SIGNING OFF

 Open Source Learning: is it a network? a tyranny? mutiny?  Is it just a bunch of crazy kids and their teacher who don't like tests?  Are they the vigilantes of the educational world?  Are they the past, present, and the future?  Yes, and as my last post in regards to this course, it's time to reflect a little and dream a lot.

From beginning to end, Open Source Learning never ceased to interest me, yet my interests never exactly got the best of me until the year came to a close.  I don't know what it was, but at first, I simply could not accept the way things were running in the class.  I've never ran without direction before.  I've never been the adventurer of an Odyssey, I've never been the king of my own castle, I've never been the Siddhartha in my own journey to find myself.  All my life, I had others to influence me and make decisions for me, but now I realize that I have no right to an opinion.  I simply have a beginning, a middle, and an end, such is the catch-22 of all life, but that doesn't stop people like me from making a difference, changing an environment, leaving a mark.  Open Source Learning helped all of us do that, not just me.  Being one of the first guinea pigs to this next-generation style of education, I am the hero of this story, but I did not work alone.  All great things have never been accomplished completely in solitude, and if there's one thing I learned in science camp, it's about the connections we make with others.  If I'm going to be the hero, my colleagues assemble the rest of this "Justice League" we call students, with reality playing the villain; something we overcame as we tossed away fear and doubt and redeveloped that hint of youth that we were missing for a while now.  Open Source Learning creates dreamers and doers from the same mold.

In the end, it was the beginning of something great.  We, as students, found something that couldn't have been attained through anything "normal," and that something was passion.  We, as seniors, don't know what lies ahead.  We don't know for certain if Open Source Learning will continue with us on our journeys, but it was a heck of an adventure.  Whether we find ourselves "mobbing" to new heights or reading a new book or baking a new cake or even building a new nation, we few, we happy few, we band of brothers, will do things with the compassion and the burning intensity that founded the "adventures of us" and the newer, braver world.  According to the mobbers of the dunes, "people just help you when you're stuck, and that's how life should be right?"  According to the bakers, "it's not about the food you bake, but about the love that goes into it."  According to the spirit squads, "change is possible."  According to "Classy U", "never go in alone."  And according to Open Source Learning, "two plus two makes five."  

It worked.  We found a passion.  We reached for the sky and jumped out with a parachute.  We built nations and conquered others.  We're just kids.  If Open Source Learning can do this for one group of kids in one year, who knows what could happen next?  And with that inference left hanging in the balance, I sign off.

POETRY ESSAY

2006B Poem: “To Paint a Water Lily” (Ted Hughes)
Prompt: Read the following poem carefully. Then write an essay discussing how the poet uses
literary techniques to reveal the speaker’s attitudes toward nature and the artist’s task.


Ted Hughes possesses a Darwinian, artistic admiration for nature in his poem, "To Paint a Water Lily."  Using an imperative, paradoxical approach, Hughes personifies the dragonfly and the water lily while teaching his audience how to paint the nature of the pond.  To romanticize nature's beauty even more, he shifts the tone of the poem into a metaphorically brutal analogy of a battlefield that helps him to convey nature's beauty in two lights.

Personification was the earliest utilization of Hughes's literary sine qua nons.  To bring about the beauty of the dragonfly, he personified the bug to be a lady.  "Lady" being an actual connotation for the word "dragonfly," Hughes allowed himself to easily point out his true admiration for nature, because if a man in reality were to compare a beautiful woman to anything, the essence of beauty radiates throughout the analogy.  Hughes then goes on to describe the "two minds of this lady" - the Darwinian mindset where the fly hunts swiftly to survive, and the calm mindset where it settles in the air for a passersby to capture a glimpse of its still beauty.  The latter is what Hughes tries to capture and teach to his audience.  To paint the dragonfly, one must not only respect its rainbow, metallic arts in its stillness, but one must also capture its warrior-like attributes and killer instincts that take effect in the battlefield above the pond, as indicated by the "death cries" and "battle shouts."

After establishing the background of the painting that Hughes paints with his words, he moves on to the foreground where the pond is every so still.  The second lady of the piece, being the water lily, takes on a much more serene and harmonic personality.  After moving from an imperative, harsh tone, Hughes uses an imperative, sensitive tone toward the water lily.  No matter how beautiful the dragonfly's brutality may be, its horrors could not touch the water lily's elegance according to Hughes.  

The shifting diversity of tone, the personification of the two ladies, and the metaphor of the battlefield all depict Hughes's aspect of the pond.  Like many things in life, there are two points of view to everything - one of harsh realism and the other of beauty.  Hughes gives instruction on how to paint the two aspects in his poem, but never did he mention what types of paint brushes or colors to use.  Like how Hughes leaves it up to the painter to decide which path to take when painting the water lily, it is up to us to also decide which point of view on life we choose to see - beauty or beast.

LITERARY ANALYSIS: MACBETH

All of us have (hopefully) read Macbeth to some extent, but with Dr. Preston's permission, I was able to hack the literary analysis outline and turn it into something different, because while I was reading Macbeth, I found it to be quite humorous and enjoyed the plot's irony thoroughly.  So on a act-by-act basis, I'm going to hopefully share with you a different point of view on the story of the ambitious traitor of Scotland.

ACT I:

ACT I begins with the "weird sisters."  If you don't already find the fact that they're called "weird" somewhat humorous, you have to take another look at it.  When these sisters encounter Macbeth and Banquo later on, their reactions to these sisters are priceless.  "Speak, if you can" is how Macbeth addressed them.  They basically called these witches animals or beasts, because these witches had beards and looked disgusting.  Later still, once Macbeth tells Lady Macbeth about King Duncan's eminent arrival to their land, Lady Macbeth enters a soliloquy in which she basically asks the gods to "unsex" her so that she could murder the king herself.  Although back in those times, women weren't supposed to commit acts of treachery, she seriously wished to be a transvestite so that she could kill somebody.  Today, the reversal is, "if you weren't a girl, I'd slap you," or something of that nature.  Not to mention, Lady Macbeth and Macbeth's relationship throughout the play is comical, because Macbeth, who is a big strong captain of the Scottish army and a ruthless killer at that, succumbs to the will of a senile woman who wears the pants in the relationship.  Shakespeare literally wrote a story about a tough guy who's secretly insecure and whipped.  There's some irony in that.

