Reflective Essay

In this class, I am exposed to a learning style that helped me improve on both structured academic assignments and creative writing assignments. This year's English class is very different from the one I am used to last year. The main difference is the writing style. Last year, writing was based on incorporating ideas to be able to write formally. Although it was one of hardest challenges, I am happy that I have learned and improved. Switching to care free style with my own voice as a writer was definitely a huge surprise. It was not hard to adjust to, but I had a feeling that I was stepping back from all the hard trained work of last year. But in fact, I was wrong. There are many aspects of this writing that helped me. On blogs, I have been practicing with my own voice on variety of subjects. Even though this is supposed to come natural, it has suddenly become foreign to me. Lately, I realized the similarities in these two distinct types of writing.

Writing blogs every week have definitely made me become more aware of my sentence structures in writing. As I have not noticed before, formal writing has a bit of a similar sentence structures to that of free writing. To me, it serves as the basis for any type of writing. For example, it became easier for me to structure my sentences to flow in Mrs. Corbally's essay on Learning Styles. Improving in this area allows me to do better in the harder levels of formal writing.

However, there are important differences between the both. The voice is one important key point. I began to acknowledge that every blog had a personality behind it, and I have never incorporated this factor into any of my formal essays. Perhaps it is because free writing sounds more like talking. (Response to Aimee's speech ) In blogs, I am able to use an everyday voice with different vocabularies. For example, I would use words like “really”, “like”, “just”, “that”, slurs, and plenty of repetition; because that is the imperfect way that I talk. When I am speaking, I sometimes encounter chunkiness in my speech. The technique of cutting back redundancy also helped me make my words flow. From repetitive (Response to Amber G.), to less repetitive (The Two Faces of Religion). I believe the increase of incorporating my own voice in writing would further allow me to speak more fluently as well as help my fluency in formal papers. I also enjoyed reading my peers’ writing, especially when it is something greatly written. In conclusion, personality adds an interesting twist of connection towards the writer’s view.

I am breaking out of writing informative and more to writing personally, which I had hated before. I disliked writing things about my life because I feel like nobody would care anyways. In this blog, it shows how I always write very informative.

“The most common lucid dreaming activity is flying. You can actually feel the activities you are doing in lucid dreams. That is why it is most important to train your brain to recall with your senses. When you first lucid dream it might be a bit creepy. When I tried lucid dreaming, I was in a dream where I was talking with two people and then suddenly the people morphed into each other and then kept morphing into different things. Turns out, this is one of the first stages of sleeping. Also, keep in mind that what you do in your dream is all in your mind. It is similar to imagination. Have fun with this and try to lucid dream! Also, find other techniques if these don't work for you.” (Lucid Dreaming)

Having an interesting topic allow me to write more. Later on, I began to write more in relation to myself.

“Because of the existence of horrible events, people question whether there is a God. Even though these things have happened, I still believe there is a god, but we just cannot understand the way he/she works or how he/she determines our destiny. I think everything that happened have a reason. Maybe god is not conducting everything. Perhaps he allows humans to lead their own road, so that's why we make mistakes, and then he justify us on what we have done in our lives, the choices we have made, and then gives us feedback like karma or happiness or whatever there is. There are so many people in this world; can he possibly control every one of our lives? Are allowing people to die a sacrifice so that humans can grasp the meaning behind it? Logic does not help in this case, but it's worth a try.” (Religion is Complicated)

My writing has not improved in much ways. Most of its progress is the reduction of redundancy. Instead, my writing have transformed from the informative voice to my own voice.

I still have not tried many varieties of writing. I hope this semester I would be able to write something different from the usual. Moreover, I want to improve on concise, clear, and descriptive vocabularies. One of the hardest choices is picking the right vocabulary choice that pinpoints exactly what I’m trying to say. Furthermore, I want to improve on smoother transition. I would like to describe food as a future topic for my blog because it is one of the hardest and most fun things to write about. I believe this blog would greatly contribute to my growth in writing.

Kite Runner Analysis!

