Blogging Around

So I read Stephanie Smelyanski's blog about her short story. Rather than simply writing the process of what happened, she wrote about her thought process, also known as Metacognition. She talks about how stressed he was about making the deadline that she overthought the entire process and stressed out. But later when she was relaxed and playing  song she came up with a idea that she was proud of. The following is my comment on her blog:

"I totally agree with you. I always get so stressed out before any of my assignments that I forget about how much fun it s to learn through writing. I've realized over time that when I'm relaxed I can come up with better ideas. When I was coming up with the idea for my story I was actually pulling my hair out and threw my laptop out of stress (don't judge me, it had been a long day). But when I sat down and watched The "X-Factor" I got my idea. It's the paradox of stress, school's think that stress "Roots out the boys from the men" but actually it creates low quality products. The Characters in our story are always in our subconciousness so it might explain the whole Uke thing. But yes, when you forget about making everything perfect your creativity flows and allows the things you want to happen, but not in the ways you expect them, like with stress on your characters."

I also read Jordin Arrigo's big on the idea of "Darkness" within the book Heart of Darkness By Joseph Conrad and how it could relate to the real world as well as how it changed her perspective on things. The following are my thoughts on her blog:

"So true, the extent to which our actions affect each other are often times unknown. Our Darkness could simply refer to a bad and confusing event or our ignorance and its consequences. these clashes of ignorance are brought to life within the book. I love how the author continually tries to emphasize the darkness as it brings to light his true message. Form is content and he made it so that half of the time we didn't know what he was talking about and that we could only see one perspective. It was giving the reader the full sense of what it's like to live in a world of ignorance. We still live in one today, there is still plenty of darkness left over, maybe even to a greater extent. Maybe the author was referring to something beyond simple cultural clashes, maybe it referred to ideas as well! I wonder what all of our darkness's are as 21st century."

That's it for today! Good luck on your AP exams!

Dialectics: Modernism and Postmodernism

In English class, we recently watched The Matrix. For a long time it was a childhood favorite of mine, not to say that it isn't anymore, but back then to me it was simply an action packed, enjoyable, simple movie, that had no purpose other than to entertain its viewers. Trust me I've continuously re-watched the movie like a Harry Potter fan watching re-runs of the film a year after the series ended. For me a movie has always been a relaxing form of entertainment, I give the same definition to a nice, long book; but this time it wasn't just a movie, it was an expression of ideas dying to be heard and to be thought further about. What made watching this movie different from all the other times I had done so before? Was it because I had a postmodernism versus modernism sheet in front of me? Was it because of the books I have read in English class throughout the year, or was it simply because we were watching a good movie in English class? I don’t know, but today I will show you the meaning that I took out of the movie this time around.

This time it was the concept of postmodernism and modernism which came to me. Modernism, though a loaded word, centrally means that memory is within humans. Postmodernism on the other hand claims that humans are within memory, it is also a very loaded word. These conflicting themes are continuously seen throughout the film which is a "postmodern film in a modern frame," according to English teacher, John E. Allen.

The Matrix is essentially the essence of postmodernism, it claims that we are "within memory". Neo, the main character, has the ability to go anywhere within the matrix whenever he plugs in. This includes any time in our human understanding of "history". In other terms, this implies that several times exist at the same time (confusing I know), similar to the book Orlando by Virginia Woolf in which Orlando has many versions of herself (as a boy, as a man, as a woman, etc.) existing at once within herself. This relates back to postmodernism because if we are all entrenched within circles of memory, then that would require that we would be able to commence any memory as it is around us. This shows the idea of pastiche in which all voices, past and present coexist.

This links back to modernism. The individual has memory "within them" in the term modernism. In terms of the individual, modernism has the meaning that "The individual must turn ins to find meaning." this similar to when the boy tells Neo that n order to bend the spoons, he mop doubt himself and must "Look inwards". The movie tells the idea of postmodernism through a modernistic individual.

Not only that, but in coincides on a multitude of topics other than the individual as well; these include but are not limited to: World view, art, truth, memory, etc.


They combine together to make an amazing movie about a world which is ruled by artificial intelligence in which human's brains are limited to a realm that is unreal and cannot conceive what the entire world is and the possibilities it has to offer. Also, the robots use human energy as batteries, so our very creation is using us.

