DAY 2: Habits of the Self

I must say, this class is doing great so far.  I have been so impressed with your hard work, grappling with difficult conceptual topics and issues.  Keep up the great work. 

This material is not easy.  And in IFS we don't have much time to belabor the details.  So don't get frustrated, stay positive, and remember that your classmates, Kerry, and myself are here to help.

I especially loved hearing about your personal songprints today.  If anything, we have learned how diverse we are as a class, coming from different backgrounds with different experiences.  And yet, so many similar themes and experiences also emerged, revealing some provocative common ground from which we can build a community of our own.

Don't get distracted.  Stay on task.  There's so much more fun awaiting us.  See you Tomorrow.

Dr.McDonald

Welcome to IU and Greetings IFS students Fall 2014!  

I'm very excited to work with you all this summer.  I have put together a very interesting course that I hope will challenge and inspire you to think critically about the relationships between music and social life.  

IFS is an incredible program here at Indiana University, and I feel quite fortunate to be a part of it.  This is my fourth time teaching an IFS seminar.  Based on my experience in previous years, teaching an IFS seminar has been the most challenging and rewarding experience of my teaching career.  I love it, and I hope you will too.

This is the Challenge: We only have 10 days together (9 classes) to cover an entire semester's worth of material.  Yikes!  I'm going to require you to read, write, and learn more in 10 days than you would normally do in 16 weeks.  This class will consume most of your waking hours (and some of your non-waking hours).  

This is the Reward:  We will get to do things impossible in a standard college classroom.  We are going to get to know one another, learn and listen from each other, play music together, dance, sing, live, and eat together.  At the end of this class you will no doubt be exhausted.  But you will have started your first semester at IU with a core group of friends, a familiarity with the University and local community, and a better understanding of music and college life.  

I promise it will be worth it.

I look forward to the challenge and the reward.  

See you soon!

Dr.McDonald

 Greetings everyone,

 I look forward to seeing you all on Thursday night. But first, I wanted to take the opportunity to invite anyone interested in joining me at the contra dance on Wednesday. 

This is not required, has no bearing on your grade, and is purely an attempt to see you all in a social setting.

 Also, as we begin the semester, I thought I would share some of the words of the Dalai Lama.

"Modern education is premised strongly on materialistic values. It is vital that when educating our children’s brains that we do not neglect to educate their hearts, a key element of which has to be the nurturing of our compassionate nature."

 Sounds like he has been listening to our lectures on global citizenship. Maybe we should teach him how to play mbira...

 Talk to you soon,

 Dr. McDonald

Greetings everyone,

 Let me just say what a pleasure it was having dinner with you all last night. What a fitting end to our brief, but intensive, time together. I must say that I thoroughly enjoyed teaching this class. This has been one of the most rewarding experiences for me during my time here at Indiana University. What makes this program so unique, and so fun for me to teach, is the close relationships I get to develop with you, the students. These kinds of interactions are rare, unfortunately. And I hope that we continue to stay in touch throughout your time here at Indiana.

 We covered a lot of material in two weeks. Dare I say, if you totaled up all of our contact hours, class time, field trips, and movie screenings, we easily accomplished the same amount of work as a typical 100 level freshman survey course. Well done. You should be very proud of all of your hard work, as I am very proud of the work you did. I gave you some very difficult readings, and expected you to master very complex vocabularies in semiotics, social and cultural theory. We then applied this vocabulary to various case studies. Some of those case studies were from your own life experience, others were from disparate parts of the world. Each of these case studies were designed to challenge you to think in new ways, and to see your own life through a different lens. I'm hoping that you'll take this lens with you, and apply it to your future life and experiences here at Indiana University.

 In addition to our lecturers, I asked you to submit many writing assignments in the form of blog posts. These blog posts have been a great way for me to get to know you, and interact with you in an academic setting. I'm still working my way through these blog posts, and hope to have your grades finished early next week. Please be patient with me, I spend a great deal of time reading your words, crafting feedback to help you improve your writing style and encouraging you to continue your successes.

