Going into my first semester of college ever, I was super nervous and didn’t know how I would survive. I thought I would be late all the time because I'm pretty notorious for being late for everything, but I managed to make it to class every week at least 10 minutes early and that's impressive for me. Being in ENG 100 made my first semester a little easier to get by and definitely gave me the tips I need for future classes. I can honestly say I learned more in ENG 100 than in high school. I learned what TPS (Topic, Position, and Support) is when writing a paper along with a Source Sandwich (don’t forget to introduce, quotation and explain kids). I also learned what it’s like to work together and be a team. I met amazing people and if it weren't for my professor, I don’t know that I would be talking to any of them. Creating a website and making it so my personality shows through my blog post was something I really enjoyed the most. I'm not a fan being assigned to read anything, I tend to not even care and just hope for the best. Although that was high school Jen. 22-year-old Jen enjoyed almost every article and short story we had to write a blog post on. My Name is Margaret, What You Don't Know, and Hills Like White Elephants really grabbed my attention when going more into the story and evaluating what the story is actually trying to represent. Had I been in high school, these blog post would be bull shitted the whole way through. My professor really gave me a different perspective on how to look at a story, paper, or article and really give it a good looking into to feel the author's purpose. Writing processes are a big deal in our class, having free write and reading about different processes that several authors have, I took all of that "advice" and tried to put it in affect with how I wrote and revised my papers and blog posts. According to Professor Mangini, you can write any paper "sexy". He's taught me some of the best "ice breakers" that I hope one day I can use with my kids when I become a teacher. I walked into this class with really low confidence that I would be like I was in high school, thankfully my class mates were awesome, my professor is the man, and some days were a little more difficult than others trying to make it through. I couldn’t be more proud of myself that I didn’t cave and drop out because things got a little rocky. I stayed. I couldn’t be more ready to take on the rest of my college career.
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This week's reading "Hills Like White Elephants" by Ernest Hemingway, it opens on a scene of a couple at a train station in Barcelona, Spain. Just from reading the short story, the couple is agitated at one another for whatever reason, anything each other says to one another becomes another bickering argument between the two. If I had anything to say about this week's short story, it was definitely hard giving an opinion when I had no idea what exactly was going on.
Does she stay in her relationship with the man? It doesn’t sound like the woman was ever really going to leave him, they talk about being happy again and living their lives as if everything was okay. They honestly sound like a bickering couple arguing about something from the night before and it carried over into the next day, and anything that’s said to one another just becomes that little annoying argument that adds on to whatever the dilemma is for the couple. What does me drive me crazy and what made this a little difficult to answer is I cannot put two and two together to finding out what it is they are arguing about. She is getting an operation and this operation is going to make the couple okay again. Imagine probably having the answer sitting right in front of your face and I probably look incredibly stupid. When have you made an important choice to stay in a relationship or leave a relationship OR stay or leave a difficult situation? The difficult situation that I made the stupid decision to leave is when I was a freshman in high school, I was a couple months fresh (ha ha). Made the soccer team and befriended a girl who became a huge factor of how I eventually became the person I am today. We were on the soccer team together, had I believe one or two classes together and eventually became best friends. As young and dumb high schoolers, we drank in the woods around a fire, it was still warm out and we were embracing every moment we had left wearing sandals. Our group had gotten a bottle of watermelon vodka in which we were all passing around. As the night went on, we'd all hit our limit and my friend had a one sip more. She became unresponsive and her body was like Jell-O. The guys had carried her back to our one friend's house and laid her down, it was clear she had alcohol poisoning. I was scared for her and I was also scared about getting in trouble, in my 14-15 year old brain, she was taken care of, the ambulance was coming and the guys seemed to have things under control. I ended up going home that night and leaving her instead of being a friend and staying with her and owning up to getting in trouble. Feeling absolutely terrible about my decision, I called my mom while she was at work and told her about the events that had happened the night before, my friend was going to be fine but she was told about how I handled the situation. I was grounded for about two months after that. My friend and I didn’t talk for some time. We still played soccer together, and we spoke to each other when it seemed necessary. I can't tell you how long it actually was that we didn’t speak but it was a good amount of time. I think we started to finally talk again the end of our sophomore year, and had rekindled a little bit more our junior year and finally became close again our senior year. After years of a growing friendship, I can't imagine my life without her and after that one night still haunting me every now and again, I'm happy she forgave me and we've been best friends for almost 10 years now. In this week's assignment we had to listen to a podcast by LuLu Wang called "What You Don't Know". I'm not to sure how I felt about this week's podcast, but I definitely got insight on how other cultures handle their family dynamics. Their traditions and their way of doing things, I must say first the 5 minutes of this podcast, I was a little annoyed, I thought how anyone could do that to a loved one. Further on into the story, I understood a little bit more and know that everyone has their own ways of doing things.
