could manage, or because there's just so much of it. I've been falling asleep or coming close to it all over the place. No good!

I met my roommate yesterday when I got out of work. She seems nice enough, and not at all messy. This may be because she's brought next to nothing with her. She said that all she does is eat and sleep. Aside from chatting online and randomly browsing the Internet, she appears to be telling the truth. But I'm not around for most of the day, so it's hard to really say. She's actually sleeping as I type this, though...it's difficult to function in a relatively dim room in as close to silence as I can manage.

The thing that's been on my mind lately is the difficulty of game mechanics. In working with my info lit team, it has become abundantly clear to me that many game development students, and to my dismay a fair share of designers, do not understand how to inject both creativity and purpose into mechanics. I have run into a group that I never hoped to encounter. Not only do they not leap at the chance to brainstorm, they prefer to argue with the constraints that would leave the inventive designer enough room to be creative without so much free reign that the ideas run rampant. Just in listening to them, I've lost sight of my own concept that started the project. That is a scary thing indeed. The worst of it is that they've reduced the game to mediocre and over-used puzzle mechanics, like mazes with obstacles that can only be moved once and simple memory games. Booooring! I didn't realize just how spoiled I'd been with the great team members I've had over the course of the last school year. =)

On a similar note, I've been struggling to come up with some nifty new mechanics of my own. Amanda pointed me to a pretty neat resource for some rather ingenious and visually appealing (in some cases) games. These are apparently the kinds of games she hopes will come out of the senior team project classes next year. I feel a strong desire to hold onto the amazing ideas I've been generating with Wes, but at the same time I see where she's coming from - these games are pretty cool in their own right, they have low production costs, and they were able to get the attention of IGF. I've just discovered that my roommate snores...

After the busyness of this week, I'm quite glad that I have this weekend off. It will be one of few, which means I'll treasure it all the more.

Welcome to Work

I haven't really kicked up with all of my summer projects, but enough of them have been starting to get off the ground for me to feel busy. Today, my info lit team started working without me. I have to say, they're off to a surprisingly rough start. They're already getting caught up in one idea at a time without leaping around in the chaos that I've come to expect from the people I brainstorm with. It was terribly frustrating for me to be sitting at a desk across campus trying to make them understand what I meant by moving on from an idea and making conceptual popcorn. I was much more explicit with them than that, it was just a nice visual in my mind.

My three jobs at the library are taking up a few less hours than I thought they were going to, which is not as good for my wallet as it is for my mental health, but I'd say that's more than a fair trade. While I was watching the desk at the library today, I wound up corresponding with my team, attempting to start laying out plans for the project as a whole for the summer, brainstorming key points and phrases for the paper that Information Literacy Librarian Sarah Cohen and I will be writing this summer if our proposal is accepted, and talking to my academic advisor Amanda about the work I'll be doing for her within at least the next 5 weeks. I'll be meeting with her tomorrow night to go over the details, so I hope it turns out to be a good move on my part.

She and my boss Marie at the library started talking about me while I was sitting at the desk as well. It was a little strange to hear them discuss keeping me at the college for longer than the next year when I was right there listening, but it was also interesting to see that they had completely different ideas. Marie thinks that the only way I'll stick around is if they offer a graduate degree I can invest in, and that I'll take off after that. Amanda wasn't clear about how she wanted me to stick around, but she questioned whether or not I'd really want a graduate degree from Champlain in a separate but related field after Marie had left. I don't know what I want to do with my life at this time next year, and I said as much. I was surprised to hear her say that she thought it was absolutely wonderful that I'm just being me and doing what I do.

It's funny though, because I've been a bit torn over work lately. I love doing things that help other people. I also love doing things that other people working with me are excited about. I've gotten plenty of recognition for this work as well. But lately, it seems like I become a bit of an afterthought once the hours of operation are over. When people approach me, it's often to talk about projects or experiences; it's hardly ever to just ask how I'm doing or to invite me to participate in something. All of my friends in the dorm with the exception of one or two, and including my boyfriend, went for the first summer walk by the lake tonight. I don't think anyone considered walking a few feet down the hall and asking me to join.

Sometimes, being so close to other people just makes things even worse when they still don't acknowledge that you're there. But to end on a more positive note, it really makes me appreciate the people that do bother to check in with me, whether they're up a floor, or in the next town, or in a state over.