Past

I have had a good year and it is amazing how fast it seems to have gone. It seems that it was last year when I had my phycology and ocean/meteorology classes when it was just last semester. I have had my share of struggles in both Econ and ocean/meteorology while the rest of my classes went fairly smoothly. The times I had the most fun of the year were when I was at OASC Man Nights and at Show Choir competitions, which at one of these competitions we became grand champions the first time in four years.

Future

During this summer I will be getting a job I have not decided where but I will get one. The next school year I will be attending UWEC. For the first year I will be doing my generals and attending choir. After that I plan to do something in engineering I have not decided what type I will do yet.

Presesnt

Project/Graduation. I found that this project was nice in that there was a clear definition on the project parrameters. The only flaw I can think of is that for the teacher to grade the assignment you have to show her in class which takes time from the current assignment that you are working on. As for graduation I find it donting to think that in just three months I will esenshally be on my own, making my own disitions not having anyone to help motivate me to do homework or to get up in the morning. It is because of this that even though I only have two days left that graduation still seems so far away.

Fiction / Dystopia

In my class we watched a film called "The Road". This film takes place in a post-apocalyptic world some years after a major unexplained cataclysm has destroyed civilization and most life on Earth. The land is filled with ash and devoid of living animals and vegetation. The connection with food is since there is a sever lack of things to eat many people have resorted to cannibalism in order to stay alive. It is a test to how far someone is willing to go to severe. We also watch an episode from the history channel about the Salem witch trials. In this episode they describe a theory that the muscle spasms and illusions that the women of that time saw were due to tainted food. One thought is that ergot, a fungus that thrives in moist warm conditions, was the cause of the outbreak. Ergot causes muscle spasms, delusions, seizures, and contortions all the symptoms of the original victims (for of course there are some who lie about it because they are jealous). Once the rain that had plugged them with this fungus stopped and the crops were dried the accusations took a major drop and so the trials stopped.

Food

In the video Food Revolution Jamie Oliver goes to L.A. in the hopes he can get a look at what their schools are feeding their kids. By seeing what the schools put into their lunches he hopes to inspire a better menu. He faces many obstacles while trying to obtain entrance into the public schools or even access to their central office kitchens. In order to get around this he opens his kitchen to parents to show the lack of nutritional value in the public school food, he has sugar poured into a bus to illustrate the amount of sugar ingested by students through chocolate milk, and he hands out cold lunches to students who would otherwise select cafeteria food. Through small suggestions and changes, Oliver hopes to make a big impact in the way public schools feed children. Since I myself am a student, I find it disturbing how unhealthy some of the stuff is. We learn what eat by example and if we are feed unhealthy foods then we learn to eat unhealthy foods.

Non- fiction

For this post I am relating the subject of food to hearing using the facts found in the book Natural History of the Senses by: Diane Ackerman. The whole of the book describes how much our different senses affect our lives and perceptions of the out side world. In the chapter I read there was a lot of interesting things in it about how being able to hear the sounds around us affects us in a very profound way. An example is that the first sound we ever hear is that of our mother's heart beat and because of this when we hear a steady strong yet gentle beat it calms us down. This relates to food because we have associated a lot of our foods by the way they sound an example is when I hear meat sizzling on a frying pan I immediately think of bacon and my mouth starts to water even without smelling it or tasting it. From just that sound I can taste the grease goodness of the bacon. There are several other foods we most strongly associate with their sound, like Rice Krispies I mean who hasn't head the “Snap, Crackle, Pop!” of Rice Krispies. Then there is the satisfying crack of a Kit-Kat Bar. There are so many sounds that are in our food that make them more appealing. Do you think that a cracker would be the same if if wasn't crunchy Because I don't think it would be. The is something esthetic to the sound of food.

Self Reflection

I picked the topic of books because I am an avid read and I hate it when I see people with very little appreciation in reading for pleasure, of the places that books can take you that nothing else can. T.V. and video games are fine, but they don’t have that same personal feel that takes reading far and beyond that of other stimuli. When I read I can almost access the same intensity of the world that is being created as you might have in a very good dream. Have you ever had a time where you didn’t want to wake up, not because you were tiered, but because you we having a particularly good dream. That is how I feel when I am in a good part of a book. I love it when I get so into a book that I feel like I know characters. I especially like the characters with a quick wit that are always cracking jokes in deadly situations and what makes it even better is if it is placed in our world and the quips and witty lines are about things I know, like when they tell the big bad guy in the dark cloak that he looks like Empire Palatine from Star Wars, it gives me a sense of familiarity that just makes me happy. So what I hope to learn is how I can convey these emotions and experiences to others so that they can get just as much enjoyment out of reading as I do.

Quarter two Wrap-up: Critical Aproaches

In my class we wachted The Help based off the book writen by Kathryn Stockett. The reason for watching this film is that it provided an opportunity for us to use a the variety of approaches we've learned to interpet it. This film focused on the separtaion between the "haves and have-nots", the main focuse being the inability of those without power to voice their complaints without violent reprecussions. Due to this unwillingness to speak out the ones without power tended to be ruled by those who do have power. This movie is uses the feminist appraoch by having you look through the eyes of a young and indipendent women named Skeeter. Skeeter does not obey the gender norm and is mocked by the other women in her community who were once her friends and even her mother would ridicule her for her professional aspirations and for being single. Then they show you the life style of the black maids who have to suffer the indignitys pressed apon them by their white bosses at the thret of not having enough money to feed their children and even in going to jail. Then it shows as these two worlds colide when Skeeter disides to write about their experinces, how deploribal there lives are. When she asks some of the maids, she knows, if they would tell her their stories. Even though they were afraid the two main maids who she asked tolled Skeeter their stories. When Skeeter called her editor, her editor said she needed more maids and so they were pressed to try and get the other maids to tell their stories. finaly near the end the maids finally pulled together and tell their stories. To make sure some people wouldn't sue them they put a story into the book that would make shur that they never admitted it was true.

