Reflection on highschool

I was both nervous and excited when I was in 8th grade about to go into high school. It is strange thinking back on that time because it does not feel like that long ago. I remember going to an informational meeting in our library and some kids from Millbrook came in and talked to us about their experience in high school. I had to decide the different classes that I was going to take, I was worried about the classwork because I had heard that it was a lot harder than middle school, and I was worried about how large the school was. But I remember still being excited about leaving middle school and going to high school.  

When They talked about how fast the experience and now I see exactly what they mean. I can still remember most of my first days here and my initial impression of the school. I remember going into your class (Mrs, Genesky) and introducing ourselves and saying something that made us unique. I remember having to go to lunch on the first day and finding a table to sit at. I have a bunch of other memories from freshman year that do not feel like they occurred very long ago, yet four years is a long time, and thinking back I can see how much I have changed. 

 During a lot of my time here I wanted to be  out of highschool but seeing as how now that it is actually almost over I feel like I will miss a lot of things about it. Mainly the other people that I go to school with. I have gone to school with many of the same people since elementary school and some since preschool. It is going to feel weird going our separate ways as I have always been used to having them around. 

Now that I am almost done with high school I feel like I am in a similar situation to when I was in 8th grade, except this time I am going to college. I am going to have to deal with many of the same things I had to deal with going to a new place and meeting new people,except this time It is on a much larger scale. I am also thinking about how in four more years I will be in the same position I am in now yet I will be graduating school and will have to work and take care of myself, which is an even crazier thought than going to college, but I will probably be prepared for it when the time comes as I feel pretty prepared for college now. 

All in all I enjoyed my time in high school and have changed a lot while I am here. I look forward to going to college and doing the same there. It is a strange feeling looking back on a chapter of your life that is almost over and thinking about how fast it went by.

I can make out the words brochure on the book, and the library of congress stamp is on all of the pages. His hand writing seems kind of sloppy and his lines are slanted. You can see Lincoln on one of the pages, he was very fond of Lincoln. Since he was very fond of Lincoln and his ideals you can tell he was an advocate for equality among all people. He also strongly supported the union side in the civil war, as he wanted to end slavery. He also compares the union to a ship. One of the other annotations said that other great poets and philosophers used that metaphor often. So it is likely that he had read many other philosophers works. I also think it is cool how strongly he felt about american success. It said that he thought the fate of the world relied on the success or failure of the american democracy. The next page was a portrait of himself. It said he did not draw or doodle so it was most likely drawn by someone else. It was also funny how they put that it was fitting for someone whose main subject was himself. The last picture in the notebook is also very interesting, and i do not really know what to make of it.

He had complex views on the civil war and referenced them in a metaphor to religion, kind of like what he did with the metaphor of america and a ship. It is also interesting that this was a turbulent time in his life as well as the country. When he released Leaves of Grass the book was disliked across the nation and since it was the start of the civil war many printing companies were going out of business and were unable to publish his books. Overall I think it is interesting to see his thoughts come from things that he actually wrote a long time ago.

I would describe the american dream as using the opportunities america provides to create any life you choose to live. America provides so many different options and avenues for people to create the life they want. It may be more difficult for some, but I think there is a road for everyone to create a meaningful life for themselves here. Their are tons of stories of millionaires and billionaires coming from nothing and working hard doing what they love to become rich. I think that is what a lot of peoples american dreams are, becoming very rich. That is often what people chase when they are chasing the american dream. But the american dream doesn't necessarily have to be about becoming rich it is just about allowing people to create the life they want. 

To me the definition of wealth differs depending on what you are talking about. Wealth is typically used to describe money or how much someone is worth, but it can be used to describe other things as well. In general I just think wealth or to be wealthy means to have a lot of something.

I think that Americans attitudes toward peoples of extreme wealth, in current circumstances, is a view of anger and distrust. A lot of people who are unhappy with the way things are currently going blame the wealthy for it. There's also a feeling that they are manipulating government and laws in their favor. In addition to this, with the growing wealth gap people think the rich are hoarding money and not putting it back into the economy. Since the wealthy have so much money currently many people want them to pay much higher taxes for things like public colleges and universal healthcare. At the same time most Americans want to become extremely wealthy and want the lifestyles that the rich have.  I think Americans attitudes toward poverty is that it is bad and everyone wants to avoid it. The attitude toward how to help people in poverty are, I would say in general, government programs such as welfare and charity efforts. 

