Blogging Around

Lauren used the "Best of Week" prompt to talk about Mr. Allen's sharing of his indirect reciprocity experience. She talked about the possible reasons for this stranger's good mood and sense of giving, and chose the most likely option. She then talked about her hope to be able to exhibit a display of indirect reciprocity. Here is my comment:

Lauren! I loved hearing about indirect reciprocity too :]. And I definitely agree that the person who bought Mr. Allen's coffee was probably having a really good day, and it's fantastic that this person had the presence of mind to share their great mood with Mr. Allen! I feel that personally, I am either a really happy, jubilant person, or an extremely depressed and mad-at-the-world person. When I am a happy person, I feel like I am not good at channeling my good mood and I end up just being an overly exuberant creep, and when I am being a Debbie Downer, I am very effective at letting people know that I am grumpy. I get sullen and cranky and altogether unpleasant to be around. I hope that I will be able to take advantage of an opportunity to make somebody's day better, and hopefully they would pass it on, because this would make other people happy, and myself happy too!

Nick wrote about his poetry writing process and how at first it was difficult, but once he just let himself write it came easily to him and he looked forward to the revision process. Here is my comment:

Nick-

your post made me feel really bad about myself. Haha. Not your fault at all... but I just realized that I should take a leaf out of your book (that's an expression right? It doesn't make sense...) and stop being such a complainer about all the poetry. I think I have a complex where I don't like things I am bad at... and in my eyes, poetry is most definitely one of those things. I think after I got my first draft back and completed the revisions, I was happy with my poem- something I didn't think possible. Therefore, I was very bitter when it came to making more and more changes. Now I realize that I should take the comments and criticism as an opportunity- not an insult. Haven't I been telling myself that I am a bad poet? Yes, I have. So, I have no right to actually like my poetry right now! other people know more than I do and I should be grateful that they want to help me. So now I won't be so annoying anymore.

Love the word floetic, btw.

Metacognition: Poem

This whole poem process started with finding a "widowed image" to base it upon. I couldn't really think of a specific "image," but I came up with an idea that I think about very frequently, and I thought I could construct a decent poem out of it. This idea was the idea of infinity and vastness, and how much it scares me. When I started to make this poem, I thought it would be effective to portray a fearful scene going out, and not being able to reach a boundary, and then a comforting journey back in. My plan was to use form as content, and have the "out" stanzas be very simple, bleak, and without much detail. They were supposed to invoke a feeling of fear and coldness. My plan was then to have the "in" stanzas be much more detailed, and overall warmer. I was unsure of how the poem would turn out, and was grateful for the initial criticism. As the process went on, however, I felt like I had lost the ability to put my own thoughts into the poem, and I didn't get the sense that it was completely my poem to control anymore. I think I eventually stopped putting thought into how I wanted the poem to turn out, and put most of my thought into how I could effectively complete the revisions that were necessary in order to get an A. Poetry is definitely not my strong suit, but after the 1st revision I thought it had turned out pretty well. After the 2nd and 3rd revisions, I began to feel as though the poem wasn't exactly "me" anymore. I very much appreciate others editing my work, but if I wrote a poem again I would be interested in multiple points of view and less pressure to make changes.

Best of Week: Group Collaboration

While it was not necessarily part our curriculum/intensive learning, I thought the most valuable thing I heard this week was your (Mr. Allen's) advice about group collaboration + food. If I had tried to approach this essay by myself, I would have most definitely had a panic attack and ultimately failed miserably. However, I planned to work with a group of friends after hearing about your late nights with nachos and coffee. Knowing I wouldn't have to go after this alone was a big comfort for me. I got together with some classmates on Saturday afternoon, and we did indeed have food to accompany us. In between our random online wanderings, we actually got some really good ideas out about King Lear. We had good discussion and were comfortable in the environment of one of our friend's houses, surrounded by people we knew. It's important to know that even in things seemingly intolerable, like schoolwork, fun can be found and maintained alongside productivity. I hope I will be able to apply this concept of low-key collaboration later in life, be it in college, or possibly even with colleagues (assuming I will get a job somewhere). I definitely think this was the best idea of the week because it can be applied to more than just specifically King Lear. 

