Class Personal Reflection

            My personal experiences with money and class in our society closely matches what was discussed in the article Shadowy Lines That Still Divide. The article states “class is still a powerful force in American life.” With this I completely agree, and I believe that class in America will be a force that never declines in importance, or even gains importance with the future generations.

            A passage from the given text that stood out to me since I have witnessed the exact scene playing out many times was “The scramble to scoop up a house in the best school district, channel a child into the right preschool program or land the best medical specialist are all part of a quiet contest among social groups that the affluent and educated are winning in a rout.” My family and I are members of Nakoma Country Club in Madison, and every summer without fail I overhear mothers at the pool, down by the tennis courts, and in the clubhouse dressing rooms discussing the best preschools and grammar schools that they may place their children in during the coming school year. Most learning institutions discussed by these parents at the club are private schools with hefty price tags—which would be out of reach for anyone under that upper-middle class to which most families that are members of my club associate with.

            Another observation that goes hand in hand with the prior, was the connection I noted with my life to the passage in the article that reads: “But merit, it turns out, is at least partly class-based. Parents with money, education and connections cultivate in their children the habits that the meritocracy rewards. When their children succeed, their success is seen as earned.” A specific way that excerpt connects to my life is through soccer. I play for the top team in the Madison area, the Madison 56ers, and have for some time now. Our club has coaches that have experience coaching at the NCAA Division 1 level, and employs some of the best trainers as well. As a club, and specifically my team, we are very successful. This article started to make me question how much of that success was due to the class our families belong to. My team’s roster has 21 girls on it, and I’d safely say that only one of my team mates family would be considered out of the high middle class, and even her family is still middle class. Sure, as players we are all dedicated and put in a lot of time and hard work to our soccer, but we are also provided with some of the best coaches, and resources that a club can provide—and at a high cost which may very well be out of reach of many families. I’d have to say that a large portion of the reason I personally have had so much success in my sport is due to the fact that my family had the resources that others did not, and I was able to play for a club like the 56ers. 

Am I a Transcendentalist?

After discussing transcendentalism in class, and reading writings by authors who hold different viewpoints on the subject, I don’t feel that I am completely on board with the whole movement of transcendentalism, but I am also not completely against it either.

The one aspect of transcendentalism that I would tend to agree with is the thought that conformity isn’t always good, and you should be your own person and think for yourself. Ralph Waldo Emerson writes in his Self-Reliance: “I hope in these days we have heard the last of conformity and consistency.” Many of the transcendentalist authors held similar views on conformity, which I think to a point is a good thing to think—that every one person should be an individual, and that he or she should not simply conform to fit with the rest of society.

I do believe that transcendentalism does have some drawbacks, and does fall short in some cases as well. I think that the “we” should trump the “I “in everyday life, and that self-centeredness is a dangerous thing. If all people were self-centered and set their focus solely on themselves, I think that a lot of good would be lost in the world. I tend to agree with what Benjamin Anastas said when writing about the flaws of Emerson’s Self-Reliance: “The larger problem with the essay, and its more lasting legacy as a cornerstone of the American identity, has been Emerson’s tacit endorsement of a radically self-centered worldview.” I feel Anastas has a completely valid point. Henry David Thoreau, another transcendentalist author wrote about the fact that he “paid no poll-tax for six years”. Actions such as this I feel are self-centered, and paying taxes is part of being a citizen of the country. If everyone had these thoughts, I feel our country would be dysfunctional.

Map Analysis

http://dlgcsm.galib.uga.edu/StyleServer/calcrgn?browser=ns&cat=hmap&wid=1000&hei=800&style=hmap/hmap.xsl&item=hmap1752b4.sid

