Professional Development | Aaron Hood

Recording an Acoustic Guitar #impmooc

I’m enrolled in the Introduction to Music Production on coursera.org and the first week was all about sound, audio interfaces, and microphones. As part of my first week, my assignment is instructions for recording an acoustic guitar.

Back of audio interface — The 48v phantom power is just above the power cable on the bottom right of the interface.

The first step is going to be connecting the microphone to the audio interface. Before connecting the XLR cable to the condenser microphone, ensure that the 48v phantom power on the interface is turned off and the gain is turned all the way down to prevent clicking from running through your system. After the XLR cable is connected to the microphone then plug the other end into the audio interface and you can turn on the phantom power and adjust the gain.

Checking the audio levels — You can see the green light meter won’t be hitting the “red” in my recording.

At this point we’re nearly ready to record, but first you’re going to want to measure the loudest point in the recording to ensure that you aren’t going to get any distortion in the recording. Check the sound meter on the outside of the audio interface to ensure that you’re not hitting the peak or red.

Distance of guitar and microphone

Now that you’ve taken precautions to prevent distortion you can record your music. Since we’re using an omnidirectional condenser microphone you’re going to get more sound from the room than if we used a cardioid microphone. Keep this in mind to prevent other noise from getting captured in your recording. Moving your guitar closer or further away from the microphone is going to provide different sounds, but I prefer getting close to the microphone so that I’m only about 12-18 inches away from the microphone so that the microphone is capturing the acoustic guitar as directly as possible.

ACPA: Institute on Social Justice

It’s been more a long time since I got back from the Institute on Social Justice (ISJ) at the University of California, Berkeley and I still haven’t taken the time to sit down and think about what I really got out of my experience… which is awful because I’m sure that I’ve forgotten several things since the conference. And I figured I need to sit down and ensure that I reflect so that I don’t allow this experience to merge into my ACPA 2013 convention experience as I leave for that within a week.

One of the themes that I took away from ISJ was about parenting as a social justice advocate/educator. Some of my fellow group discussion members talked about it, it was a topic for a couple of contributors in Dr. Shakti Butler’s film Cracking the Codes, and Michael Benitez talked about it in his featured speaker address. It isn’t something that I’ve thought too much about previously to attending ISJ so when it felt like it kept popping up, I took notice. Many of the people in the discussion group talked about the hard part being what happens outside your locus of control. At home as a parent you’ve got a substantial amount of influence over what your children experience, watch, read, and you directly influence how they make meaning. Outside the home, at school or someone else’s house, there is far less influence from you and more influence from people who may not share your same values. So I guess the focus is really about making sure that my children (still weird to think about right now…), think critically about what they’re taking in or hearing from other adults. Focusing on the conversations on what they’re day was like and what they learned is so much more important than I really ever thought about. In both Dr. Butler’s film and in Michael Benitez’s talk, the focus was on the influence that we have on our on children. One story was about a white man who started to take racial competence more seriously after watching Peter Jackson’s King Kong with his son. One was about Michael Benitez’s son wanting to do a boycott for something that happened at school and then his daughter creating the word girlcotting because she wanted to protest too and felt that boycotting didn’t apply to who she is. It was an awesome moment to hear about and I believe it spoke volumes to the kind of parents Mr. Benitez and his partner are.

When I think about radical parenting I also think about self-care because it’s become so much more of a focus for me this year for a number of reasons. And challenging my students and then coming to home to make sure that my parenting is matching my values will probably mean I’ll need to be taking care of myself.

Another huge takeaway for me was, as ludicrous as it is to say it, realizing that I’m not alone in social justice education. I rarely feel alone because I have great colleagues here at Mason, but sometimes social justice work feels very isolating and it’s a great reminder to me that there are so many of us working toward change. Whether we’re newer to the work or seasoned educators it’s important to know that we’ve got a huge network.

