Reflection

Happy Holidays!
This year went by so fast. Here is my reflection of English class this semester.

1) “Most Beautiful Work Award” - Which piece of writing (formal or informal) are you most proud of and why? What other skill or habit have you developed (maybe as a reader?) that you are proud of?

The writing I am most proud of is my personal statement. I really enjoyed writing it because I learned more about myself during the process. I think it is a good idea for us to look back and examine our life so we can find how to be a better person. I would like to thank Stephanie, Tenesha(so sad that she left), Arielle and Rishika for helping me revising it. Also, thanks to those who read it and gave me feedback. Couldn't have made it a good paper without your help.

2) “Lesson Learned” - What content do you feel you have mastered? Or, which skill(s) did you enjoy learning and feel that you have had some success in developing? How so?

Through the inquiry reading project, I developed my skill in reading, summarizing and using the books to answer my questions. I think the only way to become a better reader is to read more.

3) “Lessons I’d Like to Learn” - Which skills would you like to develop before graduation? What content do you feel that you need to know in order to feel ready for college? Do you have any project ideas?

I would like to learn how to manage my time. In December, we are given a Calendar of what we should finish each day. I found this EXTREMELY helpful. I am the kind of person that always wait until the last minute to do my work. This helped me to pace myself.

I would also like to learn more about writing. I think the reason why college is a lot harder than high school is that the standard is a lot higher and the content is more in depth. It is hard to develop good writing skills. I would like to learn more to prepare for college.

We spent a couple of weeks studying tragedy this semester. I really enjoyed it. I think we should do a comedy project so that we can read/watch something happy.

Poem

This week, I read a short poem called "We Real Cool" by Gwendolyn Brooks.

"We real cool. We
Left school. We

Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We

Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We

Jazz June. We
Die soon. "

In this poem, Brooks uses repetition to make a list of "cool" things that teenagers do, such as ditch school and play pool. At the end, she writes "We Die Soon", shows that people finally realize that they have made bad decisions and spent their time unwisely. The things that were once considered cool are actually not worth doing. I agree with her idea. We only live for once, so we should make the most out of it. I hate wasting time but I still waste a lot of time everyday.

Poem Citation:
Brooks, Gwendolyn. "We Real Cool." PoemHunter.Com - Thousands of Poems and Poets.. Poetry Search Engine. Web. 29 Nov. 2010. .

Random Thoughts

College:
Congratulations to those who have already been accepted to colleges!
The waiting time is really nerve wracking. (Fingers crossed)
I read some thread on College Confidential. The more I read, the more nervous I get. All the people who posted their stats are extremely competitive.
I.Am.CRAZY. Nervous.
...Crazy

School:
This week I worked on the poem analysis and the abstact of the inquiry project. I also located and analyzed three additional sources. One of the sources I read is a thread asking others what are the hardest decisions they have made. It is interesting to see the similarities and differences between the answers. So, what is the hardest decision you have ever made?

Thanksgiving:
I went on a cruise to Mexico during Thanksgiving break. While I was eating whole day and wasting the food I couldn't finish, I felt bad about myself because there are millions of people in other parts of the world suffer from hunger at the same time. I started to wondering is life fair? It is not fair in the sense that some people are suffering while others are enjoying life. However, it is fair because those who have a better life worked very hard before they can enjoy the fruit of their own work.

A Real Tragedy + 2nd Book

We wrote our second in-class essay today. I read The Cherry Orchard to answer my essential question, which is how one’s decisions or actions can change his/her life. The Cherry Orchard is a play written by Anton Chekhov. When I first started reading it, it is hard to figure out what’s going on in each scene and who is talking. It took me a while to remember who the characters are and what are the relationships between them. As I read more, I get a clearer idea of the story. It is obvious that each character has different personality through the way they talk. The downfall of Ranesky reveals that opportunities are only for those who are prepared. Don’t wait until feels lonely and then realize the importance of friends, don’t wait until fails and then realize the necessity of taking advice and don’t wait until it is too late to make decisions.

