Reflective Essay on my First Quarter Blog Posts

     Over the course of the first quarter, my writing has drastically improved due to the weekly blog posts. I get my blog post ideas from many different sources. My life is full of inspiration for them. During the first quarter, I was assigned to post to my blog two times a week. At least one post a week had to be a response post which was described as “Grab a thought provoking quote from another student's blog and respond. “ This was a fun thing to do because it gave students a chance to give their thoughts on another students work. The next option was to do a free-write, which was simply writing about anything to get responses from other students and to let out ideas.

    My writing has improved (in my opinion) from some of the first posts to some of the later posts. In the beginning, my sentence structure wasn't varied, I didn't support any of my facts, and most importantly my flow made the posts hard to follow and understand. In my Con Abortion Statement, I didn't use strong language so my debate was unsuccessful and we didn't excel.

“Abortion is eroding America’s potential for future heroes, great presidents, scientists, athletes, and other occupations necessary for the nation’s success.What if some of the mothers of great leaders of America got aborted?”

    In this excerpt i don't think I made strong arguments against abortion, this was topic for the debate. I could improve this writing by added more supported details and using more compelling details.

    In one of my posts, I responded to an academic essay, titled Sex, Drugs, Disasters, and the Extinction of the Dinosaurs by Stephen Jay Gould. It was about theories of the possible cause for the extinction of dinosaurs. I continued to write about how theories need to be backed up. I think this shows great improvement from my last post.

      “It is extremely important to have good evidence when doing a science report or supporting a hypothesis. If there isn’t any facts supporting the data in a theory, then is simply an idea that has no merit. Advertisers get away with “faking” evidence all the time in infomercials. This is just like a theory that is not supported.”

    This shows much improvement because I used more advanced language and it was much more interesting to read. I think I didn't do as well in the first one because i wasn't as interested in the subject. I think the science of dinosaurs in much more interesting that arguing with my fellow classmates on a topic I don't necessarily agree with. Another reason I improved from the last post was I had a lot of practice writing because I had to do at least two blog posts a week. I think that getting feedback also helps me improve. The two types of feedback that help me the most are peer feedback and self feedback. Peer feedback gives me ideas on how to write better for my peers. Self feedback lets me reflect on my piece and review how I can improve and do better.

    The inspiration for blog posts comes from many different things in my life including: sports events, family, other students posts, and prompts from the summer reader. In the first quarter,  I think I was most inspired by other students in the response posts. I liked to see their views on popular topics and some random stuff. One of the most random and thought provoking posts I responded to was The Pleasure of A Grocery Store  by Cristian Cortez. In this post, he explained the wonder of supermarket storms. This post reminded me of a time when I was younger and I shared the same fascination of “supermarket storms”.

    “‘The way people react to it is all so fun to see. little kids, and even some adults (don't be shy) all put there hand in the water for what ever reason. It is something that you should experience any time during your life.’

    I can remember when I didn't want to get dragged to the store with my mom, but she insisted. One of the points she used to persuade me was “You can see the veggie rain.” With that argument i could never refuse going to the store. As Cristian mentioned in his post, it was always exciting to here the mock thunder from all the way across the store and then running to it.”

    As I mentioned earlier, It is fun to see how my ideas relate to the ideas of my peers. This makes me relate more to my friends at ASTI and gives us a lot of new topic to chat about. Blog posts have helped me meet many more people at ASTI.

    I also had a similar experience with Bianca’s Post. In which she connects bullying from childhood to adults and even between politicians. I responded to her post here.

     “From my point of view, this type of bullying happens when with the two California Governor candidates, Meg Whitman and Jerry Brown compete against each other through the media. Meg Whitman uses numerous and repetitive commercials to make citizens believe that Jerry Brown will lead California to destruction, while she will lead it to success. Whitman uses an underhanded way to make herself look better by making her opponent look worse. Like the girls who turned others against one girl, yet another question arises: If she has time to shoot all these commercials, why not put that energy into planning how to give teachers back their jobs.”

    I responded by finding that I had the same feelings, in fact I made a similar post at the same time. I like to know that someone has the same thoughts as me. Bianca put into words what I had been thinking all the time. This really inspired me to write a blog post and response.

My two main goals for the next quarter include not procrastinating and coming up with complete ideas. I think that I can refrain from procrastinating by brainstorming ideas. If I brainstorm ideas in advance, then I will have arsenal to use when I am stuck for ideas. This will help me not be stuck on Friday nights at 11:59. Coming up with complete ideas is an important thing for me because when I neglect to do that my blog posts do not make sense. Completing ideas can be achieved by brainstorming, just like my other goal of not procrastinating.

Of Mice and Men Central Conflict

Of Mice and Men is a Novella by John Steinbeck that was published in 1939. Lennie and George work bucking barley and travel from place to place getting monthly stakes. Their dream is to have their own farm, where the mentally deficient Lennie, can tend all of the rabbits. Thesis: The central conflict in Of Mice and Men is character versus self. The character is Lennie, he is to dependent on George and he cant learn to be independent.

The first conflict that comes to Lennie is character versus society. This conflict comes up when George is telling Slim why they had to leave their previous town, Weed. In weed, Lennie like a girl’s dress, so he “petted” it and he wouldn't let go and George has to forcibly make him let go.

“By that time, Lennie’s so scare all he can think to do is hold on. So i have to sock him in the head with a fence picket to make him let go.”

