A requirement for completing the Senior Camper Program at Camp Champions is to write a mission statement. It is a statement that is as short or long as you like where you present yourself. You explain who and what you are and want to be in life. It is meant to be a living document, something that you update and change as needed. The mission statement isn’t necessarily something for the everyday, but it is a powerful reminder for when you inevitably drift off course in some area. Something too few people do is really think deep about, let alone write about, the kind of person they would like to be. While this sounds entirely like an advertisement, I give a huge amount of thanks to Camp Champions and Boy Scouts for giving me the tools to reflect about the kind of person I am and I want to be. After writing the mission statement during the final trip of the last year of the Senior Camper Program, the elder senior campers read it aloud in front of the entire camp before all of the papers are gathered together and burned in the final fire.

Out of everything in my life, it is the learning I have done from my parents, Boy Scouts, Camp Champions, and Emery High School that has most influenced my statement below.

Without further ado, my mission statement as of July 2009:

Carpe diem – Seize the day! My name is Adam Reuben Feldman, and I live by this maxim. Our lives are defined by the choices we make, and here I present some of the choices I have made. I have made a choice to enjoy my life, and I will not stray from this. Given an opportunity, I will do everything in my power to seize it. I will educate myself so I can best accomplish what I wish to. I will never stop learning. My goal in life, and my passion, is creating. I will make new things, both physical and virtual. I will own my own business. I will avoid procrastination. I will do my best to live a balanced life. As we live in a messy world, I will work to prevent, and bring order to, chaos. In my own way, I will make a difference. I will not cease to live with respect, integrity, honor, and dignity. I will be thoughtful, kind, and considerate. There is no option but for me to take total responsibility for my actions. I will be faithful, especially as a family member, friend, and husband. I will forge strong connections to those I love most and work my hardest to keep these connections strong. I will use my passion to empower those around me. It is my love for my fellow man and woman drives me to live each day how I do. We can live free and die, or live in fear and die afraid of our own shadow. I have chosen the former – to reach out and take risks. My name is Adam Reuben Feldman, and Carpe diem is my maxim.

From Adam Feldman's blog, blog.pamiproductions.com.

While I cannot possibly be as emotional as this plea to leave a certain someone else alone, I can request that everyone read Steve Job’s letter posted today on the Apple PR website and move on. Spoiler: He’s doing just fine now.

From Adam Feldman's blog, blog.pamiproductions.com.

A NASA dude made a great presentation on why we explore . Take 5 minutes and read it!!!
I also put it up on scribd.

From Adam Feldman's blog, blog.pamiproductions.com.

Dear Fellow Seniors,

I cannot stand when you sit around stressed out from college apps or schoolwork or life at home and say “wow, I’m so ready to go to college and get out of here!” Think about what you’re saying. Really what you mean is “wow, I’m so ready to go to college and get out of here and leave all of the friends I’ve known for 4-13 or more years and my family and go someplace at least a few hours away so I’ll be happy!” It doesn’t make senese to me. Yes, we’re all maddeningly stressed over where we’re going to be next year, and maybe because of schoolwork or because we’re still doing college apps (the latter two for me). Everything will be calmer after January 1-20 or so, and you can relax a lot until April. So, don’t say you want to leave everyone behind, unless you really do. I know I don’t want to leave.

With Love,

Adam Feldman

From Adam Feldman's blog, blog.pamiproductions.com.

• This post is part of a series I am writing for a class on New Media. Some technical explanations may seem unneeded or lengthy, but I am writing for the benefit of a very intelligent but less technical audience.

Here I address these issues curtly and incompletely. Others have written at length on the topics here, but I wish to add my thoughts to the mix.

Although we often say this, we often forget it: life is all about balance. For everyone who takes advantage of the possibilities of the net, there is a constant dialectic: balancing time spent communication via the web with “real world” communication and activities, and also balancing participation and consumption.

It is so easy to use the Web to communicate with five, ten, even twenty people all at once, more or less comfortably–the web allows one-to-many and many-to-many communication easily and clearly. Email, especially as it is used in business, allows a person to dispense with the niceties of human interaction in favor of expedient, efficient communication.

In contrast, real world communication is much slower to handle gobs of people either all talking at once to each other, say in a meeting, or all communicating with one key person such as a CEO. It is also slower because the social niceties, in particular small talk, are more necessary for what our society defines as proper social behavior.

The same holds for teens, the group often both lauded and denounced for its embrace of the internet. Teens are lauded for their adaption to new tools, for embracing the modern paradigm shift in communications. Yet, they are denounced for the very social problems listed above: real world, vocal, physical interaction is reduced in favor of fairly impersonal means of communication. Certainly there is no doubt of the impersonality of text-based tools such as email and instant and text messaging, where emoticons are necessary to deliver the intonation of what is said.

Further balance is needed in mediating media consumption and active participation. I, for example, consume almost entirely through the web, watching below 5 hours of TV a week. Although these two types of consumption may seem different, both are generally passive–I simply consume and do not synthesize the information actively through utilizing it. Reading and discussing a newspaper around the kitchen table with parents or blogging about current events or your knowledge are, however, more active, participatory activities. In them, you are required to internalize, analyze, and reformulate the information for critical discussion. Doing only one or the other is not necessarily good–fully active participation implies a lack of relaxation in consumption while fully passive consumption implies a lack of critical thinking in consumption. Balance is necessary here as well.

Our modern communications tools are not leaving us anytime soon–heck, I would be miserable without the speed and efficiency of information consumption we have today. We can embrace all of these technologies, activities, and “traditional” practices and proceed to balance them for the best outcome for us.

Authors note: Shelly G. had me write this.

From Adam Feldman's blog, blog.pamiproductions.com.

Shoutout to David Bowie’s Space Oddity!

Attention world: As my Twitter says (and will say for the next two weeks), I’m logging off. Absolutely no digg, reddit, slashdot, google reader, twitter, google news, feeds in gmail, etc. I just blocked digg and reddit in firefox. Yes, there will be a blog post here next week, but it’s for class. Why am I subjecting myself to this?

1. Can Adam survive? He’s not sure, so we’ll see.
2. If I want to tech my school’s musical again (new job for this one: audio effects and clicktrack!), and manage to get my college applications done, I need to buckle down.

Goodbye internet, cya on the 20th! May the lulz be with you!

From Adam Feldman's blog, blog.pamiproductions.com.

Student mindsets according to my physics teacher

Do only two mindsets exist in students in schooling: the “Middle School” and “College” frames of mind?

From Adam Feldman's blog, blog.pamiproductions.com.