We also shared our tragic creation in class. I was disappointed that the sound of the background music of my slideshow was really low; it didn’t work on the school computers. My slideshow also got cut off and played a little faster. But I really enjoyed looking at other’s works. They turn out really great. The one strike me the most is the art piece The Cataclysm of the American Dream. It looks really cool. It reminds me of the big fire in Shanghai on the 15th this week. The whole building was on fire and 58 people died. I am scared by only look at the pictures. It is hard to imagine how the people inside felt, from scared, hopeless or desperate. It is definitely a tragedy because those people couldn’t control what was happening. They didn’t do anything wrong. Most of them were probably taking a nap. It is also very sad for their families. I feel really sorry for them. Wish the dead rest in peace. Hope their family members can move on.

Here is the link to the pictures of the fire:
http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_4701280b0100mri0.html

Tragic Creation

I am almost done with my tragic creation. It is a slideshow with pictures and quotes. I spent about five hours on it today, from finding famous quotes about tragedy, images representing those quotes and recording background music to creating the slideshow. The biggest challenge for me was to find the images that match the quotes. I tried my best and I wish it would come along well. After I put the quotes and the images together, I tried different effects. I learned how to convert m4a file into mp3 file and how to set continuous music to the powerpoint.

Here are some of the quotes I found:

1. “Life's tragedy is that we get old too soon and wise too late”
-Benjamin Franklin
2. "Tragedy, sadness, loneliness and despair taught me that life is really a beautiful thing; if it wasn't I wouldn't be able to recognize that anything was wrong"
-Greg Evans
3. "The essence of a tragedy, or even of a serious play, is the spiritual awakening, or regeneration, of the hero."
-Maxwell Anderson
4. "Life is a dream for the wise, a game for the fool, a comedy for the rich, a tragedy for the poor."
-Sholom Aleichem

Response

In this blog post, I decide to answer the questions I got from the comments of the previous posts.

Katie: Do you think that our view of a "tragic hero" has changed since Aristotle's time? He believed it had to be someone of noble status who got knocked down by his own faults/misfortune, but what do you think we consider tragic heroes now?
A: I think it has evolved. Like the idea Arthur Miller presented, a common can be a tragic hero as well. I agree with his idea because we can relate them in many ways. We understand their decisions and have more sympathy for them. In my opinion, a tragic hero can also be someone innocent, like a kid. Because those are who should not be suffering. They are unable to defend themselves and are unable to change what life brings them.

Andrew: was Gloomy Salad Days the saddest piece of media you have seen? Did it affect you?
A: No. The reason why I wrote about it is that it is the most recent one; therefore, the first one I thought about. I think it is hard to say which one is the saddest because all the tragedies are sad in different ways. I like this story because it is originated from a true story. What I learned from it or how it affected me is that I become more aware of what is going on in the society and how some other teenagers think. It also shows that we have to take responsibility for our actions. We should think about the consequences before we do certain things. Living in regret is probably the worst feeing.

Lindsey: I always wonder why do people continue to hurt someone they love so much? If they truly loved them so much why do they continue?
A: I think sometimes people don’t mean to hurt the ones they love. For example, sometimes when people lie to others, they just don’t want others to get hurt or to be worried. But when the truth is revealed, those people got hurt. Sometimes we hurt others when we try not to.

That’s all the questions I got so far. Thank you for asking those questions and I enjoy answering them because they push me to think deeper.

Patty’s Charcoal Drive-in

This is a poem we read this week. To me, it sounds like a middle aged woman reflecting a summer job she had as a teenager. She worked in a diner drive-in, the way she described it (such as “bouncing pony tail”) shows that she enjoyed that job. However, she had some concerns at the same time.

