Personal Statement

When I was young, life was just one big mystery. It all started with the huge amount of curiosity within myself. It took over me causing me to become a person that crave for answers of the unknown. Whenever I learned something new, I would want to thrive for more and move. One thing in my life that I always wonder was about what other people around me are really like As time went on, I learned that everyone is different in their own unique way whether it is their experiences in their life, personality, interests or even in their dreams, etc... I have my own aspiration and dreams because I'm unique like everyone else.

As I grew up, I soon took an interest in studying the different nature the people around me. As I observed during school, I found many people to be in different groups. This was quite interesting to me because it got me a step closer to understanding others. The kids in my school were separated into different groups causing me to wonder which group I would belong to. I did not come up with an answer at that moment because I simply could not. I was different. I wasn’t like anyone else, and this made me really sad. I couldn’t relate to anyone at all. Eventually, I became a person that would assume things right off the bat about other people by only first impression. Despite all of this, it led me to finding a purpose and a dream.

This dream was to become a lawyer. A really close mentor and friend of mine told me everything about being a lawyer. He shared his view about the legal system and told me of not only of its hardship but also its benefits. He told me that there are all kind of people in this world. Everybody have their own troubles, but all they need is someone to be there and listen to their worries. By doing so, lawyers would be able to become their guardians and defend them through justice in court. These things that I learned from him really made me think. All my life, I have been trying to figure people out and now I have been given a chance to do just that. I wanted to be remember by the people around me. It just did not feel right if I had to leave this world with a empty story left behind. The dream of becoming a lawyer shone me a door of being able to have a chance to be remember by many people. Case after case, I would be helping people all around. Each time I defend a person, that person and their family would be able to remember me because I was there to defend them in their time of need.

Dream and aspiration is important to me because it change me as a person. I’m grateful for that because the world have changed in my eyes which changes my perspective on other people. I came to a realization that there are so much to meet the eye. This ultimate shaped my gifts and talents of being able to understand other people more. At one time in life, I have witness the death of a really close friend of mine. This led me to a path of astray of hopelessness. I did not know where to go at that moment on. I realized that the world is not the place that I thought it to be. Responsibility began to take a hold of me making me want to become a better person. This responsibility became a new drive for me. Life has became a job where I have to become a person that would be able to help others through hard times. I need to be able to listen to them intently, and be able to get them through whatever problems they are having. I have done this tons of time before with the people close to me like my family members and my friends. However, this experience made me realized that I have to step out even more. I need to take a risk and come out of the safety zone and be able to help strangers. Everybody deserved a chance to be heard which is why I decided to listen to them no matter what. If others make fun of me for helping a certain type of person, I would not give them the time in the world to actually care what they say.

This experience was a moment I can never forget. It was a turning point in my life. It build upon by my resolution of becoming a lawyer. I moved on in life because I have goal. I feel that if I would be able to attend this school then new opportunities will be given to me. I would be able to experience new events that hopefully able to build upon my resolution positively. I can never forget about all of the past events that I have been through nor will I ever will forget any events that shaped my life in any size and form because ultimately I owe it to all of those things for making me to be the person I am today. I will continue to strive forward no matter what and hopefully someday my dream will come true.

Book Review: The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Perilous Journey

The book that I chose to read for my English class is called The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Perilous Journey by Trenton Lee Stewart which happens to be the second book of the series. The type of prompt that I thought was interesting to talk about is the first one. The first prompt is about why the author wrote this book in the first place and what is the purpose of him writing it. In my opinion, one of the main purpose of writing this book is show the importance of friendship between a group of people:

“Constance, Kate, and Sticky were like family to him. It didn't matter that he'd met them only a year ago. Their friendship had formed under extraordinary circumstances.” (Page 2)

This kind of theme is really widespread in many famous books like in “Harry Potter” or in the “Lord of the Rings” and many more... Even though this kind of thing seems really cliché, I think this kind of main idea is essential for an adventure book. Does this mean that I'm saying that all adventure books have to have the main idea of friendship behind it in order for it to be good? No. Personally, I just like the cliché about friends helping one another because it makes me smile whenever I read those kind of books. The value of friendship should be appreciated by all readers because I think friendship is really important and I'm glad that there are still a lot of books out there that have this kind of idea behind it.

Another purpose why I think the author might have wrote this kind of book is that he wanted to write a book that is interesting and catches readers to enjoy reading something fun and interesting. There are many books that is like this, and I enjoyed every single one of them. One kind of writing style that the author of this book uses to make the book more intense and interesting is the way how he ends one chapter with a foreshadow or a cliffhanger:

“But whether Reynie needed it or not- and though he ad no way of predicting it- danger most certainly awaited him and his friends. And it would not be waiting long.” (Page 16)

This type of writing style really make me want to be more engage into a book. This is one of the main reasons why I would ever keep on reading a book until the very end without stopping at all. Overall, I believe the author of this book did a fantastic job on getting readers all around to be hooked onto The Mysterious Benedict Society series.

