Miss. Mavendorf

I did something today which I thought I would never do. I took a stab at Second Life. My Second Life experience began with a few hiccups though. Firstly, I had trouble registering with Second Life because they were having technical difficulties or something. I had to check back several times to actually create my avatar. Then when I finally did register, I was a little dissapointed with what I found. I was expecting thousands of possibilities for my avatar. But for a basic user like myself, I could choose from only a few. That's why I picked fuzzy-sexy-fox lady, she was the most interesting and wasn't super ugly like the rest of the default female avatars. I named her Jeannine Mavendorf. I chose Mavendorf because it sounded like something from Harry Potter. When I took my first step into Second Life I was a bit scared. I was thrown in a random room with a bunch of strangers, and they were all speaking different languages. One person said, "Hello Jeannine!" But I didn't want to speak to them, so I left. It took me a little while to figure out how to move around, talk, and of course, dance. But from there I went to a Reggae Dance Club, and felt a little more comfortable as Jeannine Mavendorf.

I felt way more at ease in our comfortable classroom setting. I was so much less afraid of being in an online universe with people I knew from class, even though they looked really different...and someone was naked. As for the art displays which were available in our pretty little garden, I also had very high expectations. I was really expecting mind-blowing work. Even though I could never produce anything like the work I saw, I had a completely different vision in my head regarding what we would see. I also think I got too caught up in the whole experience, and was so excited/distracted by my classmates that I didn't get the full effect of the installments. For instance, with "The Raven," it asked me to change the environment setting to midnight to get the full effect of the literary classic. But, I didn't. I looked around and went to the next one. With "Mme Rimbaud's Salon," I was expecting a beauty salon. But, I guess they meant salon...like a room. An empty room, I guess. I appreciated the creative writing portion of "On Looking North." I also really enjoyed the paintings featured in "A Vision of Raphael." Although, some of the paintings were blurry and I didn't know if I could change that. I thought each of the installments were great examples of things we touched on this semester. I think having taken BECA 670, we are all on the right path toward creating interesting projects like the ones we saw, if we are so inclined.