ACT II:

When Macbeth kills the king, he freaks out.  He's killed so many people before, but he freaks out this time and totally forgets to leave the evidence in the room.  With blood on his own hands, he starts blubbering and makes his wife go back in there and finish the job.  Shortly after, someone's knocking at the door and the Porter answers half-drunk and half-asleep because it's still the middle of the night.  Macduff enters and wishes to see the king while he is sleeping - in the middle of the night.  Did anybody else find that weird?  Macduff is ultimately a creeper and discovers the murder and starts yelling, which gets Macbeth all worked up, which makes him kill the watchmen.  I thought it was weird.  From the words of Ron Burgundy, "that escalated quickly."

ACT III:

The story becomes slightly more serious from this point on.  Macbeth becomes king and decides to have Banquo killed due to his insecurities about the witches' prophecy.  That part is easy to understand, but later at the feast, the ghost of Banquo haunts Macbeth, and his own wife again has to cover for him.  I think it's funny that the king of Scotland who's killed a hundred men in battle still needs a female figure to hold his hand because there's skeletons in his closet.  His wife later scolds him and questions his manhood.  Fleance's escape only takes on relevance to the point that some people blamed him for the murder of Banquo.  The witches' prophecy about Banquo's sons becoming kings gets completely left after Banquo's death.  Thought I'd point that out.  Fleance never substantially re-enters the play.

ACT IV:

Let's skip to the part where Macduff, the creeper, flees to England, which leaves the paranoid Macbeth room to kill his wife and family, because that's what civil people do when somebody leaves the country.  There's of course other reasons for Macbeth's doubts on Macduff, but having his family murdered honestly had no point other than to introduce Macduff's wife and son.  His son, by the way, is a sarcastic kid, and he is funny in his conversation with his mother where they just go back and forth about his father.  In the end, the child's sarcasm and witty remarks result in his death, which is ruthless to say the least, but I bet it would be a pre-teen's dream to say something really funny and cruel right before they get shanked to death.  Later, as Macduff visits Malcom, Malcom tests Macduff by first making himself look evil.  Ross shows up and tells Macduff that everything back home is all good only to tell him shortly after like "yeah, about your wife and kid, yeah they're dead..." as if that wasn't previously important information.

ACT V:

Everything just goes wrong for Macbeth in ACT V.  His wife is just crazy from wearing the pants too long, then Macbeth prepares for battle against most of his old friends.  Then, his wife kills herself, and he receives this news from one of his allies, Seyton (which sounds phonetically like Satan).  When your new best friend is Satan, you might be doing things wrong.  Then, one after the other, the witches prophecies come true to the very bone.  As Macbteh fights with the insurance that nobody woman-borne could hurt him, Macduff the creeper announces that he was a sesection, and Macbeth freaks out!  It was the ultimate SIKE of medieval times.  Macbeth dies, Malcom becomes king, then boom "the end."  Everything happened so fast.  It was like a climax and a resolution in two pages of reading.

It might have sounded like a narration, but certain things just stood out to me while reading.  Although I didn't quote instances because I'm trying to condense my thoughts, there's really a lot to look at while reading from Macbeth.  Some characters may have very well been likely created for the sole entertainment of the audience due to the dry humor that they produce.  I simply thought that the idea of a tough soldier who lets his wife run his life let three ugly hags control his fate, and where there was any doubt, he killed it... literally, until his actions consumed him.  I'm sure anybody could parody this, because throughout the play, there were plenty of behind-the-scene raunchy jokes (such as the witches reference to the sailor's wife who had nuts).  Many clever things were brought to the table on this one, and I got a few chuckles out of it.  If you didn't read these parts closely, you should read it again.

P.S. I know that this literary analysis was slightly confusing and only addressed a few areas, but I had to hijack it in this way in order to avoid telling you guys too much of what you already know.  Plus, all of the deeper literary elements and obvious seriousness of the play was avoided for you all to discover on your own.  There were numerous allusions and various double meanings within the play to keep track of as it is.

TOMORROW AND TOMORROW AND TOMORROW

Since I've been absent of late, I wanted to make sure that I received credit for an assignment that has been given me.  Danny Luu can vouch for me, but as you can see from the video, he's just a wonderful camera-man - of course with no sarcasm included.  But really, if you haven't seen Danny's real work on Youtube, you should check it out for all of its different flavors.  Danny missed a couple of lines from the soliloquy, so I'll start it off.

"She should have died hereafter/
There would have been a time for such a word/
Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow
Creeps in such petty pace from...

The video is pretty funny and it was filmed in my AP Biology class today.
Also my apologies to Dr. Preston for having missed the class so frequently.

MACBETH ACT 2 READING NOTES

• Macbeth's senses seem to fail as he wields the dagger of which the blood of the king will later be spilled
• His soliloquy in Scene 1 makes it a performative utterance as he shapes his thoughts to bend the future reality of his actions to kill Duncan
• Macbeth kills the king and gets scared that the chamberlains woke up
• He found it hard to say "Amen" as the chamberlains prayed once more before they went back to bed
• Religion plays a huge role again and juxtaposes the murder that happened just before
• Macduff enters the castle and finds the kind murdured
• Macbeth and lady Macbeth act shocked and Macbeth kills the chamberlains which adds suspicion to Macduff that Macbeth may be the killer
• Macbeth becomes named the new king and has his coronation in Scone
• Malcom and Donalbain leave the country in fear that they may be killed next

LOOK AT MY BATTLES

Warrior Nation meant more to me than the average student.  Those happy few of us who constructed it also took on many other challenges that we did not foresee in its creation.  Not only did we have to create cheers of which the student body could participate in saying, we had to somehow find a way to make the rest of the skeptics believe that what we were doing was "the cool thing to do."  In this generation, re-creating the idea of "cool" is probably one of the toughest things to do.  Factors like popularity, image, and judgment all came into play on our masterpiece, and if we didn't collaborate with the more popular seniors and make them "spirit commanders," we wouldn't have lasted a day.  All in all, it worked out.

