Weee... Reflective essay

Reflective Essay

During the first quarter, I have learned how to improve my usual writings and my revision techniques. I also have been typing some blog post as a way to express my writing beauty. However, those blog post are usually just some random blog post topic I decide to type about. They are either some blog post about myself or a response post to the other students blog. They may also be some assignment that is due because of Mr. Sutherland required me to, like this assignment.

I been writing for almost a while since I enter ASTI. Overall I think I have made some improvement because of some tips and tricks that I learn from my English 1 teacher. An example in the very first blog:

“Regardless I think it was horrible of them to harm their peer like that. So I would stop those action if I ever encounter this type of situation. I will also ask myself does I want to be treated like that.”

Personally I think this is a bad way give a ending to the topic that I wrote about, which is about bullying. If i were to retype the whole thing again, then I would first work on the ending. The body paragraph is pretty fine because it shows my thought about it, but the ending does not really wrap up everything I am trying to say. After a month of learning new tricks in ending a pieces, I have now improved in many area and have many new techniques in ending a piece.

An example after I learn some trick and type I typed a thesis and put it in my blog:

“He didn’t take side with Lll or his uncle. This quote also supports my idea of his personality.”

This type of ending is usually the best because it pretty much summarize my thought about it and end my writing. Personally I think this could be improved more somehow. This is because I am more of an instinctual writer so I have can somewhat tell whether my writing need improvement. Thanks to my instinct, I have gotten out of many trouble that I did not notice but got a strange feeling where I made an error, which I did. This was really important because I am the type of a hand on person who learn from mistakes so being a instinctual writer actually has it own benefits for me. However, as a instinctual writer, I have some flaws. Those flaws include that I might not have an instinct that I got something wrong and I might not notice it. In such a case I will be in big trouble.

Another way that I have improved in my essay is speed. I have been typing and writing way faster than before. I notice this because when I write this blog it took me less time then usual. It about the same length I always type them, and they usually take me 30 minute to write the whole thing. I don’t plan my stuff so I just write. This blog post however, took me only 15 minute to write and blog about it. So this mean that I have been improving over the last quarter.

Another improvement that I gain during the past quarter is new tricks in revising my draft. I have been writing up some thesis and posting them in blog. The thesis usually have a first draft, second draft, and final draft. At first I was being stupid and all that so my thesis was extremely bad because I just random put stuff in and it had a lot of revision to do. But now I can avoid that by learning technique not to make mistakes in the first place.

One of my most common mistakes is that my introduction usually need to be worked on. This is true because on my Q’s thesis it was very hard to come up with the intro and then back it up.

“Q, or qfwfq, is different in every story in Cosmiccomisc written by Italo Calvino also known as qfwfq is a character that is different in every story written by Italo Calvino in Cosmicomics. He is sometime a tadpole, dinosaur, or even a molecule. Even though he is very different he still possesses some of the same characteristic in every story. Q’s personalitly is very unique as he doesn’t like to take sides, he is very showy, and he often misunderstands others.”

It took me a long while to write this thesis. This is a thesis about one of the special story that Italo Calvino wrote where the prompt is what is Q character traits. To be honest with you, it took me about 3 hour to write this thesis. I keep on messing up and everything like that the thesis you are looking at is about the sixth revision that I made. This is a improvement because my original thesis without any revision was:

“Q is a character written by Cosmiccomisc. His personality is very unique as he doesn’t like to take sides, he is very showy, and he often misunderstands others.”

You can see the differences between the two where one is kind of perfect or lean toward perfection where the other one is just need improvement. Overall I expected a lot of things from this type of blog post.
Since I learned so much from the past quarter, I am expecting a lot from this quarter. I expect that I will learn more techniques about revision, editing, writer’s blog, and hopefully overall improvement of my writing. I also hope to improve my reading skill because sometime I struggle with reading. This is my goal for the whole freshmen year of ASTI.

