Details

I spent about 2 hours Sunday working on my re-written Literary analysis
I spent 20 minutes editing Aimee Claire's cover letter and then 1 hour fixing the mistakes and just basically redoing mine

Reading:

• The Fault in Our Stars: 20 min (wednesday), 45 minutes (friday), 1 hour 30min (sunday), 15 min (today)

Noticing

Looking.
it can't always get you that
far
it presents you with something you
want
it can trick you
help you believe

oh Looking
it knows you
it knows them
it knows the things hidden
the even Looking cannot
see
it knows

Looking.
it can take you to the edge
make you feel what isn't there
Looking can be
wrong

but then you meet Noticing
Noticing can be there for you
Noticing presents the missing pieces
Noticing can help you put Looking
behind

In this poem i used personification by treating the verbs "Looking" and "Noticing" as if they were human. I had the know things and do things that I'm pretty sure verbs can't actually do. I also used enjambment to put emphasis not the words that are opposite to the main idea of the poem. It is a poem about opening your eyes and noticing instead of just looking. So the words that were left alone like "far" and "want", "wrong" and "behind" are associated with the negativeness the poem is trying to stop. I also used anaphora with the phrase "it knows" and "Noticing" in the second and fourth stanza. These were used to express the amount of things that Looking and Noticing due and also draw attention to the contrasts between the two.

What I Want

hmmmmm ok so if I could really have ANYTHING in the world....

i'd probably go for family. Yeah yeah its sentimental but what I mean by that is having all of my family here in one place. My moms parents and two sisters live here in Baton Rouge with their families. I get to see my cousins Owen and Arden everyday with my Aunt Bebe and Uncle Dayday because they literally live in my neighborhood and my grandparents only live about 10 minutes away so I can visit anytime I want. My mom's other sister, Aunt Meg has her three little blonde boys that I get to see every so often but less then i'd like for living in the same state. But what i really want is to see my dads family. Now don't get me wrong I love the family i have here and seeing them so often is one of the best parts of my life, but having my dad's side here to would just complete my world.

I have 4 other cousins who live so extremely far away. My dads parents and youngest brother Lance, (but i refer to him as Uncle Goober for classified reasons so lets stick with that) and his family live in Atlanta, GA. My dad grew up there and I love the place, but I haven't been since Christmas of 2010. I miss georgia and my family there like crazy, my cousin Danielle is going to be 21 in 4 days and my cousin Jake is about to graduate high school but I won't even be there :(. On the other side of the US my dads middle brother Todd and his wife Jun live in Arizona. Its basically impossible for me to ever see them and I have yet to meet my two new cousins Owen Tang and Kayli Ting (my aunt Jun is chinese... cool right?) I cannot believe that i have two little family members that don't even know who i am! I want to meet them as soon as I can and so if this one wish could be granted, that would just be the best thing ever.

Carry On (Fun.) - Lyric Analysis

I chose the song Carry On by Fun. and the lyrics can be found here... http://www.lyricsfreak.com/f/fun/carry+on_20989899.html

Yes the song rhymes in various verses and choruses but when I listen to the song  I tend to focus more on the rhythm and how the lyrics connect to that verses the actual sound. In the choruses, pre-choruses, and bridge the rhythm of the song is very syncopated and follows a pattern of "short, long, short, long" and other variations of the two different lengths of the lyrics the singer sings in one breath. Here is an example or the pre-chorus to chorus area of the song:

Pre-Chorus:                                              You swore and said 

We are not

We are not shining stars

This I know

I never said we are

Though I've never been through hell like that

I've closed enough windows

TO know you can never look back

Chorus:                                                  If you're lost and alone

Or you're sinking like a stone

Carry On

May your past be the sound

Of your feet upon the ground

Carry On

So first there is a pattern of "long - short - long - short - long" followed by three long lines and there there is the steady beat for two lines and then the short and smooth "carry on" in the chorus. This rhythm stands out to me because it seems to me like the song is an actual like journey, a road someone is traveling along. It seems to be steady and easy to follow along the "long" parts but every so often you hit a "short" bump. But as the song's title explains, the singer is able to Carry On and make the best of it. 