LITERARY ANALYSIS 5

I'm collaborating with Kylie Sagisi:

PLOT:
- Yet another dystopian novel, Brave New World takes place in London, where the generations of man are artificially created in hatcheries and bred to become who they are destined to be through a caste system that works much like the educational grading system.  Through following Henry Ford's "assembly line" lifestyle, the character, Bernard tries to break away from his society.  He meets John at a "savage" reservation with his mother.  John is brought back to the World State to cope with his ancestry, but cannot change who he is and adapt to his new environment, making him immoral in the eyes of his peers and Mustapha Mond, their district leader.  He falls in love with Lenina but cannot express it the way he wants to.  John eventually freaks out, which causes disruption to the society's happiness, which then forces Mustapha Mond to exile Bernard along with his friend, Helmholtz, and John exiles himself some distance from the World State.  People visited the "Savage," Lenina visited him later, they had an orgy, John lost himself to the society and killed himself the moment he realized it.

THEME:
-The major theme of all dystopian novels is the imperfection that arises from perfection.  On the surface, societies of a dystopian novel functions perfectly, but there is everything wrong in the eyes of a free thinker.  Society will crumble through systematic routine.  It is unnatural to suppress free thought or action.  With perfection comes a human life that isn't worth living.

TONE:
- Huxley's tone is very scientific and hypothetical throughout.  A very factual and straight-forward science fictional author, Huxley gave the mechanical World State a type of truthful reality that almost broke the fourth wall while reading his work.

5 LITERARY TERMS:
- Allusion: "History is bunk"
- Metaphor: Mustapha Mond's pipe metaphor about human pleasures
- Pun:  the "World State" can be read as the "World's State" of being
- Motif: Ford serves as a motif to remind the reader of where the World State's vision comes from.  It works hand in hand with the allusion but plays along in religious context such as "Year of our Ford" instead of "Year of our Lord."
- Symbolism: Soma symbolizes artificial happiness

CREATING A NATION

Most of the students within this course are currently composing their senior project of which they can each call their "masterpiece."  They are all collaborating - doing whatever necessary to complete a project relevant to a goal.  While they scramble, I reflect, because my masterpiece has been performed long before we were assigned our task.  Together with some colleagues of mine, we shaped an idea into a reality.  Attending a high school where "school spirit was at an all time low," where "unity did not exist," and where "the average student could not connect with others," we decided to make a change.  Together we forged a campaign and built a "nation" of students who brought back the spirit of Righetti High School.  This Warrior Nation became rumored as "one of the best," and we did it in one single year.  Thank you to all of the students who participated in the section.  It couldn't have been done alone.

Some of the many faces behind the making of Warrior Nation!

JOHN THE SAVAGE

In Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, a noble "savage" who's name alludes to religion - shunned by the world state - roamed around.  Later to become the World State's zoo animal, John found himself to be from almost a different planet after being redeemed from the "Reservation" of savages like himself.  In the eyes of his newly-found peers, John the Savage was immoral, and from his point of view, he could not change who he was.

The World State is a perfect society - a utopia, but within all perfection lies imperfection to a foreigner.  John, being the alien, found this "Brave, new world" confusing.  He could not cope with a world where all emotion but happiness had been cast away.  He could not understand the casts to which people were unnaturally born into.  His first physical offense, however, was his refusal to take soma - the happiness drug.  Being characterized as a more "human" being, artificial happiness just wasn't to John's taste, making him immoral for not succumbing to one of the most valued norms of the World State.

His second offense was the revolt.  John attempted to encouraged the lower castes to rebel against Mond's traditions and, in doing so, dumped liters of soma.  By leading this sort of "tea party" in this land far away, John set himself up for his last and final offense to the World State - to commit suicide.  Knowing that John could never be truly happy in the utopia, which is the goal of its people to maintain, John killed himself the moment he participated in an orgy that symbolized his surrender to the World State.  Yet instead of truly surrendering to the artificial happiness that is the world's state, John executed upon the one and only action that expressed his religious depression.  By committing suicide, the savage not only rebelled against the world state's culture, but he also sent the message that he would never will artificial happiness so long as he should live.  Dying for an immoral belief was his greatest offense of all.

In the eyes of the reader, the true immorality lies within the World State's dystopian culture, but in the eyes of the denizens of the World State itself, the immorality lies with John.  Like a fish out of water, John died once he was brought out of the ocean to attempt to breathe the air of man and only to fail - a sad ending to a valiant experiment.

BENCHMARK...

I guess you should know why I'm about music.  When I was 4 years old, I walked into the living room.  My big brother of 9 sat at the piano, playing a tune.  He was already at "level 3" when it came to reading music.  "Maybe you'll learn to be as good as me one day," he said.

He left to go play outside.  My parents were out.  I rolled back the cover that protects the keys of black and white and put my ear to the piano.  It was electric and old, but I said, "One day, I'll be able to play this thing like nobody else can."  Using nothing but the memory from which I heard him play, I taught myself to play the thing; not by reading the foreign symbols placed in front of me on my brother's papers, but by something much stronger.  By the time he walked back into the house, tired from play, I was playing his song.  I was 4.

I'm no prodigy.  I was only born with a desire to live in music.  I took lessons from that point on, and I've won classical piano tournaments throughout the state of California, but I never learned how to read the music I played until I was much older, and this quality damaged my chances of going any further with my lessons.

