Blog

At times I thought the blog was kind of frustrating, but usually it was really useful. Especially since you could look at the other students blogs. This was helpful when it came to the meanings of stories, or the opinions because that way you see different opinions. This helped me figure out what I thought of the stories because sometimes thinking about a story in different ways you get new ideas. It is kind of like the discussions in class because you get to hear everyone's opinions, so you get to combine different ideas. Since we have to have the blogs posted by class looking at each others blogs helps you prepare for class because you get an idea of what the discussion will be about.

Romeo

Well at college there's a bunch of things that people miss, friends, family, food, not doing your own laundry, and for me I really miss my dog Romeo. People always laugh at my dog being named Romeo, especially when I say he is a chihuahua, but he is a great dog and really always has been. He is a really spoiled little thing, because he has a bed in my room, that says princess on it, I know he's a boy but he's pretty much a girl in my head. I've had him since I was 14 and he's pretty much like my child, I love dressing him up and putting him in cute clothes but I think that he likes these clothes. I think he really likes them because my other dog just tears off the clothes when I put them on, so I don't think he minds too much.
I really can't wait to go home because I want to see my dog so badly, I love playing with him or watching tv with him on my lap. I really miss when he thinks there is something scary going on because he barks so much, even though he's so tiny and really couldn't do anything to harm someone. People always laugh about the things I do with my dog, but I really only do them with good intentions. I take care of him the same way I would want to be taken care of if I were a dog, and that's probably why he's such a spoiled dog.

Outline

I found using the outline really useful for writing my paper. Usually when I write my papers, figuring out what to put where, and how to structure my paper is the hardest thing to do. Since we had this outline, it was much easier for me to figure out how to organize my paper in order to make sure I have the support and things that I need to make it make sense. The outline, and using the notecards made it easy for me to remember and organize what quotes and ideas belong together because that usually takes me a pretty long time. Sometimes I'll think that a quote is really good and will support the main purpose of my paper but I won't be able to link it with something else because its hard to figure out what it belongs with. Using the notecards allowed me to look at different combinations of quotes and ideas to make my paper make the most sense. I think the outline takes kind of a long time to do, but it's definitely useful for writing the paper.

Silvia's protection of her innocence from the hunter in "The White Heron," Silvia Orne Jewett demonstrates her view that women are changing their value to society in the progressive era.

Thesis Statement

By having Silvia choose not to give her innocence to the hunter, Sarah Orne Jewett, is demonstrating how women have begun to view themselves as more than prize to men, because they have started to get more rights in the early nineteen-hundreds.

Reading Critically

Well, reading critically has been a really interesting experience, in high school we only really read fiction freshman year, and we did some critical reading then. Maybe it was because we were young, or maybe I just don't remember well, but it was nothing like what we did this week. I mean I definitely enjoyed it, but I was kind of confused at first because it meant something totally different than I thought. I knew it was about something bigger than a girl who won't show a hunter a heron, but I only thought of it as maybe she wouldn't give him her innocence. I know that sex is often linked to innocence anyway, but I never made that connection, or thought of it in that way. The story was definitely more enjoyable when you understand the underlying meaning because then its not just a story that you would tell a child or something. The other thing I realized is that the historical context is really important when reading something critically, because certain things might not be noticed if you don't understand the context in which literature is written.

Symbolism in The Yellow Wallpaper
the pattern of the wallpaper- The pattern is meant to represent the fact that she sees herself as this women who is trapped in the house. At first she doesn't realize that she is trapped, which is in the beginning when she doesn't recognize the pattern. She doesn't realize how trapped she is in the house until she has to spend so much time there, that she can't help to realize how she is trapped, without any stimulation. The fact that she is in a cage, shows how the house is like a cage to her. She touches this when she realizes because it is almost as if she is caged in on the opposite side of the women in the wallpaper, and neither know how to get out.
The color yellow-I'm less sure about this one than the pattern, but I'm pretty sure the yellow represents the sickness she feels, and how the she is losing the purity of her ignorance. She is beginning to see how trapped she is, so she is losing that purity, of being a good housewife.