Connection: King Lear and Arrested Development

The connection I am going to make is between King Lear and his daughters and Lucille Bluth and her children in Arrested Development. It may be a stretch, but in the show, the children are frequently trying to suck up to their mother in order to gain control of the company which changes administration frequently. Michael Bluth is probably the only competent sibling, but he has too much sense to shamelessly try to please his mother like his brothers and sister do. In this way, he relates to Cordelia who refused to drench her father in mindless praise just because he asked her to. Lucille is very quick to become angry at her children and quickly becomes enchanted with another and gives them power over the company. This shows her likeness to the king because both are very quick to act and react, sometimes (most of the time) irrationally. Both characters are quite selfish and spoil themselves. They are both rather shallow and neither of them is very thoughtful. 

TED Presentations

Phew. Thank goodness that is over! While the TED project was very interesting and I really enjoyed my video, looking back on the project I think I will mostly remember what went wrong and how stressed I was. I will start with the things that I enjoyed, though. First of all, I loved my video. I thought it was incredibly interesting and the whole foundation that it was about is really cool. I also liked how we were divided into 3 presentation groups. It was nice having a smaller group of people to present to and  not sitting through as many presentations. The guidelines and the website were also extremely helpful in providing a predetermined format. There were, however, many negative qualities about the project in general. First of all, having all four grade levels participating was not ideal. Even with the rubric, not everybody contributed their fair share. Also, some of the freshmen were incompetent or trying to take control (they're FRESHMAN...  trying to tell everyone else what to do... that's not how it works!!). Also, 15 minutes was not nearly enough time to make a presentation. While I was very satisfied with the amount of information we had on our site, I feel like we couldn't showcase it in the presentation because we had to frantically rush through to provide time for discussion at the end. In doing so, we didn't have time to mention one of the required elements, so I am fearful that that affected our grade. Also, being the first presenter in our room, we were under the impression that we really needed to leave the 5 minutes for discussion, so we did our best to do so and ended up having about 4 minutes. The other groups, though, talked right through their discussion time and then one of the teachers in the room said that they didn't have time to discuss, even when some of the groups tried to start a discussion. In that respect, the presentations didn't work very well. I was thinking to myself that it would be a good idea to maybe make the presentations half an hour long, but then I immediately thought that there is no way I would ever want to sit through 5 or more 30 minute presentations. I am not sure if this project is worth doing again, since it was more of a frantic compilation of words than an actual learning experience. I like the point that Leanne brought up during the whole-group discussion- we should actually DO something instead of making presentations about videos. Overall, if we are going to do these presentations again, we should cut out the freshmen and possibly the juniors and/or seniors. To be honest, I think it would be seriously AWESOME if we could do this project with just our class. I feel that there would  be a lot more quality and less frustration. 

Captured Thought: Respecting Parents

Last night, I was eating dinner at The Cheesecake Factory with some friends. About halfway through our meal, a woman walked in with her son of about 10 years old, by the look of him. I continued talking with my friends and then suddenly I heard the boy saying "SHHH!" and fiddling with his iPod Touch. I heard his mom sharply whispering to him, "Do not shush me. I'm your mother. I was asking what you want to drink." Then the boy said, "Just ask me later!" (or something along those lines). The mom looked very distraught and of mixed emotions: She was angry with her son for talking back to her, she was hurt by the disrespect she was showing to her, and she was confused and frustrated about not being able to acceptably reprimand him in public. I know I have been disrespectful to my parents in public before, and I have seen it happening with other kids before, but seeing at this close proximity really hit me. Parents only want what is best for their children and hope to raise them with good manners. Seeing the iPod was another factor that added onto the discomfort of the situation. It represented a lot of things to me: The boy was more interested in the iPod than spending time with his mother, the boy was probably spoiled by his mother who is unsure of where to draw the line because she wants her son to be happy even though she probably knows she should say no sometimes, and kids growing up in this era are extremely electronically-materialistic (does that make sense?). I guess this isn't so much a captured thought as it is a captured experience, or emotion. Still though, it really shows me how important it is to be respectful to our parents and be grateful for everything they do for us and how hard they work.

