Essays>Term Papers

Wow. It's hard to believe that I just completed my final essay of high school. EVER. Its weird to say that I went from this

to this in a matter of 18 years.

Now that I am finishing my adolescence, I think it times to acknowledge that I will truly miss essays. They were simple, fast, and quite fun. From what Bernardo said, term papers suck, and they he will always miss Preston's essay.

Luckily, through this course I've been able to create fabulous products such as http://minicreasian.weebly.com/ which lead to places like my photos and my videos. One of my favorite videos that touched many peoples heart had to be this one. 

This video had turned out better than I expected, and the satisfication of it touching peoples heart strings has made me all the more passionate about what I do. 

All in all, this course has been one of the best things I have ever chosen for myself to do and I am very glad that I've let the hard work and toil not get the best of me these past few years.

THE END!

Masterpiece

Wow so it's already the end, and I've somewhat procrastinates on this project. But here is the start to  my masterpiece. minicreasian.weebly.com

Melody Monday #21

Please forgive me again, I have yet been delayed on this side project because of priorities in my life that seem to be coming faster than ever. BUT PLEASE DO ENJOY THIS NEXT MELODY. It's a really nice one, and I really want to make a music video or something to it.

Active Reading notes to Act 5

Wow. Is all I can say so far. I also make this personal connection of one of Harry Potter's songs using the witch's conjuring act "Double Trouble" (Video here)

But anyways, so this act shows Lady Macbeth going insane and driving herself to her own death because of guilt, quite similarly to Macbeth himself. Spoiler, Macbeth also dies by being beheaded or maybe "honorably" giving up his position by Macduff. I think it is all quite ironic by when Macbeth says "born by a woman" because everyone is born from a woman unless metaphorically speaking, natural birth is outlandish. This was the final act and summed up and tied up all the loose knots.(More notes soon) 

The Crossroads Between Should and Must

"The two days that are most important in your life are, the day you are born, and the day you find out why". A Mark Twain quote used in the essay The Crossroads Between Should and Must, exemplifies what Elle Luna was trying to convey in her essay about following intuition and reason. After reading the paper, I was left in awe. Finally, the feelings that were at the time deemed unexplainable were eloquently spoken in a way where it all made sense. Just a few months ago, I was very unsure of where I wanted to go to college, what I wanted to do, and what I wanted to major in. For my ENTIRE life I was implanted with dreams of going to Stanford and UCLA (dreams that were shattered on March 27th) and becoming a surgeon or doctor of the brain, you know, go big or go home. But as the time got closer to applying to colleges and choosing a major, the less and less I was sure about what I wanted to do. Going to med school, becoming pre-med, and choosing to click on those biology and chemistry majors was a struggle and in the end, eventually ended up not happening. At one point I even remember I had a different major selected for every college I applied to, the product of being a very indecisive person. I know what I love doing, I know what I am passionate about, I know what I find interesting, and I know what I am good at and what I am not so good at. So how was that supposed to help me with choosing a major? Well it didn't because I am still very lost in the abyss of college majors even though I got into 9 schools under a psychology major. I do enjoy learning about reason, why people do things, and all those gadgets and gizmos, but how does it relate to what I LOVE doing?

With Elle's essay about the should and must roads, I've been led to believe that this could be the doing of my parents influence. Their need of being overbearing and wanting me to be successful has driven me to choose a major/career that fulfills their needs more than it fulfills mine. They want the best for me, but perhaps just don't understand what is best for me. I love the outdoors, I love helping and traveling, I have great people skills, I love to be active, and I could go on. But how can I convert that to their dreams of me becoming a doctor, a lawyer, an engineer? I even fooled myself into believing that I want to go to graduate school after to get a PHD in Psychology and becoming a psychiatrist for PTSD victims, or even joining Doctors Without Borders. Even joining the air force after graduate school became a tantalizing thought for quite awhile. It's awful to know that when someone asks me what I want to do, that these answers will be the first things I say. These thoughts are really only what they want to hear. It's not my genuine self. What I want to be could can be controversial. It could be unorthodox. It could be outlandish. But it could also just be the real me.

So where am I really when it comes to this fork? I can't say I have come upon it often but I do believe that it's occurred at very important moments in my life. The essay is quite truly an art piece of it's own. It integrates what Elle loves, painting and making art, and what she can be good at. This is a must read article for anyone who is on that bubble of becoming who they truly are meant to be in this oyster.

More Macbeth Notes

Act III-
Scene 1:
Why is the attendant all capitalized?
Macbeth is describing banquo in a threat and e wants to kill banquo. This is guilt building up and Macbeth is going off the rails. (Direct characterization) violent and brutal and honorable to murdering Duncan and making people into enemies so he turns into a sociopath. Character development and evolution. This shows him punishing himself. Diseased.
Witches give suggestions not orders.
Convinces them to kill banquo by saying banquo was better than you and not equal and stuff. Says this to murderers.
Scene 2:
Scene 3: banquo dies
Scene 4: "banquos safe" meaning he is dead
Safe= secured. Look back to fair is foul and foul is fair. So like look again at things said. Witches said banquo would be father of kings. Macbeth needed to kill fleance so family relatives don't come back. Banquo's ghost comes. Ghost is in MacBeths head. More about schitzophrania. He is talking to banquo. Lady Macbeth is questioning his mascunality and verbally abusing him.
Scene V:
Heckade guide to witches or adviser
Scolding the three witches for talking to Macbeth, and should be knowing that humans are weak, and that they talked to him in the way that didn't show there full potential of power. Heckade now has to go and sort everything out and manipulate MacBeths perceptions on thing. Macbeth will start acting more like a killer.
Scene IV:

ACTIVE READING NOTES IM SORRY ITS LATE

or am i.

Act I

Scene I:

“Fair is foul, and foul is fair:

Hover through the fog and filthy air.”

Indication of this quote is self-explanatory.

-Setting: so far there are three witches in the desert

Scene II:

“For brave Macbeth--well he deserves that name-“

Talking about Macbeth because the audience needs to understand Macbeth through the perspective of his colleagues.

Scene III:

Macbeth becomes a king!

The vanishing is strange of the witches, which leaves Macbeth wondering why he is king.

King of whatever was over thrown.

Scene IV:

Macbeth seems to have taken all the praise to his head.

Banquo is also another important figure.

Scene V:

Lady Macbeth is going to meet the “king”, she is a dramatic and not very pleased.

Scene VI:

“This castle hath a pleasant seat…”

Something interesting might happen because the setting seems sketchy.

They seem to be waiting for Macbeth.

Scene VII:

Macbeth is talking about assassinating someone.

ACT II

Scene I:

WHAT ABOUT MY MASTERPIECE

Progress... I have put a mild hold on my senior project. Video filming though and enhancing my skill has been prominent. But I really need to start now because we do not have that much time left. My friend Erica and I have started our website and as far as I know it is working well and such. What is funny is I wish I had more time and when I get more time all I want to do is rest and sleep. It's not that I feel like I am not managing my time well, I just really cannot seem to move and am making up for lost sleep. Unlike Macbeth, I have to work between school and sports to make stuff work unlike him who has alot of time on his hands. Anyways, more to come later.

LOVE IS BLIND

Macbeth duties as a husband would be to love Lady Macbeth, and that is exactly what he does. He puts Lady Macbeth on a pedestal and actually comes to her for the news of him becoming a king. Lady Macbeth actually does know that he is going to be a king and manipulates him to do what she wants. The appeal of being a queen is highly liked by Lady Macbeth. So as the audience, we see that Lady Macbeth is a manipulator to Macbeth.

Look At My Brain

Sheesh. I need to really catch up on the posts, I might be in denial but I think I've finally caught the flu of senioritis. Anyways as you can tell, I've slowly been slacking off but really do appreciate these posts we have to create.

My masterpiece... well at the moment I am a bit lost. Dr. Preston has introduced me to a wonderful mentor who creates Matt Damon's films but I cannot seem to find what my original idea was for this project. I know that I wanted to travel, connect classrooms around the world in helping prepare for the AP test and work on my skills of videography and being compassionate. But really, I am lost. Not entirely lost, just a little stray off the path.

Though I hope through this masterpiece, my audience or the world will learn that I am a person, a human being, not trying to just survive or live life but trying to create meaning in places that it was not before. I want to display how I think and the type of person I am. My ambitions and what I want to teach. I want to get people inspired to do well in their community, to stop waiting, and start doing. We always have this common perception that we can do things later or it can wait when really the main obstructor is your mind yourself! 

In Preston's ramble today about the girl who basically described open source learning in a nut shell, I wrote about that exact idea in a journal a month or so ago. I talked about how we shouldn't go to school to learn things that just might be unnecessary but more about things that will help us out in life and help us excel at what we are good at. Once we find that balance of learning and work and finding that passionate thing, we will be able to live a society where most of these "problems" we have can be eliminated. I think something important too is being innovated. If we ever create these schools, we must learn how to take our passions and turn it into a career. When a job becomes something you love and are good at then it is no longer a job, it's a passion.

So this may be a tangent, or it may just answer what this post is supposed to be about. But I hope in the end that you as a reader, has a good general esque idea about what I am on to. Thank you and enjoy your night.

Literature Analysis #5

1.    Briefly summarize the plot of the novel you read according to the elements of plot you've learned in past courses (exposition, inciting incident, etc.).  Explain how the narrative fulfills the author's purpose (based on your well-informed interpretation of same).

Into the wild is not written in a chronological order of events but written in a way where we get to understand Chris as a person and why he did the things he did. Right off the back (even in the summary of the book) it is stated that Chris dies. But how Chris dies and his journey to his final days is what makes the story. In the exposition we are given back ground information about his parents, families, and previous life along with the scene to where he is actually dying or is found dead. The inciting incident would have to be when the readers get to the part of the story (again) where Chris meets Jim Gallien to get a ride to Anchorage. This then leads to the climax of Chris’s adventure of actually living out in the wilderness, to the falling action of how he could have possibly died, and Jon Krakaeur investigating the death. The purpose of this book was to tell a story about a man who had intentions and was naively killed. What happens to be most intriguing about Chris as a character was that he had everything going for him with grades, athletics, and family, yet he decided to get rid of everything?

2. Succinctly describe the theme of the novel. Avoid cliches.

The fact that this book is not biography or novel and more of a non-fiction genre about the life of Chris Mccandless, makes it hard to depict what type of themes are in the novel. A theme I could think of though is to be cautious and knowledgeable about big risks you can take in life. If you jump into an idea very naively you might not get the results you expect. Chris was hoping to live off the land for a month or so, and despite being very intelligent he failed miserably which led to his death.
3. Describe the author's tone. Include a minimum of three excerpts that illustrate your point(s).

Krakauer’s tone throughout the book was understanding and unbiased. He never really took sides on peoples remarks about whether Chris was naïve and idiotic or intellectually curious.

“When Mccandless turned up dead in Alaska… many people concluded that the boy must have been mentally disturbed. The article about McCandless in Outside generated a large volume of mail, and not a few of the letters heaped opprobrium on McCandless- and on me, as well, the author of the story, for glorifying what some thought was a foolish, pointless death.” (Pg. 72)

“I encounter evidence of McCandless’s presence where my vision rests…I feel uncomfortable, as if I were intruding, a voyeur who has slipped into McCandless’s bedroom while he is momentarily away.” (Pg. 178)

“Starvation is not a pleasant way to expire…it would be nice to think McCandless experienced a similar rapture” (pg. 198)

4. Describe a minimum of ten literary elements/techniques you observed that strengthened your understanding of the author's purpose, the text's theme and/or your sense of the tone. For each, please include textual support to help illustrate the point for your readers. (Please include edition and page numbers for easy reference.) 

(1 & 2)“Nor was McCandless endowed with a surfeit of common sense” (Pg. 65) Direct Characterization/ foreshadowing. In this passage that we get this quote from, the reader learns about Chris’s working skills and what type of person he is. This is part of direct characterization. The foreshadowing of this statement is that it correlates to Chris’s naivetés and common sense of surviving off the land. He was very intellectual but just because a person is intellectual doesn’t mean they can adapt and learn in sudden changes in environment.

(3)” Perhaps inevitably, parallels have been drawn between John Waterman and Chris McCandless. Comparison have also been drawn between McCandless and Carl McCunn…” (Pg. 81) Didactic. The use of the comparison of these characters is to try and understand the intentions and journey of Chris McCandless. Krakauer uses these comparisons to also provide another insight of understandment.

(4) “A half century later McCandless sounds eerily like Ruess when he declares in a postcard to Wayne Westerberg that “I’ve decided that I’m going to live this life for some time to come…” (pg 92) Allusion. The frequent allusions used in the book correlate to Chris’s constant of reading a variety of books. He read things from Tolstoy to Thoreau.