MIdterm

Oh man yesterday i just took the midterm. It actually harder than i thought it was super hard. The first midterm which is about Gun, Germ, and Steels movie. It was about somebody call Jared Diamond trying to uncover the secret of the European dominating the whole world. It also contained some part of a professor from College of Alameda, which is a college close to us and he gave us some lecture about World history. We were tested on those two things. I did study for the test in case you are going to ask. I did take notes on both of those things and  study them. But, what I didn't really like is that the note I taken is not actually helpful on the actual real test, which suck bad in most case. The test was almost cover up with questions like question about what the main sources of food was for the European or Asia,etc. This mean that everything that I study the night before was actually useless and cannot be rely upon on. In the end I have to rely on my prior knowledge to actually tr to answer my question. Prior knowledge that was added with some useless knowledge that I did not need to know.

My other Midterm that I took yesterday was regarding biology. It was actually about the field of basic Evolution.
It asked questions such as define species or evolution. It also asked multi-choice such as many things such as example and other question. It was 1 point each for those question. Then there was something like design an procedure,etc for an experiment explaining some stuff. It was horrible hell that took all of my lunch time period. It was the worse.

Of Mice and Men...

The novella “Of Mice and Men” is written by John Steinbeck, who describes lives during the great depression. People’s lives were hard at that time, for there were many dreamers but only a few achievers. “Of Mice and Men” will bring you down to a exciting adventure.Within those dreamer is Lennie and George. Those two travel together, and they are just like the other guys in the society. George dream is to be his own boss at a farm, and Lennie dream is to tend rabbit. But, at the will include a truth that is cruel, but very common in that age.The central conflict of “ Of Mice and Men” is Character vs Society. Even though there are plenty of other conflicts, they will eventually add up back to the original conflict. The conflict, however, revolves around Lennie.

Lennie is problem all start out by George spoiling him. He wouldn’t be like this if George did not spoil Lennie. At the end of the story. Lennie half-hallucinate half-reminiscence:

“When he got a piece a pie you always got half or more’n half. An’ if they was any ketchup why he’d give it all to you.”(101)

George has been very lenient with Lennie, lenient enough to give Lennie some of his share of food.

Also, during Lennie first meeting with Curley he was all protected by George. When he did not talk back to Curley, Curley try to get Lennie talk, but he was all protected by George:

“George said, ‘S’pose he don’t want to talk?’ Curley lashed his body around. ‘By christ’  he’s gotta talk when he’s spoke to. What the hell are you gettin’ into it for?’”(25)

If Lennie could not talk to Curley back there, then Lennie won’t properly die at the end of the book because Lennie could become friend with Curley.

What this mean is that Lennie slowly lives by depending on George without slowly being independent. If Lennie can’t be independent, then Lennie would never survive by himself in the Society because he lack common sense that did not develop because he was all spoiled and protected. In the end everything is affected by Society.

Also, despite being protected by George, Lennie and George also have a dream that eventually led to their downfall of their friendships. When George and Lennie were talking about their future:

“George went on. ‘With us it ain’t like that. We got a future. We got somebody to talk to that gives a damn about us. We don’t have to sit in no bar room blowin’in our jack jus’ because we got no place else to go. If them other guys get in jail they can rot for all anybody give a damn. But not us.’”(14)

Despite their dreamking big George couldn’t fulfill their promise to each other because George already knew in the back of his head that dream will never come true. Then after Lennie broke Curley’s wife neck and George and Candy are discussing about their future:

“ George said softly, ‘- I think I knowed from the very first. I think I knowed we’d never do her. He usta like to hear about it so much I got to thinking maybe we would.’”(94)

This quote show that from the very beginning George never expect that their dream would come true, but after Lennie asking to hear it so many times cause him to think that it might happen. George and Lennie are just like other guy on the branches, but they had believed in a delusion that give them a false hope. So in other word George and Lennie are just like other thugs in the society.This mean that their fate was affected by the society from the start.

Despite being protected and having false hope to believe in. Lennie have another characteristics that eventually led to his downfall. Lennie is physically strong, yet mentally weak. During the time whenever he was working at the barn. Slim and George was discussing about Lennie. Slim was really surprise by Lennie physical strength:

“‘It wasn’t nothing,’ Slim repeated. ‘Say, you sure was right about him. maybe he ain’t bright, but I never seen such a worker. He damn near kill his partner buckin’ barley. There ain’t nobody can keep up with him. God awmighty I never seen such a strong guy.’”(39)

This quote shows that Lennie has a amazing gift that grant him a physical ability that is stronger than normal. However, like all power, if you can’t control it then that power would cause harm to others around you. This is exactly what happening to Lennie. He couldn’t control his strength and has cause a few incident such as destroying Curley hand or breaking Curley wife neck. That strength of Lennie was one of the reason he died at the end.