This is from last year and this definitely helped me become better in writing. (Mr. Sutherland: I can't separate this paragraph into 2 because this is ONE paragraph.)

Childhood is an important stage during which children experience the first tastes of life; their gains and loses during this period teaches them how to lead their lives in the future. Amir and Hassan begin experiencing the many aspects of life together as children. The flying kite in the novel represents both the sweetness of friendship and the bitterness of betrayal between Hassan and Amir. Surprisingly, The activity of kite running settles the differences between Baba, Hassan, and Amir, ultimately bringing them together. Amir actually admires Hassan when he runs a kite instead of being jealous of him when Baba gives him greater attention. During these times when they fly a kite together, Hassan and Amir feel genuinely relaxed as if an invisible bond of trust is pulling them together. Amir says: “Not a word passes between us, not because we have nothing to say, but because we don't have to say anything- that's how it is between people who are each other's first memories, people who have fed from the same breast,” (122). The kite creates a brotherhood between the two friends. Even though they are not brothers by blood, Amir feels so comfortable with Hassan simply because they were fed from the same breast, not because they were born from the same wound. The happiness in their childhood is essentially what attracts them to one another. More importantly, Hassan and Amir feel freedom when accompanied by each other and this strengthens their relationship. Freedom and independence make these days significant and will always be remembered as precious memories. The kite represents all this- the journey of their childhood, all the hardship they went through to make the kite. When they are flying the kite, they sense the acceptance of each other in their hearts; they feel an ease to be themselves. It seems as if this feeling is the basis of their relationship but unfortunately, Amir eventually decreases the kite’s value to symbolizing an unspeakable betrayal. The day of the kite tournament, Amir and Hassan achieves victory Over the exploding sounds of cheering, Hassan gladly promises to run the last kite for Amir Pumped by the joy of their success, Amir views this as an opportunity to secure the relationship between himself and Baba: to finally demonstrate his aggression to Baba and to be the masculine son Baba had always wanted. After receiving the kite, as he had faithfully promised, Hassan is cornered by the bully, Assef, and his two friends, Kamal and Wali. Hassan refuses to give up the kite and accepts the consequence instead: getting raped. Amir, who had eventually found Hassan, witnessed this event while hiding behind a wall, too cowardly to make any move to save Hassan. Before the rape, Assef snickered a reminder that lingered in Amir's mind from that day on, “I'm letting you keep the kite, Hazara. I'll let you keep it so it will always remind you of what I'm about to do,” (73). Happiness and sadness both are entwined into the kite. Just as happiness bloomed from kite running, the hobby is stopped by the silence of betrayal. When the joy of the kite has faded, it becomes a symbol of the sin committed. The kite hides a message thatstrikes Amir harder than Hassan. As Hassan will always remember his loyalty to Amir during this experience, Amir will be constantly reminded by his own guilt of his betrayal to Hassan. Kite running releases the tensions of jealousy and humiliation Amir shows towards Hassan. However, Hassan’s loyalty towards Amir is the same throughout; it is Amir who causes the tensions and then experiences the guilt afterward. The kite can be seen as the object that unites the two, but in the end, Amir turns even that into another symbol of his sin.

Religion is Complicated.

Religion is a hard topic to discuss. I am overwhelmed by the uncertainty about god, just as Ruby is. She says in her post:

If there truly is a God up there, do we really want to believe (s)he has complete jurisdiction over lives, and scrutinizes our every mistake? And, if God permits or generates the most unfortunate of events, what is our praise and faith really doing for us? Do all people believe dreadful; events aren't so bad, because God commands them or authorizes them to be done? And if God controls the Earth, why isn't the world in peace like we so desperately want it to be?

