Curtain Call on the Life of a Blog

Thank you, blog, for teaching me that as nerdy as a blog may seem, it is immensely capable of spreading knowledge, perspective, wisdom, and wit to anybody with internet access.  And a not-too-constrictive political body reading over their shoulder.

Dr. David Preston, the person really responsible for the creation of this blog, gave me a little peek into what a future in a technology-driven world will be like for a student, something I hope to always be, and for the career-making individual.

On a less serious note, here is the link to my final project in AP English Literature.

I Lied!

I'm not actually going to do a video with my home group (aka The Overachievers) for the senior project.  Instead, Ming and I are going to be working on itineraries for noobz.  Ming will be planning a trip to Taiwan that she will eventually take herself while making the plan available to other travelers.  I'll be doing the same except I'm planning for Paris because that's where I will be starting school in September. *eeeeeppp!*

Here's the General Outline:
1.Airplane ticket:

•  requirements to travel
•  tips to make and save extra money before and during the trip
•  how to be frugal with the ticket purchase itself.

2. Shelter

• Hotel v. Hostel v. couchsurfing

3. Transportation

• buses v. taxis v. trains v.subways

4. Food

• Fine dining v. Eating like a local
• Street food

5. Safety

• pickpockets
• different laws
• health

6. Culture/Etiquette

• tipping and the like

7. Communication

• Language
• Wifi/internet access

What's Next?

From now to the end of the year I need to have a new goal.  At the moment, it's finishing up my senior project with my group and continuing to find resources for learning Mandarin on my own as much as possible.

Streets is ruff

This essay made me think a little more than yesterday's but I'm pretty happy with it. 

     

     A character's relationship with environment can be an integral part of the plot due to its ability to drive the plot or shape characterization.  In Ann Petry's The Street, the relationship between Lutie Johnson and the city she's in is defined heavily by imagery, figurative language, and personification.

     The role of figurative language in the passage is to create an interaction between the people of the city and the city itself.  The description of a " barrage of paper" in the passage is significant example of this purpose because that barrage was made of paper that the city's denizens had left.  In essence, it was like a part of a cycle where the citizens litter and the city's winds hit them back.  The interaction between the wind, Lutie, and the sign is a also a force to move Lutie to find shelter or at least make the search more urgent.

     Perhaps the most significant of the device Petry used was personification.  Giving the wind fingers and having them cause trouble by pushing bones down the street creates a personality in Lutie's environment which is integral to the complexity of a relationship within a piece of literature.  Making the sing's rust appear bloody in the reader's mind is additionally humanizing to the environment, giving the city a history where it has interacted with others and, by comparison, making Lutie's interactions seem more significant.

    Imagery in the form of Lutie's presence in this gale defines her character indirectly.  However uncomfortable it must feel to have the eyelashes pulled away from the eyeballs by a grimy wind, Lutie persists in her efforts to read the sign rather than ducking inside.  The description of her warm serenity being violated by the wind's cold finger additionally prepares, in the mind of the reader,l an established antagonist in the city as if a newcomer appeared to challenge a tyrant.

     By creating a visual out of imagery, personification, and figurative language, Petry is able to define not only a character but also her relationship with the setting.  These factors introduces a tone of the piece and even hint towards conflict with Lutie's search for shelter.  In this way, the relationship between character and setting moves from accessory to a necessary factor in the plot.

Thou Blind Man's Mark

Sorry there's no witty title to accompany this post.  I know you all look forward to reading them on cold mornings with your half-caf and buttered toast.  Anyway, here's the essay.

     In Thou Blind Man's Mark by Sir Philip Sidney, the poem's theme, desire, is ensconced by various poetic devices and techniques that allow the speaker's attitude to be made more complex.  Where at the commencement of the poem, desire is characterized as a maleficent force, the speaker eventually describes it a s a weakness of character rather than an external antagonist.
     At the outset, Sidney's heavy use of metaphors allows constant direct characterization in which desire is painted as a Pandora's Box.  The fact that they all share similar structure emphasizes the author's motion to accumulate many negative qualities in desire.
    In addition, the poem's simple rhyme scheme allows for facilitated diffusion from one attitude to the next, each line being connected to another line by rhyme.  This, in turn, conveys to the reader the idea that they are evolution of opinion.  While the poem moves along with rhyme, the change in opinion of desire follows.
     That which creates the most complexity in the speaker's attitude of desire is the shift.  While the flow of rhyme goes uninterrupted, the meaning of the lines changes at line five with the introduction of first-person pronouns.  This emphasis on the effects of desire which emanate from private decision illustrate the contrasting perspective of the poem's second half.  This generates a new portion of the speaker's attitude in regards to desire, improving complexity of the opinion toward desire.
     By utilizing such poetic devices as rhyme scheme and shift, Sir Philip Sidney is able to illustrate a multi-tiered opinion of desire.  His speaker's change to personal analysis accounts for the largest portion of the complexity, also supported by use of consistent metaphor, structure, and rhyming scheme.

Wow. What a baby essay.  Would somebody mind sharing their conclusion paragraph technique because mostly I just summarized :/

#grownupdecisions

If you're looking for the essays I was supposed to do this weekend, you won't find them because they don't exist.  I thought they were a great idea and if circumstances had been different, I would have done them.  This, however, was not the case because personal events, college decisions, and a calculus test had other plans for me.  I promise I will be ready for the AP test but my grade in Calculus needs more attention right now.

Groupthink

I missed class the day we went over the poetry charts so I was mostly an observer during class today.  Once I understood enough of what was going on, however, I was able to jump in and help Sam and Ashley with their understanding of "Marriage a la Mode."