There is a way in which these two topics are related though. If you think about it, memory makes the individual, yet in a postmodern sense there are several circles of memory that we share with others. Not everyone lives the same lives, not everyone has been to every of the matrix. The different parts of the matrix you go to (the different circles of memory you share with others). So basically in terms  of memory, one is layered complacently which makes you believe that it is what makes you because you share it with a few of them with others. The other is true in which memory a person, because the same two people cannot have the same shared circles of memory, and your past circles determine how you will react and remember these memories.

The difference between the two are the assumed connotations that come with a loaded word. Mainly being that there is no way to get out of the system that rules then a post-modernitstic sense,  and that the individual can find the escape within themselves. Like Plato's Cave Allegory in which these ideas came to each other way before their time, the world society imposes things upon you (The prison chains looking at the pictures and sounds projected in the cave). And because of those things, the majority of people will become homogenous zombies living in a world of deception, yet it takes the individual to

 

Metacognition: Jane Eyre Mashup

In all honesty, when I first heard of the mashup I waved it by as if it was the easiest assignment I had ever seen; but I had no idea of what was to come. I originally began working on the assignment in a group with two of my friends, Emily and Sebas, and we had the notion that if we took a bunch of video clips and stuck them together it would create something meaningful on the topic of individualism. But things began to change. Bombings at the Boston Marathon occurred and just a few days later I would be heading to Boston for college visits with a program hosted by my religious community. But I wasn't heading there with family, I was going there with a few teens, who like myself were irresponsible, immature, and young.


I had promised my group that I would stay in touch while I was there and work on whatever I could, on my plane ride there I scoped out a few passages in Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte (I later had to quit the group due to communication issues and lack of time). But in my quest for these passages my brain quickly made the realization that one could not be an individual without breaking the status quo or the so called "norm" of society. And how was Jane, the main character, individualistic and unique? She broke the norm, the broke the status quo. I dug deeper into that until in dawned upon my that I also had a ton of chemistry to finish by the time I got back, plus my head was hurting as my brain quickly skipped the topic of status quo and realized that feminism was the definition of one of the huge status quos Jane broke. My calculator crunched some numbers and my sore hands wrote their answers down upon a piece of paper, while my mind continuously fret yet was eager for the adventure ahead of me - I was living through history and getting a unique perspective on it; I was a Muslim teenage girl (people who were seen as suspicious yet innocent because of age) living through a rare event in Boston which terrorized people across the country.


The rest of that Thursday was bustling, getting off a flight, meeting counselors, meeting my room mates, and the kids in my day group. You may be asking yourself, "What does this have to do with the mashup?" Well, this trip gave me new viewpoints and perspectives in my own life and taught me more about myself, which I found to reflect into my mashup. Throughout the trip, due to a lockdown and packed schedules I was not able to touch my book again until the flight back in which I was more focused on studying for a few tests I would have to make up the next day. Monday night was when I was able to revisit the topic with a fresh mind and reinvigorated perspective.

For the longest time I was focused on the whole individualism and status quo perspective, which I decided I would relate back to feminism. And I realized I was spending way too much time on the topic, and I still needed to get the project done. I began fishing out some quotes which fit this vague topic, and realized that I must once more change my topic again. I personally felt that the status quo Jane was going the most against wasn't the expectation of a female with a vacuum cleaner in one hand and a sandwich in another. No, it was a class expectation. throughout the book there seemed to be a clear distinction in how the poor acted and how the rich acted. From this my mind jumped to the topic of love because of a TED video by Helen Fisher on reptilian love. It explained how reptilian love existed and that love most often occurred between people of similar class and race. The love affair between Jane and Mr. Rochester in the book was not based on social/economic status and rather it was purely love, and that is what got me thinking.


I then began to question myself, "What role does feminism have in love?" if it is all in terms of equality for the sexes, how does that change relationships and "love" in general? This led me back to the status quo idea of how feminism breaks the status quo of relationships in the 1840s which led me to the poem Bonsai Tree which we read in English class. The following is a list of a few connections I created with the poem and the book.
     -Jane is expected to be neat and trimmed, that's why she's sent to Lowood
     - Helen Burns is being picked on for her inefficiencies
     - Mrs. Reed asks for general/un-established behaviors and polies within her home
     - Rochester is attempting to speak to Jane as an equal


My topic once more changed again as my mind quickly grasped the notion after re-reading a few passages that it wasn't about love at all! Bronte was trying to get across the set of informal yet enforced "rules of society" and a girl who didn't exactly defy them yet was breaking them. I was back to status quo.