The very first thing that caught my eye when I first looked at this map of North America was the amount of detail and city names present along the coast. Not that this surprised me since that was the first portion of America settled by the Europeans, but it was very noticeable in this map. The amount of city names present on the map vastly decreases as you look west of where Appalachia would be.  The second thing that I noticed when reading some of the names of the towns, cities, and states written on the map, was that the names really show that the English felt entitled to ownership of these lands. Places in the new world were named after prominent people in English culture (Delaware for Lord De La Warr, Pennsylvania for William Penn, and Virginia for the Virgin Queen for example). A quote from the Babb chapter we read in class that does a good job of somewhat demonstrating this is as follows: “America suggested a certain inevitability to English control of the North American Continent”.  The last thing that I thought was incredibly interesting about the map was the title shown in the bottom right corner. It reads “A new and accurate map of the English empire in North America representing their rightful claim as confirm'd by charters, & the formal surrender of their Indian friends; likewise the encroachments of the French, with the several forts they have unjustly erected therein by R. Bennett, engraver”. I found it slightly humorous that they called the Indians their “friends” and confidently phrased it to sound as if the Indians also had no problem surrendering and giving up their land to the English population. This title helps to promote English entitlement to the land as well as English superiority. 

Presidential Words

After reviewing all of the word clouds produced from the past presidential inaugural speeches given throughout American history, the most interesting thing I came upon was the differences I noted when I compared the word clouds created from President George Bush’s 2nd address in 2005 and President Barack Obama’s first inaugural address given in 2009.

The biggest difference I noted between the two was the nature of the words presented in the cloud. Words used by President Bush such as tyranny, fire, and enemy were aggressive and rough in nature. This was contrasted when I looked at the word cloud created from President Obama’s 1^st inaugural address to the country which included words such as care, promise, journey, and life. These words are very different in nature than those of President Bush in that they are more reserved and positive.

I believe the reason for this juxtaposition of diction used in these two speeches most likely has to do with the timing of the speeches given and the fact that one speech was a first inaugural address while the other was a second and last. President Bush was giving his second inaugural address and his speech which used the more aggressive wording was at a time where 9/11 was more recent, and the war on terror was a large issue at hand. President Obama’s speech with the softer language used was a first-time address and he was probably playing off of his campaign theme of hope and change for America as a country. Just by analyzing the words used in their speeches to the nation, it’s clear that Obama was a change from President Bush.

Scene Analysis

Two things that I noticed that the film maker of Apocalypse Now, Francis ford Coppola, used in the opening scene of the film were the use of music, and also the mix of war imagery with images of what was actually occurring at the time.

Francis Ford Coppola, the film maker of Apocalypse Now, successfully employed the use of music in the opening scene of the movie. I thought that the juxtaposition of the scenes of bombing and destruction paired with somewhat calm, slower music was very interesting and worked to make the slower-motion scenes of destruction of more impactful to the viewer. I believe that was most likely the main goal of the film maker—to make the scenes of destruction more impactful by placing them in slow motion and adding the slower music, and also to evoke some emotion from the viewing audience.

Another interesting strategy that Coppola used in the opening scene of Apocalypse Now was having a mixture of war scenes, but also showing the view of what was actually occurring with the character at the time (lying alone in a hotel room). He successfully combined the two very dissimilar sceneries in creative ways such as having the propeller of a helicopter fade into the imagery of a ceiling fan in his room. I feel that this mixture of images was incorporated to demonstrate the truth that even when a soldier is not in battle, the scenes and images of the battles he has endured never fully depart from his head.

Sound and Fury

After viewing the film Sound and Fury, and learning more about the cochlear implants and the various feelings associated with the operation, I have come to the conclusion that the best possible thing for any deaf child who is a candidate for the surgery would be to have the implant and go through speech therapy.

The fact of the matter is that although deaf people may have the opportunity to become fairly successful in their lives, they cannot be absolutely anything they want to be, it’s not possible with deafness. As a parent, I believe that you should aid your child in realizing their goals. You should have no part in limiting their horizons. I feel that Peter and Nita Artinian had the opportunity to provide their daughter with a future that held anything she wanted, but their decision to keep Heather deaf took some of those opportunities away from her.

Peter and Nita Artinian, the parents of Heather, argued that they were afraid that if Heather received the cochlear implant, she would no longer be part of the deaf community and that she would solely associate herself with the hearing world. I fail to see how this could be accurate. Since both of her parents are deaf, she would still be very involved with the deaf community—she would have to be. Heather would continue to sign in order to communicate with her parents on a daily basis. She would be bilingual, and her life would be enriched because she would be educated and knowledgeable about both the hearing and deaf worlds. I understand that Peter and Nita would have some fear and reservations about having the surgery for Heather because the deaf world is all they know. Sometimes change is scary, but this change would ultimately be the best for Heather.