Another thing that I notice that I guess you could classify as theme of the song, is the wording and meaning of the pre-choruses as they change from beginning to end. At first, the pre-chorus gives a sense of struggle and acceptance, like the singer is saying they know their life is tough and they are the best of people, but they are Carrying On (see the pre-chorus above). But somewhere in the bridge the singer's purpose and sense of life changes and the final  pre-chorus becomes a song about freedom almost. The basic lyrics are similar in wording but the meaning is completely different. The singer says "we are who we are" and realizes that no matter who he is and what life he has been given he is making the best of it and will carry on for miles and miles:

Cause we are 

We are shining stars 
We are invincible 
We are who we are 
On our darkest day 
When we're miles away 
So we'll come 
We will find our way home 

Life of Pi

So i've been reading The Life of Pi over the break for the book discussions we are going to have this week. I was really interested in the book due to the movie and the fact that my dad actually read me the story when I was younger and didn't understand the book at all. What I got from it back then was that a humongous tiger was on a boat in the middle of the ocean and somehow was nice enough to let this really awesome guy live with him. After reading the book again with a bit better focus and understanding of religion and science and just a love for the adventure the book presents, I got a lot more out of it.

One of the interesting parts about how the book is written is that it is actually a story retold by an author who had the privilege of hearing the actual tale from Pi himself. The author presents chapters from Pi's point of view while occasionally slipping his own view of Pi in his life recently into the book. I found that very interesting as it presented many comparisons and kept you wondering just how Pi actually managed to survive and tell this tale to the author.

Also, the book gives a long backstory that not only describes Pi's childhood and unusual life, but explained a lot about science and religion that I didn't know. It gave me knowledge about the Hinduism as well as the Islamic faith and how they can somehow connect to Christianity through Pi's life and experiences. The scientific facts were not only funny and insightful but they gave me the knowledge I needed to understand just how insane Pi's adventure in the middle of the ocean was. The conditions became much more severe and unbelievable to me after reading about the endless dangers, abilities, and lifestyles of the animals Pi grew up around. However it's these same facts that probably saved Pi in the end.


Reading Details:
The Life of Pi by Yann Martel

• Saturday: 2hours
• Tuesday: 2hours 15min
• Wednesday: 45min
• Saturday: 1hour 20min
• Sunday: 1hour 45min

When Re-writing My Literary Analysis (uh oh)

Overall this year I have struggled with the formatting and citations in my paper, they are the one trait that I have lost points for all three papers we have written. I'm not sure what the problem is because when I am formatting the paper on my computer everything seems to be right. I just hope that I can fix this problem when I...... yes, rewrite my Literary Analysis.

I must be crazy for wanting to write this again but it was definitely my worst paper out of the 3 and we have to do one.... so here it goes.

I struggled with Ideas and Organization in this paper which is strange because typically these traits are simple and easy to get 10s on as long as I have an main point for my paper and details to expand upon it with. I had ideas in this paper just not ideas that I could easily explain. I was a bit confused with the purpose and the point of my paper from the beginning, which must have caused my execution of the insanity of thoughts in my head to be a jumbled up mess of ideas on the paper as well. This brought the organization down too just because I was lost as to what went where and how I should go about explaining the ideas that weren't completely making sense to me. So this time around I really need to get a good understanding of what I'm talking about, otherwise I really have no right to write about it.

My voice, word choice, and conventions always seem to do well in my papers. I'm not too worried about the sentence fluency although it was pointed out by Dr. D int he rubric. I think that if my ideas are straightened out and I find an organization that flows, then the sentences will too. So wish me luck as I try to rewrite something that I've yet to even completely understand.

Jane Goodall's Mistake

This whole situation seems extremely serious. If plagiarizing can put a student in danger of suspension even expulsion at Episcopal, then in the real world where this work had a chance of being published there could be enormous consequences. As they explained in the article, Jane is not a qualified botanist as she has never studied the subject or received a degree in that area of science. She is simply interested in the topic of plants. This lack of knowledge was what caused her to go searching for extra information and explanations on websites that may not even be trustworthy or correct. Jane's mistake shows just how serious giving credit to a source is, especially since this mistake may even make Jane look as if she as trying to pass off someone else's research and knowledge as her own.

I think that Jane and her co-writers/editors should just turn over a new leaf with this book. It seems as if a majority of the book is plagiarized due to the fact that it was all factual information that Goodall did not know. She could maybe release a different work that includes knowledge of her own and her stories, but not include such deep research due to the people she may have offended with her mistake. Not paraphrasing a paper or work is a mistake that could be almost impossible to fix, and Goodall will have to work hard to do so.