People within the book were expected to stick to the norm of their class, but in King Lear by William Shakespeare, a "Wheel of fortune" was discussed in which the status quo revolutionizes and norms can change. In Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, the status quo for the Congolese was that they were "Savages", and in Orlando by Virginia Woolf, Orlando was expected to stick to the norm of her sex. Plato's Cave Allegory helped to put it all into perspective by showing how these social norms established by society bound and chain individual till their death.


But I decided in the end to stick with individualism. I realized that contrary to what I had believed before, individualism was necessary to break the status quo: By staying true to yourself and withholding your morals and persevering, one can break the status quo and social norms, and that is exactly what Jane did. This idea of perseverance breaking the status quo was highly linked back to my trip. My counselor had talked of how he had been bullied in school for being dubbed as "stupid" but he stayed up all night studying for tests and persevered through their taunting and went to Columbia University. The norms people had set up for him were broken through his act of perseverance which was similar to Jane's.


The movie, Forrest Gump reminded me of this topic as he said, "Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're gonna get." No one chooses to be born into their norm, but it is a choice if you want to get out of it or not.


The compiling and synthesizing for me were fairly easy in comparison to the hunt for a topic. While searching for topics I had viewed a variety of sources and my mind was already beginning to see how to piece them together. I remember Jane talking about how the face of your loved one seems to be beautiful even if it is not, and related it back to how King Lear said that his eyes had seemed to see things that weren't real. How love an be a lie but yet you struggle through with it. Perseverance marks the beginning and the ending of every journey.


I've realized over time that my brain is very indecisive when it comes time to make a decision, it is not very impulsive but it is logical. This surprises me because when it comes to other things such as shopping, I am quick to say no so I can save money. I like to list the pros and cons of each idea and imagining future situations before pulling through with them. Though it took a lot of time I realized that it was for the better, it allowed me to chose the best possible topic for myself.

What I like about my thinking though is that my brain is quick to make connections, and someone once told me that all learning is, is your brain making connections to everything around you and within you. these connections allowed me to infuse my trip into the mashup , as well as my world views and personal experiences as I've said before.

Next time I do a project like this I wish I had more time to work on it (after I returned I became very sick so my thoughts were a bit hazy), and to perfect and polish my mashup. Also having another person to work with would be nice so as to get as many perspectives in on the topic as the limits possibly allowed to allow myself to learn better as well as completely fulfill the topic. But all in all I learned more about the topic and the abilities of the human mind so I feel quite accomplished.

Metacognition: Drummers to Party Poopers

Sitting down at a blank white table I mentally drew out different scenes upon it: A woman riding a boat alone, a picture frozen in time from the depths of my memory, a young boy staring at his ice cream transforming into slithering, silky milk..... They continued, playing out upon the table, until they could play no more. One by one, I disposed of each idea until one remained, which seemed to play out in an intriguing outline of a story (This entire process takes around an hour to finish).

The story was based upon a man I had met, interesting, kind, and regretful. I came upon him in a cafeteria at a summer camp at Northwestern in 2011. He was called "Dan the Juice Man", the reason for this was based upon the fact that he was up from 6 am to 10 pm with only a two hour break, creating fresh juice and serving it with his genuinely relaxed West Indies complexion. My friends and I made a point of saving up money everyday in tips for Dan, and in the last week he sat down and told us he was in the process of sending all the money he had collected from us back to the rest of his family in Jamaica. He regretted not being able to go to school and finish his education, and he had said he was homeless and living on the streets for two years before he was able to get this job. He told us, "You four are extremely lucky and should thank God that you get education. Keep learning and comeback and teach me."

I have never forgotten those words and have been grateful ever since, but it got me thinking into creating a scene on his back story when he was living on the streets. It's a story that is unfortunately common among youth and is idolized in modern hip-hop and rap culture. Druggies (though I doubted this was Dan's story) at home are sent on the street by their parents (kicked off the street after too many offenses and jail), from there it just keeps going downhill, making their drug problem worse. A few days later I was nodding my head and tapping my feet to the beat of some extremely talented drummers. It hit me and the blank table transformed itself into a scene. A kid gets kicked out of home and school for a drug problem, on the streets goes through an experience that transforms him and ends up a reformed drummer about to get a job (like Dan). The climax though would be when his siblings and parents are ready to accept him home.

Here was the problem. I loved the story, it was original, intriguing, and awesome, but I had no connection to the characters. I tried to feel what the characters were feeling, really tried. I took the feeling of dejection and regret, but could not find anything as momentous as what had happened there. I looked back and realized a flaw with my thinking. My story was dead, emotionless and begging to be killed. What could I relate to? I hit the scratchpad again.