Perdictably Irrational

I read Perdictably Irrational by Dan Ariely and I learned how the people in the United States have an almost inconceivably out of control spend now save later attitude. One of the theories on why we do this is that we are taught throughout childhood and though our school careers to always do as the people with authoritative voice. So once we are out on our own we have this ingrained reaction to authoritative voices such as those in commercials telling us to buy, right now, all this junk we don’t need .

I also read about procrastination on how in an experiment kids in three different classes were all given the same three assignments the difference is they had different due dates. One class was given the choice to set their own due dates as long as it was in by the last day of the semester but they could only set it once and if they were late then they would be docked points. Another class was given the same option but that there would be no penalties as long as they were in by the last day. The last class were given three set dates to turn in their papers. Now you may think that the kids in the second class would get the best scores on their papers but you’d be wrong the kids in the third class got the best average scores. The reason for this is thought to be that since we have always had the due dates given to us and since they had all that time the kids in the other two classes procrastinated till they were rushing to finish and so did not do as good of a job on their papers.

I have a problem with procrastinating too much. If I have a big project to do I will start out doing it right away but then I will realize that I have other homework to do that is do the next day and I will gradually start working less and less on the project till the due date is upon me and I only have ¾ of it done. There is plenty of procrastination in the books I’ve read even the “heroes” have problems with it. In the book The Way of Shadows by Brent Weeks the main character Azoth is an orphan boy from the Warrens (slums, a part of the city for the extremely poor) who is given a chance to become the apprentice to the best wetboy in the city Durzo Blint, but Durzo has one condition Azoth must kill Rat a boy who is in charge of Azoth's guild (they are called guild rats bands of poor kids that stay together for safety). Azoth accepts Durzo's offer he starts to gather support from other boys in the guild so he would have enough power to over throw Rat. But Azoth procrastinated and because of that procrastination his closest friend Doll Girl had her face cut up. While Azoth wept over Doll Girl's body Durzo came and said if he went right then and killed Rat he would save her. If Azoth had just killed Rat right away then Doll Girl would never have gotten hurt.

Blink

I read Blink by Malcom Gladwell Seven Seconds in the Bronx: The Delicate Art of Mind Reading
Just like the men of the National Archeological Museum of Athens, the New York police officers from the Street Crime Unit made an incorrect assumption that Diallo was criminal just because he was standing in a crime hot spot. Then there was the assumption that Diallo made. Diallo made a major misstep in thinking that the cops were muggers not that the cops gave any indication otherwise not so much as to say they were police or a flashing of a badge. I have learned that people see what they expect to see the cops expected to see criminals on the streets so they see a criminal pulling out a gun and Diallo expected to see muggers so he saw muggers. I myself have experienced this then people look at me they see someone that is younger than I am they think me to be in 8th grade when I am in 12th. They also think I am weak and so easily to push around, but I have found that there are different kinds of strengths other than the typical. This lesson I learned from a many of books concerning the people of stealth such as the Rangers Apprentice and the Night Angle Trilogy.

Mindset

I read Mindset by Carol DweckThis chapter is about how you can do better in life just by changing your mindset. I read how changing your mind set is more effective in increasing your grades than a group that teaches new study skills. The rest of the chapter is about how this program has affected their lives.

I probably would benefit from this. I have a bit of a fixed mindset on Spanish. As I see it I’m not good at Spanish and, while I will get better at it until the time when I am not studying it and not using it as much then I will lose practically all of it. So why do I need to learn it if I’m not going to use it and yes I’ll make sure I don’t have to. If I changed my mindset though it may make it easier to get through the time for when I do need it.

Will Treaty is a forward thinker as shown in how he solves the many challenges and conflicts that come up in his many adventures. In the book series “Ranger’s Apprentice” Will, a ward at castle Redmount becomes a Ranger for the king. The reason this applies to Will being a forward thinker is that Rangers are trained to be forward thinkers. Rangers are trained to move silently and blend into the background so well that they virtually disappear. They also are experts with the long bow and with a saxes knife and throwing knife as well as being great tacticians known to come up with unique tactics and adopting the specialties of other nations for their own purposes.

This I belive commparison

The Joy And Enthusiasm Of Reading by Rick Moody
I connect to "The Joy and Enthusiasm of Reading" essay because I am an advid reader as well. I also find it enjoyabull to go walking through the stacks of books finding an interesting dust jacket or title look at it and more often than not I end up reading it. I also enjoy reading books others find to be hard to read and/or understand and make my own dission on how hard it realy is.I've had my apiffinies in getting into reading if not quit as profound as his. I also thind that a book is not complete untill it meets a reader that loves it.

Poettry

I realy like Billy Collins' The Symbol from one of his poettry books horoscopes for the dead. It makes you look at life with a different perespective. I like the way he discribes the mirriors as being able to perceave the out side world and taking in opinions and giving answers. What realy strikes me though is that what they long for is the end of the day when they can look down the long corridors of each other. One looking at the past and the other to the future.

Secret Powers of Time

What I've taken from this video is that every one starts out in the subcatagory of the present oreanted hedoistic. Which is when you live in the moment and you avoid pain and live for plesure. Which is what babys do. Then they go to school so that they can be turned into more future oriented people.