“The guys in weed set a party out to lynch Lennie. So we sat out in an irrigation ditch all day.”(42)

This quote shows that Lennie is not mentally able to think for himself in stressful situations such as described in the quote. If George was not always there to chaperon or babysit Lennie, then Lennie would have died long before he found George because Lennie has no common sense and he cant control his own strength. George made Lennie let go of the dress by causing him pain that would have severely injured a normal person, but to Lennie it was just enough distraction to let go of the dress.

    The second conflict that Lennie encounters is character versus character. The opposing character in this situation is Curley, the ranch  owner’s son. Curley strongly dislikes Lennie because of his size and stupidity. In this quote Curley is beating up Lennie and Lennie is begging for help from George.

    “‘George,’ he cried. ‘Make ‘um let me alone George.’(63)

    Before George says anything, Lennie just stands there like a big punching bag.I think Curley picks on Lennie the most because Lennie is the only person not as intelligent as Curley. In the time of the Great Depression, people weren't sensitive to people with mental retardation and people like Curley were not tolerant of people that need special help. This quote shows that Lennie would just stand and die if he didnt get instruction from George in a situation like a fight. This quote also shows that Lennie is extremely dependent to George he can kill somebody so he can fight his own battles, he just cant live on his own with out George.

The third and final conflict is character versus self. This quote is taken right before Lennie’s death and he is hallucinating about Aunt Clara and giant rabbits. The hallucination of Aunt Clara addresses the exact issue of Lennie being to dependent to George.

    “‘Hes been doing nice things for you alla time. When he have a piece of pie, he give you more that half. And if there was any ketchup why he'd give it all to you.’”(101)

    This quote shows that Lennie gets so much from George and in reality, Lennie gives nothing back except a burden on George. George helps Lennie so much, that he sacrifices his own rations. George would even go out of his way to find Lennie’s favorite food, ketchup. This quote shows that Lennie is guilty somewhere deep down. He realizes that George does everything for him and it shows when he has visions. It may have been a made up conversation while Lennie was hallucinating with his conscious or it could have been a negative memory in Lennie’s small mind. I think the more reasonable answer is that Lennie realizes that he is a great burden on George and he feels guilty. I find it surprising that Lennie has the mental capacity to understand a complex feeling such as guilt.

    Of Mice and Men is really about Lennie’s internal conflict with himself, because he is too dependent to George. Mentally challenged people need to be supervised and in the case in Of Mice and Men George constantly has to supervise Lennie or he will do something crazy, like kill someone. I interpret that there needs to be people trained to teach  mentally challenged people and look after them to make sure that they dont do anything wrong or hurt themselves and someone else.

Response to David's Post about bullying

I found this quote on David Su’s Blog about bullying and how it should be stopped.

“Everyone should speak up when someone is in trouble. Students shouldn’t be afraid of the bully at all. i also suggest that teachers and the principle should pay more attention to each student. When using the internet, i suggest staying away from signing up for websites where random people can comment anonymously. When using Facebook or Myspace, make sure that the friends that you approve aren’t strangers.

Building a comfortable education where young adults are happy is important to their educational career. if bullying cannot be stopped, kids will live through their educational career in fear and depression similar to those in the civil rights movement and the girl that committed suicide. i understand that stopping bullying takes a large amount of time and effort. But, as long as everyone puts in some effort, it can be stopped permanently.”

    I think bullying is a big problem in schools today. Bullies make life miserable for their targets and I think it should be stopped. David’s suggestion that teachers and principals should pay attention to each student is a good idea except that at most schools there is not enough people to watch every student. Another one of David’s suggestions is to stay away from anonymous forums because people often troll on them. “In Internet slang, a troll is someone who posts inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum, chat room, or blog, with the primary intent of provoking other users into a desired emotional response or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion.” It is important to set privacy settings on sites such as Facebook or Myspace so not everyone can comment on you pictures or posts.

    Bullying anonymously over the Internet can feel like a shield to bullies but it still really hurts the people that get bullied. If bullies dont see their victim face to face then it doesnt seem real to them. I would assume that most bullying happens online between people that dont even know each other in real life.

Response to Cristian's Post about Supermarket Storms

    On my day off from school, I was browsing Google reader and I came across a quote from Cristian’s blog that reminded me of the excitement of going to the supermarket as a young child.

“You, know world, I really fantasy the Simulated rain and storm at the produce section of every Grocery store. I think it is really awesome. All of a sudden, the flashing LED lights of the produce section flash like a police siren lights, it never ends. Then the simulated sounds of thunder ring through out the grocery store. I really like the fact of having a fake storm in the produce section of a Safeway, etc. The way people react to it is all so fun to see. little kids, and even some adults (don't be shy) all put there hand in the water for what ever reason. It is something that you should experience any time during your life.”

    I can remember when I didn't want to get dragged to the store with my mom, but she insisted. One of the points she used to persuade me was “You can see the veggie rain.” With that argument i could never refuse going to the store. As Cristian mentioned in his post, it was always exciting to here the mock thunder from all the way across the store and then running to it. The GOAL  was to dodge people with carts and carefully maneuver around fruit formations as to to not topple them over.

    Once the younger version of me made it to the wondrous place that was the produce section, I would LOGICALLY  position my self under one of the sprinkler heads so would get the optimal amount of “rain”. When the red light started to flash, I knew i was in for a very light shower with all of the healthy fruits and vegetables. The very fine mist came and refreshed me from the stuffy air of the super market.

    It was very interesting to read about Cristian’s experience with the exciting “store storms” and how i had a similar view on the same topic.