Blog Post #5- Free Topic- My dorm

I believe that everyone has a certain place that is their center, their place to get away, their place to relax. As we move to college, many students lose their beloved serenity spot. They are moved into an unfamiliar place with many unfamiliar people. Where do they go to get away in a place they don’t even know? Last year, during my first year of college, I struggled with that very same problem. I never knew where to go to be purely in Zen. Every place I went was strange and not mine. So, one day I got fed up and decided that if I couldn’t find a place to be my own, I’d make one. From that point on, I worked on covering all the walls with memories of things that made me happy. I used pictures, old letters that I had kept, a giant pirate flag that I commandeered from a friend and many different band posters. From that point on I felt the year went by much more smoothly. My room here at Wesleyan is no different. I have taken all the creativity I have in my to create a room that makes me smile every time that I walk in it. Even though I was supposed to be living in an apartment on campus and got moved into Burt Hall which is notorious for their extremely tiny rooms, I still enjoy every inch of my dorm. On the North wall you’ll find that you can’t even see the color of the paint on the walls because they are covered from ceiling to floor in my favorite pictures and favorite memories. The East wall, which houses the only window to my cell, has a large Beatles poster and other random letters or notes that I cherish. The South wall is completely covered in band posters including Led Zeppelin, The Doors, Jimi Hendrix, the Ramones, and Pink Floyd. The west wall, where our closets are found, is far from bare as well. Underneath my loft you can find a groovy Buddhist tapestry that my roommate brought. Underneath her loft is the pirate flag that I so cherish. If you look on the ceiling, you’ll find an abstract version of the sun and moon made out of construction paper. Everyone always tells me how my room looks like they just stepped into the 60/70s. My room is definitely my comfort place. All I can say is that I’m glad my roommate has the same hippy style as me!

Blog Post #4- Free topic--PAIN

Everyone knows that there is no real definition of pain. Some think that pain comes from a paper cut; others say that you have to go as far as any serious injury requiring surgery and even others say that that isn’t even true pain. It’s all based on one’s pain tolerance. Recently, I’ve learned that my pain tolerance is not very high. But then again, this comes as no surprise to me. I’m not going to pretend that I’m comparable to Rambo because, let’s face it, I’m not. Recently, I’ve been required to wear a brace because of the, what I consider to be, severe pain. It’s not broken, it’s not sprained, in fact, I have no clue what’s wrong with it. Last Wednesday, I was forced to go to the doctor, who happens to be my own dad, so that they can run every test under the sun to find out what in the hell is wrong with me. Their leading guess is that I am suffering from a pretty bad case of carpal tunnel so they started me off with that test. If you don’t know, the carpel tunnel screening is a test that hooks you up to a series of wires that connects you to a machine. The purpose of this machine is to shock you over and over and over again to determine how your nerves react to decide if you do have the symptoms. Each test consists of ten shocks to the hand. They start by connecting the wires to the wrist and up to you middle finger. After ten shocks to feel very similar to grabbing on to an electric fence multiple times, they continue by shocking the opposite hand to compare. For some reason, the tests to my left hand weren’t being read by the machine so we have to retry it three different times. Now my hands have gone through 40 shocks. After this test the nurse returns to my right hand and connects the wires to my pinky finger. Ten more shocks. After sitting in the minor surgery room for 15 minutes, waiting for the results, the nurse comes back with a guilty look on her face and informs me that the results from the very first test didn’t come out either. So we proceed to torture my hand for two more tests. After the nurse had successfully shocked me 70 times she comes back to tell me that the results came back negative. Great! All of that for nothing! Even though the tests were negative, my dad didn’t want to take any risks so he informs me that they are going to inject a steroid into my wrist to help with the pain. To make this story complete, I think that you need to realize that I might be the worst patient to give shots to. For some unknown reason I have gained a huge phobia to needles. Believe it or not, the pain in my wrist was so horrid that I was willing to go through anything just for the hope that it may be better soon. As they injected the steroid into my nerves I could feel the pain shoot up all to the way to my elbow but the doctors promise me that that was a promising sign. I really didn’t understand how more pain was promising but I wasn’t in any shape to argue. So how does one define pain? Can it be described as any physical discomfort to the human body or is everyone’s definition of pain just what they can or can’t take? If each of our definitions are different, mine would be short and simple. For me, pain is everything in my right hand.