 We also had a performative dimension of this class. I asked you to begin to learn a Zimbabwean folksong on the indigenous instrument, mbira. And despite some initial misgivings, I'm very proud that you were able to make great strides in learning to play this repertory of participatory music. I was very proud of all of the hard work you put in to learning these instruments. And I must say that our class discussion/performance of this music was by far the best I have ever experienced in my six years of teaching this material in higher education. That is a testament to your personality, charisma, and enthusiasm to learn, to sing, and to dance. Thank you.

 In addition to all of this, there was an experiential/observational components of this course that is quite rare in Indiana University freshman seminar. We took our ethnographic toolkit into the local community, mapping the Bloomington Farmer's market, observing the Irish music session at the runcible spoon, and kicking our heels at the local old-time music Contra-Dance. While each of these events was incredibly fun for me (and I hope for you), More importantly, they allowed us the opportunity to apply the theoretical concepts developed in our discussions towards the real world experiential aspects of music, dance, and performance. I wanted you to not only understand what participatory music is, but I wanted you to experience it firsthand. In the process, I wanted to introduce you to some very special community events here in Bloomington in the hopes that you would begin to develop a sense of belonging and connection with the local community. You are now part of that community, and I want you to feel like Bloomington is your home.

 We are going to have one last meeting, August 23 at 7:00 PM in the seminar room located at 501 N. Park St. where we can catch up on how the semester is going, and discuss some concluding elements to our time together.

 I wish you all the best in your studies here at Indiana University, and do hope that you will take some time to keep in touch with me.

 Prof. McDonald

 I really enjoyed hearing about your musical songprints today. More than anything, I enjoyed hearing about where you came from, how you got to Indiana University, and where you see yourself going in the future. 

As I read through your blogs, I realized that there is a great deal of diversity in this class.  Many of you grew up in a small rural towns in Indiana. Others were raised in urban environments like Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and Chicago.  And finally, several of you are from suburbs of major metropolitan areas. Likewise, you have a very diverse palette of musical tastes, from hip hop to country to folk and everything in between. Many of you have siblings whom you love dearly. Others have persevered through family challenges, divorces, and moves.

However, despite the many differences, in many ways, you are all dealing with the same issues, struggling with the same pressures, and seeking the same answers. I'm hoping that throughout our course discussions, we'll be able to bring some of these things to light, to recognize our differences while seeking out our commonalities.

 We've also made great progress on learning to play the mbira. I'm proud to say that you have learned one half of your first song. Tomorrow we will begin by rehearsing what we've already learned, and hopefully, learning the next part of the song, "Karigamombe." Don't give up. Keep practicing. I promise it gets easier the more you play.

 For tomorrow, I'm looking forward to hearing about emotion and meaning in music. We are going to be discussing the chapter, “habits of the self,” as well as the four fields of music making. We have a lot to do, but I promise it will be worth it.

Welcome to IU and Greetings IFS students Fall 2012!  

I'm very excited to work with you all this summer.  I have put together a very interesting course that I hope will challenge and inspire you to think critically about the relationships between music and social life.  

IFS is an incredible program here at Indiana University, and I feel quite fortunate to be a part of it.  This is my second time teaching an IFS seminar.  Based on my experience last year, teaching an IFS seminar has been the most challenging and rewarding experience in my teaching career.  I love it, and I hope you will too.

This is the Challenge: We only have 10 days together (9 classes) to cover an entire semester's worth of material.  Yikes!  I'm going to require you to read, write, and learn more in 10 days than you would normally do in 16 weeks.  This class will consume most of your waking hours.  

This is the Reward:  We will get to do things impossible in a standard college classroom.  We are going to get to know one another, learn and listen from each other, play music together, dance, sing, live and eat together.  At the end of this class you will no doubt be exhausted.  But you will have started your first semester at IU with a core group of friends, a familiarity with the University and local community, and a better understanding of music and college life.  

I promise it will be worth it.

I look forward to the challenge and the reward.  

See you soon!

Dr.McDonald

Contra Dance and Farewell

Greetings IFS'ers:

 Thanks for such a lovely evening at the local Bloomington area Contra dance. I had a wonderful time with you all, and appreciate your willingness to try new things and to explore little-known aspects of our Bloomington community. Now that our formal course is over, I hope you have had a chance to submit your final paper. I look forward to reading your work, and hope that our paths will cross again soon.

 It has been my pleasure teaching you these last three weeks.  Best of luck to you all in your first year here at IU.