I am always caught in confusion when the quote, "God works in mysterious ways", comes up. If philosophy cannot justify religion, what can? For a long time I thought it is fate; the amount of trust you have in god, that helps you solidify god. But this have been proved wrong by numbers of events in history, like the Holocaust. Is killing innocent lives part of god's plan? In the book Night, the Jews' fate in God did not help the most pious survive. Because of the existence of horrible events, people question whether there is a God. Even though these things have happened, I still believe there is a god, but we just cannot understand the way he/she works or how he/she determines our destiny. I think everything that happened have a reason. Maybe god is not conducting everything. Perhaps he allows humans to lead their own road, so that's why we make mistakes, and then he justify us on what we have done in our lives, the choices we have made, and then gives us feedback like karma or happiness or whatever there is. There are so many people in this world, can he possibly control every one of our lives? Is allowing people to die a sacrifice so that humans can grasp the meaning behind it? Logic does not help in this case, but it's worth a try.

Minimum Wage

Since the remaining of my vocab words all relate to the government, I'll write about it, even though it is not very interesting.

In modern today, the current minimum wage is 7.25 per hour. Even though it seems very little, a person who is very poor is able to support himself if he works full time, but it will be a hard struggle. In the past, people had an even more unfair deal. Some were paid with a few pennies every week, or not being paid at all! The history of minimum wage is very important.


In the past regimes, compensation did not exist and people possessed no rights of discretion. One of the primary laws is the minimum wage law. From the past experiences, without this law, it restricted those in the third class from getting any richer. Instead the rich became richer, and the poor became poorer. There were very few rebellions because the poor had no other choice but to contribute to this system. There were no laws to constraint the owners from this form of abuse. This was one of the main cause of the Great Depression in the 1930s, and until then did minimum wage begin to be questioned. In order to make a living, families of children and adults would work in extreme conditions that were unhealthy and had the risk of death, for unreasonably long hours. Few labor unions formed and finally became a huge riot. President Franklin D. Roosevelt required a minimum wage of 25 cents per hour to simplify the lives of the poor so they would be able to maintain their health and other factors necessary for living. From here, debates agreed to the minimum wage today. Along the way, they also formed the government revenue, which is another big history.

Ms. Valdez (A response to Vy)

Vy wrote a fantastic post about our last year's teacher, Mrs. Valdez, and I very much agree with her opinions.

"She just wanted use to express ourselves as a student and help us find the bigger meaning in everything. One of the best thing about class was whenever anyone in the class would say something deep or say something she likes, she would go “mmmmm interesting” or “oooh i like! say more.”Freshman English would not be the same without Valdez and without her it would not be so
memorable." 

Although she was a very hard teacher, Mrs. Valdez was indeed a great teacher. She gave out tons of homework assignments, including reading two to three chapters every night, completing dialectical journals, vocabulary sheets, writing papers in a one week spam, and we had a quiz on what we read the next day. Mrs. Valdez pushed us to the fullest potential and I am grateful for that. Before I was in her class, I sucked at writing really bad. She opened a whole new perspective of analyzing books for me. We always had to find a deeper meaning to the contexts. It took a while for me to get the hang of it, but when you do find the deeper meaning it is exciting because then I have so much to say in my writing. I began to like finding deeper meanings in books and intergrate it into my own writing. If she had not pushed us with all her work and efforts, I will not be able to write like I do today. Furthermore, Mrs. Valdez was a funny person. The stuff she does and says sometimes is hilarious.

I am most touched about the gifts she gave us in the subsequent year when she had to leave. She gave us a small little paper bag with materials inside that she called "ASTI Survival Kit". Inside included a Dum Dum lollypop, a paperclip, a safety pin, smarties, a pencil, a cut out heart, a book mark, clay, plastic mirror, and others. Even though they were not worth much, the meaning behind them is immense.  The meanings were typed on a tiny paper. For example, the mirror says: "This is the solution to all of your problems. Here, you will find the answer to your deepest, darkest questions." The pencil: "Maybe you are a recycled soul. Maybe you are born a new spirit. Maybe your life has already been written. It does not matter what your belief is. Don't let things outside of yourself control your life. Live each day as if you were the author of your own story. Take what you have been given and make the most out of it.  She says the most important item was the ring because it was our commitment to ourselves... We also received a letter of encouragement from the juniors or seniors. It was such a cute and thoughtful gift.

I have learned a sufficient amount from her.