Another characteristic weakness of Lennie is that Lennie has a unusual weak mental ability. Lennie intelligence was was below average of a normal human, and thus led to many things happen to him because of his inability to cope and think. When Lennie hallucinate and has a conversation with his grandmother:

“Lennie moaned with grief. ‘I know, Aunt Clara, ma’am. I’ll go right off in the hills an’ I’ll fin’ a cave an’ I’ll live there so I won’t be no more trouble to George.’”(101)

This quote shows that Lennie is trying to run away from his problem. This mean that mentally he can’t take the stress. This represent Lennie inability to survive alone in the society.

    So, the many types of conflict we see in “Of Mice and Men” are important because they add up back to the main conflict which is a character vs society. This conflict is significent because in our society there are many people like George and Lennie, people start out with dream and friendships. But, at the end dreamers will remain dreamers and left behind by the cold-cruel common sense/survival of the fittest in the society.

MIce & Men by John Steinbeck

After reading chapter two in this book. I predict that the central conflict in Mice and Men are properly some type of Character vs character or character vs self.

I think of that because I think that Curley wife is going to flirt Lennie and that is going to cause some problem because Lennie have no immunity to woman that is more into pleasure with others man than just being faithful to one man. Some quote or text from the book lead me to believe this. That quote explain that Lennie is very vulnerable to stuff he likes. Apparently he liked Curley wife because she fascinate him.

Some central theme about character vs self is properly something like Lennie is a guy who can't resist temptation of Curley's wife. Sadly this mean that Lennie is going to have a hard time in this book. I think here is what going to happen:
Despite all the warning from George about Curley Wife, Lennie still couldn't resist woman temptation and fall into her trap. Lennie will properly like try to hold her dress or hug her or something then she will properly like scream. Then Curley and his dad will come and fire Lennie and George. This is what I think is going to happen. 

Another possible central theme about character vs character is properly something like Lennie is going to be picked on by Curley and his wife. I think here is what going to happen if this main idea theme is true:
Lennie is a big guy and Curley is a small guy. Curley hated big guy because Curley is a small guy (unreasonable). So Curley is properly going to be picking on Lennie and make Lennie life harder. George is going to do almost anyting to prevent that, but despite what everything he warn Lennie. Lennie decided to give Curley a punch in the face. This is what I think is more likely to happen. I think this is more likely to happen because well Lennie is annoyed by Curley and he is going to snap anytime soon (I think). If Lennie snap then Curley will get it because Lennie is extremely strong. So if you add everything together it make sense.

Movie Night

This is a response to what I think about Movie Night after reading Tony's blog post:

The movie night itself was very disorganized. The total duration of it was about four hours. After fifteen minutes of a unique lecture Jasmine, the movie started. After about 10 minutes into "without a paddle" out whole group left and went to hang out next to the weight room.

I am very glad that I decided not to go to movie night. The fee was four dollar and five dollar at door for student. I at first decided to go to the movie night because it sound cool and fun. After looking at the way the student was organizing movie night 1 days before the actual date start. I become more and more disenchanted with the events thinking it going to be a waste of time as well as a waste of money. Fighting against the inner-want to have fun-self and my inner-not wasting any money-self, I decide that I shouldn't waste the money and so I didn't go to movie night.

From what Tony say it seem like the movie was very very disorganize. Not a lot of people was interested in the movie or they just simply gotten bored and they wish to have some fun with others instead of just watching a super boring movie.( DO NOT GET THE WRONG IDEA) I have made a good ideas and I think (hope) that one day I too would become a smarter choice making person. I am very bad at making choices. I am unique/weird person so the choices I made is always look upon by others. So I doesn't feel good at making the choice. Even during the hours of movie night, I was still having a conflict with myself deciding some type of 'this is my last chances god! hurry and go there. Other self say: There is no way you are wasting five dollar for that messy unorganized event' and that type of conflict continued to happen until the event ended. In the end both side did not win but instead time win. Time win because when the conflict win the event is already over so there is really no way for me to go back in time.