MY UNIVERSITY

Today was a short day and even though our period was cut to a short thirty minutes, I managed to get quite a bit done. First, I got my journal out of the way. That took about 10 minutes. After completing my journal, my group and I compared some of our Beowulf comprehension questions. We did this for the rest of the period. By doing this collaborating, it was very helpful. I got clarification on the things I wasn't so sure of in the epic and, hopefully, I can manage to answer the rest of the questions with no problem at all. 

August 23, 2014

So today has been one year since my cousin, Kenny, has been gone. This last year has been so crazy. I remember the exact day and time i found out he was gone. All the way down to the clothes i was wearing and what i was doing. To this day, I still trick myself into refusing that he's not gone, he's still just overseas and my family is awaiting his return from Afghanistan. Kenny has brought to me in life that no one else will be able to. He has taught me how to be strong, no matter what the situation. You no longer being here has taken a HUGE chunk out of our family and you can tell nothing will ever be the same at family gatherings cause we'll always be missing our "Godfather" hahaha. I'd do literally ANYTHING just to talk, see, or touch you one more time. We all miss you like crazy. You may only be gone for a year, but all the pain makes it feel like you've been gone for a lifetime. I don't know how I can thank you enough for not only risking for your life for our country because freedom sure in hell isn't free, but for teaching me one of the most important traits in my life; remaining strong. The greatest honor in my life is being able to call you my cousin. I'm certainly blessed. I love you, and i hope you're havin fun up there. Rest in Peace, soldier. See you on Monday for lunch. #KCA 

From Legend to History: Notes Pgs. 2-14

This Life is Your Life

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RSKeGQqSKm8

My Opinion Isn't A Right

Notes: 

• So, Jack is adding irrelevant information/throwing in other topics into the argument to make his argument sound better after being "shut down" by Jill.
• One of the main ideas of this is that we all have rights, but nothing, not even yourself, is truly free.
• While in arguments, people tend to use fallacies like "I have the right to my opinion" to blow off the relationship and surrender, without actually surrendering.
• It is irrelevant to bring anything else into the argument other than that that you are debating about.
• If  you are entitled to an opinion, your opinion is supported by various pieces of evidence.
• When people claim they have a right, question them on what duty it exposes and see if their 'right' is really a 'right'.

ALS Ice Bucket Challenge

ALS Ice Bucket Challenge- This links to the video about how the ice bucket challenge started. So cool and inspiring!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCoKB_tU9ng

For those of you who don't know, Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, is a disease of the nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord that control voluntary muscle movement. ALS is also known as Lou Gehrig's disease.

Reflections On Week 1

1. If anything affects my participation in this class it would be either family or my schedule. Lately I've been spending an enormous chunk of time with my family because so much has been going on. And later on in the year, I'm going to become so busy (with practices and other homework from classes). 

2. A memorable learning experience for me was sophomore year english. I learned a whole lot in Mrs. Byrne's class. She always knew how to get you involved and was never afraid to use "constructive criticism". 

3. So far, I'm liking this Open Source Learning. It's really cool that we get to type everything out on our phones and post them on a blog for a whole bunch of others to see. It's like your life on one URL. In learning, I look forward to becoming more open-minded and looking at the thought process with a whole different meaning to get that deeper side of things. 

Mission

The link below is a song that uplifts those who have cancer. It's called Mission by Lupe Fiasco. I'm sharing this because it's a powerful song that gives me a feeling of happiness and it shows that there is hope for cancer patients. 

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-R-_sxP5kCk

Vocabulary: Fall List 1 ❗️

Adumbrate: to produce a faint image or resemblance of; to outline or sketch.

-The famous artist adumbrated the model's sillhouette. 

Apotheosis: the elevation or exaltation of aperson to the rank of a god.

-Some teachers believe they have such high authority that students should be looking at them as an apotheosis. 

Ascetic: a person who dedicates his or her life to a pursuit of contemplative ideals and practices extreme self-denial or self-mortification for religious reasons.

-A priest or minister can be a strong example of an ascetic. 

Bauble: a showy, usually cheap,ornament; trinket; gewgaw.

-Thousands of people have made baubles for their Christmas trees as younger kids. 

Beguile: to influence by trickery, flattery,etc.; mislead; delude.

-I don't know how some teens do it, but they tend to beguile their parents into letting them do what they want. 

Burgeon: to grow or develop quickly;flourish.

-Frogs tend to burgeon after they've surpassed the tadpole stage. 

Complement: something that completes or makes perfect.

-A perfect throw after a diving play really complements your effort and strategic. 

Contumacious: stubbornly perverse or rebellious; willfully and obstinately disobedient.

-Time after time, the teenager was contumacious and never listened to his parents. 

Curmudgeon: a bad-tempered, difficult,cantankerous person.

-The curmudgeon teenager would not listen to his parents and ended up getting in trouble with the law. 

Didactic: inclined to teach or lecture others too much.

-Some teachers are a little too didactic and sincere that it's hard to take them seriously. 

Disingenuous: lacking in frankness, candor, or sincerity; insincere.

-It was insincere of him not to RSVP

to the party, but show up. 

Exculpate: to clear from a charge of guilt or fault; free from blame; vindicate.

-The judge exculpated his offense after hearing the lawyer's argument. 

Faux pas: a slip or blunder in etiquette,manners, or conduct; an embarrassing social blunder or indiscretion.

-He had a faux pas when he spilled his drink down his shirt. 

Fulminate: to explode with a loud noise;detonate.

So many fireworks fulminated on the night of the 4th of July. 