Connection: The Kite Runner and October Sky

Although we finished reading the Kite Runner a while ago, I recently watched October Sky and found some striking similarities between the two stories. Both stories have main characters with controlling fathers who have specific plans for their futures. Amir's dad wants him to be a lawyer or a doctor or some other respectable profession while Amir wants to be a writer and Homer wants to be a rocket scientist while his father wants to follow in his footsteps and go into the mines. Both main characters have a supportive character who encourages them to follow their dreams. Amir has Rahim Kahn who is very impressed with his writing and wants him to continue, so he gives him a journal to help him write. Homer has his mother, but more importantly, Miss Riley who gives him the resources to help him pursue his rocketry like the rocket science book and the general science help. Both main characters end up pursuing their interests and gaining at least partial approval from their fathers. 

Blogging Around

I read Kate K's post about whether or not soulmates exist. She talks about how frightening it is that there may be one soulmate for a person, and how difficult it would be to find them. In addition, she talks about how so many marriages do not last. Here's my comment: 

Kate!! We are so alike in so many ways... I always think about the future and getting married and whether or not there are soulmates. I read Kyle's comment, and in many ways I agree with him. With over 6 billion people in the world, there are a lot of people who are similar. Since I do not really believe in fate, I don't really believe in soulmates. i think that, like Kyle said, there are multiple people who could make any given person happy. I am also a very firm believer of not rushing into relationships or claiming love too quickly. It always peeves me when kids our age or younger say "I love you" the first day they begin a relationship that lasts for, oh, a few weeks maybe. Then they'll get a new boy/girlfriend and tell them that they love them, too. I think when people rush into relationships like this it develops bad habits that, if copied when people are actually looking for someone to spend the rest of their life with, could have disastrous effects as they realize that the person they claimed to love, they don't really love. Anyway, your post was great! We should have a discussion about this some time :] 

I also read Alli S's post about homework and whether or not the amount we receive is appropriate. Here is my comment:   

Oh Alli, thank you for vocalizing this! :] Of course, just about every kid or teenager has the same views on homework. It is very true that some homework is necessary to help the learning process. For example, without math homework, I would be doing even worse in that class than I already am. However, I totally agree that a huge load of homework does quite a bit of bad. I know that when teachers dump the homework on, all it does is make me bitter towards a subject and less eager to learn it. Spending hours upon hours on something at home most definitely makes me less eager to put time and energy towards it at school. And, I know my mom hates the amount of homework I get. I feel sorry for her. With my sister at college and my dad working downstate during the week, I am the only one home to be with my mom. Then, by the time I get home from swimming, it is 6 o'clock. I have to eat a rushed dinner her and then immediately labor through my homework until 9:30 at which point I have to go to sleep because I need to get up for swimming again. This is another problem with all the homework- too many teachers have absolutely no tolerance for extracurricular activities, which is extremely frustrating. Anyway, thanks for the awesome blog!

360 Degrees: Politics

I'm not going to write about the economic crisis, or the war in Iraq, or abortion, or any of the things that politicians and non-politicians alike can argue so heatedly about. No, instead I am going to write about politics in general. Every day I wonder how many people who have labeled themselves as "Democrat" or "Republican" actually know what they have associated themselves with. I am not afraid to admit that I am pitifully ignorant when it comes to current events and politics. I have tried time and time again to educate myself about the problems in our world, but when I try to learn about the Middle Eastern conflict, for example, I find that to learn about what's happening now, I need to learn what happened previously, and I get lost trying to go back years and years to find out how the whole conflict started. When it comes to the economy, I am a lost cause. I always try to have my parents explain to me how the stock market works and what is going on in the economy, but I just get confused. I know very little about politicians' views, and because of the tugging in different directions I am faced with at school and home, I am hesitant to choose a party. So I wonder, how many people are like me, and know very little about current issues? And then I wonder, how many people like this have claimed that they belong to one party or another, or that they support this politician or that one? I believe that many people jump on the overwhelming Democratic bandwagon that dominates in many places around our country, and is most definitely dominant in these Chicago suburbs.  Should these people be able to bash politicians shamelessly? Should anybody, informed or not, be able to call a politician an idiot? If someone doesn't agree with a person's views, that's fine, say that. But to call someone an idiot, I think, is disrespectful (even if they actually are unintelligent). Do people realize that these politicians are being scrutinized CONSTANTLY, and that no matter what decision they make, SOMEBODY is going to disagree? I think that everybody who calls himself or herself a Democrat or Republican needs to be educated, and that the people who are educated need to show more respect.

