wow.

WE ARE!

creative technology - nerds are the most important creativs

...

I'm searching for an interesting theme for my essay.

I am sitting here, in front of a paper with a lot of hearts, smileys and other little scetches on it and do not know what to write.

I could ask a lot of people but they can not help me. It should become my individual essay. I want to write about something personal.

So I have to work for my own. It is the first time, the first assignment for this study which you have to handle totally by yourself.

I feel overstrained with this.

Since I have moved to Holland I have felt alone a lot of times and now I have to work totally alone. I do not have a reason for asking my roommates, no reason for making a break and going to a different room to talk to someone, because I know: this is my assignment!

And I remember what I have thought so often in the last year:

You should work alone, you like to work alone. You learned not to count on the help of your fellow men. You learned how people have changed. You learned how unsocial they have become.

“I hate people!” This is, what I've thought all the time in the last year.

The reason for that can you find everywhere if you just open up your eyes...

...if you are driving your car and want to go left, nobody stops for you even if there is a long line behind you...if you are by foot and want to go over the street, nobody stops for you to let you pass, even if you are together with children...if you have problems, nobody can help you because everybody needs his full time to solve his own problems...if you loose something, nobody screams for you to indicate you...if you need help, nobody feels responsive and just looks away.

So why should you want to work with others?

Everybody just takes everything and does not give anything back. Everybody wants to have everything managed in his life but does not want to do anything for it. And if you start to help them, work for or with them, they expect a lot and are really angry if it will not be like they want it to be. But they do not do anything for it.

There was a time when everything was different; different people, different principles, different life: AUSTRALIA.

I went there, directly after my prom, after the learn-stress for my exams, after I quitted my three jobs and after I just thought: “This is the time, I hate people the most.”.

I went there to improve my english and I came back with an improved view on life, on people, on me.

It was the first time that I flew alone, and it was the first time that I flew for 18 hours.

But the journey started perfect. A woman in the waiting room said my name through a microphone and I was really scared that something was wrong with my tickets or with my visa or anything, but it wasn't. I was chosen to sit in the business class because the economy class was full.

When you sit in the business class, you get everything for free, have a big screen and a seat which can become a bed. It was a wonderful flight with very friendly people.

When I arrived in Perth it was totally dark outside and I had to go to my family myself so I took a taxi. The taxidriver was really friendly, explained where we drove through and made me just feel relaxed. It was nice to talk to somebody after such a long flight and also nice to go to bed directly after I arrived at my family's house.

I didn't sleep a lot, because it was day-time in Germany but the next day the weather was really nice for autumn and I went out to the city with my host-mother and she showed me everything. I lived with her and her husband and another korean student for two weeks, but I didn't enjoy to live with this family. I met so nice people in school but I couldn't see them after school because my last bus was on 5 o'clock pm, so I spend every evening alone in my room while my family was watching TV. That wasn't my life. That wasn't what how I wanted to enjoy Australia.

I talked to my teachers and my friends and they were really nice, understood my problem and tried to help me. One guy, I just met in the bus, offered me his flat for one week, because he went on holiday. An other familiy picked me up from school, showed me a park with kangaroos, went out for dinner with me and took me home at night. And the family of a german friend I met invited me for a nice evening and took me home at night, too. Everybody was so friendly, everybody tried to solve my problem, tried to help me and tried to find a new family for me.

And at the end of my second week in school they said to me that I could move to a new family, an old lady who lives alone, on the next monday. It sounded so good. I was really happy. They said to me I have to go there alone again, but the guy who offers me his flat before brought me to my new host-mother on sunday night, just a few hours after he came back from holiday.

And the old lady, Suzie, was the best family I could ever find. She cooked dinner for me and asked me why I wanted to move in as abrupt as I did and I explained her the situation in the old family. Suzie listened and changed everything. She went out with me to a big park where we had a picnic while we watched sleeping and eating koalas. She had a son who took me out for party and for surfing. And we had a glass of wine every night in her heating room and talked. She listened to me and I listened to her and we had a really nice time. Especially when her mother came for a visit. Her mother is 86 and can drive her car perfectly, even in the night. She said to me all the time that she doesn't want me to go back to Germany. Unfortunately the last two weeks of my stay were over much faster than the first two.

