Jody Shipka Presentation

Good morning everyone.

Last week, I was awarded with the opportunity of watching Jody Shipka give a presentation. Shipka is an expert in communication and composition, who also teaches at the University of Maryland. During her presentation, she discussed both her hobbies and her projects. Her hobbies include an array of activities, including but not limited to, photography, cooking, antiquing, and DIY (do it yourself) projects. It was evident throughout her presentation how passionate she is about each and every one of these hobbies of hers. She mentioned at one point in the presentation that whenever she gets stressed or her thoughts get too jumbled, she escapes to her antiquing space. Here, she mentioned that there is no beginning or end or separation between her and the antiques. She described the antiquing space as being an example of her idea, “where nothing is yet, but everything acts”. It was clear that this is a very therapeutic area for her, which makes it that much more incredible that she is able to merge this hobby with being a scholar. She then showed us one of her projects, which consisted of a video. In the video, she incorporated several clips of different scenes and narrated over the clips. The narration was related to a work composed by someone Shipka admires greatly. In order to create this project, Shipka found inspiration from the cooking TV show, “Chopped”. In this show, chefs are given four ingredients and are required to create some dish using these four ingredients. Similarly, Shipka created a “scholarly version of Chopped” by taking her own four ingredients, which consisted of four different, and seemingly unrelated, books. She mentioned at one point in the presentation that she felt she did not do an adequate job narrating because the piece is just so beautiful originally. What I found most fascinating about the entire presentation was the concept that Shipka is able to merge being a scholar with being a hobbyist. She asked the audience at one point to consider how a hobby impacts one as a scholar. She demonstrated throughout the entire presentation that it is very possible for the two concepts to coexist, which I was greatly fascinated with.