Pictures to Words Fitzpatrick, Shawn >>SPEAKER: Can you just tell me your name first? >>SHAWN: I'm Shawn, do you want first and last? Shawn Fitzpatrick. >>SPEAKER: It's not going to go online but for labeling purposes. >>SHAWN: For archiving purposes. >>SPEAKER: Ok, so share your narrative with us. >>SHAWN: Well it's going to be more of a mind map I think which is sort of what my narrative is about. A self-discovery I made just in the past few years, and I couldn't put my finger on an exact date, is that a lot more so than my peers my thoughts come to me very out of order, in a lot of ways like a mind map. So very often, for example, if I have to give an off the cuff presentation I will just trip over my words because actually like five thoughts are coming to me at once and I can't sequence my thoughts in that way. My whole life I've kind of tended to thinking in pictures and I've kind of gravitated towards visual media. For example when I was younger I was really interested in comic books and when I was younger, ironically my mom was even worried that I wasn't developing on a normal trajectory of what my reading level should be; that's one of the experiences that I wanted to talk about. I was in my room one day and I was older than you would expect for this to be happening but I was looking at a picture book and my mom actually got really irate and she came and she said, "You shouldn't be reading that. You're old enough that you should be reading novels. What's wrong with you?" Which is funny because I think in retrospect if you had listened to what I was saying I was saying, "This book is kind of boring, mom." [Laughing] I don't think she heard that, all she saw was that I was reading this book. I think she was basically right, it was actually not really at the level I was. The reason why I was attracted to that type of picture book was because it used a visual media combined with a written media and unfortunately that's something that in our society is kind of relegated to children. Like when you grow up you should be free of the confines of depending on visual cues and that sort of thing. So there are two ideas that I'm not sure if I managed to weave them together but I'll attempt to, so oneself discovery I've made - well I've known this for a long time - but I gravitate towards visual media and I've felt that my whole life because of the role that plays in society that I've had to justify that somehow. But there's also something I've discovered more recently about myself is that it also partially addresses how I think. So maybe you've heard about multiple intelligences and like some people are very good at linear, sequential thinking and if you think about the way in which language is structured it has to come out one dimensionally because it's bound temporally so it's bound to come out in order. On the other hand when you're dealing with visual images or kinesthetic images you have two, three dimensions to work with; those two media are not always compatible but they can inform each other and complement each other. So that's what I have found out about myself over the past few years. So was that coherent did it come out right? [Laughing] >>SPEAKER: Yeah. >>SHAWN: Ok. >>SPEAKER: Let me just stop the tape here. >>SHAWN: Ok, so based on your body language I think it was at least coherent enough to be- >>SPEAKER: Yeah, I'm just trying to find... [Laughing] >>SHAWN: Oh you don't know where you put it. It's still filming. >>SPEAKER: Yes, I made it smaller and I don't know... >>SHAWN: Do you guys know how to use Movie Maker to clip off the parts you don't need? >>SPEAKER: No. If I make something smaller how do I find it? >>SPEAKER #2: Down here probably. There, go over all those icons to see.