4A - Acknowledging the Lizard

Brainwashed - Godin

Connect - It’s crucial for us connect with others.  In the media industry, the adage “no man is an island” is truer than ever.  Everything is based on collaboration and connection.  People advance in the industry by having connections with others, people make reputations for themselves by their ability to develop positive relationships with people they work with, and eventually, people will look to be connected to you once you’ve made connections yourself.

Acknowledging the Lizard - The “lizard” refers to the ancient part of our brains that resists our efforts to stand out.  Godin says that in today’s society the people who are truly successful stand out from the crowd.  However, when we stand out, we run into the risk of failure.  This failure is the lizard’s worst nightmare, and so it tries its best to stop us from taking that risk

I think that the blog assignments we do are useful to a limited extent.  Starting to create our digital footprint is a very good first step, but I think that some additional ones could be taken.  Many assignments like this one, where we review manifestos that some person wrote, is interesting I suppose, but is it the best use of our time?  A more useful blog assignment would be to comment more on work that other people do.  But instead of asking us to record audio tracks commenting on other people’s work onto our own blog, instead we should be reading and viewing content that is put on people’s blogs then commenting directly below it.  I think that will give the blogger a chance to see what people think about their creative products, and hopefully foster people to begin a creative and professional discussion about media.  After all, its good to build relationships between media students since we will be emerging into the media industry together in three years or so.

I think that people certainly acknowledge the lizard and the embarrassment of failure in this class.  However, I think that many people aren’t quite able to ignore the resistance that the lizard tries to force upon us.  I have talked to people who refuse to let me see their projects because they are afraid of being laughed at.  I think that perhaps more hands-on work in lab would make people more confident in there work.  I know that if my first garageband attempt ever had to be posted online for all to see I might be a little embarrassed as well.  It might even be helpful to hold an optional informational session once a week to help people who have never worked with the programs before.