This weblog has failed.
It was my original intention to stage the Interopticon as a new platform for the TIC community, where students’ thoughts could dwell and, perhaps, even interact. Students were given writing assignments—not as many, I told myself, to help the goal become attainable—that would help resurrect our long-form engagement with The Issues. (You can see most of them as you scroll back through the 2018 archives.) With enough engagement, we could return to the heyday of Manila-driven groupblogs and daily posts that were once hallmarks of the class.
The writing came (and much of it was long), but the engagement did not. My grand design was a failure.
You, dear reader, probably fall into one of two camps. The first might guess that I am writing to tell you I’ve decided to completely scrap this endeavor and transform the site into a museum of aging coursework, an inactive curiosity of TIC history. The second group—and I should hope this includes the TAs and alumni who know me better—will have picked up on my use of the world failure, and will guess that I’ve presented an ulterior thesis.
In some ways, both are right.
After I saw how little accustomed the 2018 students were to using WordPress as a vehicle for their own purposes, I knew I wouldn’t be requiring writing assignments to use the same platform in the future. The question isn’t whether I’ll continue to use the Interopticon in some other way. The question is how long I’ll keep trying.
One of the more beloved random traditions of mine took the form of so-called “cultural exchanges” between me and Garrett (TIC 2013). When he joined as a TA, it became apparent very quickly that he and I shared a scary amount of pop culture fanaticism. When we came upon the rare title that was unknown to the other, the discrepancy could not be allowed to stand for long. Once we both had a favorite to share with the other, we’d get together and make the exchange.
One of Garrett’s shares was the 2014 film Whiplash.
The story follows a young jazz drummer who has exceptional talent but starts very green. He is pushed by his teacher (played by a ruthless J.K. Simmons) to increasingly high expectations, and barrels through failure after failure as a result. As you watch, you ultimately stop asking whether he’s going to give up. The real question of the movie (at the risk of spoiling it) is to ask: at what point does he go too far in persisting?
When I first deployed this site, I was keenly aware of the ground shifting beneath my feet. While some of it has settled (TIC has a home, Cal’s budget has been balanced, online rhetoric has at least become more self-conscious), I feel like this year is a leap of faith that has yet to land (new lab, new TAs, new curriculum). It may not. Like this weblog, our designs may also fail.
But failures are not endings. As always, I view them as invitations to learn, to improve, to revise and attempt another experiment. The next iteration of the Interopticon will be much less intentional, more spontaneous. There will be call-outs to student work, and perhaps a new writer or two will add their voices of their own inclination. Regardless, I aim to remove the contrivance.
How far am I going to push this? I don’t know. I wasn’t sure what to make of Whiplash either. I am sure that I won’t know until I try.