So I quit.  I picked up some software and became a producer.  I even sold the music I produced for a while, which was made on FL Studio (basic stuff, nothing special).  Having sold all that I've made, I no longer have the rights to any of my songs; so as an older hobby, I guess I could pick it up again.  Regardless of the project I choose to be a part of for my "masterpiece," I intend to show you all somehow how I make music and hopefully give you insight as to why it is important to me.  My memories of family, my philosophy of living, and the ways I think can all revolve around the endless moments that I can sit at the piano and hit the same chord over and over again just to feel the same way.

Sometimes I still rest my head on the keys.  It's weird, I know, but now that my brother has moved out, I find myself alone in the house a lot with nobody but myself to impress, meaning there's nothing to stop me from playing as loud as I want...

LIT ANALYSIS

Brave New World is my next literary analysis... Don't worry, it will be here soon.  I recommend to also read, 1984 by George Orwell, which I read literally at the same time as our class read Brave New World.  No spoilers here, but you can visit my literature analysis on that in the meantime...

10 QUESTIONS

So we have to find an expert for our Final "Masterpiece" Project of which I still have no direction.  I'm starting to bend toward leadership/self-reflection, but who knows where my project will turn.  I'm like an undeclared major in a community college - unpredictable to where this might end up, and equally as predictable to be a failure.  Here are my 10 questions.

1. What is your job?
2. What does your job mean to you?
3. What do you think your job means to others?
4. How do you accomplish goals?
5. Where do you go when you need help?
6. What was the greatest moment of your life?
7. Does school really matter?
8. Where have you found happiness?
9. What do you think of when you hear the word 'masterpiece'?
10. Is a masterpiece structured or conjured?

THOUGHTS ON BRAVE NEW WORLD

• It was interesting
• All dystopian novels seem to have endings where the characters either lose themselves physically or mentally to the perfectly imperfect society that man has created

HI THERE...

So our big "masterpiece" is coming up, and I haven't been posting much on my blog lately.  So, if you are reading this, I'm offering you something that could possibly benefit your final masterpiece.  I don't have a group yet for my masterpiece, so I'm willing to participate in another group.  After a disappointing performance from last semester's piano duet, I decided to stay away from doing my own project and try to join another, although I am still very passionate about music.  So, if you're doing a video for your project, I can produce literally any type of music if given enough time.  I can produce music, play piano, do whatever.  I offer that skill to you/whatever you ask of me for your masterpiece

LITERARY ANALYSIS 4

PLOT:
-This is a dystopian novel.  Winston Smith, the protagonist, lives in an area formerly known as London in the continent, Oceana.  According to the new innovations from the continent's philosophy, called Ingsoc, there can be no free thought, and history does not exist.  The Party, those who worship "Big Brother" - their leader- control everything.  The Party (which is basically the government) controls history, time, existence, thought, and language within the four parliamentary bastions: the Ministry of Truth, the Ministry of Peace, the Ministry of Love, and the Ministry of Plenty, which are all named ironically of themselves.  Winston later meets another agent of free thought named Julia, and they fall in the only form of love that exists in Oceana, which is strictly political and hardly emotional, but later that love develops into something stronger.  There is thought of a resistance of the Party called "the Brotherhood," supposedly led by a man named Goldstein.  O'Brien, a friendly type of person later identifies as a leader of the "thought police" and captures Winston and Julia and reconditions them into viable members of the party through torture.

THEME:
-The major theme of all dystopian novels is the imperfection that arises from perfection.  On the surface, societies of a dystopian novel functions perfectly, but there is everything wrong in the eyes of a free thinker.  Society will crumble through systematic routine.  It is unnatural to suppress free thought.

TONE:
-The tone is hopeful all throughout until the plot twist and betrayal of O'Brien is realized.  In the Ministry of Love, the tone takes a philosophical turn for the worse until it once again changes at the very end of the novel into a hopeless work.

10 LITERARY ELEMENTS:
1. Pg. 12: Rhetorical question: "What if they were to catch me?"
2. Pg. 17: Motif: "WAR IS PEACE; FREEDOM IS SLAVERY; IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH"
3. Foil: Julia serves as a foil to Winston.  Winston is more oppressed whereas Julia is a younger, more free spirit.
4. Pg. 166: Point of View:  Winston's point of view is similar to Goldstein's book.  The Party's point of view is completely opposite of his.
5. Pg. 11: Stream of Consciousness: Winston writes in his diary exactly what comes to mind, which is a mixture of random words.
6. Pg. 170: Exposition:  Goldstein's book gives background knowledge and history of the development of the Party.
7. Pg. 210: Allusion: "Thou shalt not..." relates to the 10 Commandments
8. Pg. 221: Repitition: "...triumph after triumph after triumph: an endless pressing, pressing, pressing..."
9. Pg. 229: Simile: "I could float off the ground like a soap bubble if I wanted to."
10. Pg. 234:Synaesthesia: "He could hear the blood singing in his ears."

CHARACTERIZATION:
1.)- Direct Characterization: Most characters.  "She was a bold-looking girl of about twenty-seven, with thick, dark hair, a freckled face..."
- Indirect Characterization:  Most round characters were indirectly characterized later on through their speech.  Winston's thoughts indicated him as a free thinker, confused within his society for knowing and remembering too much and not being able to master doublethink.

2.) Orwell's syntax and diction was very structured.  Diction related to the fact that free speech could not be used entirely.  The thought of always being watched with very little freedom always came into play, and it gave a sort of philosophy to the writing.

3.) Winston is an incredibly round character in an incredibly flat world.  Being a round character is a crime in Oceana, making the novel much more interesting for Winston who must obey and hide his real character in order to survive and live with the automatons that the society has created of mankind.

4.) I related to Winston, especially being a student-athlete where my routines consist of wake up, study, learn, practice, eat, work, study, sleep.  In the world today, people are challenged and suppressed into becoming yet another cog in the machine of society.  Colleges want us to apply to their "prestigious ranks," but first, they want to hear every one of their applicants succumb and accept and even embrace the truths of becoming "a part of something bigger."  Free thought hasn't been extinguished today in my world as it did in 1984, but I definitely feel the oppression of living, working, then dying in my country.

