Dear Blum,

I’ve got a shirt that I would like to wear.

It’s lacking professional style and quality every where.

But should I trust this masking tape?

To highlight a situation I hate….

*BING BING BING…..* Dada dada dadaaa da da da da……*

Here is my extra credit hack of me sporting out Section 1 shirts. I wish I had time to make this more put together/larger/better but you know… life.

Let’s see what I’m up to after spring break. This is my hack.

Why is it that we traditionally teach history linearly?

Why is it that our TA’s first name is Linnea which sounds a dang lot like ‘Linear’?

Why am I pointing this connection out?

Why aren’t you..?

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Well well well… Okay. Our brains function differently. As a primarily Neuroscience Student, I know that just the same way everyone has a brain, it’s about as different as everyone having a face. (We all have faces but they are all uniquely different)

Anyways, this hack for me is my opportunity to voice my opinion and share a little of my thoughts about whats happening.  This past weekend I took my mother to Vegas as a “thank you” for all she’s done for me. On Saturday I fell asleep around 7pm and woke up around 2am (Sunday) morning unable to go back to sleep.

Lying in my heavenly bed at the Westin, terrified to wake my angelic mother I remembered that our hotel’s pool and jacuzzi was 24 hours.

I ended up meeting a man in the AirForce named Tyler from South Carolina around 4 maybe 4:30 in the morning and we got to talking about the city and nature and the stars and how we wished we could see more of them.

“Isn’t it funny that the light hides just as much as it reveals?” I asked him.

“Wow. Yeah.” He replied, stunned. “But it just blew my mind when you put it like that.”

Then I explained how they weren’t my words and started to getting into where they really came from. I talked about Blum and how something wasn’t right and I knew it from a week ago and how I had a teacher who made me excited about a subject I never cared for and that i was really sad that he wouldn’t be my teacher anymore and that even though I’m rolling with the punches I’m just happy he’s alive and I hope he teaches again.

Yadda yadda something like that.

What I shared with Tyler in detail is what I’m about to share with you now:

It’s deeply saddening and shocking to me that Blum will not be finishing out the semester with us this spring. I have a history of poor attendance, and typically when I’m in class I’m usually ‘somewhere else’ but I always found a way to make it to AL 201 MW 1200-1250 for Hist110 because I looked forward to it so much.

Blum has such an impressive teaching style, his work is truly “couched” in professionalism….. Yes… Couched meaning standing on the couch barefoot in a sombrero smoking a cigar and jumping up and down and singing some punkrock 80s song out of tune.

What I’m trying to say is that yes Blum’s class was professional but it was really really fun as well. I wish all of my classes were like that.

Blum really gave a shit about us. He wanted to empower us to think critically and challenge what we “know” and why things are the way they are. Something that’s truly rare. He inspired us to not be so passive in our education and to not be so passive in our lives.

Blum is passionate about what he does and my only hope that wherever he is he can continue to share that with others or can get back to that soon.

What sucks though is that hist110 gave him the platform to get through to 500 of us at once and now that’s not there

Anyways. This picture is of me on a rooftop in Las Vegas taken by my new friend Tyler who now knows all about how much I value my education

So I guess my title “Bitching about Blum” is slightly misleading because I was really just talking out of respect, and I know ‘bitching’ has a negative connotation but it’s catchy and I like it and it got your attention.

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Cool. I am learning wordpress. So tonight I went out for Ethiopian food and I was talking about our class. I was talking about teaching styles and how we integrate technology into the classroom to enhance our Hist 110 experience and so when the person I was with asked for an example I talked about how I tweeted at Prof. Blum today about something that was bothering me. At dinner I also talked about the whole Micro/Macro Tree/Forrest thing but I guess I will use this post to explain my discontent with whoever made that meme attacking Patricia Arquette.

Dating tip: If someone takes you out to dinner, definitely bring up your History 110 class. It will without doubt lead to a date #2 🙂 Our college tuition is so dang expensive, I like getting the best experience possible out of it.

Group 4 answer

Vietnam being called a mistake cause cynicism and public suspicion because the propoganda leading up to the war was so convincing, that for main media to go back on that, the U.S. Public was caught holding two contradicting beliefs.

These two beliefs were a) it was just for the U.S. to send troops into Vietnam and now b) it was a mistake to send u.s. Troops into Vietnam. This was hard for the public to accept because if they were to go back on what they were told before, what’s stopping them from going back on what they were saying now?

this was my way of taking what we learned in the classroom and sharing it with someone else. That person was my mom. We have been Hellogoodbye fans for years but the other day I showed her what we did in class and we were able to talk about ways we want to think more critically about the world around us.