I think that acquiring wealth to the extent that you are free of financial worry is most important, as that is probably one of peoples biggest stresses which I would prefer to avoid. Personally I would not sacrifice things like relationships or other non material things to gain a huge amount of wealth. In respects to how I view extremely wealthy people, I look up to them and try to emulate some of what they have done in my life. There is no possible way to become a billionaire if you are not one of the best at something, and I think that there is a tremendous amount of wisdom that can come from the ultra wealthy. As for my view on poverty I think that there are many ways to end up in poverty, just as there are many ways of getting very wealthy. I think that a lot of time poverty is a result of circumstances and results in a cycle. Since I have never been in poverty I do not know what it would be like, but I can imagine it would be very difficult to get out of if you were constantly surrounded by it. Oftentimes it is a result of just being born into poverty I feel as though people who were blessed to not be born into poverty, all of which is by chance, should try to help and give back to those who were.    

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IOC Practice:

Criterion A - For criterion A I would get a 5 because i feel as though my comments showed that I understood what was going on in the text but looking back i=on it I forgot to include information about the doctor who also had a part in the text and i did a comparison between Malcolm and Macbeth, who was not in the passage, and i am not sure if we are allowed to do that. I thought my references were decent but upon reflection I feel as though I used to few and did not vary them enough I also think I could have gone into more detail on explaining why they were important. 

Criterion B - For criterion B I would give myself a 4. After listening back to what I said I think I give a good range of different literary elements that are used to show the theme I was targeting but i forgot to give give examples of what their impact is on the reader. I think I did a pretty good job of using them to construct meaning within my thesis. 

Criterion C - For Criterion C I would give myself a 4. I feel like I did a good job organizing my thoughts. I went from one point to the next and attempted to connect it back to the original theme that I stated at the beginning. I had an intro about the text, my thesis, 3 points I analyzed using literary elements, and then a conclusion. 

Criterion D - For criterion D I would give myself a 3. I think that the terms I used were appropriate but i am sure there are some elements or literary terms that I could have used and did not. Overall though I think that the comments and structure that I used for the commentary was appropriate for what I was trying to say.

The two book covers that I am choosing to compare is the top left and the bottom right book covers. All of the images show some sort of isolation in them seeing as there is either one person or lone object in all of them and the scenes are kind of depressing. There is also kind of a yellowish tone in three of the covers, except for the bottom right, which might be mean something. I feel like all of them have some meaning and obviously some connection to different parts of the book. In the case of the bottom right one it is hinting at the fact that they have to eventually give their organs away. The other ones are of a girl, probably Kathy. Then the one with the boat does not make that much sense seeing as there have been no boats yet in the book. Another similarity is that they all have a lot of open space which could contribute to the first thing when talking about isolationism. For the closer comparison the one on the bottom right makes me think of the cover for some horror movie, because it is a dark cover and the outline of the human organs is something that is creepy. The one on the top right reminds me of some 70's hippie movie. The coloring makes it look kind of old and her surrounded by nature adds to that. If i had never read the book before the top left one would make me think of some girl who ran away or something bad happened to her because she looks sad. In the other cover i would think its about some illegal organ donors because the image looks like it would be something bad as well but the main focus of the title is on the organs. Since i have read it the one on the top is probably Kathy at Hailsham and the one on the bottom is about the fact that they have to donate their organs. If feel like the viewpoint is not of kathy or someone in the book, because the pictures are either of her or about something she is having to go through that is traumatic. I think the picture are from kind of an outside view to stick with the theme of isolation.

Ted Talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/melissa_marshall_talk_nerdy_to_me#t-224404


The argument of this talk was that people are often scared or uninterested in what scientists have to say, not because of the content but because of how it is presented. She calls for scientists to present their findings in an accessible way to everyday people. Throughout her presentations she gives advice to scientists and engineers on how to do that. She says they should first relate their research to our everyday lives and use more visuals and less words so whoever they are presenting to can understand the topic. She starts out the presentation with ethos. She makes herself credible by saying that she had experience with engineering students and when she finally understood what they were talking about it was like "Alice in Wonderland". By doing this she kind of makes herself seem empathetic to the audience in the sense that she has been through what they have been through, so they will listen to her solution.  In addition to this she tries to use humor to get her point across at the end by summarizing what she had to say into an equation. She does not really play on any of the audiences emotions, unless humor is considered an emotion.

The purpose of this presentation was to try to get scientists and engineers to be able to communicate their ideas to everyday people. She says that their ideas would be much better received if they would put it into everyday language and make them engaging.