Post 27 - Blogging in Class

I've liked blogging since Professor Hamon first introduced me to it in composition 1. I started my own personal blog, but have not had as much time to put into it as I would like. Unfortunately that time is being taken up on my studies here at South University and caring for my family. I manage to post in between semesters, but that's been about it. I am glad that I was taught about blogging and the openness that it gives to get my thoughts out. It also gives me a forum to continue working on my writing.

Post 26 - Using Google Drive in the Class

I have appreciated the opportunity that Professor Hamon has given us to learn about Google Drive. I've found it extremely useful and have been using it for other classes and my personal use. For my pathophysiology class, you can't do well if you don't record the lectures and repeatedly listen to them. When one of my fellow students missed a lecture, we were having issues figuring out a way to share our recordings. I ended up uploading the lectures that I recorded with my phone to Google Drive and then sharing through their Google accounts with those that needed a copy of a particular missed lecture. Some of my classmates would have been up a creek if I had not learned the many uses of Google Drive in my composition classes!! 

Post 25 - Writing in Wikipedia

I really enjoyed the experience of learning to write in a Wikipedia article. It was fun to write something, post it to a well known website, and have the knowledge that others may use my writing to learn something. I like teaching and helping others, so there is a definite satisfaction in knowing that I may have helped people that I don't even know. Also, the research that was required of us in order to even write our portion of the Wikipedia article was a huge help when it was then time to write our Doc 2. All in all I appreciated the exposure to something new and will be looking for more ways to contribute to Wikipedia in the future.

Post 24 - Death

There is no life without death. I think that one of the biggest part of our journey through life is coming to the realization that we will die. Death, and the fact of our own death, is always there, but I think that it takes living and losing others before we truly accept that death is an inevitable end to the journey that we call life. All that we can do is to be the best kind of person that we can, love others, and make our life something that makes a mark on the world. At the end, death is the natural conclusion to a life lived. We are born, we live, and then we die. The end. It's what we do in the middle part, the living, that really matters. So live and make your mark!!

Post 23 - Death of a Marriage

My first marriage was a learning experience that reminds me of the recent loss of my father. I know that it seems kind of wrong to compare the two, but my grief is very much the same.

By the time I left my ex-husband, he had become a drug addict and abused my child. I did my best to hold on and make the marriage work because I wanted my children to grow up with both parents in the household. I was the product of divorce, and I absolutely did not want that for my children. The day I walked out on our marriage, I had arrived home to see that he had pushed the baby swing that held our 5 month old baby over. The swing collapsed in on the baby and left him with bruises all over his head and face. That was unacceptable and I packed up my kids and myself and walked out of the marriage. I had given and done everything that I knew to do so that our marriage would work. That made the leaving so much easier. Our "marriage box" was empty. When only one person is adding to your "marriage box" and the other just takes, then your box is forever empty. I was tired of adding to the marriage and getting nothing but problems and abuse in return. That's not what a marriage is supposed to be.

When my dad died in April, I also knew that I had done everything that I knew how to do to help him at the end. We were very close. He was my friend as much as he was my father. I had also been living at home with my mother and him and was his primary caretaker. I made sure that he took the right medications, that he ate, and that he had everything that he needed. We talked and laughed and debated politics and the news. I have no regrets about not spending enough time with him or not doing enough to make the end of his life easier. When he was in the hospitable, I helped my mother make the ultimate decision to remove all life assistance because that's what he asked for. That's never easy, but I was comfortable with it because that's what he wanted. We honored every one of his demands and requests and I would like to think that I helped him to be more comfortable his last couple of years. His death was not tragic. It was very sad and I miss him like crazy, but it was not tragic. He lived a good life. He loved and was loved in return.
The death of my marriage and the death of my father were similar because I knew that I had done everything humanly possible to make things work before they ended. I gave my all to my marriage and I gave my all to my father's final years. I loved my ex-husband and gave effort to my marriage. I loved my father and treated him with love and compassion until the very end. The knowledge that I have no regrets makes the grief a little easier to bear. My conscience is clear, so grief is all that I deal with. I think that sometimes dealing with regrets is the most difficult part of coping with loss.