One of the other major themes I took away (which wasn’t very surprising because I know I will always need to do personal work on my identities) was some of the identities that we spent time on at ISJ. One of the TED-like talks at ISJ was about supporting our undocumented students. This really challenged me to think more about my privileges in not ever having had to worry about my national status or how people might treat me if I can’t fill out certain paperwork. It’s been highlighted more and more as we continue to talk about immigration reform (which the speakers challenged as being a politicized word because there has been natural migration of people and animals throughout history – it was only when we created artificial political borders that we changed it to “immigration”) I also was challenged to think more about my identity as an atheist because I still benefit from Christian privilege even though I don’t identify that way. My family still celebrates Christian holidays which are usually reflected as time off on my university’s calendar but they don’t hold the original meaning to me because it’s always just been time for family to be together.

ISJ was clearly a great experience that gave me a lot to reflect on as I continue to grow as a social justice educator and as a person. In addition to all of this I met some awesome people who I hope I can continue to connect with over the years.

Portfolio, finally!

One of my goals when I repurposed this domain last year was to post some of my accomplishments over the course of my graduate program that reflect who my professional identity. I finally got that page to the point where I wanted to share it today.

I have some of my accomplishments with RA Training, three presentations, one activity, my resumé, and some academic posters that I created for my study lounge. I think they all reflect a part of my professional identity and I’m proud of them.

Recently, there have been lots of #sachat folks creating new blogs for themselves and adding their perspective to the web. I think the next logical progression is for people to begin sharing their work and have a digital footprint of their own professional identities to go along with their perspectives on different topics.

The Resolution Game

It’s 2011. This is going to be an very interesting year for me as I will graduate with my M.Ed. in Higher Education Administration and find a full time job. Given the circumstances, I think my resolutions could simply include making sure I graduate and find a job. But I like to challenge myself a little bit. 🙂

Read more – Over break I finished up a book I’d been reading for a couple of months, breezed through another in a day, and then read two of the books that I got for Christmas. There was something about it that was refreshing. I really enjoyed curling up on a couch with the book and losing myself in another world while surrounded by silence. That relaxation is something I want to continue through the year. (you can see all of these in the GoodReads widget on the right of the blog)
Yoga and more water – These are my obligatory health related resolutions. I’d like to do yoga because it keeps you limber but also strengthens. There is also an amount of calm and concentration associated with it that I’d like to keep going. As for the more water, it’s really about replacing the soda that I drink with water and trying to cut soda out as much as possible.
Find time to be inspired by new people and things – Over the break I discovered some new people that I’m inspired by. Jean Michel Basquiat is one of them. I want to make sure that I’m allowing myself to draw inspiration from a wide variety of people. Whether it be my supervisor, my peers, my students, or scholars and artists, I want to diversify my inspiration to incorporate music, literature, art, as well as scholarship in my work.
Take more photographs, write more music, write a story – This is where the diversity of my inspiration will really come into play. I love taking photographs and I want to create the time and the frame of mind to do it more. I’ve written a few songs and many more fragments. I’d like to continue to use music as a medium for self expression. As I was reading some of the books during winter break, I was inspired by what I was reading as well as the Hudson river (I was on a train right next to the river). These inspiration led me to write a few fragments of stories. They are really just character sketches, but I want to do more with it and create something complete.
Professional Identity – In addition to all of the goals above, I’d like to continue to define my own professional identity. My areas of passion drive my work and I want to define what it is about those passions that drives me to be the professional that I am.
Expand my work as an advocate. A professor that I had last semester truly inspired me to become an advocate and activist for the things that I believe in. I want to make sure that I focus on these beliefs and incorporate them into my work.

I have a varied list of goals/resolutions that I want to keep this year. Not all of them apply directly to my professional development, but they are part of my identity which defines me as a professional. So reading a novel or writing a song may not directly apply to my work as a Residence Director, but they all influence who I am as a person which influences my work as an RD. It’s all connected.

Now that I’ve written them, I just have to follow through with them all!

My Expectations

I consider myself an ally and advocate. But is that enough? What am I doing to work toward a community that is shaped to equitably meet everyone’s needs? I participate as much as possible in the educational process to make people aware of the overarching injustice within society. I often leave presentations or discussions that I facilitate feeling a little disheartened. I expect to somehow witness the same fireworks and passion that I feel when learning about social justice. That just doesn’t happen.

I need to recognize and adopt reasonable expectations. The probability that someone’s entire perspective is going to change in an hour long presentation is very slim. I need to make sure that I understand that any presentation I give or discussion I lead opens up eyes a little bit. These presentations are getting feet in peoples’ doors. They open minds a little for future considerations. They are the small change that can snowball into huge change in the future.