One of the lines from the poem stood out to me. It says “ A breeze comes up, chasing papers in the far corners of the darkened lot, as if suddenly cold wind had stated to blow straight at me from the future.” It is like the situation most of us in right now. We are all working on our college application, going to school, doing our volunteership and spending time on our jobs. It seems that we all have a lot of things to work on, but the future is still undefined. I was always asked what would I want to do in the future. But I can never give a specific answer. The answer has always been changing as I grow up. Even though I can’t picture what the future will be like, I believe that the future is in our own hands. We should enjoy our time and take all the opportunities we are given. The more we learn, the more we explore, we will have a clearer image of what we want to do with our lives.

I think this is a good poem. And for those who haven’t read it, I hope you’ll take a look at it. It is pretty straight forward and it’s worth reading.

Type of Art That Best Describes Grief

“ It is that union of experience, insight and the simple beauty of language that helps us to give our own grief a name, that gives us a kind of company, that extends a wise hand.”
This quote is written by Ben Brantley. I agree that words and language are very powerful when expressing our thoughts and emotions. I think Literature is the type of art that best describes grief. We feel a strong connection with the authors while reading. It’s like we are having a direct conversation with them. We can picture what is going on and what the characters are like. However, if it is being performed, it limits our thoughts and imaginations. And sometimes the performance doesn’t match our interpretation of the literature.

We finished reading Oedipus and then watched the play. While I was reading it, I was really engaged and was eager to find out how it ends. I pictured that Jocasta looked really young and pretty. But when we were watching the play, I focus on how they performed. I found out the characters are not the way I pictured. It was kind of disturbing to see Oedipus and Jocasta being together. They talked very fast, it was hard to catch every single line; therefore, it was easy to miss the important information. I feel that I focused on the plots instead of the emotions and meanings behind the scenes. I enjoyed the story more when I read it.

Sad Story

We studied tragedies in class this week. This reminds me of Gloomy Salad Days, a Taiwanese TV drama taken from real social cases. The fist two episodes tell the story about Huanghe. Hunghe was born in a very wealthy family. He is a merit scholar as well as the leader of gangsters. He is very popular and respected because he does well in everything. He said that he wanted to be extremely good and extremely bad at the same time to experience life. He had a love relationship with his chemistry teacher. After the teacher gave birth to a baby boy, she told Huanghe that it was his child. She also divorced her husband. Huanghe was afraid that the baby would look like him one day and ruin his future. He told the Death Girl that he wanted the baby to disappear. The next day, he heard from the teacher that the baby was dead and the teacher quit her job. Huanghe committed suicide because he thought he killed his own baby. What makes it a tragedy is that after his death, he received an apology letter from the teacher. She told him that the baby is alive and is not his. She lied because she wanted him to get back with her again. It is really sad because he could have a really bright future. I could picture him being a successful businessman or a politician. His story tells us that the hardest thing to get over with is our own sins.

We also learned how Aristotle defines “tragic hero”. I think Hunghe is a tragic hero. First of all, he was born in a very wealthy family. Secondly, he is very wise and is respected by most of the people. He could have had a bright future. Finally, he made mistakes and the punishment he received exceeded the crime (In this case, he didn’t really commit a crime, he just thought he did).

Law and Order

If you were a voluntary resident of a state, where you don’t agree with the laws, would you break them? This is one of the questions we were given last week. And my answer to that question was no. Reason being if we chose to live in that place, it is our responsibility to respect the law and follow the rules.

After reading Crito, we were then asked whether we would escape if we were in Socrates’ place. I said I would escape for many reasons. First of all, the law held Socrates was unjust. Besides, he should take his family and his friends into consideration. Some pointed out that his kid would be ashamed of Socrates if he ran away. In my opinion, their father’s safety is far more important to them than other people’s judgments. In addition, if Socrates died, he would not be able to search or truth and educate others anymore. For those that against him, his death is a good news. But if he is alive, he can go to elsewhere and make a difference there.

I think it is interesting to see how my answers to those two similar questions are different. I think when the question is really broad; it is more likely to be answered with theories, something that is normally considered to be right to do. But it pushes me to think more and put more emotions into the answer if there is a real situation I can put myself in.