Post 22 - APA in Doc 2

I don't know why APA format seems so difficult sometimes. Maybe it's because different professors are particular about different parts of the formatting. Maybe it's because there really is no rhyme or reason to the set-up of the format. Personally I learn a concept well when I can understand WHY I am required to do something. If I can't understand the why of it, then I have a hard time remembering the different steps required for the completion of the task. Since we have all been doingAPA format at school for at least several semesters, I would think that writing a paper in APA Format would be easy by now. Even I messed up the formatting on Doc 2 though!

Post 21 - Myth in My Life

I lived in California during elementary school. In the small town in central California that I grew up, the Mormon church was the dominant religion. My best friends through elementary school were a part of a typical Mormon family. I was always playing at their house after school and on the weekends, and so naturally attended church with them. I appreciated the feeling of being around a normal, intact family. My mom was a single parent and not around very much because she was working to support our family. The acceptance and normalcy of my friends' home was a welcome change from what my home was like. Their lives revolved around the Mormon church. As a result, I began to be taught about the doctrine of the church and was eventually baptized. Once I became an adult, I started to really look at what the religion was about and the beliefs that they enforced. If you've ever taken a step back and really analyzed what religion is about, it can seem a little bit crazy. The only reason that I believed the myth of the Mormon religion is because I was taught at a very young, impressionable age that their religion was the truth.

Children do not have critical thinking skills to a point that they are able to separate truth from myth. You can see this all over the globe. For the most part, children believe and take on the religion of their childhood home. Children born of Christians are Christian, Muslim parents raise Muslim children, Buddhist parents raise Buddhist children, and so on. This tells me that the myth of religion is subject to a person's parentage and geography. Every person with faith believes that the other religions are not the right religion. That says something about the myth of religion.

Post 20 - Myth in Charles Martin, "Taken Up"

In Charles Martin's poem "Taken Up," the author is describing a group of people waiting on a hill, watching a disc-like flying ship with a "glowing wheel of lights." It descended down on the hill where the group of people were waiting, and they watched it land. Martin then wrote about an alien came out of the ship, "And those who watched them were confirmed in faith:" The poem then spoke of them speaking to the group of humans with "Light was their speech, spanning mind to mind." The aliens communicated telepathically with the group of humans and asked them if they wanted to leave Earth and exchange "amplitude for emptiness?"

The humans were then pulled up into the ship, bent back with their arms and legs hanging down slightly, like every ufo abduction you've ever seen in a hollywood movie. This was a fun poem to read and dealt with an unusual type of mythology from the typical God-like myth. Their are many people who believe in extraterresterial beings and ships from outer space. This is a popular myth in our current culture, so it was interesting to read and write about.

 

Post 19 - Emily Dickinson

I've really enjoyed reading the poetry of Emily Dickinson. She was obviously a very talented poet. She has so many quotable, meme-worthy, lines in her poems too. I've never really gotten into reading poetry before this class. Now, so many of the poems we've read have really made me appreciate the art and beauty of some poetry.

I always admired authors that can paint a picture with their words. The format of poetry allows for fewer words than a full short story or book. It's amazing that authors like Emily Dickinson are able to paint such a beautiful scene full of metaphors and symbols, and they do it with the use of so few words. I'm in awe of such carefully constructed writing. The more I read, the greater my new found love of poetry.
I also love that each poem, because of the poets meager use of words, can speak different things to different people. I'm finding that when I read a poem, and we have to interpret the meaning for class, my take on the poem, what it said to me, is very different from what others say the poem is supposed to be about.