I, JURY

Reading my peers' essays have helped me find a few things about my own writing.  First of all, an expanded vocabulary in some areas of my writing could prove useful when attempting to convey my thoughts in a more professional way to the AP test graders.  Second, my structure could use some work.  I have trouble transitioning from my thesis statement to my supporting evidence in the body paragraphs.  Lastly, I should avoid making generalizations.  Being specific will prove to be vital once again.

BRAVE NEW ROUGH DRAFT (THESIS)

Discuss the relationship between science, religion, and political power in the World State:

The World State is not only a united dystopia in Huxley's Brave New World, but it is also the world's present state of being where science, religion, and political power have all coalesced into one force.  This novel takes it's form as if Henry Ford were to somehow impact the world in such a way as to become the "savior" upon which his people's scientific approach, religious beliefs, and political structure are based.  The world is the products of his innovation; the world is a futuristic assembly line.


My goal was a 15-minute thesis.  My apologies for not completing the essay as I'm having trouble with my PC.

I AM HERE

Self evaluation is something I usually do in my own head, but I am here.  Since the very first grading period, I wasn't very good at using Open Source Learning.  I even fought against it.  Advancing in this area is the only real improvement that I've found within myself this year.  I guess I know a few more big words to throw into my arsenal, and I understand literary terms and their definitions a little more, but my greatest advancement has been in collaboration this far.

LITERARY TERMS 6

• Simile: an analogy or comparison implied by using an adverb such as like or as, in contrast with a metaphor which figuratively makes the comparison by stating outright that one thing is another thing
• Soliloquy: a monologue spoken by an actor at a point in the play when the character believes himself to be alone
• Spiritual: an autobiography (usually Christian) that focuses on an individual's spiritual growth
• Speaker: the narrative or elegiac voice in a poem (such as a sonnet, ode, or lyric) that speaks of his or her situation or feelings
• Stereotype: a character who is so ordinary or unoriginal that the character seems like an oversimplified representation of a type, gender, class, religious group, or occupation
• Stream of Consciousness: writing in which a character's perceptions, thoughts, and memories are presented in an apparently random form, without regard for logical sequence, chronology, or syntax
• Structure: the relationship or organization of the component parts of a work of art or literature
• Style: the author's words and the characteristic way that writer uses language to achieve certain effects
• Subordination: the act of placing in a lower rank or position
• Surrealism: in this movement, the artist sought to do away with conscious control and instead respond to the irrational urges of the subconscious mind
• Suspension of Disbelief:  temporarily and willingly setting aside our beliefs about reality in order to enjoy the make-believe of a play, a poem, film, or a story
• Symbol: a word, place, character, or object that means something beyond what it is on a literal level
• Synaesthesia: it involves taking one type of sensory input (sight, sound, smell, touch, taste) and comingling it with another separate sense in what seems an impossible way
• Synechdoche: a rhetorical trope involving a part of an object representing the whole, or the whole of an object representing a part
• Syntax:  the standard word order and sentence structure of a language
• Theme: a central idea or statement that unifies and controls an entire literary work
• Thesis: a proposition stated or put forward for consideration, especially one to be discussed and proved or to be maintained against objections
• Tone: the means of creating a relationship or conveying an attitude or mood
• Tongue in Cheek: a figure of speech used to imply that a statement or other production is humorously or otherwise not seriously intended, and it should not be taken at face value
• Tragedy: a serious play in which the chief character, by some peculiarity of psychology, passes
  through a series of misfortunes leading to a final, devastating catastrophe
• Understatement: the opposite of exaggeration
• Vernacular: the everyday or common language of a geographic area or the native language of commoners in a country as opposed to a prestigious dead language maintained artificially in schools or in literary texts
• Voice:  the "voice" talking and narrating the story is not identical with the author
• Zeitgeist: the preferences, fashions, and trends that characterize the intangible essence of a specific historical period

THE NOSE

1. Barber
2. He finds a nose
3. She threatens to report him for slashing someone's nose off
4. He sets out to get rid of the nose
5. Happiness lasts only for a moment
6. "The Nose" is the antagonist of the story.  It is the main obstacle Ivan must overcome and get rid of after finding

LITERARY TERMS 5

• Parallelism: when the writer establishes similar patterns of grammatical structure and length
• Parody: imitates the serious manner and characteristic features of a particular literary work in order to make fun of those same features
• Pathos: emotional appeal
• Pedantry: overemphasizing the details
• Personification: a trope in which abstractions, animals, ideas, and inanimate objects are given human character, traits, abilities, or reactions
• Plot: the structure and relationship of actions and events in a work of fiction
• Poignant: keen or strong in mental appeal
• Point of View: the way a story gets told and who tells it
• Postmodernism: literary style where tendencies include: (1) a rejection of traditional authority, (2) radical experimentation--in some cases bordering on gimmickry, (3) eclecticism and multiculturalism, (4) parody and pastiche, (5) deliberate anachronism or surrealism, and (6) a cynical or ironic self-awareness (often postmodernism mocks its own characteristic traits)
• Prose: any material that is not written in a regular meter like poetry
• Protagonist: the main character in a work, on whom the author focuses most of the narrative attention
• Pun: a play on two words similar in sound but different in meaning
• Purpose: the subject at hand and reason for which the author had written
• Realism: any artistic or literary portrayal of life in a faithful, accurate manner, unclouded by false ideals, literary conventions, or misplaced aesthetic glorification and beautification of the world
• Refrain: a line or set of lines at the end of a stanza or section of a longer poem or song--these lines repeat at regular intervals in other stanzas or sections of the same work
• Requiem: any musical service, hymn, or dirge for the repose of the dead
• Resolution: the outcome or result of a complex situation or sequence of events
• Restatement: stating something again for effect
• Rhetoric: the art of persuasive argument through writing or speech--the art of eloquence and charismatic language
• Rhetorical Question: a question posed to create thinking within the audience and is not answered formally
• Rising Action: the action in a play before the climax
• Romanticism: rejected the earlier philosophy of the Enlightenment and relied on emotion and natural passions that provided a valid and powerful means of knowing and a reliable guide to ethics and living
• Satire: an attack on or criticism of any stupidity or vice in the form of scathing humor, or a critique of what the author sees as dangerous religious, political, moral, or social standards
• Scansion: the act of "scanning" a poem to determine its meter
• Setting: the general locale, historical time, and social circumstances in which the action of a fictional or dramatic work occurs