Blog Post #3- Movie Clip

My video, Das Rad, or The Wheel in English, shows the development of the world from a rocks perspective. Winner of the best short animated file, this German video has been translated and accepted to be part of the Animation Show 3. In this video, we see how a couple of "rock people" live life and how they view the development of the world. Some interesting points that I noticed from this video were the materials that the animators used to create the rocks. i can't tell if this film was made by advanced claymation, or if it was all created by digital animation, or even if they actually used real rocks. that shows how believable the animation was for the video. The super speed of the movie is very important to the plot because I believe that it symbolizes how quickly time moves for the rocks because of how long a rock lives. a day to us, feels like a second to them. throughout the clip, we see small villages appearing in the background while the rocks go about living like they always had. eventually, one of the rocks starts playing with a circular rock that he had found and we can see that he starts to realize the power of a wheel. at this point, an early caveman comes and sees the circular rock that the rockman had been playing with. from this point, man creates the wheel and once the wheel is created, the development of the land around the rock men is sped up twice as much. we see a road appear, and soon the villages grow larger and larger. At one point in the video, the speed of the development becomes so extreme that the rocks don't know what to do. this clip is very symbolic because it shows the progression of man and how it's just been getting faster and faster and never slowing down. Another ironic point was the billboard that was put up by the rock men that said built to last and eventually just broke down. By that, the creator is showing that he believes nothing is "built to last" As the development went on, the sky grew darker and everything became much more polluted until everything just stopped. I believe that the creator of this movie was trying to get a point across of how much our world has changed but I don't think the creator is quite a fan of how much we've developed lately. He makes a statement about what he thinks will happen in the future about how mankind will be the end of mankind. After all this development, everything is just swept away and everything starts over again as new. The movie tends to have a negative point at the end that makes you think. To me, that's what makes a good video/essay. It has to make you think deeper about a part of your life or some experience you've had.

Blog Post #2 - Diagrams

My diagram, which pictures a volcano in full blast, is probably viewed as a more elementary example in the world of diagrams. As I was searching for a diagram that interested me the most, I realized that many diagrams now-a-days aren’t very visual at all. Now, maybe I’m wrong here, but I thought that one reason for even creating a diagram was so that a person could put their information in a more visual set-up. But, when I looked at all the examples, they were all pretty much just a bunch of words in a bubble. To me, that’s not visual at all. Now, I may sound somewhat perturbed here, but that’s only because I am such a visual learner. Diagrams were how I survived many or any science class. So when I see people just putting the same boring notes into little bubbles or squares and calling them diagrams, I have to disagree.
So today, we are going to learn about volcanos! This wonderful diagram, which I have so gratefully taken from the Education World Website (http://www.education-world.com/a_tech/techlp/techlp039.shtml), shows a volcano at full eruption. We also learn each of the different parts that work together to create a volcano. We can see the craters, the vents, and even learn where the sill is located. To me, this is very informational. I think that the labeling on this diagram is very basic, but it also needs to be because the whole diagram itself is basic. I also like the fact that the diagram has a cartoon look to it, almost as if someone had doodled it on the paint application. I believe that this factor is important to the diagram as a whole because it helps the diagram connect to its audience who is obviously fairly young. I’d say early to middle grade school to be exact. One of the biggest differences that this diagram has had to suffer now that it is on the world wide web instead of in a fourth grade classroom is that it is very limited. It can always only be a drawn diagram. Maybe, if the designer gets creative, they can add some animation to it and make the volcano actually explode over and over again, but it will never be the same as some 3-D model that a little kid stays up all night working on. We will never be able to see the combination of baking soda and other ingredients that make a chemical reaction that spills over the edge of the volcano and makes an exciting mess all over the classroom table. We lose all of that, but I think we are starting to get used to missing all of these things with the internet. We are starting to become too digital and wrapped up in technology that we forget to get our hands dirty with the real diagrams. I know that this isn’t very close to the idea of what you wanted for the blogs but still…it needed to be said.

Blog Post 1

"I want to see a piece of the essayist. I want to see a mind at work, imagining, spinning, struggling to understand. If the essayist has all the answers, he isn't struggling to grasp, and I won't either. When you care about something, you continually grapple with it, because it is alive in you. It thrashes and moves, like all living things." (Atwan 22)

-Alan Lightman

My quote, by Alan Lightman, really hits home with me. I think his abstract wording and ideas help me to relate to him. When I read an essay, I too want to learn a little bit about the writer, not just the topic. For me, an essay is truly successful if it makes the reader want to go out and search about the topic on their own. A good essay should bring up all the questions lingering in the essayist’s mind but doesn’t always have to answer them. They may possibly leave some of the answering up to the reader to discover. Another good point that Lightman brings up is how a reader should be able to feel the passion of the writer through the ink and pages. Its chain reaction, when the writer is truly excited or interested in the subject, the reader tends to feel the same. An essayist who really struggles with a topic, almost to the point where it seems to haunt him, will automatically become a better writer because he pours his emotions, frustrations, accomplishment, and more onto the page. If the writer isn’t struggling, in a good way, the reader won’t either. Thus, if the writer isn’t interested in the topic, there can be no hope for the reader. Again, the wording is brilliant and it caught my eye, especially the line, “When you care about something, you continually grapple with it, because it is alive in you. It thrashes and moves, like all living things.” I believe that when you stumble across an amazing essay, or any piece of writing, you will be able to feel the words trying to thrash themselves off the page. They scream at you, grab your attention, take you along for the ride and don’t let you go until the writing is finished. After you finish reading, take a deep breath and all you can do is mutter, “wow..” Now, I know this doesn’t happen very often, but isn’t it amazing when it does? Those are the pieces of writing that you’ll remember.