Fustian: a stout fabric of cotton and flax.

-His new bedspread was made out of a very rich fustian even though he purchased it for cheap. 

Hauteur: haughty manner or spirit;arrogance.

-His head is so big and he's so stubborn he's filled with hauteur. 

Inhibit: to restrain, hinder, arrest, or check (an action, impulse, etc.).

-The officer inhibited the criminal from his ongoing process of running away. 

Jeremiad: a prolonged lamentation or mournful complaint.

-Many people come up with these jeremiads just for attention. 

Opportunist: a person who practices opportunism, or the policy of adapting actions, decisions, etc.,to effectiveness regardless of the sacrifice of ethical principles. 

-By traveling the world at a regular basis, he turned into an opportunist and searches for the greater things in the world. 

Unconscionable: not guided by conscience;unscrupulous.

-Many persons actions seem as if they are unconscionable. 

Montaigne/Austen Essay

   The famous author David Foster Wallace once wrote in a 2001 story, "What goes on inside is just too fast and huge and all interconnected for words to do more than barely sketch the outlines of at most one tiny little part of it at any given instant." What Wallace is trying to get across to his readers is that our minds think way too fast for our hearts to express in feelings. It's like the cliché saying where "your mind is telling you no, but your body is telling you yeah." It's super complicated to express how you feel to someone or about a certain thing when there's so much that goes on in your mind and you can't even understand yourself. The book The Complete Essays by Michael de Montaigne negates Wallace's whole idea in his 2001 story.

   Wallace talks about certain things and their importances. Montaigne talks about things like people's imagination. Very popular in his works, Montaigne uses a strategy called "stream of consciousness." This strategy depicts the thoughts and feelings of the characters, and even the readers, that keeps the story at a constant flow. While reading Montaigne's books, you can tell he is filled with intelligence because he makes these very rare connections with certain subjects. Montaigne talks about his own experiences. This fills his work with interest and individualism. 

   In the book, The Complete Essays, Montaigne goes from topic to topic, covering a load of topics and feeding the reader with bits and bits of information. This is where stream of consciousness comes in. This novel was supposed to be an organized piece of information that promoted his beliefs. It ended up being a piece that went on and on with all he had to say. It pretty much flowed on (stream of consciousness). There were a lot of allusions from different types of foreign literature (Greek, Latin) that helped back up a lot of his ongoing stories. All of these writing in this books contradict Wallace's technicallity and brings out the ideas of peoples. 

   Jane Austen's writings are very similar to Montaigne's. Like Montaigne, Austen used stream of consciousness to keep the story flowing in Pride and Prejudice. She and Montaigne were very likely to depict the thoughts of characters to interest the reader. This was the opposite of Montaigne. Wallace was very technical with his thoughts. 

   Wallace figured that you couldn't go into deep thought and express those feelings according to the 2001 quote. Both Austen and Montaigne contradicted his sayings with their writings by using stream of consciousness. They grabbed the reader's attention and were able to talk about one's feelings. While Wallace was technical about not being able to express your feelings to others and better yet yourself. 

1987 AP Exam

I CAN READ!

The Link to my video: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9_dx7KriI8I

So, Dr. Preston took about 4:30 and had about 3 mistakes. 

I took about 4:50 and had about 6 mistakes. 

Poetry #1

1. This poem is called The Laughing Heart, written by Charles Buckowski. 

2. It is ironic because the message of living free and being an individual is sent, but the Levi's Company is trying to get people to buy their product just to be like everyone else, and the opposite of an individual. 

3. Just like the poem Richard Cory, this poem sends out a message that is similar to the Levi's commercial. And it goes with the reputation of Buckowski. 

4. To find the answer to #1, I googled the first couple of lines to the poem and it popped up the name of the poem and the author. To find #3, I googled who Charles Buckowski was and got background information and realized he is also the author of Richard Cory, i poem i rememberd and recited Sophomore year in english class. 

Essay #1

   In the novel The Poisonwood Bible the character Adah Price is, in a sense, "cut off from home". Not only is she born with the left side of her body crippled, but she is forced to move from her homestate, Georgia, all the way to Africa. All of these hardships is what strives her to become what she does in the mere future, successful. This epic rollercoaster is a perfect example of what the book illuminates as a whole. 

   Once Adah and her mother escape the ugliness of the Congo back in Africa and return to Georgia, Adah attends college and later on medical school. With this knowledge, she goes on to become an epidemiologist. 

   Throughout the story, Adah is exiled with many different hardships. Her life was a constant rollercoaster filled with various ups and downs whether it was overcoming her hemiplegia with the help of a neurologist to losing her younger sister, Ruth May. All these situations has led her to become stronger to allow her to chase her dreams and be successful. Despite her and her mother abandoning her father in Africa and moving back to Georgia, it doesn't pull her down. She is even more determined to go to school and receive her credentials. 

   Within this novel, she is looked down upon because her sister seems like the "perfect" twin while Adah sees herself as an observer other than a participant. Adah sought out to be more of a "cynical" thinker who was completely different from her sister. All because Adah preferred to view things backwards other than forwards. As Adah matures, she finds the religion of science. With this interest, she is able to find a way to see the world in a different angle and overcome her handicap. She grows to love and admire the viruses she studies and goes on to study them in college. 

   With Adah being "cut off from home", it delivers her to a whole new lifestyle to where it started off as the worst experience ever and turned into a really great one in the end. Pretty much like the sum of the book and how this one character illuminates into the whole novel. 

Summer Homework

Essays of Michel de Montaigne: 

The Poisonwood Bible:

Pride & Prejudice: