Group work

        We were asked to work together for a common goal and work as a group. Many times teachers were like to put students into group to perform various projects and tasks. I think group work is sometimes a lot better than working just by myself. With group work, depends on what type of people you are working with, you can learn more from each other and enhance cooperation and social skills. In most of my group project, my group basically is pretty fair that we have peaceful discussion and each of us has equal amount of work and contribution to the project. Although sometimes I may contribute less or more depend on what type of people I’m working with, I found group work pretty interesting and cool. Sometime through group work, I can meet new people and get to know people better. In life, everything is group work. It is impossible for one to complete an incredible task just by oneself. Only through discussion and sharing of information can people achieve something great. Group work allows me to learn and take responsibility that in order for a job to be done, you have to finish things on time and cooperate with each other to arrange meeting time and other things. 

Language Use

How are new words created? Well most words are created through combination of words such as the common slang in junior PAS community “Bromance” which is the combination of brother and romance. It basically means friendship between brothers, nothing homosexual is involved in this (I hope). Anyway, when new words that are creative and happen to fit into a culture well, the word will stay and become popular which eventually become real words in the future. I guess this is how new languages are created. In the old days, people have no fixed grammar or syntax usage due to the lack of written record. As technology and communication improved, people started to put down their speech with alphabets or character that enable speeches to pass down from generation to generation. When people have slightly different accent for the same word, the way people spell it will become different and eventually theses words become separate and contain different meaning that is suitable for each different culture. Words are also created when people tried to simplify words, in now days due to text messages. We created words such as LOL, ROFL and other words that is basically an acronym for a phrase. However, as time move on with more people recognizing and acknowledging the meaning of these so call symbols, soon they will also become words and be put in a dictionary. 

Independent Reading Project Reflection

From the independent reading project, I learned a new book called the catcher in the rye. At first, I wasn’t really motivated to read the book because I thought I could have more than a month to read it. However, as the deadline for the project approached, I got very motivated to finish reading the whole book on time within less than 6 hours and manage to get my project on time. In this project, I did a 3D model of a scene in the book, or I will say it’s a diorama. Originally I was planning to do three scenes, but I was kind of procrastinating for the project, so in the end I only get 1 scene done. But I will say I did a pretty good job with the scene that it includes lots of details and it’s large enough for people to appreciate a scene in the book. I found this type of project to be fun and creative. It allows me to make connection of the book to other text, self or the world. It allows me to further explore the detail of the book to further understand the theme and the personality of a character. 

Archetype

According to the Merriam Webster dictionary, the word archetype means the original pattern or model of which all things of the same type are representations or copies. It can also mean the perfect example. For example, Superman is an example of an archetypical character that represents justice, truth and wisdom. Superman is some typical romantic heroes that save the day and defeat the villain. According to Carl Jung, in order to achieve mental health, one needs t realized our own archetype and make up stories with them in it. For example, in the movie Star Wars, the story is full of archetype. Luke skywalker represents owns own idealized self that we went through adventures in life. The archetype of an evil man is Darth Vader, who in the end is actually a reflection of oneself. An archetype of a mentor or a helper in life is Obewan Kenobe, who help Luke, the self, to achieve own ultimate goals. To make people an archetype, it has to be a model or a typical model of a certain thing. In literature, it often include archetype like the innocent self, evil opposition who gives you the conflict, a helper who give you advices and help you overcome your difficulty, and the ultimate goal of winning back and earning someone who loves them. 

Contemporary

 Throughout the year, we have looked at several literary movements in American Literature class. We have witness the Rationalism period. This is the time when literature contained element that believed that god created the universe and that people arrive truths by using reason instead of feeling. They believe strongly in religion that everything is a reflection of god and that we are ultimately predetermined in our fate since we are born and we work in this word seemly to redeem our sin. Moving on, we then have the Romanticism. This is the period where people started to move away from reason and believe that intuition and feeling valued over reason. Romantic heroes were created during this time and imaginative stories were created. However, as Civil war started, Americans finally realized the violence of war and were brought back to reality. In the Realist movement, people stopped to idealize the world; instead they focus on observing and characterized ordinary events and daily life, trying to portray life as realistic as possible. Then we came to the First World War where we move on to Modernism. In Modernism, artists and writers begin to look and explore the word with a different and unique perspective. In the contemporary, or post-modern, movement, we are willing to look back at the past and use them fearlessly to include culture diversity and all multiple meaning. 

Reflect on Your project

I did a project on the Handmaid’s Tale with Judy and Alyson. When I heard that instead of writing an essay for Handmaid’s tale, we were doing a group project, I felt relieved that I wouldn’t have to type essay again. During the first group discussion, Judy came up with an excellent idea by making a 3D display of the project instead of a conventional 2D poster. We decided to use three shoeboxes with each of the boxes to represent a category of connection including text to text, text to self and text to world. In each of the shoeboxes, we will place cards each with example and a picture of our connection. Each one of us will come up with an example for each category so it will be fair that neither one of us will have to do a harder category of connections. I feel lucky to have Alyson and Judy on the team, who stay till 2 in the morning in school making the poster. We work peacefully and cooperate well all the time. Although we have some sort of schedule problem with the meeting time, mostly due to me, we are able to get the project done on time. Great job everyone! 

A Horror Story?

Is “A Rose for Emily” a horror story? Yes I will definitely say it’s a horror story. Unexpected and horrific things happen at the end of the story. This type of horror story is often called a Gothic horror which combines elements of both horror and romance. This type of horror story is somewhat different from the horror movies of the modern error. Many horror movies or novels focus on supernatural event such as aliens or monster coming out of a corner of dark gloomy rooms. Horror movies often include violence and revolting scene such as blood spilled all over the place in a room or crazy monster that screams and have blood all over its teeth. In horror movies, with the story and the abnormal setting enables the audience to know ahead of time that something terrible is going to happen. As in “A Rose for Emily”, readers don’t really have a sense of fear as the only thing we know is that poor Miss Emily is overly protected by his father and has a crushed on Homer Barron, a Yankee whom the southerner hate. Puzzles pieces were slowly shown to us as we progress through the story such as Homer Barron never ever came out of the house again and the strange smell that lasted for week from Miss Emily’s house. The shocking ending is the final kicker that truly makes this story a horrific one to read.