The poem, "I Felt a Funeral in my Brain," spoke to me of that feeling I sometimes get in my head, when a thought or a problem goes round and round, and I can't figure it out. There are times when I feel like I'm going to go crazy with it. It does feel almost like a drum, beating a rhythm that is telling me that I have the thought or answer, but I just can't quite get to it. At the end of the poem Dickinson writes,

"And then a Plank in Reason, broke,
And I dropped down, and down–
And hit a World, at every plunge,
And Finished knowing–then–"

 

That perfectly describes the feeling of finally reaching the thought that I knew was in my head all along. When I looked up online what this poem was supposed to be about, this is not the interpretation that I saw most people have. The general consensus is that it's about the obvious, funerals, or that it may be describing a person falling into madness. When I went back and reread the poem, I could see the other interpretation's point-of-view. I don't know if maybe I'm just not "getting it," so I see something that others don't, or if maybe I just have a different perspective than most people have. I don't know, and really I don't care. The point of reading poetry is to enjoy it and I'm doing that. If I get something completely different out of it than the author intended, that doesn't make me admire the beauty of the author's words any less.
I really like the poem, ""Faith" is a Fine Invention" it spoke of the clash between science and religion long before most. Her foresight was amazing. And that a poem with only 16 words, can say so much. She sometimes wrote of being surrounded by those with faith, when she couldn't do so herself.

Emily Dickinson was a complex person, as her writing shows. I am a new admirer of her work. I actually just asked for a book of her poetry for my birthday next week. I can't wait to read more of her writing! I also look forward to going back and reading some of the poems that we've read in class, when I'm in a different place in life, and seeing if I read something different in them at that point.



Post 18 - A Symbol in "Revelation"

One of the many symbols in Flannery O'Connor's short story "Revelation" was the book Human Development that  Mary Grace hurled at Mrs. Turpin. I think that this was symbolic of the new views in society that were confronting those that were stuck in an old pattern of thinking, like Mrs. Turpin. Mary Grace was a college student from the North and so, most likely, had learned a progressive way of thinking while away at school. Mrs. Turpin was portrayed by O'Connor as a typical southerner, full of racism, pride, religion, and certainty. The final clash in the doctor's office waiting room ended in Mary Grace's throwing of the book she was reading, Human Development, and hitting Mrs. Turpin in the head. This was symbolic of the development, or in other words progression, of society confronting those same southern views. This was the part of the story that I found to be the most entertaining. It also spoke the loudest to the theme of the story. Though Mrs. Turpin spoke of God and her religion throughout the story and it ended with her having a religious "revelation," I interpreted the story as more of a statement on the changes occurring in society, and the book Human Development hitting her upside the head was the ultimate symbol of that progression.

Post 17 - A Symbol for Me....

This is a more difficult topic than I thought. I'm very comfortable with who I am, and I feel that I know who I am, but when I started to think about what single thing to choose as a symbol to represent my life, I was faced with putting a lot more thought into it than I expected to. How do you assign a symbol to represent a person? There are many things in my life that show just a small part of who I am...There's my engagement ring as a symbol of the love and commitment in my relationship with my fiancée. My children symbolize what I am most proud of in life and what I have put the most of my time and energy towards. My backpack and laptop currently represents my academic life at this point. My many pairs of stiletto shoes represent my femininity. The random prints on some of the shirts that I wear to school give a small bit of my personality to the world. I really can't choose just one symbol to represent me. I'm way too complicated for that!!

Post 16 - A Symbol of Love

My dad wore a St. Christopher's Medallion on a gold chain around his neck all of the time. His mother gave it to him when he was shipped out during the Vietnam War and he never took it off. When he passed away last month, my mother kept it and has worn it since. I get really sad when I see it outside of her shirt, but I know that it really means a lot to her and helps her to feel close to him again. I really miss him!!

Post 15 - Psychological Criticism

Psychological criticism is defined in our literature book as:

"The practice of analyzing a literary work through investigating three major areas: the nature of literary genius, the psychological study of a particular artist, and the analysis of fictional characters. This methodology uses the analytical tools of psychology and psychoanalysis to understand the underlying motivations and meanings of a literary work."*

I would imagine that when an author is contemplating a literary work that she/he would consider a psychological analysis of the characters in the story or poem. This can be seen by the author writing the different character's speech and thoughts within a work. Each character would have a different psychological (and personal) perspective and that would be shown by the author writing what the characters are saying and thinking. Once a work is completed, a psychological criticism by the reader would be an attempt to analyze the psychological perspective that the author gave her/his characters.

Another method of doing a psychological criticism is to look at the life, quotes, and history of the author of a literary work. This would give insight into the story and characters of the writing. Either method of psychological criticism would give insight into the literary work being analyzed.

* Kennedy, X.J., & Gioia, D. (2013). Literature: An introduction to fiction, poetry, drama, and writing (12th ed., p. 2073). Boston: Pearson.

Post 14 - Critical Perspective for Doc 2

I decided to write my Doc 2 on the sociological perspective of Flannery O'Connor's "Revelation." Considering the intensity of the societal changes that were building up and occurring during the early 1960s when O'Connor wrote "Revelation," I thought that this was the most interesting criticism for me to write. I enjoy sociology and history, so it was a natural choice for me to analyze the story with those topics in mind. I look forward to the opportunity to relate the hippie and civil rights movements to the characters in "Revelation." Flannery O'Connor did an excellent job in her portrayal of the changing society using the different characters in this story.

Post 13 - Dog Haiku

I really enjoyed the light-heartedness of "Dog Haiku" that we read. It perfectly captured what I would imagine a typical pet dog's day would go. I also read it out loud to my fiancée and if you read with a certain tone of voice and rhythm it sounds extremely dog-like. This was not a serious subject at all for a poem, but I could use a little funny lately so it suited my mood!!

Post 12 - My Wiki Article

I chose to write about "Revelation" by Flannery O'Connor. I edited the plot summary, added a couple of sentences for the theme and wrote a paragraph about the symbolism of the names that Flannery O'Connor chose for the characters of the story. I also added a couple of resources to the bibliography of the Wiki article. I didn't want to add anything else because there are other people that are working on the same article. I hope that's enough to fulfill my assignment requirements. I'm now thinking about my doc2 and what I would like to write about for that assignment.

Post 11 - Women Writers

I've really enjoyed the women writers that we've read in our literature books so far. I especially liked "Revelation" by Flannery O'Connor. The way that she was able to show across the full spectrum of the social classes and, at the same time, portray characters with attitudes that many of us have encountered in life decades later. Having an idea about the history of the time period gives depth to the story, but the characters themselves are timeless. Even though the facts and very racist attitudes may not be completely current, the personalities of her characters can still be seen in society today.

I also liked "The Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman because it used an excellent and interesting metaphor for the way that women were treated at that time. It also showed how desperate women were to be more free than the time period allowed. I would go crazy being treated like "the little woman" and I could sympathize with how the narrator was feeling. Great literature evokes thought and feelings in the reader and both of these writers did that for me.

Post 10 - Gender Criticism

As we read in this week's required reading, gender criticism really began with the start of the feminist movement. As the role of women began to change, those changes were reflected in literature that was written by women during that revolution of the part women played within society. Literature often reflects current society, so it makes sense that as the feminist movement progressed it would be portrayed in the literature of the time. The writings of the women authors during that movement would then have more freedom to write from their feminine perspective. With any change in society that would then be seen in the literature of that time period, it would be natural to also see that change in the criticism of that literature.

Post 9 - Wikipedia

I've heard that anyone could contribute to a Wikipedia page, but I never thought that it was something that I would find myself doing. I'm finding that I am unexpectedly enjoying writing on Wikipedia. It's nice knowing that something that I've written during my time at college may be shared with more than just one of my professors. I also look forward to the possibility that what I do write and post on my Wikipedia topic will stay up on the page for thousands to reference in the future.  I get personal intellectual satisfaction from the opportunity to achieve that sustainability with my writing.

Post 8 - The Theme of "The Fall of the House of Usher"

I think that the theme of "The Fall of the House of Usher" is the many ways that people can be "ushered" into another status in life. The sister, Madeline, was being "ushered" into death from her illness. The brother, Roderick, was being ushered into madness with the looming death of his sister. The house was "ushered" into disrepair and collapse. The family name was "ushered" into its demise with the end of the family line being the twins, the dying sister and rapidly psychotic brother. And at the very end, the narrator was "ushered" away from the house with his frightened retreat of the twins.

Post 7 - My Purse Full of Paper

My purse is full of different important documents for me and my family. Every time that I have to search through all of the things in my purse, burrowing around the stack of papers folded in half, it reminds me of the central role that I play in caring for my children. Without me knowing where all of these things, as well as others, are then my family would be disorganized and not have the things that they need. I'm the keeper of the information and I do my best to track our information so that my children are well cared for. That symbolizes what I think is the best thing that I do in life....I'm a mother.

Post 6 - What I've Learned About "The Chrysanthemums"

I've learned that the critics are pretty much on the same page as far as the symbolism in "The Chrysanthemums." I also stopped and thought about the time period that the story was set in and changed my opinion a little bit about how the story represented the role of women. I still don't like the way that Elisa was manipulated by the tinker, but I can now see that, for the time period, she had a fairly progressive attitude. I can accept that that time period was different and I'm learning to adjust my judgments based on the setting of a story.

Post 5 - The Setting in "The Fall of the House of Usher"

The setting in Edgar Allen Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher" begins with the main character's description of how dreary and depressing the day was. Poe went on with a description of the sad, decaying state of the house of Usher. Most of the story took place inside the house, but the most thought & emotion invoking description was of the image of the main character's approach up to the Usher house. It is enough to send chills down the spine of any reader and preps the reader for the climax and conclusion of the story.

Post 4 - Gregor from "The Metamorphosis"

I thought that Kafka's character, Gregor, from "The Metamorphosis" was really interesting. By the end of the story, I felt such empathy for his character, which also inspired disgust for the other characters in the story. I also grasped with trying to medically analyze what was happening to him. I at first assumed that he was dealing with the onset of schizophrenia, but then Kafka made mention of a cut he had gotten while making the frame for the lady in fur. That threw me off and sent me to the Internet to look tetanus symptoms up. All in all though, Gregor was a dynamic character that tugged on my heart strings.

Post 3 - The Protagonist from my Favorite Movie

My favorite movie, and the best movie ever made, is Avatar. The protagonist of Avatar is the character Jake Sully. I really enjoy the lessons that are shown in the story line of the script, especially the insight that is shown into how we treat our own planet with such disrespect and greed. Jake Sully arrives with little knowledge of the alien planet, Pandora, and learns to love and value it as the native people do. I fear what my generation and those that have come before me are leaving for my children. I hope that we all quickly wake up and have a "Jake Sully" moment and realize what we are doing to our beautiful planet Earth. His is a character both to admire and learn from.

Post 2- My Wikipedia Article Choice

I've decided to write my Wiki article on the short story by John Steinbeck The_Chrysanthemums. I know that it was written in a different time, when women were expected to stay home, do very little of value (the "little woman"), and focus on making their man and children happy, but I found the story irritating to my strong feminine psyche. If more women stood up and refused to accept being inferior to men, then we would be living in a different world where glass ceilings, glass elevators, and non-equal pay would be nonexistant issues. Also there is very little information about this story on Wikipedia, so there's a lot to add to flush out the article.

Post 1-Introduction

I am a mother of five wonderful children and an aspiring nurse practitioner. I divide my time evenly between attending school, studying, and raising my children. I'm nearing the end of my prerequisite course load and will be applying to the nursing program in the spring of 2016 here at South University. I look forward to wrapping up the next couple of semesters so that I can take next winter's semester off and be home with my family. I've been spending so much time on school work, and am about to start working in the tutoring center, that I will enjoy a couple of months to focus entirely on my kids. I'm sure they will appreciate that time as much as I will!