LAUNCH/DRAFT

• What am I passionate about?  What do I want to do?
• I'm passionate about music and building relationships.
• How can I use the tools from last semester (and the Internet in general)?
• Surfing the net for articles on subjects I'm passionate about usually distract me for hours and hours, but this won't get my homework done.
• What will I need to do in order to "feel the awesomeness with no regrets" by June?
• I'm not sure.  I usually end up regretting doing the things I'm passionate about, because I end up not studying for the next big test and flunking it.  It seems as if we aren't allowed to be creative until we're in our mid-life crisis, and by then, we'll have full-time jobs, a wife and kids, and little money for ourselves to express that creativity.  Maybe I'll write a book.
• What will impress/convince others (both in my life and in my field)?
• I know that I can impress others once I become an expert in the field I'm passionate about.  Usually experts are the ones who have the degrees from college.  Hello debt.
• How will I move beyond 'What If' and take this from idea --> reality?
• That's a good question.  'What if I stopped prioritizing my school work and started focusing on my passion?' could lead to that one kid who dropped out of high school, joined a band, and ended up on the streets... I don't want that to be me.
• Who will be the peers, public, and experts in my personal learning network?
• In regards to personal learning (or anything personal in particular), my greatest peer is myself.  The public are those closest to me.  The experts are those with enough authority to grant me a valid opinion.

LITERARY TERMS 4

• Interior Monologue: a type of stream of consciousness in which the author depicts the interior thoughts of a single individual in the same order these thoughts occur inside that character's head
• Inversion: inverted order of words or events as a rhetorical scheme
• Juxtaposition: the arrangement of two or more ideas, characters, actions, settings, phrases, or words side-by-side or in similar narrative moments for the purpose of comparison, contrast, rhetorical effect, suspense, or character development
• Lyric: any poem having the form and musical quality of a song
• Magical Realism: mixture of fantasy and surrealism that creates a truly dreamlike and bizarre effect in their prose
• Metaphor: a comparison or analogy stated in such a way as to imply that one object is another one, figuratively speaking
• Metonymy: using a vaguely suggestive, physical object to embody a more general idea
• Modernism: literature in the 20th century after WW1
• Monologue:  a character speaking aloud to himself, or narrating an account to an audience with no other character on stage
• Mood: a prevailing emotional tone set by the author
• Motif: a conspicuous recurring element, such as a type of incident, a device, a reference, or verbal formula, which appears frequently in works of literature
• Myth: a traditional tale of deep cultural significance to a people in terms of etiology, eschatology, ritual practice, or models of appropriate and inappropriate behavior
• Narrative: a story where the character tell its own story
• Narrator: the person telling the story
• Naturalism: a literary movement seeking to depict life as accurately as possible, without artificial distortions of emotion, idealism, and literary convention
• Novella: an extended fictional prose narrative that is longer than a short story, but not quite as long as a novel
• Omniscient Point Of View: point of view where the narrator knows the irony; all-knowing point of view
• Onomatopoeia: the use of sounds that are similar to the noise they represent for a rhetorical or artistic effect
• Oxymoron: using contradiction in a manner that oddly makes sense on a deeper level
• Pacing: going back and forth or stepping back in forth in the same direction
• Parable: a story or short narrative designed to reveal allegorically some religious principle, moral lesson, psychological reality, or general truth
• Paradox: using contradiction in a manner that oddly makes sense on a deeper level

TALE OF TWO CITIES LECTURE NOTES

• Dickens's friend wrote a play called "The Frozen's Deep"
• Plot-line finds itself similar to Tale of Two Cities; Dickens played a role in the play
• "It was the best of times... it was the worst of times"
• The novel revolves between France and England
• Dickens wrote about revolution to warn his modern society
• Dickens "wrote as he went along"
• There is a creation of a world in the late 1700s along with many equally powerful personal stories
• The lecturer reads excerpts from the novel

WHAT'S THE STORY?

Ask any high school student why Charles Dickens wrote Great Expectations, and they'll tell you "because he was crazy and wanted us to suffer studying him."  I'd hate for any literature fanatic to glance at my blog, but it's true.  Of course, Charles Dickens wrote his novels for reasons most authors write, but the literary elements he used within Great Expectations might draw his audience's attention to what might be his real purpose.
In Great Expectations, Magwitch was first characterized directly by his ragged, brutish appearance.  To add more shape to it, Dickens provided diction that would indirectly characterize Magwitch's impression.  Threatening to rip out Pip's innards if he were to leave Magwitch to the authorities, the escaped convict outdid himself by making an absolutely horrid first encounter with the protagonist.  Maybe hoping to become an expert in characterization, Dickens wrote this novel, because another example lies within his main character, Pip. By corresponding Pip's advancements in society to his growing age, the novel serves as a bildungsroman.  Phillip Pirrip is even a funny name for a character as Dickens was known for a creative humor when characterizing the roles of his books.  Phillip "Pip" Pirrip is clearly seen here as an alliteration - yet another literary element that justifies Dickens's approach.
It's no mystery why novelists write - to better themselves by utilizing their techniques a little differently with each new experiment until they snag a "best-seller."  Even so, the joy that the creative pen draws forth might do the trick as well.