But Australia gave me a lot and I hope I gave something back. I definitely know that I will go back. I don't know when, but I know that there are people who miss me, who be there for me if I need them and who accept me just the way I am.

I learned that I shouldn't say that I hate people. People are not the same. I didn't meet a lot of people yet. I think I will meet more in my life and hopefully more like the people I met in Australia.

Because in Australia everybody was social, everybody had a look on me and on their other fellow men, if we are fine, not just on him- or herself.

Australian people make their life so easy, not so difficult and stressful and self-interested like the most European's. They say thank you all the time, they are waiting for the bus in lines and don't kill each other for getting the best seat, they help you if you need help and they just smile on you if you need a smile.

My best example for this friendly behavior was an old man in the bus. I had to met a friend in front of a shop but I didn't know how to go there so I asked him. No he didn't explain the way with a few “go right...go left...turn around...ask another person again...” like you would get as an answer in Germany. No, he showed me the way. He went out of the bus with me, went the street down with me and brought me to the shop, before he went back to the bus station.

I envy this people for their behavior, I am not like them anymore. I fit to them when I was together with them. I gave something and I got back a lot. But back home, back in Europe I am not like this anymore. Before I went to Australia I did a lot for my fellow men. I always tried to be there for them, help them with their problems, arrange everything, do everything. But I learned more in Australia. The people over there aren't just friendly, they also know how to make themselves happy and have good relationship with others. They act like they do because their fellow men do it too. They are friendly to each other because everybody is it. And if others aren't, you shouldn't try to make your relationship better by yourself. If others don't work on it you shouldn't work on it, too. It costs too much energy. Have a look on yourself if your fellow men do it too and don't let everybody treat you like they want.

I can't make the people social again. I can just watch out for the social ones, for the ones who aren't just self-interested, who are interested in me too, so that I can be interested in their life and listen to them too. I don't want to think anymore that I hate people, I just want to spend my life with them you aren't there to be hated, who are like me: the australian European's. :)

I think I found them in Holland and I found out who of my old friends is like that too because when you aren't living in one city with them anymore but you still have contact than you know that they are friends who are interested in you and your life. You should work for this relationships and be interested in their life too.

what i unlearned!?

Perfectionism is a characteristic of a lot of people. They want everything happen in one moment. They don't want to spend time by learning something. Everything has to be perfect from the beginning. And most time they think that just there own work can be perfect and don't want to trust other people's work.

Perfectionism can be a good characteristic. You can use it to motivate yourself and others to work harder and it can make you looking at details, so that you see mistakes better and can improve it.

But it can also be a bad characteristic. While you try to make things better or give advice you can act like an egoist and seem unfriendly because you think other people are not working good.

For the interactive video-project i worked in a group with 4 other students. 2 germans, 2 dutch…1 girl, 3 guys. the dutch guy wasn't there in the first meeting so we decided to choose him as our actor in the video because nobody else wanted to do it.

Now I think it was a bad idea, because the actor is the most important person when you have to make a video. and you shouldn't choose the person which isn't there at the first meeting. you should choose somebody you can trust and who wants to have a perfect video in the end, just like you. otherwise you will loose your nerves. just like i did.

I think there were two perfectionists in our group, one student who is just lazy and two students who works a lot but just want to finish it and do not think a lot about it.

We had a really good idea for our project. We had to make an interactive video and we choose the themes education and sport. Our idea was a game called RiG which should improve the life of students.

We thought a lot about our story, the video and the game itself. I think we had more work than other groups because they just had to make a video and we developed also the idea of a game.

But we started on time, so that it shouldn't be a problem to be finish on time.

We had fun in working for our video because we wanted to see the result and everybody liked the theme we were working on. We were nearly the first group which starts filming. But we didn't think enough about it, we just started without a plan. We had made a script before but we forgot to mention a lot of things and especially our actor wasn't good prepared for his role. He didn't bring the right clothes and didn't have the right hair dress and just didn't think about it.

But he and the group improved. We had a discussion about the script again and tried to write in everything we needed for one scene and which clothes the actor has to bring. We filmed from more perspectives and added a few interactive parts and everybody brought in his ideas and worked in the project.