Symbolism in The White Heron
The color white-in the same way that yellow represented the loss of purity, I think that the white in the story represented the purity of her heart. Not meaning she was ignorant to her oppression, but that she was so pure and good in her heart that she couldn't tell the hunter where the white heron was.

During the Progressive era, women finally go the right to vote, in addition to this many women were working for the first time. Since there were so many technological advancements, there were more factories, and opportunities for women to work. The fact that so many women were working left the child care situation in a bad position. Some women, had their families take care of their children while they worked, some examples of this are older children watching the younger ones, or grandparents watching the younger children. (Durst, 141) Other women weren't lucky enough to have this opportunity, so the Progressive era is really when daycare facilities began to have a bigger impact. This was a more affordable way for the women to work, while still knowing that their children were in safe hands. (Durst 146) This really helped me understand how we got as many daycare facilities as we do now, because they are so prominent now, but I had never thought of, or seen a link between the advancements of women and daycare before.

Durst, Anne. "Of Women, BY Women, And For Women'": The Day
Nursery Movement In The Progressive-Era United States. Journal of Social History. 2005. 141-160.

The Most Dangerous Game

Well this story was kind of confusing to me, I just don't get what the exact point of this was, I mean one way I kind of looked at it is the way we hunt each other. While we don't literally hunt one another, we often get bored and find enjoyment out of someone else's expense. Maybe I just totally misread this piece and that's how I got this result, but I just thought of the awful things we do for a few minutes of fun. People are always picking on each other for a few laughs, or taking the kid no one talks to's backpack because its funny to see him freak out. We hunt each other's emotions I guess you could say, because we get bored with the other things that are going on. People will keep going and going until they get the reaction that they want. I think I might have totally misread this piece so I'm interested to see what everyone else thought because I'm not sure exactly what this piece meant.

Omelas

When I read this I was pretty confused, and it kind of bothered me but then I really thought about it, people sacrifice their own happiness all the time, and other people hardly have the chance to be happy. It is almost a numbers game what is worth more to you, your happiness, or a fair chance at happiness for everyone? When I read I thought wow maybe that is really horrible, but then I thought about it and it really isn't as bad as it could be. In our society there are so many poor people, and they get paid such low wages so the people at the top make the most profit, leading to their happiness. If you want to have this kind of superficial happiness it requires someone else to have unhappiness. The only difference is that in our society you have people to be unhappy with. That makes everything better when you have people that understand what you are going through, but this child doesn't have anyone. While I like to think I would sacrifice my own happiness for the good of my town, friends or family I can't even really say that I would. So when it comes to sacrificing my own happiness as well as everyone else's for a child's chance at happiness I don't think that it is a fair or even trade. It is truly awful for the one person that has to deal with it, but sometimes life is really unfair.

Writing Process

Writing this paper has been pretty difficult for me, because I'm not totally sure if the way I wrote it makes sense to someone else, so I'm unsure if I should continue writing this way, as I find more research or format my paper entirely differently. Since I'm not sure where to go from here, I had problems getting to just 5 pages this is because I'm not totally sure if I should include more subtopics or elaborate more on the things I referred to already. One of my other problems has been I'm not sure exactly how long to make this rough draft, I have more research that I can include in my paper, but I'm not sure how long this rough draft should be. Some people I have talked to have said their papers were much longer than mine, but I don't know where to go from where I am now. This unsureness has been the biggest problem, I think my paper will be much improved when I get some feedback from someone about what things my paper is missing or could use more or less of.
The research at first wasn't bad, because I didn't have much problem finding my articles once I got into doing the research. I found articles then I was able to find different words or ideas to look up to find different articles. This process has been really helpful to me because I was able to find so many articles, which will definitely help on future research projects. The biggest problem for me was getting through all of the research, especially when they talk about their method of studying because it is so dry, and most of the words were pretty confusing so it took a pretty long time to get through it. Overall I think my paper has a good start but it can definitely be improved a lot.

