Welcome to my blog!

This is where all my creative thoughts mashed in my brain come alive into mini writing assignments for my English I class. Most importantly this is where writers block strikes me with a vengeance! Feel free to comment and read away. Enjoy.

IRJ Reflection #22

There’s  No One to Catch You When You Fall: The Safety Net of Growing Up

While flipping desperately through the pages of Homer’s Odyssey, I remembered a specific part in Book 1 in which Athena almost acts like Prince Telemachus’ mother. Athena tells Telemachus that he “must not chling to [his] boyhood any longer — it’s time [he] were a man” (Homer 87).

I find this one scene in the huge book very powerful to me. At home, my life has been tossed around like a hopeless sock in a washing machine. The day my brother came back, a mere 6 weeks into his freshman college year, my whole family flipped upside down. He didn’t make it. He didn’t get his work done. He let our whole family down. Why could such a person throw such a prestigious school away like a wrapper on a candy bar? Because someone in our family has not “grown up” yet.

I could tell it when I walked into his dorm room, littered with trash and papers and a smell that hit you in the face like a punch from Mike Tyson. Immediately after walking outside, putting myself back together and attempting to regain consiousness, I realized his time at this school will come to an abrupt halt in the next few days.

Like when someone pulls the emergency brake on a train, his life jolted forward with the momentum he had. I can see his improvement everyday from going to classes and from just finally starting to “grow up”

The key stage of life may happen at conception for all of you scientific people, but for me, I think the most important stage is maturity. Every parent knows it, and you can see it in their eyes that one day, their little toddler that is bouncing around watching the TV must go to college and leave his family behind. However the crucial step in leaving the sanctuary one knows like the back of his hand, is the preparation for departing. A college student must be grown up, ready to go, and he himself must seem prepared.

In our world today, many people seem unprepared for the activities or occupations they are about to handle. Some may call it a normal nervousness for the big world standing in front of them like a billboard, but I think it’s someone’s lack of growth. They aren’t ready for the tasks and lives that lie ahead of them. And when they fail at their jobs or live in a pig pen, the world is hell for everyone that relies on them. As a community we seek a hand to grasp and a shoulder to cry on. But when that shoulder reeks of 3 week old pizza because your best bud got fired from their job, well you might have to look somewhere else.

In my brothers case, he was completely unprepared for the vast college experience and life that revealed itself in September. He wasn’t grown up enough. He was still the bubbly and excited 15 year old kid he used to always be. But I think and hope that someday, he will realize that we are falling because of him and he needs to catch us by growing up.

IRJ Reflection #21

Word Choice: Proven to Protect Vulnerability!

What’s the point anyways? I most surely am dead soon so why give a care in the world? These thoughts rushed through Esau’s head when he came back from a long day of hunting: famished and on the verge of “death”. When he sees his brother Jacob preparing a stew and pleads for some, Jacob says, “‘First sell me your birth right.’ Esau said, ‘I am about to die; of what use is a birthright to me?’” (Gen 25.31 – 25.32)

Okay, first of all like most people in our society, Esau completely uses the word “die” incorrectly. He obviously is not actually going to drop dead in the next five minutes and elaborates greatly on his famished condition.

Even my friends today make comments like, “I am litterally going to die in that test,” or “I’m going to go home and die.” Guess what? We see them the next day because they exaggerate, a common human phenomenon. Esau, exaggerated with his brother and Jacob, the smart and quick person he is, took advantage of his older brother’s ridiculousness by earning his birthright (the right the eldest son attains at birth). Had Esau not been so outrageous by saying he was going to “die” he could have just gotten food somewhere else or perhaps asked his brother for food in a way that did not expose his vulnerability to be taken advantage of.

Word choice is an important part of human life and communication. With the wrong words one may convey something that was not meant to slip their lips. I think one ay to fix this problem in our society is to be cognoscente of what one really wants to say and to use words and vocabulary that specifically convey the fact or statement. We need to ween ourselves off of popular words that serve no purpose like “death” (used incorrectly of course) and “retarded”. Not only may some words be harmful, but some can actually be physically harmful in the sense that one may use you poor vocabulary to their gain.

So I think we have all learned a lesson here today. Exaggeration leaves people susceptible to being taken advantage of. However, a simple and easy prevention exists: think before you speak, it may just save you from total manipulation.

IRJ Reflection #20

The Main Event: Pulling Back the Curtains and Letting the Star Shine

Yahoo! my web browser homepage, happens to be my greatest source of procrastination. More than certain social networking cites, Yahoo! provides an update in the middle of the page on anything from a cat unlocking a door, to the latest news in Finland. Today, while undoubtably wandering from Genesis, I saw a before and after picture of the famed Lady Gaga, a New York born top chart pop artist. Known for her funky and wild attire, Yahoo! interviewed the singer and asked her if these outrageous outfits are just for show. In turn she replied, “I’m not a character,” she told People [Yahoo!]. “I really am all the things that you see.”

Lady Gaga: The story and pictures from Yahoo!

In life I think it is important to possess strong and smart morals. Lady Gaga knows that she make look like a fake, or just someone who acts and dresses the way she does just for show, but the artist truly understands that beneath all that makeup and ostentatious clothing, is her true self. However in Gaga’s

case, the clothing and her are one; inside her is actually the personality she portrays. From a personal stand point, I feel as if Lady Gaga has an excellent sense of her morals and know that she needs to be herself.