LITERARY TERMS 3

• Exposition: writing or speech primarily intended to convey information or to explain; a detailed statement or explanation
• Expressionism: a technique of distorting objects and events in order to represent them as they are perceived by a character in a literary work
• Fable: a brief story illustrating human tendencies through animal characters
• Fallacy: any of various types of erroneous reasoning that render arguments logically unsound
• Falling Action: the consequences following the climax of a piece of literature; occurs before the denouement
• Farce: a form of low comedy designed to provoke laughter through highly exaggerated caricatures of people in improbable or silly situations; traits of farce include (1) physical bustle such as slapstick, (2) sexual misunderstandings and mix-ups, and (3) broad verbal humor such as puns
• Figurative Language: a deviation from what speakers of a language understand as the ordinary or standard use of words in order to achieve some special meaning or effect; similes and metaphors are the most popular forms
• Flashback: a method of narration in which present action is temporarily interrupted so that the reader can witness past events--usually in the form of a character's memories, dreams, narration, or even authorial commentary
• Foil: a character that serves by contrast to highlight or emphasize opposing traits in another character
• Folk Tale: stories passed along from one generation to the next by word-of-mouth rather than by a written text
• Foreshadowing: suggesting, hinting, indicating, or showing what will occur later in a narrative
• Free Verse: poetry based on the natural rhythms of phrases and normal pauses rather than the artificial constraints of metrical feet
• Genre: a type or category of literature or film marked by certain shared features 
• Gothic Tale: a type of romance wildly popular between 1760 up until the 1820s that has influenced the ghost story and horror story; the stories are designed to thrill readers by providing mystery and blood-curdling accounts of villainy, murder, and the supernatural
• Hyperbole: the trope of exaggeration or overstatement (tropes are twisted meanings of words)
• Imagery: the "mental pictures" that readers experience with a passage of literature
• Implication:  the relation that holds between two propositions, or classes of propositions, in virtue of which one is logically deducible from the other
• Incongruity: not harmonious in character; inconsonant; lacking harmony of parts
• Inference:  the process of arriving at some conclusion that, though it is not logically derivable from the assumed premises, possesses some degree of probability relative to the premises
• Irony: "saying one thing and meaning another"

LIT TERMS REMIX 1-5

1.  CIRCUMLOCUTION

2.  CLASSICISM

3.  CLICHE

4.  CLIMAX

5.  COLLOQUIALISM

LITERARY TERMS 2

• Circumlocution: roundabout or indirect speech or writing, rather than short, brief, clear writing
• Classicism: the principles or styles characteristic of the literature and art of ancient Greece and Rome
• Cliché: a hackneyed or trite phrase that has become overused
• Climax: the moment in a play, novel, short story, or narrative poem at which the crisis reaches its point of greatest intensity and is thereafter resolved
• Colloquialism: a word or phrase used everyday in plain and relaxed speech, but rarely found in formal writing
• Comedy: any play or narrative poem in which the main characters manage to avert an impending disaster and have a happy ending
• Conflict: the opposition between two characters (such as a protagonist and an antagonist), between two large groups of people, or between the protagonist and a larger problem such as forces of nature, ideas, public mores, and so on
• Connotation: the extra tinge or taint of meaning each word carries beyond the minimal, strict definition found in a dictionary
• Contrast: opposition or juxtaposition of different forms, lines, or colors in a work of art to intensify each element's properties and produce a more dynamic expressiveness
• Denotation: strict definition of a word as found in a dictionary
• Denouement: the outcome or result of a complex situation or sequence of events, an aftermath or resolution that usually occurs near the final stages of the plot
• Dialect: the language of a particular district, class, or group of persons
• Dialectics: the art or practice of logical discussion as employed in investigating the truth of a theory or opinion
• Dichotomy: division into two parts, kinds, etc.; subdivision into halves or pairs
• Diction: the choice of a particular word as opposed to others
• Didactic: writing that is "preachy" or seeks overtly to convince a reader of a particular point or lesson
• Dogmatic: asserting opinions in a doctrinaire or arrogant manner; opinionated
• Elegy: in classical Greco-Roman literature, "elegy" refers to any poem written in elegiac meter (alternating hexameter and pentameter lines). More broadly, elegy came to mean any poem dealing with the subject-matter common to the early Greco-Roman elegies--complaints about love, sustained formal lamentation, or somber meditations
• Epic: an epic in its most specific sense is a genre of classical poetry that contains an epic hero invoked by a muse who goes on an epic journey
• Epigram: a short verse or motto appearing at the beginning of a longer poem or the title page of a novel, at the heading of a new section or paragraph of an essay or other literary work to establish mood or raise thematic concerns
• Epitaph: an inscription carved on a gravestone; the final statement spoken by a character before his death
• Epithet: a short, poetic nickname--often in the form of an adjective or adjectival phrase--attached to the normal name
• Euphemism: using a mild or gentle phrase instead of a blunt, embarrassing, or painful one
• Evocative: a phrase that calls forth a feeling intended by the author

LITERARY TERMS 1

• Allegory: a symbolical narrative; extended metaphor
• Alliteration: repeating a consonant sound in close proximity to others, or beginning several words with the same vowel sound
• Allusion: a casual reference in literature to a person, place, event, or another passage of literature, often without explicit identification
• Ambiguity: in common conversation, it is a negative term applied to a vague or equivocal expression when precision would be more useful
• Anachronism: placing an event, person, item, or verbal expression in the wrong historical period
• Analogy: a similarity between like features of two things, on which a comparison may be based
• Analysis: a philosophical method of exhibiting complex concepts or propositions as compounds or functions of more basic ones
• Anaphora: the intentional repetition of beginning clauses in order to create an artistic effect; 
• "We shall not fail.  We shall not falter.  We shall not flag."
• Anecdote:  a short narrative account of an amusing, unusual, revealing, or interesting event
• Antagonist: a character or force that opposes the protagonist; the bad guy
• Antithesis: using opposite phrases in close conjunction
• Aphorism: a terse saying embodying a general truth, or astute observation, as “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely”
• Apologia:  a work written as an explanation or justification of one's motives, convictions, or acts
• Apostrophe: the act of addressing some abstraction or personification that is not physically present like speaking to Death as if it were a person
• Argument: a statement of a poem's major point--usually appearing in the introduction of the poem
• Assumption: hypothesis, conjecture, guess, postulate, theory
• Audience: the person(s) reading a text, listening to a speaker, or observing a performance
• Characterization: an author or poet's use of description, dialogue, dialect, and action to create in the reader an emotional or intellectual reaction to a character or to make the character more vivid and realistic
• Chiasmus:  a literary scheme in which the author introduces words or concepts in a particular order, then later repeats those terms or similar ones in reversed or backwards order