Did you agree with the family's choice to deceive Wang's grandmother? It was tough to say at first, I lost my grandmother in August of 2016 to lung cancer. She was given till Christmas to live and passed away 6 weeks after diagnosis. I still remember my mom sitting me down and telling the awful news and telling me that Nan did not want treatments. It broke my heart and I was so angry at her. It took me a week or two to understand my Nan's perspective. I believed that Lulu's grandmother should've known in the first place because she had right to know what was going on with her body and how to take care of it, instead of getting lied to by her family. Hosting a wedding early to have everyone together would've been more sentimental and special if Nai Nai knew her situation instead of seeing her grandson cry waterfalls at his wedding and not because he just gotten married. I would want to spend as much time as I could with my loved one and not have to pretend everything was normal, so no, I did not agree at first, but I do respect that other cultures do things differently. When have you made an important choice to tell someone a difficult truth or you made an important choice to tell a lie that had a major impact on you and/or someone else? A friend of mine, we'll call her Chelsea, had left for bootcamp and she had a boyfriend that I wasn’t fond of, pretty much since they started dating. He was controlling and super shady all the time which throws up some huge red flags for me. I mentioned to her several times that I think he might not be a good guy. Of course, she tried to reassure me that he was truly a nice guy and to give him a chance. He had cheated on her before and she was trying to give him the benefit of the doubt that he had "changed". A week after of Chelsea being gone, TRAINING to defend our country, Mitchell cheated on Chelsea again. A couple friends called me super early in the morning to tell me about what happened at the party the night before. I was clearly furious but had to be smart about how to go about the current situation. Chelsea had no communication to the world beings all technology was taken from her the moment she landed for her training. She looked like a fool without knowing she looked like one. Words were exchanged between Mitchell and I cause quite frankly, it was a long time coming. After a lot of thinking, I decided to wait till I knew Chelsea would be able to handle the information and not get off track. My one friend and I told about two weeks before she graduated. She was heartbroken for about 5 minutes and then called Mitchell "just to tell that he was single and he's a pig". I withheld information for almost seven and a half weeks and it totally killed me. In the reading, My Name is Margaret by: Maya Angelou, she speaks of a time in the 1920's where African Americans were servants to the rich. The reading is about young Maya at 10 years old and is a servant to high class white woman, Mrs. Cullinan. Young Maya is just starting her job with Mrs. Cullinan and doesn’t quite understand much yet about the world around her, but as she learns, she gets a feeling not everything is what it seems.
Did you agree with Margaret's choice to break the casserole dish and two green glass cups? I agree with Margaret on shattering the dish and breaking the glasses. Being a young girl in that day and age, the courage she had built to make a point that she was worth more and she deserved to be called by her given name is truly inspiring and I believe more women should understand self-worth no matter who or what the situation may be. This extraordinary young lady also left through the front door when the respectful door was the back door for servants back in the day. She makes a bold statement going through the front door which says to me "I'm just like everyone else, my skin is just a different color." She challenged the status quo, instead of following the rules. She fought for her right to party and decided to share her story with the rest of the world. When have you made an important choice to either resist or not resist oppression, challenge the status quo, or refuse to obey an authority figure? I had a friend for three and a half years, she was super friendly in the beginning and about after a year or so our friendship became toxic. She was a super controlling friend and always seemed to feed off putting me down, making me second guess myself, started to get angry when I didn’t always invite her places, always had to put me down to make her feel better about herself and always one up-ed me, almost like she was nervous that I was going to be better than her, just very manipulative. It got to the point I had only her as a friend and no life outside of our friendship. In every friendship, there is going to be arguments and disagreements, but the way our friendship was, it was always one sided. She would tell you how a friend should be but wouldn’t live up to her own expectations and being a friend in return. Thinking about it now, it just makes me laugh, over the summer I finally had enough of her and put my foot down. I had many big positive changes in my life getting ready to happen and the last thing I needed was to be told I was a "shitty friend", which I had been called by this same girl on several occasions, knowing that I would anything for any of my friends if they called me. If I didn’t or couldn’t do something or make it somewhere, the first thing I would be called was a "shitty friend." Having the strength and ability to completely remove someone, who not only felt like a sister to me but just wasn’t going to make the cut in my new year, was the hardest but best decision I made for myself. I am definitely back to my old super happy and positive self and I couldn’t be more relieved. Everything I wanted to do, that would become a battle when we were friends, I'm finally doing with the right support system instead of just someone who made me think I couldn’t do it. |