(5) “Everett twice etched the name Nemo- Latin for ‘nobody’- into the soft Navajo sandstone” Epitaph (pg. 93) This reference to Everett is used as a way to show the deterioration of a persons mind living in the wilderness. Another fact to understand Chris’s snow bound expedition.

(6) “Reading of these monks, one is moved by their courage, their reckless innocence, and the urgency of their desire. Reading of these monks, one can’t help thinking of Everett Ruess and Chris McCandless” (page 97) Analogy. The journey of Chris McCandless is quite an interesting one because there have been many stories similar, but his has stuck out the most. Using this comparison explores the importance Chris is to Jon.

(7) “… The troopers immediately shifted their search there for the hiker’s next of kin. An all points- bulletin turned up a missing person named McCandless from eastern South Dakota…” Analysis (Pg. 100) This passage was a very long passage describing the process it took to find Chris after getting the missing persons report. The passage went very in depth of how the process went.

(8) “The hardest part… is simply not having him around anymore.” Dialogue (Pg. 104). Even though dialogue is almost in every book and a very beginner term to use, it had a prominent use in this book. Taking into accounts the many people Chris met, Jon was able to get to know the type of guy Chris was.

(9) “He kept track of everything and showed me how to do it…” Indirect characterization. (Pg. 120) Through out the book, the audience was scattered by personal accounts of Chris through other people’s eyes. He was indirectly characterized by his actions like helping people with their jobs, or quitting his job randomly. This helps the audience better understand him.

(10) “Both were perceived to have lacked a requisite humility…” pg. 180. Understatement.

CHARACTERIZATION 
1. Describe two examples of direct characterization and two examples of indirect characterization.  Why does the author use both approaches, and to what end

(i.e., what is your lasting impression of the character as a result)?

Two examples…. I will actually combine this because since this book is a biography type book, there are a lot of direct characterizations from other people. Indirectly, it was his actions of traveling through rigorious and risky situations that we have assumed that Chris is a fearless and adventurous being. He studied well for some potential risky situations, sometimes succeeding, and ultimately in the end doesn’t. Directly, there are way too many examples to include, he was mostly coined as a gentle, loving, and kind intellectual being. I think the author uses both approaches because since Chris is dead, we can’t really ask him directly to understand his point of views and perspectives on certain subjects to understand the person he is. So when asking other people for accounts on him, we get a more genuine and complete answer of who he was by the people he affected.
2. Does the author's syntax and/or diction change when s/he focuses on character?  How?  Example(s)?

 No I don’t really think that the author’s syntax or diction changes when he focuses on the character. I think it changes only when he gives his opinion but besides that, to tell the story Kraukaeur tries to give it from Chris’s point of view.
3. Is the protagonist static or dynamic?  Flat or round?  Explain. Honestly its hard to tell because he’s dead. Jk. But really I think he is a very dynamic character and round character because he adapts very much to every condition he is put in and at the same time impacts every person he meets. He has affected them each differently that they all were shocked that his end came so soon and very young.
4. After reading the book did you come away feeling like you'd met a person or read a character?  Analyze one textual example that illustrates your reaction. 

Yes I did. The way that Krakauer presents Chris, is as if he was a person that you knew. The stories other people would tell about Chris definitely reminds the audience about that one person who was just always innately good and never  did anything to harm anyone.

IS THERE AN EXPERT IN THE HOUSE?

YES THERE ACTUALLY IS.

Dr. Preston was ever so kind to introduce Lesther and I to Matt Damon's Videographer, Michael Rosen. We are very fortunate but I really need to reply back to his email! I need to hone up my skills. 

Also, there are several youtubers such as Devin Graham, Casey Neisat and Mr. Ben Brown that I could contact and show them a profile of my skills. Some of these experts aren't professionals but they know well enough in the field that if they saw my page I think they could get a feel for what I could improve and not.

THIS IS ONLY A TEST

TEST:
Something that measures capabilities.

I believe the test I should be given is one that focuses on my basic skills of videography and how to story tell through videos. On my website with Erica I have a specific tab that has the videos that I want to display or showcase. These videos are what I want my expert to focus on because they show my skills and progress in them. *More to come soon*