This time the idea hit me spontaneously while watching Project X for the second time. It was playing on T.V.  I sat once again to finish trying to save my dying story. But I had to tell myself it had died and needed to rekindle a new life. My ten year old sister bounded into my room while I was working on my new story. Refer to my previous blog post in which I stated that the best things in life are often unexpected. I began writing a story about a house party held by a boy named, Jimmy (based off of me) during a weekend that his parents weren't home. He had a younger sister, Lauren. She woke up within the party scenario, and her reactions from that. this was a thought experiment for myself. How would an eight year old react to the scenes that she saw at a teenage party?

This story was fun to write unlike my dull seeming story about a drummer boy. Though it had taken five hours to come up with, write and revise, it was all worth it. I was proud of this story.

I wish that it didn't take so long for me to create these ideas for my story, but each person's brain works at their own pace. I found that I could not be content, or happy with a story that I could not relate to. As my English teacher stated at the beginning of the year, "Learning is all about making connections."

I was connecting to my characters and learning from them as I progressed with my story, and I learned the true extent of my ability. My brain was better at forming scenes as compared to dialogue I learned, and I needed to improve on it. My descriptions were superb and I just needed to work on forming my idea better by organizing it and cleaning up unnecessary detail.

Learn through yourself through emotion, connect to what you can, and your mind will be more intrigued.

Change of Mind: The best things are unexpected

It's been long said as a motto for children as well as adults, "The more you put in the more you get out." Personally to me this has always meant that if I put in a lot of hard work, the rewards will be truly the best things I could ever imagine. Not to say that this is no longer true, but sometimes the best things really just depend on factors that you cannot control or expect. I mean think about it. How often, when you come home with a report card with all A's do you say "This is the best day of my life."? I know I would say that if that would happen to me. But when you look back was it truly those moments that you had personally built up to achieve that were the best, or things that were just plain old unexpected?

In English class we read the book Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad in which a man goes to the Congo only to discover the opposite of what he had anticipated. He went there thinking it was going to be an adventurous and heoic trip for Europe and returned with images of savegery and death within his head. That experience changed him forever. Though it may not have made him a happier person it sure made him more knowledgeable. For him he had worked his way up via help from his aunt and others to leave on his trip to discover the Congo, tame the savages, and become a respectable man. Rather, he learned something else, and that became his greatest takeaway from his trip as opposed to the attention he tecieved when he returned.

Once was an Irish film we saw in English class in which we realized that love is unexpected. It is not solely caused by two people "Trying to make it work" as young modern society has been led to believe. Rather, love is spontameous thoroughly imperfect, and the mjority of the time takes no heed of your expectations and situation. We saw that the man fell in love with the woman even though she was married and he had a major heart break from before. We also see him able to let her go and her doing what's best for her family. We see that love is great, and bring smiles and memories with it, yet it is unexpected and you have no control over it.

By combining these two ideas from both of these areas, I have been led to believe that the best things in life are unexpected. It may sound like a cliche but let's look at it through another light.

What does best mean? Does it mean the greatest, or most memorable? Or does it simple mean the best of anything you could ask for? Is best itself an unexpected term which.....All of these are valid. But let me give you my story of realization.

I always grew up with the consequentialist "You reap what you sow" perspective on things, and though this still exists, I wonder if things just happen for a reason of unexpectedness. Watching this movie and reading this book made me want to do a quick evaluation of my life to test if whether or not it was true that the best things are unexpected. And this is what I came up with:
1.) My best friends are unexpected treasures
2.) Best memories (crazy things, moments of inspiration) were unexpected
3.) Surprise encounters unexpected
4.) African journalism unexpected
And the list could go on and on and on. I began to challenge my own thoughts about best things being
unexpected thinking will my hard headed brain that everything is expected and not percieved yada yada.

As I thought why the best things are unexpected I came to the conclusion that it was simply because they are "Best things". They are what make us happy, sad, and fill our head with random figments when we go to bed. They are things that are inexplainable to ourselves. And if their process cannot be explained either because it is spontaneous, then we can simply just accept it as "the best" because we can't fully comprehend these portions of our lives.

No longer am I a cynical pessimist about best things being unexpected. Because as I look back, I realize that  the majority of moments that made me smile, the people that I have met in my life, and the experiences I have had that still make me reflect to this day were unexpected. And I would neve want to change that.

360 Degrees: What should we do with Africa?

The idea of looking at this problem from all points of views came to me this morning as I was furiously typing a comment (I would never actually end up posting as usual). Sorry for a few grammar  errors in the screenshot below, it was five in the morning.

