I was happy to cover photography for the college’s spring awards ceremony on April 16. Some of the highlights:
Kent Sharples, the DSC president, preparing to hand out one of many awards.
An applauding faculty member in the audience.
The QUANTA gang says hello. QUANTA is a community for a collection of core subjects at building 300 in the fall and spring at the college; it’s one of the premier learning communities in academia. I had a lot of fun studying and making friends their over the 2007-2008 year, and recommend it to any prospective students. Read my story here. A great book we traditionally read at the end of the spring semester is Seven Life Lessons of Chaos. Brilliant stuff; you won’t find this level of reflection and personal development in any normal class. Their motto is “don’t think either/or—think both and,” which is a welcome departure from the typical rigid mindset you find in the classroom.
It’s funny looking back, because Kent was so happy to announce that he knew the name Daytona Beach College was about to be approved, and already it’s Daytona State College.
I shot all these on black and white 35mm film, but am looking forward to shooting the next ceremony with my excellent Canon Rebel XTi and EF 50mm 1:1.4 lens. No one is camera-shy at the college, likely because of the prestigious photography presence. Unfortunately a lot of the photography department’s links are broken at the moment, but there’s some good info on that page.
Richard X. Thripp at 2008-08-05T00:22:56.Hi Kathleen, thanks for commenting! You’ll have a lot of fun in QUANTA I’m sure. When I started in the fall of 2007, the class was 57 students divided into 9 groups. You’ll be around the 5-6 other students in your group the most, even writing in-class essays and taking exams as a group. Dr. Michael Flota does this for Sociology; one-fourth of the test grade is the group grade, which is usually higher because you hash it out and come up with the ‘right’ answer. It is an either/or thing; his tests are multiple choice with one correct answer, but if you choose the wrong one but write a good explanation you’ll get 25 to 100% credit.
Casey Blanton’s humanities exams are harder. You have to write in-class essays with no notes, and many of the questions are fill-in-the-blank or write a sentence rather than multiple choice. The students complained most about the essays. I actually did the best on them. If you’re a good writer and know the material well, an A isn’t hard.
Frank Gunshanan gave me writing skills of unmatched fervor. You can’t say stuff like “back in the day” or “in my opinion.” You must write concretely, analyze rather than summarize, document, quote, explain. “Show, don’t tell” is the motto.
QUANTA is hard, harder than many other courses. On the bright side: some of the assignments count for all three courses, it’s not all writing, there’s a big focus on quality over quantity, and you get a 50 point bonus in each course for not missing more than two days in a semester—a great help to your grade since the courses were about 1000 points each in fall and 1500 in spring. We did creative stuff like writing plays, analyzing dreams, going out in the woods at DeLeon Springs and talking about it, creating pamphlets, sharing food in class, analyzing 2000+ years of history, discussing problems like racism, sexism, class struggles, and more.
Say hello to Casey, Frank, and Michael for me!
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