But when we wanted to finish filming the actor wasn't in school anymore and we couldn't reach him on the phone or on the internet. After one week – we thought he is dead or has quitted the study – he came back to Uni and said: “ Yeah, I am sorry I was ill.”!? How can you be so sick that you can't answer on a call or a message or send a short mail to inform your group?

That was the time when I didn't enjoy this group-work anymore. I didn't want to work anymore with this guy, didn't have fun in the project anymore, didn't thought that the video is going to become a success and didn't want to spend any more time on it.

That was my problem in this group work, because I am one of the perfectionists.

I don't like to work with people who just want to finish something and do not think about it. I don't like to work with people who does not have a look for details and do not want to make something perfect.

But I think it is the same with my group members, they don't really liked to work with me, because I said all the time: “ Do it out of this perspective, and from over here.” and “Let him doing this again, let's film it one more time.” and gave them the feeling that I did not like their work. But I liked and after we changed the script and the way how to work I enjoyed working with them.

But then we didn't have a lot of time anymore because we lost one important week and we just had to finish everything so we didn't work good we just worked fast. And I lost the fun again and the thought that this project is going to become a good one.

I have pictures in my head, how it should look like and than I want to do it totally like this and am not open for other ideas anymore.

And if I think that something won't become good, I don't want to work on it anymore. I don't like to present things which are not good and I don't like it if I can't make them become better. But in this study I am not perfect in every course. The most things I didn't do before and I have to learn a lot.

The last week before the video-presentation was terrible, because I didn't like what we did and I especially didn't like what I did and how I edited my parts of the video. But I couldn't improve it because I didn't know how. I wasn't able to work with the video editing program as good as I wanted to and I didn't have as many good ideas as I wanted to have.

I hate the feeling if I can't do something perfect. But now I know that you can't be perfect the most time. Everybody from my group did video editing and filming and writing a script and everything what we did for the first time and you can't be perfect when you do something the first time. It is not possible and it doesn't have to be possible because we are studying to improve and how could you improve if you would be perfect. So I learned not to expect too much because nobody can be perfect and I unlearned to try to be perfect.

At this moment I use this unlearned skill the first time because I hate to write essays, especially in English, because I know that I am not good in it. But I know while I wrote my two essays I improved my writing and if I will do it a lot of times I can become really good in it (not perfect!). Just like my group in making an own interactive video. We didn't do a good job all the time but we improved while working on the project and I think our presentation was a big success. I am really surprised that I say that, but I think the video was a big success and we did a really good job in the end.

happy to survive the first drive with self-changed tire

it's monday night...since my last post we had our interactive video presentation on friday, i had a nice weekend and we had our last course with eliens today.
the presentation on friday was really good. i was really surprised of our whole course and of my group. yeah we made a good job and i think our video has been well received. i thaught that there would be more people from the university but there were a lot of parents and friends and it was a nice afternoon.
i think eliens was proud of his students, or i hope so.
after the presentation i went home, had a nice weekend with my parents and my boyfriend and came back on sunday evening to work a little bit more on our assignments with nick.
this morning we had to present our worst pages. I think there were a lot of annoying sounds, a lot of boring pages and a few really good ideas and a few really good realizations of huge html-knowledge, like chris (the winner) but also of just a small and self-teached knowledge, like nick (third place).
there were no girls under the first three students. i think it's because girls can't make worst pages. they always wants to make everything pretty. ;) but normally they should be better in annoying pages right? :)
after the worst pages everybody had to talk 20 seconds about what he or she learned and UNLEARNED. the most common skill which the course unlearned is to start with a project at latest as possible. the most common skill which the course learned is how to work in a group, how to act, how to talk, how to think and how to solve problems.

now i have to sleep. i have my first working day tomorrow...before lecture. :/ good night.

present your study. be interesting. be special. be informative.

i think i forgot to show you my postcard. yeah i know everybody saw it in class but i wasn't there so i didn't here your feedback. so if you want to....i would like you to give me a comment. you can just write your own opinion or maybe the feedbacks from other students out of our class, which you remember.
dankeee. :)

i'm going to show you the background later. with this internet connection it takes too long to upload pictures,