HACKING MY EDUCATION: WHAT IT REALLY MEANS

So for the longest time, Dr. Preston has over-used the word "hack" especially when discussing our educational goals and mindsets.  I finally got the picture and did a little research on what he truly meant and stumbled across a couple TED talks that you might find simplistic yet interesting.  Hacking our education is easier than what you may think it means, but our society is nowhere near accepting it as a practice... at least not just yet.

AP PREP POST 1: SIDDHARTHA

A.)  I was browsing Google and I found these five questions on Siddhartha:
1. Siddhartha features substantial activity and narrative action. At the same time, it is about one man’s largely internal spiritual quest. What is the relationship between the internal and exterior worlds of Siddhartha? How does Siddhartha negotiate these worlds?
2. Herman Hesse’s novels before Siddhartha focused on alienated young men who rejected the cultures of their upbringings. However, these other novels did not feature the spiritual elements of Siddhartha. How do the spiritual elements of Siddhartha make it different from any other story of an alienated youth?
3. Most literary scholars agree that Siddhartha was prompted by Herman Hesse’s fixation on Eastern spirituality. Is there a case to be made that Siddhartha is designed to celebrate Eastern religion? Is Hesse’s treatment of spirituality as relevant today as it was when he wrote the novel?
4. Siddhartha concerns the quest for spiritual enlightenment, and by the end of it four characters have achieved this goal: Govinda, Gotama, Vasudeva, and Siddhartha. Is the enlightenment achieved by each of these characters the same? Why or why not? What distinctions and similarities exist between the paths these characters use to reach their final goal?
5. Consider Siddhartha’s relationship with Govinda. How are they similar, and how are they different? What are the narrative functions of Govinda’s reappearance throughout the novel? How does their relationship impact the novel’s ending?

These questions tell me that the test is in depth and covers a wide range of topics and concepts. 

B.)  My answers:
1.  Siddhartha had always studied that everything is related when he was a Brahmin's son, but only until the end of his journey did he find the relationship between the exterior and interior worlds at the river.  In Siddhartha, the mind (interior world) is bound to the trials and tribulations of the past along with predictions and anxieties that lie ahead in the future (exterior world).  Siddhartha negotiated the two by employing years of experience both in the spiritual studies and worldly culture.
2.  The spiritualism make Siddhartha different, because enlightenment and holiness are nearly impossible quests.  Usually novels on alienated youths portray a child who grows and matures and accomplishes something while still remaining an imperfect human being.  Siddhartha, however, matured to find perfection and become perfect in every sense of the word.
3.  The novel isn't so much a celebration of Eastern religion as it is a journey that prompts the audience with various philosophical themes that rely on the self-improvement of mankind.  His treatment of spirituality is very close to the studies of Buddhism today and is quite relevant to Eastern religions.
4.  Vasudeva and Siddhartha both become enlightened through the river, but Govinda is much different.  Always being a scholar of Gotama, who had achieved his enlightenment much earlier on through unknown reasons, Govinda never employed the experiences and understandings of life as Vasudeva and Siddhartha had.  When Govinda and Siddhartha were reunited for the last time, Govinda finally touched Siddhartha on the head and felt the holy Om radiate from Siddhartha's self to his.  Each character found enlightenment differently, because, like all ordinary people, they chose their own paths to walk individually.
5.  Siddhartha and Govinda both desired Nirvana, but Govinda was always a follower whereas Siddhartha was more curious and wanted to learn through experience instead of teachings.  Govinda's reappearances throughout the novel functioned to show another aspect from a different character.  Instead of merely watching Siddhartha's growth into maturity, Govinda's growth could also be monitored.  In the end, their relationship impacted the end of the novel by displaying an everlasting friendship that could not be broken even through separate lifestyles and upbringings into enlightenment.

C.)  The AP Literature Exam wants students to display complex thoughts on ideas that peck at the surface of what they have read in the past.  When we read, we need to focus on big ideas like religion and themes while drawing relationships to the main characters as well as the other influencing characters within the novel.

HACKING MY EDUCATION

To hack means to break up the surface.  Education up until now has been a breeze over many topics of just that - the surface, but when will we be able to go more in-depth and think more about our own thinking?  I'm tired of waiting for the "glory days" of college life to figure that out for me; so consider my education already hacked as of last semester.  Questions like "what do you want to know?" or "what skills would you like to demonstrate?" or even "what experiences would you like to face?" have always come up in the past, but they were never realized until this year.  With new freedom to learn during my senior year, I'm embarrassed to say I'm dumbfounded over these types of questions now.  I've never been conditioned to think freely, meaning that I've been a slave to my learning since the day I blindly took a step into the educational system.  My priorities are now on the fence, and I can't decide whether or not I want to know more about medicinal science, writing skills, or skilled musicians.  There's so much to learn, and a very limited amount of time to become experts in all fields.  Before I conquer these mountains though, I'd like to re-learn to love learning.  I'm already tired of school, and it's barely the first day of my second semester.  I want to demonstrate my writing skills on my blog, and I'd like to experience peace in learning before my world turns upside down.  It doesn't seem like too much to ask for.