Evaluation of this Semester

My least favorite thing about this class, is that we have so many papers at one time, it kind of frustrates me to work on all 3 of these papers at the same time. I know that this is how all of the English classes are, but it makes more sense, to me, to write a paper, do all of the drafts and corrections then hand it in and be done with it. Since we are working on multiple papers at once, I stop working on one when we have to do things for another paper. That's probably more of a time management issue.
My favorite part of class is when we have discussions about things, for several reasons. I think its easier to talk about things when its more your opinion than to answer a question, like what is this concept from the book. I also think its easier to have a discussion like that when you can really see everyone, like in the circles. The only thing I don't like is when someone is put on the spot during discussions, because sometimes people don't say anything because they don't have their thoughts together, or haven't decided their opinion on a subject.

Chronic Offender

For my research paper I want to write about the chronic 6 percent, or the 6 percent of criminals are responsible for a disproportionate amount of crimes. I'm not sure exactly how to narrow this down though. Some of the questions I've thought to ask are
1. What are the causes of this? Is it more biological or social?
2. Can this be changed?
3. What are some of the early signs of this behavior? Can we tell who these people are going to be before they commit all of these crimes?
4. How should we react to these people after they have committed these crimes? Are harsher sentences such as the three strikes and your out rule, fair?
5. Is there any thing we can do to prevent this?
6. What are the impacts this has on society?

This is life. You have to kill

When I read the language of War is Killing, I was completely torn and that really really frustrated me. It bothered me that he was claiming to be similar to someone as important to Americans as George Washington, but when I stepped away from emotions I started to understand. Since I knew so many people that were affected by the attacks on 9/11, I didn't want to believe someone that said this. I didn't want to believe that there were any good intentions or ideas behind it. I still don't completely buy that he had good intentions or that he did it completely for independence of his country, but it reminded me that there is always more than one side to every story. The last line kind of bothered me because it seemed too true, but also too simple. I understand that there is going to be war in our world, but I don't know how to make war acceptable, or needed. Looking back, it seems like the revolutionary war was completely needed, but it's hard to make comparisons like that when we don't have complete hind site.

Media Culture

Thesis-In order to become a more cultured society we need to change the way we use technology.

1. With the internet everything is so accessible, so we spend so much time worried about what everyone else is doing instead of thinking about ourselves.

2. The internet allows us to create even more shallow relationships than before because you don't spend as much time developing quality relationships.

3. More people vote for relatively insignificant talent competitions than for elections.

100 people

For the most part I agreed with most of the things that were said in the excerpts from 100 people who are screwing up America. When he talked about celebrities being liberals, I totally agreed with him because they often claim to be so open minded but they won't consider the conservative point of view. People who are liberal try so hard to be liberal that they don't see the good things from the conservative point of view as well as the overall good things in America.
The other point that I really liked in this was when he talked about college campuses, and how many of them try really hard to stay diverse. My high school did something really similar to this, and on paper it was a really diverse group of people, but based on opinions and ideas it wasn't diverse at all. Everyone was extremely liberal and had complaints about nearly everything going on in America, but this is the country that we're all pretty blessed to live in. People complain all the time that whatever group is degraded or oppressed, but there is almost no way that if this group was totally oppressed that they could say that. If things are so bad they should go to another country where they really have no opportunities. Many liberals are so set on not offending people that they forget that we have freedom of speech. It does bother me quite a bit when people say its okay for one group to say something its okay, but if another group says the same thing it is wrong. I'm in no way saying that conservatives are right 100 percent of the time, but so many people make these comparisons that I wonder what they would think if these comparisons were more accurate than they are now.