Always something our mothers told us as kids growing up, being yourself is an incredibly important trait to understand in order to obtain a well rounded persona. Lady Gaga is a great example to all of her fans that one should not hide their inner self and instead flaunt it and let it flourish outside of its dark cramped cage inside you. Those who never reveal themselves are naturally insecure which definitely is not a comfortable way to live.

Lady Gaga conveys through herself the fact that people need to let out their inner self in order to truly become an all around blissful person.

Image Credit: http://www.collegian.psu.edu/blogs/snapcracklepop/Lady-Gaga-jet-2.jpg

IRJ Reflection #19

But I Didn’t Do It: Ancestral Blame

This piece is based off of the story of Noah and the Ark in the Bible (Gen 7-8)

The smell! Oh the smell! The potent odor of hundreds of animals all laying in their own waste, water dripping from the walls steadily onto their backs; the floor slowly flooding. Waves bashed the sides of the cypress wood ship with immense power; power only God could harness. All of his hate and anger at his creations forced waves,  blow after blow,  into the makeshift ark.

Each powerful rumble and jostle caused the animals to bay, bleet and

howl. To Noah though, music to his ears.

Noah, proud of his accomplishment as a “blameless human”, worshiped his opportunity to help the Lord. Just as an ant helps the queen, Noah gratefully accepted his task to house the animals of the earth for God as a punishment for his ancestors faults. Noah realizes that mistakes in the past can come back to bite him, and as a wave peaks the upper deck and pushes him to the floor, he resigns to the fact that he must “pick up other’s trash” and clean up his ancestors mistakes.

Praying for a break in the pounding flood, Noah passes the time counting the animals while his family sleeps. Counting each pair, his mind wanders to heaven where he is walking with God on the clouds.

“Noah, this is all your fault my son” grumbled the white bearded, squatty man. Upon his nose lay gold half-moon glasses through which his blue eyes pulsed with discontent.

Cowering and making no eye contact with the Lord, Noah trembles, “But I have built the ark as specified, with all the animals. What more could I possibly do to make up for our mistakes?”

“Now Noah, this may be difficult but you must do exactly as I say, and promise you do, for the consequenses are endless if recklessness overcomes you.”

“Anything my Lord. Your wish is my command.”

Looking off into the distance with glassy eyes hidden behind his twinkling gold glasses, God uttered softly, “You must die like those before you.”

And with that the Lord lifted his pale smooth arm into the sky above him and with a deafening “CRACK” a lightning bold left Noah as smoke drifting in the wind.

And just like that, Noah woke up to a burning heat across his face. Like a good friend, a man helped him up, and as Noah regained his focus, he recognized his location: Hell.

Image Credit: http://shadowwar.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/blame.jpg

IRJ Reflection #18

‘Envyitis’: A Jealousy Disease that May Cause Cranial Implosion

In the first book of the Bible, Genesis, when God creates the heavens and the earth, Adam and Eve and all who inhabit it, his hopes for utopia shatters. Not only do his first humans commit the first sin, but one of their offspring, Cain, kills his brother Able out of pure envy.

When Able, a farmer, offers God his crops and God thanks him, Cain follows Able’s lead and gives god the fatty part of one of his animals in offering. When God rejects Cain’s gift, mentally he breaks down. Not only is he jealous that his brother receives all the acclaim from the Lord but also that the Lord does not accept his gift, and thus Cain builds hate for God. He goes crazy and murders his brother out of hatred and actually insecurity.

What Cain did not see is that his gift, the worst part of his cattle, showed no affection or thought, thus God had the right to rescind his offering. Thus immediately, Cain thirsts for what Able possesses: a close and loving relationship with the deity. Cain’s story shows that jealousy may overcome you and cause you to undergo morally ambiguous acts.

This first form of true envy reflects the effects of jealously in people and creates a guideline that humans should follow. Like a prescription drug, jealousy should have a side effect: recklessness

IRJ OP #17

Snap Out of It: The Need for Excess

Upon receiving Lyra’s opinion of her flower choice in The Golden Compass, Mrs. Coulter responds cheerfully and sputters a few insightful words to her daughter. Mrs. Coulter utters, “I suppose one can’t go wrong with roses, but you can have too much of a good thing” (Pullman 87).

Insightful Article — psychological article on the proverb

In life, good things are exactly how they seem, good things. Their power to enlighten, thrill, and brighten someone makes good things a great thing to possess. However, when the pile of good things exceeds the sane limit, one’s personality and lifestyle alters. “Spoiled,” a word perfect to represent the ignorance due to excess of something also walks hand and hand with the proverb that one can have too many good things.

This high body image, or ego, resulting from a surplus of something can ruin a person’s life. For example if one were to perceive that French fries are the most incredible taste experience on the planet, they might desire more. However, the health consequences are immense with obesity and cholesterol due to foods like French fries. This compulsion and constant need drives people to unhealthy and dreary conclusions. A quiet, respectful girl could be spoiled and transform into a snotty, disgraceful brat. This pushing desire and languid, passive result of it formulates a reoccurring system found in many people today.

Proposition: In the end, excess may do you harm.