An argument that was raised during the course of the film was that deaf culture may start to become extinct, and with that, those who are deaf would be further isolated from the hearing community. With the increased technology and how extremely successful the cochlear implant surgery is, this idea is probably not much of a stretch. Deafness today is a disability which today can be reversed fairly simply, and parents are often going to take away any disability which may be limiting to their child.

Although some understandable arguments were mentioned throughout the documentary Sound and Fury against the surgery, my view is that the pros of having your child undergo the cochlear implant operation far outweigh them. The surgery gives deaf children the ability to be all that they are capable of becoming, and it’s simply unfair to make a decision that takes that away from them.  

Foamphobia

I have always been a bit tactilely defensive, socks have to feel just right and seams on clothing absolutely cannot be itchy… A good majority of fits I pitched in my youth were related to things just not “feeling right”. This leads me to my irrational but overwhelmingly strong fear… of foam. Yes, foam. I can’t tell you with certainty what the root cause of this “foamphobia” (as named by my family) is, but I can assure you this fear is immensely real.

My foamphobia is the one major reason I no longer choose compete in the sport of gymnastics. Even entering the same room as that giant looming pit of disgustingly hellish foam is much too intimidating for me, let alone practicing proper tumbling form into it. The foam pit drove me away from the sport after six years of high-level competition, and needless to say it was a bit of an embarrassing talk with some of my relatives who were wondering why I was no longer participating. My coach had definitely seen it coming. The very last tumbling practice I ever attended, he had been warned that I was in no way willing to tumble into the foam pit, but he forced me to participate with the rest of my team. Anxiety started building the very second I realized my fate was to end up flipping into the disgusting pit, and the moment I hit that foam was definitely the rock bottom point of no return for my ever-strengthening foamphobia and I. Upon my landing, I felt my body become engulfed by those hellish spongy blocks and was paralyzed by the feeling that I would never escape the clutches of the horrid material. I promptly responded by throwing up a good portion of my lunch.

I’m not even sure of exactly what about the material frightens me, but do not bring even a miniscule piece of that spongy material around me. The foam will set off an embarrassing fit of hysteria, and if I am forced to touch it with a bare hand I am guaranteed to feel nauseous, uneasy, and on the verge of tears (on a particularly good day).

I sincerely hope that one day I may be able to conquer my irrational fear of foam, but until that day arrives, I would appreciate it if you would refrain from bringing me near to any piece of it. 

I believe the controversy over Julian Assange’s WikiLeaks site will never cease to exist, but personally I see Assange as more of the people’s hero than as a monster to be feared. Viewing the TED Talks interview with Assange helped to sway me towards having that stance.

The single largest reason I feel Assange is right in defending his website, is the Bradley Manning video that was leaked. The footage of soldiers laughing at the deaths of innocent people is something the American people should be aware of, and not something that should be covered up by the government. Those soldiers in the helicopter knew exactly what they were doing, and I don’t see any defense for them being found out.  This is an example of Assange’s WikiLeaks being used to uncover truth for the common people, truths of “true human rights abuses”, as Assange stated in his interview. The comment Assange made about the footage of the helicopter shootings, “they (the people in Afghanistan and Iraq) don’t need to see the video, they see it every day”, really hit home for me. If my country’s military is abusing basic human rights of innocent civilians, I believe it should be brought to light, and that those involved should be prosecuted. Assange’s website makes this possible.

Another reason I feel Assange should not be known as an evildoer, is that through viewing the interview I felt he believed that uncovering truth through leaks can do good for the world, and even change the world. He stated that he works to “police perpetrators of crime” through his work, and that he has a hope of “doing good with the release of the documents” through WikiLeaks.

WikiLeaks also seemed like a fairly credible source for getting information. Assange said in the interview that if the website cannot fully verify a document, but feels it could be substantial, they will say that outright. Also, the people submitting information are “whistle blowers”. These individuals obviously feel that the general public has a need for viewing these documents for whatever reason.

