At-Home Activity (due 9 AM Thursday, 3/10)

I know you're busy tonight with finishing up your profile drafts for our deadline, but before we leave for Spring Break I really need us to start our next unit. In preparation for that I have an article for you to read. It provides an overview of a book called On Looking: Eleven Walks with Expert Eyes, by cognitive scientist Alexandra Horowitz. Rather than read the book, this article will give us a quite in-depth discussion of what it's exploring.

I will warn you that it's not something to scroll through; nor is it something you can zip through in a few minutes. Mentally prepare yourself. That said, it's fascinating, and it's about psychology: and how our brains notice (or not) the world around us. In the book, Horowitz takes a walk around her New York block, and in each chapter, she brings along a different expert--one is her toddler! and one is an artist. Others include a a geologist, and a graphic designer. In each case, that expert notices completely different things. So you'll read about some of those differences (and what's going on that our brains work that way).

Here's the survey, due 9 AM Thursday. Do the reading. We're shifting gears, slowly, away from merely writing about ourselves or writing in more popular genres, and toward the more intellectual pursuits we arrive at in college.

And here's where we're heading with this. You'll be touring your own neighborhood and putting together a photo essay. Just like the experts in Horowitz's book have a "perspective" that allows them to notice certain things, we'll define a perspective for you to have on your own walk. I'll have that assignment posted for Thursday's class, and then you'll have time over break to do some initial thinking, planning and exploring.