Peer Review

Surprisingly the peer review today was pretty helpful, I really liked that we were talking more about the topics, and the basics of the paper instead of the grammar and sentence structure details. That was really helpful because I was able to make sure the reader understood my voice, and the basic message that I’m trying to convey. I’m usually able to find grammar mistakes and things of that nature on my own, so I usually found peer review pretty pointless. The feedback helped me because it showed me that I could change my message but not directly saying but instead show how my opinion changed throughout the story. Since we all wrote about totally different things it was also good to see how someone else put a story together that had a message.

If I were a boy?

I think about this a lot, how would life be different if I were a guy? Would I still have my personality, and my opinions if I grew up as a guy?If I still had my parents, and my general life but I were a guy things would probably be pretty different. I mean besides the obvious like I wouldn't be obsessed with Grey's Anatomy and instead would care about how awesome my fantasy football team is, I don't know how different I would be. I mean from the outside there are so many things that are different, but a lot of the more important things I would probably be pretty similar. The thing is, I could say maybe I would understand why guys do this or that, but I'm not sure if thats really so true. There are a lot of girls that do the same things as guys, so its probably more of a people not understand other people thing than a girls not understanding guys thing. Guys always say that girls are very catty, but a lot of times guys can act the same way they just don't take things as personally as girls. Thats probably the number one thing I would want to understand, how guys can hate another guy so they get in a fight with them and five minutes later they get along with them.

When we were describing the different traits of the opposite sex I thought it was interesting how we only used the negative words to describe each other. A lot of the negative words can be spun in a more positive way. Messy can just be people having different priorities. Jealousy can be someone caring and worrying too much.

The Notebook, love or a lie?

Well I’m a girl, so of course I’ve seen the movie, I always wanted to read the book since books are usually better than the movies anyway. I just never got around to it, but this passage made me want to read that book again. Well besides how good I thought it was, it made me think about the future, and wonder if people actually think love is enough. He talks about how he knows he won’t be remembered for long, but its ok because he loved another person and that makes it all ok. I always wonder how people can say something like this, maybe I’m just a negative person, but I just don’t understand how people can be happy based on love. Maybe love makes someone happy, but I don’t understand how a person can feel like their life is complete only on love. The other thing I wondered about was how he was so hopeful about things working out for once with his wife. I don’t understand how someone can stay so hopeful in a situation like that. For me, I see the worst in the future so its kind of bizarre to me how people can have so much hope in that type of situation.

Sports, Why do we care?

Why do we care about professional sports so much?? We all complain about how overpaid athletes are, and that they don’t deserve it, then of course there is the debate about what team is better, why the Yankees suck because they buy championships, how awesome Peyton Manning is, or whatever athletic conversation. This used to confuse me so much, but then I started to feel the same way, well my brothers are kinda stereotypical guys, the ones who are obsessed with sports. This would drive me crazy, I never wanted to watch baseball and would just look at the guys, this led to me getting a crush on a new player. Once I had a personal interest in it, I wanted to understand it more, going to a Yankees-Redsox game with this interest made me notice the drunks and crazies a little bit less. It was there for me to make me love the Yankees and even though I don’t really hate anything or anyone, the Boston Redsox are pretty high up there on my dislikes. I remember exactly why I became such a big fan but it isn’t one memory since I’ve been a fan, it’s a group of them, a group of memories of pride and happiness.

About Me

So, I’m Julia Buckley, I’m from Staten Island, NY which has gotten me so many questions whenever I meet someone new. Every single time they ask what are you doing here? Or something like that. I just really don’t like the people from New York, most of them are pretty rude and think that they are so much smarter than everyone else. So whenever I’m with people I avoid the where are you from topic, but my new friends love to tell other people or start laughing whenever someone asks. I don’t think I have much of an accent though, but people keep asking me how I say words, then tell me I say them wrong. Since I’m from New York and grew up in the 90s it seems like it only makes sense for me to be a huge Yankees fan. Usually I take jokes about things pretty well, but not usually about the Yankees, I can get defensive about them because I hear the same things about them all the time, so it gets kind of old. I didn’t used to care about them so much but over the past two years I’ve started to understand baseball more and really love them now.