As you can tell, I was having some fun negating her and falsifying her statement that "The Whites Did It On Their Own", but I could understand the logic and reasoning behind why she thought that. The fact is that you cannot clearly argue with someone unless you thoroughly know what they think about the topic (you must stay in their frame of mind as well). To truly come up with the implementation of ideas and plans, we must understand the dimensions of all arguments and ideas, so as to choose the best one(s). In class we just recently finished the book, Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, as well as finished learning the history of African imperialism. But as we all know, the age of imperialism and colonization left devastating effects through out the continent.

Some of the aftermath includes nations that are now in constant zones of violence (Darfur, Democratic Republic of Congo, etc.) due to the implementation of the "blood diamond" trade, the apartheid, making the African soldiers subject themselves to foreign rulers lest they wanted to end up like the people they were forced to cut the hands off of. The violence we see today depicted in popular movies and more are due to the 19th century Europeans, who in their "Scramble for Africa" clumped together various tribe groups. (It's almost as if we one day decided to clump The U.K, France, Germany, and Italy into one country today, imagine the problems that would create.

Yet the Europeans also brought modern technology to Africa and began integrating it with the rest of the developed world.

These are facts most people won't deny. The problem is, what do we do now about places that due to violence have not been able to achieve development? Whose governments are still unstable and whose economies are rickety? Whose people are still oppressed? What do we do?

There are generally three points of view on this issue as I've observed: The, "It's not my problem" attitude (as seen above), the "Let's just give more charity!!", and the "Lets teach them how to do things our way/assets and deficiencies" school of thought. And yes, sometimes these thoughts may blend in and mix with each other. In this blog post I'm going to conduct a thought experiment and imagine myself in each of these persons thought positions. Note that they will be analytical and will cover each main point

The "It's not my problem attitude":
Usually this is due to the idea that the Africans should learn how to "Help themselves" and become independent through that. Many people believe that this is the only way that they can repair themselves. Information used to back this up includes examples of other civilizations which built themselves up (as seen above). Many people refer back to the old empires of Sub-Saharan Africa such as those in Mozambique in which they built themselves up out of a warring period which had lasted for years. It was an extremely stable and long lasting empire: Until it was ruined by outside influences. Once they are stable, they will be unstoppable and smarter in everything they do (whether in trade, government, etc.) My only problem with this is that there will be more lives and generations that will suffer due to this until they get their acts together. Besides, the modern and early modern/renaissance ages of Europe were only possible due to  globalization in the form of the Crusades in which the Islamic Empires relayed information and knowledge from the past and from the east to the north west.  They say that we have given too much aid as well. Which makes sense, how will people of another country become independent if they continuously survive off the charity of other countries?


The "Let's Just Give More Charity" attitude:
My world history teacher, Mr. Williams once told us that "American's have big hearts, but they're just really lazy". this might be the point with the rest of the world. I've observed from my surroundings that whenever people talk of Africa it's often in terms of charity work. "We should send more clothes to Africa", "We should send more food to Africa", etc. The first flaw I'd like to point out in this is the fact that AFRICA IS A CONTINENT. Please refer specifically to where you want to send your stuff. Giving charity is very thoughtful and well wished indeed, but as mentioned before in the previous paragraph, how will they become independent if people are continuously relying on stuff from other countries? That just depletes their economies and lives! This attitude generally stems from the fact that people consider Africa just to be a poor place with starving children dying of malnutrition. Not to say that this is false but for the most part, that's not all that "Africa" is. In general it's people reaching out to help, but in my opinion: it's not in the right way.

Assets vs. Deficiencies attitude:
Assets vs. Deficiencies is probably the thought group that I support the most solely due to the fact that it makes the most sense to me. The idea behind it is that foreign assistance is needed, but not in the form of charity. It's pretty much formulated around the idea of: "If you feed a man a fish he will eat for a day. If you teach a man to fish, he will eat for a lifetime." If you teach them to have sustainable economic systems (as opposed to the raggedly broken fragmentation it is at now due to colonization, etc.) and rather than leaving them to themselves, help them find the right way. You can slowly help them become independent.

Charity organizations such as Heifer International have reformed themselves to do exactly this. They give pregnant animals (most notably cows) to rural areas in need of money, and teach them farming techniques and business, etc. This allows the people they are helping to have jurisdiction over what they want to do and  helps them grow as a business, as a farm, or even in the market place.

So now that you've heard all sides of this issue, what do you support and why?