Metacognition: Kite Runner Essay

This is a weird feeling... thinking about how I think. Hopefully, I will be able to recall my thought process for the Kite Runner essay project. I know that I chose my original ideas by looking over the essay/discussion questions and seeing if any ideas popped out at me as I read. If my mind latched onto an idea, topics for an essay related to that idea would begin to flow through my head, and I would attempt to pick out the good ones. Then I would force my mind to find ideas that I could work with. Eventually, I came up with 3 possible ideas, and when I conferenced with you/Mr. Allen (should I be talking in 2nd person?), I realized that my idea about repetition in relation to closure was my most original, personal, and natural idea. You/ Mr. Allen (this is really confusing) helped me come up with the 3 main ideas for my essay: refrains, ideas, and parallels. Once I had these 3 ideas, I knew what to look for, and proceeded to find the passages I needed from the book.

One thing I like about my thought process is how I pursue the ideas that I gravitate towards subconsciously. This is an example of how first impressions are often the best ones; I work better if I don't have to think too hard to squeeze something out of a topic. When the ideas come, it's good to work with them. Maybe something I could change about my thought process is giving myself more time to come up with ideas before I make a decision. We'll see how my thought process evolves as I get past the evidence plan stage of this essay!

Best of Week: Short Sentences

It is possible. Truly, it is. It is possible to speak eloquently and intelligently without the constant use of long, drawn-out sentences. I can do it! I can speak with varied sentence lengths :) Anyway, I think that the best topic we covered this week was the Artful Sentences method of "artfully" using short sentences to make a point in writing. After learning about it, I subconsciously picked out the use of this technique as I read The Kite Runner. Related to the short sentences technique is the skill of using a form of the verb "to be" in these sentences. I had learned about varied sentence lengths before, but I never realized just how short and elementary we could make sentences in our writing! "subject"-"verb"-"adjective (if necessary)" It's crazy! I am extremely happy to have learned this technique. I can make myself a better writer. It's easy. Now I know how to do it! Of course, I have much more to learn, but now I will search for the use of short sentences in my reading, and hopefully, I will be able to successfully apply it to my writing! I really think this discussion of sentence length was very beneficial to our class because it is great knowledge to have, and it was exciting! We were excited. About writing. Who would have thought? I am definitely looking forward to reading more Artful Sentences throughout the year and then beginning to write!

Change of Mind: Poetry

Before seeing Rives's TED poem, I always thought of poetry as either rhyming lines in an ABAB pattern, or free verse pieces with such depth and metaphor that their message is buried beneath the surface. Mockingbirds was neither of these. The message was clear, but the words and the delivery were totally different from what I used to think of as traditional poetry. Yes, there was rhyming, but it was subtle and arbitrary. And the mockingbirds were used as a metaphor, but the metaphor was not intimidating or difficult to grasp. The delivery was so natural it was almost as though the poet was just having a normal conversation. The whole thing flowed like a song and the timing was so perfect; it kept me hooked. 

To be honest, I have never like writing (and, frankly, reading) poetry. It always made me feel incredibly inferior and unintelligent because during writing, I could never come up with intelligent metaphors or make myself sound smart enough, and during reading, well, I couldn't understand poetry at the depth at which it was intended to be understood. Now I have a whole new outlook on poetry. This type of slam poetry is my kind of poetry. It doesn't require exceptional intelligence or vocabulary; rather, it asks for artful manipulation of language, which I think I could handle more easily. If I could learn to write like this, I wouldn't be intimidated by poetry anymore. I really would like to hear more of this kind of poetry to help me understand it and appreciate it even more.