So I put this off until the last day and quite close to the last minute. Why?

Well, the question to answer seems simple enough: "Who are you and why are you here?"
In the literal sense, I'm Tiffani and I'm here (in this class) because I wanted to take another class with Beth. I'm here (at this school) because Ball State wasn't approved for the financial aid I'm receiving. I'm here (on this earth), because God put me here for his purposes.

..But who I am? In the meta sense--beyond "Tiffani, female, white, 25"? I haven't a clue, really.

I could say I'm an artist.
I could say I'm a below-average gamer.
I could say I'm a creative person.
A Christian.
A writer.
A consumer.

But I don't know if any one of these actually define me. I'm still exploring. I'm still undecided on what I really want out of life.

So how can I really know who I am, or what defines me?
When I do the book part of this assignment, I'm curious to see what comes of it.

I thought it was really interesting listening to everyone's reactions to "sleeping" on their book. Some people had weird dreams, some people came up with different solutions around it to accommodate for the size of their book, others subconsciously rejected being so close to the text.

I, however, had no trouble sleeping with my book. I didn't notice its presence all night. In fact, in the morning, I almost forgot to take it with me to class.
This could be because I'm dealing with a lot of other things in my life right now that are far more important than a book I dislike. It could be because of the reason I dislike my book--it's a guilt thing. Or maybe it's just because I'm already feeling somewhat unattached or disinterested in this class, though I don't know why exactly that is. I enjoy the class, I just feel as though maybe its more of a peripheral part of my life right now.

A semester-long assignment has us taking a book we really don't like and changing it, altering it into something new.

The book I've chosen is not one that I hate, per se, but I do have strong feelings concerning it.
It is a CSS instruction book.
Don't get me wrong, I love CSS! Coding web pages is a lot of fun. But that's not what this book means to me.
Around 10 years ago, I started getting into web design. I didn't have any teachers, so I was learning through Google searches and reading web page sources. My dad saw me struggling with it in some areas, so he went out and bought two books: HTML 4.0 CliffsNotes and the CSS instruction book. I was ecstatic. Finally, something that will show me what I need to know!
Well, I tried to read and understand these books and I just couldn't wrap my head around them. So they sat for 10 years, unused.
This was something that my dad went out of his way for in order to help me with something I loved. And I didn't even use it.
The guilt of that has haunted me ever since.
Looking at these books, which are outdated and largely useless now, reminds me of that guilt.

To me, the book represents the guilt. Looking at it, I feel ashamed I didn't make a better effort to use it. I feel like I must be some kind of ungrateful child for not making that better effort.
That's what the book means to me. It's a weight on my shoulders and on my heart. And it's time to change that.

Yesterday, we shared our "Egg and Eye" projects. It was interesting seeing everybody's interpretations of the egg -- life, self, iconic game characters...
While my project wasn't necessarily unique (I'm not the first to drop an egg in a jar of vinegar), I still feel good about what I did with it, because it reflected myself (at the time).
Our further discussion of synchronicity, serendipity, surrender, and spontaneity brought me a little closer, I think, to really understanding how the four exist and work together. I feel like I'm closer to synchronicity and serendipity; I use them more than I do the other two. It's difficult for me to surrender myself and I can't be spontaneous (At least, I can't when I try).
Speaking of serendipity and synchronicity... I'm still curious about that piece of paper that had been left in the room before class started...

... the egg ...

Our new assignment, we were given an egg. Just a simple white chicken egg, likely from the grocery store. What it meant and what we were supposed to do with it was up to us find out and decide. It was a completely open assignment... centered around one egg.

I thought. And I thought. And I thought some more.

Should I microwave it? Make a huge mess and have fun cleaning it up? Nah. It didn't feel right.

Should I freeze it? That's what I was going to do. Freeze the egg and bring it to class, frozen and peeled. I was going to write a neat little narrative, too, from the egg's point of view. Something about being trapped in a strange cold place that only gets colder. Nah.

Instead, I put the egg in a jar full of vinegar.

The fun thing about this experiment? The shell of the egg is slowly removed by the acidity of the vinegar, but the membrane remains intact.

It reminds me of me, actually, and how stress, anxiety, and anger work against me.

Little things that shouldn't matter slowly tear away at me, and I let it just build up, bottling everything in. I try to keep from breaking down, or exploding, but it's difficult.

The vinegar, that looks on the surface like harmless water, eats away at the shell of the egg, until only the membrane is left to protect what's inside. But what's inside has become bloated, filling up with gasses and just ready to explode. 

Eventually, something... something small, will set me off and all that frustration or irritation will be released in a mini-nuke of emotion.

Just like it doesn't take much to burst the membrane of the egg.

Another day is done. Today we shared our Doodle assignments.

I have an apparent inability to surrender myself to mindless doodling. I have an apparent inability to surrender myself to anything, really. I like to be in control, or at least have a goal I'm trying to reach and have a general plan that is likely to produce an expected degree of success in whatever I attempt:

I'm in the middle of planning to move out of my current apartment and into a different one. It's only across the street, but because it hasn't actually happened yet, and I have a lot I have to do to make this move go as smoothly as possible, it's imposing itself as a huge stressor on my life right now.
I'm taking another class and this class as been most poorly planned. The work load is appropriate for an intro-level 16-week course, but since no tailoring has been done to the study plan as it's transferred to a 6-week course, the work load is daunting. I'm frustrated already and would rather not deal with it right now, but I don't have much of a choice in the matter.

I like to have a plan. I like to know what to expect, or a general range of what to expect. I like to be in control.

Indecisiveness is crippling and I hate it. "Going with the flow" is a most difficult concept for me to fold myself into.

I've experienced it once or twice, but needed pharmaceutical aid in reaching that point each time. I loved the creative works that resulted from those episodes. But I can't seem to let it go on a whim.

I shall endeavor to change that about myself.

Ugh. I really hate sharing anything... that hasn't been moderately refined. But when one must share doodles, one must share doodles.
Synchronicity, serendipity, spontaneity, surrender... Success! Maybe not quite success, but I've certainly got some things to work with here (A couple of which I plan to keep working on).
I'm still not entirely sure how these four s's actually work together, but the idea is a pretty one.
For the first half of this thirty minute session, I doodled while listening to some of the videos. That certainly had an affect on what I drew, as did what I was looking at.
I started with the duck. There are ducks in my backyard--I was watching them waddle around when I started the duck sketch. I then doodled a person... thinking about doodling the duck.
Then serendipity got stuck in my mind. The definition is a "fortunate happenstance", according to Google. That got me off on the tangent of fortune and fate, which ultimately led to the cosmic. Hence the planet and comet.
Then someone in the videos (I lost track of which one I was on at this point) talked about the window to the soul, a merging of technology and biology, global inspiration, etc...
Then I went back to the ducks, who were by the pond. Pond = fish. Koi fish.
I don't know if anything I doodled can be attributed to serendipity except to the word itself. But spontaneity and synchronicity were certainly present during this session. Surrender? I'm an artist by nature, but I have a hard time limiting my drawings to doodles. It was easy, though, to just draw whatever came to mind--surrendering myself to, well, fortunate happenstance. And the other two s's.