CKC Blogs L&T (Sometimes)

A love-hate relationship. The always trustworthy Wikipedia describes it as an “interpersonal relationship involving simultaneous or alternating emotions of love and hate.” I have a love-hate relationship with my Lives and Times blog, which I have called “CKC blogs L&T” because everyone loves a little rhyme. However, I should rename it “CKC blogs L&T (Sometimes) because starting around Spring Break, it seemed that Thursday 3:30 would roll around and I’d be sitting in class thinking “Shoot! I forgot to post my blog..again!” There were days when I would sit on my computer and try to recap days of the posts I missed, scrambling to my notes to recall past class discussions and assignments. Other days I would let it slide and essentially write the post in my head instead of on the website...lesson learned. Overall, trying to keep up with the blog was a good lesson in organization, critical thinking, and time management and I am grateful that the class provided me these opportunities.

Before I bash myself even more, there are some things I did well with the blog. For instance, here, on my very first blog post, I gave a peek into my personal life. This was the assignment where we had to describe a place of significant meaning. I provided ample details that related specifically to my place, which was a good example of showing and not telling, something we as writers are reminded to do over and over again. Another strong blog post I put up on my blog was an example of close reading. In a close reading of the painting Ophelia, I laid out the step-by-step process of close reading which includes noticing the “surface” information or bigger details, noting certain details that make the piece stick out, trying to extract meaning from those details and then identifying a main message that the piece carries out. A third example of a strong post was my entry regarding the Harlem Renaissance when I discussed the painting “Aspects of Negro Life.” I haven’t revisited that painting since I wrote my blog post about it, but reading it now, I can still picture the painting in my head. Relating specific points in the painting to aspects of American life at the time of the painting emphasized an understanding of life as it was at the time of the painting. My film response to Persepolis was another strong post of mine. I think I did a good job highlighting something specific from class and then relating it to something I’m interested in outside of class. I hope that my classmates were responsive to that and that I inspired them to make more “real life” applications to things we talk about in class.

As mentioned before, at the end of March, I caught myself slipping behind in my blog post entries. I wish I had a better explanation for that besides the fact that I simply forgot. I would forget to put it in my assignment planner, and then my memory would escape me and next thing I know I would walk into class on a Thursday, hear the word ‘blog’ and kick myself under the table. This is what my blog looked like on March 31st. It was a game of catch-up trying to go back and recap what I had missed in the weeks before.

If I were to blog for another class in the future, I would make it more personal. This semester, I would only blog if there was a prompt posted. I think it would have been more useful for me to take notes on my blog, or talk about certain things that inspired me during class discussions or while I was close reading at home. I would also consider posting more meaningful comments on other students’ blogs. During class discussion, I have no problem interacting with my classmates, but my comments online seemed forced and insincere. I am happy to have had this experience blogging for a class, but I know in the future I need to be more consistent, invested, and sincere.

Extra Credit

DELETED YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!

Why Climb Mountains at All?

As my former teen idol Miley Cyrus once said, "life's a climb but the view's great!" As cheesy as it is, there's a lot of truth to the statement. Now not all of us will be climbing literal mountains, but reading a story about doing so can reach each of us in an individual way. I'll use my blog to vent for a hot sec, that's what a lot of bloggers do, don't they? Life is a series of mountains. Sometimes you're at the peak, and other times you're stuck on the bottom. Some days even feel like a journey up and down a mountain. Like this one for instance. I feel like I've been wearing a "kick me" sign for the past twelve hours. Everything that could go wrong did go wrong, I've had a real Murphy's Plan kind of day. But in the greater scheme of things, it's just a few steps down the mountain. I know tomorrow and the next day and the day after that I'll start climbing up again and get to the top and realize how trivial it all was. Excuse my sappy rant...but it's all about the cliiiiiiiiiimb.

Translations Reflections

I have read plays in my English classes since about junior year of high school. Personally, I'm not a lover of plays. (Musicals, whole other story). I just find plays to be a little dry. I do believe they are more beneficial if you read and are able to see it acted out. If it were just one or the other, I think I get more out of a play when seeing  a live action performance of it. However, if you read a play, then get to see it live that is something very unique to experience. Seeing the stage directions written out in the screen play make you appreciate the performance more.

Film Response

I think Persepolis the movie was much more moving and dramatic than the film. I think of the things that contributed most to this was the background music. Music in a screenplay is one of the most powerful tools to use. It automatically makes you feel something. I'll digress for a second here, and talk about Grey's Anatomy (shocking). The other day I came across a Buzzfeed with a link to a Spotify playlist about moments in Grey's Anatomy that were defined by the songs behind them. I'll share the most recognizable song, that even a person who is not a fan of the show might recognize. In the season two finale, Chasing Cars plays as Izzie's fiance dies in the hospital. The opening notes of the song invoke tears, and now whenever I hear it I am immediately brought back to that moment of the show. The same things happen in movies. The music behind big moments let us know that we are supposed to be feeling something, or that something is of higher importance. When just reading the book, I think certain events can be interpreted differently depending on the reader. When a book becomes a movie, you're sort of forced to interpret the events how the directors, actors and production team want you to see them.

Current Events

I think automatically the word "ban" gets a bad reputation. Personally, I don't think Persepolis is appropriate for seventh grade students to read. The fact that I'm reading it for the first time at twenty years old, and still find some topics a little hard to chew, I can't imagine a twelve or thirteen year old reading it. When I was in seventh grade, we read the Diary of Anne Frank. I remember there was some controversy because some kids bought the unabridged version, and that was not what we were assigned to buy.  The unabridged version had a little more graphic detail than the other. The Diary of Anne Frank has become a staple on reading lists in the American education system, and I think Persepolis could be too, if there was an edited kids version. The message of learning to think for yourself is a lesson all adolescents should learn, however I think twelve years old is a little too young to be reading about selling drugs, torture, and sex.

I think freedom of speech kind of negates the idea of book censorship as a societal factor. However, there are some things that are appropriate for the classroom and others that are not. I think teachers should have some say in what they're going to teach. But especially when working with children, they need to be extra cautious of the gravity of the topic they are teaching. They could even pull certain chapters from the book to read, and that would be fine too!

Tool Kit

One of the issues Smith and Watson brings up is the narrator I vs. the narrated I. In other words, they are dissecting how narrators of (auto)biographical writing present themselves in their writing as opposed to their actual persona. Some narrators talk themselves up to be a hero in a story, where others might degrade themselves to make them more relatable to the common reader. In Circling my Mother, Mary Gordon the narrator writes critically of her narrated self. This is apparent when she is describing the scene of taking her mother to the doctor and then having to take her shoes off for her. "I phoned an agency to hire a nurse to tend to her feet every day. I could do it once, but I couldn't endure the possibility of having to do it again and again. The possibility of that made the idea of life unbearable" (219). I am sure the common reader would have a similar gut reaction, but Mary Gordon makes herself out to seem like this horrible person who couldn't even tend to her mother. However the truth of the matter is when medical necessity required added help, anyone would agree to utilize it.