I do understand the opposing views in this argument. I realize that some documents are confidential for a very significant reason and can possibly protect the safety of a country’s citizens.  Videos and information about outright abuse of human right and various other ugly truths, though I feel do not meet the criteria of that category.  

Book Post

I chose to read ‘The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down’ for my non-fiction choice reading. I ended up choosing this book because it combines two subjects I love to learn about—different cultures, and medicine.

The book is about cultural miscommunications between western doctors, and an eastern patient’s family. The Lee family is a Hmong family that fled their native country of Laos due to the “quiet war”. The mother in the Lee family is named Foua, and the father’s name is Nao Kao. The book is centered on their medical journey with their 14^th child, a girl named Lia—A traditional Hmong name.

Foua and Nao Kao live in a rather large Hmong community in Merced, California. The couple welcomed their daughter Lia to the world at a local hospital there. Lia was the first child not to be born at home or in a refugee camp. Lia began to show symptoms of epilepsy at the age of three months, and the first time she visited the emergency room in Merced, California was when the battle between doctors and family began.

            Lia’s pediatricians were Neil Ernst and Peggy Philip. They stood firm in their beliefs in western medicine, where as Lia’s family stood by their Hmong belief about illness and healing being more about the soul rather than the body. The Hmong actually believe having epilepsy to be an asset to a person. They call the disease quag dab peg, or “the sprit catches you and you fall down”. Hmong believe that this disease indicates the wandering of your soul, and this is seen as a positive.

            At one point during Lia’s treatment, after her medicine had been changed 23 different times, her parents refused to administer the drugs any longer. Lia was then taken from her family and placed in foster care. This was very hard to read about, because you know that Lia’s parents only are doing what they know, and that the truly do want the best for their daughter.

            The whole story is a struggle of Lia’s parents to understand and to be understood through this clash of cultural beliefs. The author of this book does a really good job of teaching the reader bits and pieces about the Hmong and their culture so that they are able to understand why Lia’s parents are doing the things they are doing.

             I highly recommend this book to anyone with an interest in studying anything in the medical field. It really teaches one to think further into the decisions that people of different cultures may make in regards to their health care, and why they decide the things they do.

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

I found Mary Wollstonecraft’s essay on the rights of women very difficult to get through due to the massive amounts of difficult vocabulary and the different style of writing that she uses. I found myself having to stop multiple times either to re-read paragraphs of the essay or to look up definitions of unfamiliar words she was using.

Wollstonecraft clearly feels very strongly about education not only helping to gain knowledge, but also forming the person as a whole. I had never really thought about that point, but I fully agree with her.

I also learned through reading this essay that Dr. Gregory and Rousseau share very similar beliefs on women’s rights. They both think that women should be inferior to men. Thoughts such as these anger me when I read them now, but back when this essay was composed in the 1700s, these thoughts were very common. It is hard to think about living as a woman back in those days.

One quote I found is “they are never to exercise their own reason, never to be independent, never to rise above opinion, or to feel the dignity of a rational will that only bows to God…” I felt that this was her way of saying that women weren’t thought to be able to reason and think for themselves.

Although I cannot say that I enjoyed reading this essay because of the difficulty of reading a piece from the 1700s, it did show me just how much opinions have really changed of women in society. It also made me very glad to be living in 2012 as a woman instead of in the 1700s!

Is Google Making Us Stupid?

I was intrigued by Nicholas Carr’s essay.  I thought he did a great job of pointing things out to the reader that are true, but that one doesn’t necessarily pay much attention to.  For example, how magazines are filled by many small snippets of information, and how television programs add pop-ups and text crawls.

               When Carr wrote about the findings of the published study of online research habits conducted by scholars from University College London, I found him describing myself perfectly. When conducting research on a given topic, I will usually read from one source no more than two pages. I may favorite or bookmark a page, but I rarely actually go back unless I am looking for some specific piece of information. A quote from the authors of the study, “It almost seems that they go online to avoid reading in the traditional sense.” left me feeling a bit guilty. I definitely do this, especially with research for a school project or something along those lines.