I need to understand that. The world can’t change in one day, no matter how much I will it to. We all know that life isn’t fair, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t strive for it to be that way.

Presentation Ground Rules

I did a program session at a conference on October 30, 2010 and before I started the session, I realized that I needed to set some ground rules for the presentation. This is not something that I’ve always done and I think it really helped out with my presentation because the participants understood immediately that we were there to learn. I created these in the context of a presentation that discussed social justice, but I think they are applicable to any presentation.

The first ground rule was that the session is intended to be educational. We were all there to make learn something new together, and I emphasized that meant me as well. There is always a possibility that someone in the audience has some insight into whatever topic that I’m presenting that I haven’t heard yet.

The next was to think about the concepts rather than analyzing and attacking every detail within them. The “that’s not what we’re talking about” syndrome can seriously derail a conversation and do far more damage than good.

Being respectful is important. I focused on the attendees being respectful to each other. There is no need for name calling or swearing in an educational environment. If we got to that point, there probably would not be much learning going on any more.

Keeping the sensitive conversation in the room is also important as an attempt to help people feel comfortable sharing information that they may not otherwise share.

The last ground rule that I laid out was the idea of the “parking lot.” The parking lot is a technique that one of my professors uses to highlight an educational moment without interrupting the person who is sharing. The item that is put in the parking lot is written on the board and revisited later so that my professor can highlight the educational moment. It’s been enlightening throughout the course of the semester to see what we can learn in addition to what is already on the syllabus through the parking lot concept.

Some other ground rules that I plan to work in for later presentation is that people should respond to the person who spoke before them and validate what they said for better development of trust within the group. I also want to focus on the concept of the group being a community to further enhance the respect and trust aspects of my ground rules.

What ground rules do you use in your presentations? Is there anything that you’d add to mine?

#sachat – Stay Connected!

Working in student affairs is a great experience for professional development because there is so much of it. There a dozens of professional associations for the different functional areas that intentionally think of ways to engage their membership in discussions of current events and developments within the field.

Mostly, Student Affairs Educators think of conferences as the major way to gain professional development and I think conferences are fantastic! I always connect with the field in a way that energizes me and teaches me something new about how I can further my work. I also think that it’s hard to stay connected to the material that you learn because you come back to catch-up work at the office. It’s also expensive to travel to conferences. So, #sachat is an easy way to stay connected to the field and the knowledge that is being developed in an exciting way.

#sachat is held every Thursday at both 1 PM eastern time and 7 PM eastern time. There are also a few splinter groups for doctoral students (#sadoc) and masters students (#sagrad).

These conversations are always awesome because of the knowledge, both scholarly and practical, that people bring to the conversation. It’s also a great way to network across the field to understand how different institutions function. While I’m not the most active person in these chats, I’m definitely a lurker, I always get something out of them because of the knowledge that the conversation revolves around.

#sachat is a great alternative to staying connected to the field and learning in-between conferences and as an free alternative to conferences. So I suggest them to anyone who is looking for little something extra in their own development. And you can learn more at thesabloggers.org

P.S. They also celebrated their 1st anniversary a few weeks ago.

Adventures in Pro Dev

One of my new(ish) passion projects is a blog that is specifically for Residence Life professionals/para-professionals. I want to create a place where people who are currently in positions write articles (blog posts) about some of their best practices and passions while creating a community that talks about their own work. The planning of this project has been going well and I had modified a WordPress theme to the point where is was almost entirely mine when I realized that I didn’t have support for the new menu feature in WordPress 3.0. This new feature ended up being critical to a new way that I was going to organize the site and I couldn’t figure out how to integrate it as well as the TwentyTen theme that comes standard in WordPress 3.0…

So, now I’m modifying TwentyTen to my liking so that I can have the native WordPress menus. All the original work has been scraped and I’m trying to salvage the color scheme because I quite liked it.

In other Professional Development news, I’m planning on making a couple of presentation proposals for conferences about online (read: FREE) professional development opportunities. I hope to send in the proposals to the North Carolina Housing Officers conference and the South Eastern Association of Housing Officers conference.