            The part of the essay that amazed me the most was when Carr spoke about the science of the brain that is behind the change in how we read. The fact that “the human brain is almost infinitely malleable” isn’t a new one to me, but it always has and always will amaze me.

            Overall, I think that what Carr has brought to my attention is completely true, but I’m not sure that it is so bad. Technology has changed the way we get our daily information, but if the brain is so malleable, we can retrain ourselves to read in a different fashion by simply reading longer length text more often.

Total Eclipse

I found that Annie Dillard’s writing was fairly interesting to read. Some things that were included in the piece confused me. For example, the reference to the clown painting… I mean, most people despise clowns, and not many people love to eat their veggies. It’s just a double whammy, and I found it kind of strange. For me, I found the part of Dillard’s writing where she spoke of Emperor Louis of Bavaria to be intriguing. She wrote of his death by fright at the sight of the eclipse in 840, before a time when he would have prior knowledge about what is really occurring during a total eclipse. Dillard compares what Emperor Louis of Bavaria must have felt to what we in the modern world would feel if we saw a mushroom cloud in the horizon—utter shock and despair because soon, we will no longer be alive. It seemed to me like Dillard was describing that during the eclipse her logic was no longer in charge and a human instinct of terror and fright completely took over. The last thing that stuck out to me as I was reading was a reference to “a decorated sand bucket and a matching shovel”. The first time this was mentioned was when Dillard was describing the hotel lobby. There was a decorated child’s sand bucket and a matching sand shovel beneath the cage of a canary and amongst spilled millet seeds on the carpet. The second time these two objects were mentioned was when the author was describing the mind having two tools—grammar and lexicon. She then compares those two tools to the bucket and shovel. Overall, I thought that Total Eclipse was a well-written and interesting essay.

"Talk of the Town"

After reading “Talk of the Town”, I was left with a mix of emotions and reactions. Being so young at the time of the attacks, I have only a vague memory of watching the tower falling on television, but not really understanding the massive impact the 9/11 attacks would have on our country.

When I read the sentence “We knew we had just witnessed thousands of deaths; we clung to each other as if we ourselves were falling” written by John Updike, I felt as if I had just received the worst of news. I cannot imagine what he could have been feeling or thinking at this point in time. I feel that being so hauntingly close and viewing this massive destruction would be a surreal experience and would leave one somewhat dumbfounded and at a loss for words.

I personally know of at least a few people that I believe would be somewhat angered by Susan Sontag’s response and personal viewpoint on the 9-11 attacks, but I see that Sontag has an extremely valid point, and she certainly forced me to take a different viewpoint of 9/11 in reading what she wrote. The sentence that I think struck me the most and made me think was “In the matter of courage (a morally neutral virtue): whatever may be said of the perpetrators of Tuesday’s slaughter, they were not cowards.” Sontag really makes you as the reader think past your initial reaction of disgust and fear, and helps you see further into the 9/11 attacks.

Both authors helped me gain insight on the happenings of 9/11, and aided me in considering viewpoints that I would not have probably seen had I not read these essays.

All About Me

The first thing anyone should know about me is that I absolutely live for the sports I participate in. I play soccer, downhill ski, golf, play tennis, run distance, and mountain bike. Soccer is my favorite and my club team is like my family, we do absolutely everything together! I also coach four sports over the summer-- golf, soccer, tennis, and swimming. I teach tennis, swimming, and golf at my country club (Nakoma) and coach soccer with my club. The kids are so fun to be around all summer!
 I have been having a pretty rough time this summer not being able to be active due to a knee surgery after an ACL blow out in the spring, and several procedures concerning my lungs which had me in the hospital for a while. Other than sports, I love to travel-- especially with my family. I leave for Ireland in a few days to visit my father's side of the family!

As of right now, I am almost completely set on attending nursing school with the ultimate goal of a position as an AP/NP, but I'm not positive on what specialty I would like to take. I am weighing the pros and cons of both anesthesiology and NICU care. I thought about going into physical education and that thought still crosses my mind. I think I would also enjoy that, and an added bonus would be the ability to coach!