Another prompt that I decided to talk about for this book is the 8th one. The prompt says to pick a character that interested me, and I am to analyze he or she in depth. The character that I decided to analyze is Reynie Muldoon who happens to be one of the most important character in the book. The main reason why I chose Reynie as the character to analyze because of his unique traits that brings the book together. I would like to first start off talking about the basic description that the author of this book gave to him:

“He was an average-looking boy- with average brown eyes, legs of average length, nose an average distance from his ears, and so on- and he was entirely alone.” (Page 1-2)

This show that the author purposely make it seem that Reynie is a boring character, but I think there is good reason why the author did this in the first place. The reason is that by making Reynie Muldoon sound like an average person, all of the accomplishments that Reynie pulled off throughout the book would be put into more of an effect to the readers because the reader would have never expected an average person like Reynie can pull off something incredible. Reynie Muldoon also show deep compassion and love toward his friend:

"The most important thing. however, was that it had been half a year since he had seen his three closest friends." (Page 2)

In my opinion, these kind of characters are key to a good story because this kind of compassion coming from a character brings out a really important strength to he or she has. It can bring out confidence, courage, and hope from a character. In this book, the power of friendship between the children is a really strong one. It pushed all of them forward with the knowledge that each and every one of their friends are there to support one another. This trait of Reynie Muldoon enable to bring hope to his friends, and ultimately helped them overcome any hardship that bestowed them in their adventure.

In conclusion, this book was a really great read. I enjoyed everything about it. The plot, the characters, and the writing styles from this book was absolutely amazing. the author definitely got me hooked on all the way through from beginning to end. I can't wait to read the next book of this series!

The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Perilous Journey Book Review Rough Draft

The book that I chose to read for my English class is called The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Perilous Journey by Trenton Lee Stewart which happens to be the second book of the series. The type of prompt that I decided to write about for this book is the first one. The first prompt is about why the author wrote this book in the first place and what is the purpose of him writing it. In my opinion, one of the main purpose of writing this book is show the importance of friendship between a group of people:

“Constance, Kate, and Sticky were like family to him. It didn't matter that he'd met them only a year ago. Their friendship had formed under extraordinary circumstances.” (Page 2)

This kind of theme is really widespread in many famous books like in “Harry Potter” or in the “Lord of the Rings” and many more... Even though this kind of thing seems really cliché, I think this kind of main idea is essential for an adventure book. Does this mean that I'm saying that all adventure books have to have the main idea of friendship behind it in order for it to be good? No. Personally, I just like the cliché about friends helping one another because it makes me smile whenever I read those kind of books. The value of friendship should be appreciated by all readers because I think friendship is really important and I'm glad that there are still a lot of books out there that have this kind of idea behind it.

Another purpose why the author might have wrote this kind of book is that he wanted to write a book that is interesting and catches readers to enjoy reading something fun and interesting. There are many books that is like this, and I enjoyed every single one of them. One kind of writing style that the author of this book uses to make the book more intense and interesting is the way how he ends one chapter with a foreshadow or a cliffhanger:

“But whether Reynie needed it or not- and though he ad no way of predicting it- danger most certainly awaited him and his friends. And it would not be waiting long.” (Page 16)

Another prompt that I chose for this book is the 8th one. The prompt says to pick a character that interested me, and I am to analyze he or she in depth. The character that I decided to analyze is Reynie Muldoon who happens to be one of the most important character in the book. The main reason why I chose Reynie as the character to analyze because of his unique traits that brings the book together. I would like to first start off talking about the basic description that the author of this book gave to him:

“He was an average-looking boy- with average brown eyes, legs of average length, nose an average distance from his ears, and so on- and he was entirely alone.” (Page 1-2)

This show that the author purposely make it seem that Reynie is a boring character, but I think there is good reason why the author did this in the first place. The reason is that by making Reynie Muldoon sound like an average person, all of the accomplishments that Reynie pulled off throughout the book would be put into more of an effect to the readers because the reader would have never expected an average person like Reynie can pull off something incredible. Reynie Muldoon also show deep compassion and love toward his friend:

"The most important thing. however, was that it had been half a year since he had seen his three closest friends." (Page 2)

In my opinion, these kind of characters are key to a good story because this kind of compassion coming from a character brings out a really important strength to he or she has. It can bring out confidence, courage, and hope from a character. In this book, the power of friendship between the children is a really strong one. It pushed all of them forward with the knowledge that each and every one of their friends are there to support one another. This trait of Reynie Muldoon enable to bring hope to his friends, and ultimately helped them overcome any hardship that bestowed them in their adventure.

Book Review 2: The Mysterious Benedict Society and The Perilous Journey

The prompt that I chose to write about this time for "The Mysterious Benedict Society and The Perilous Journey" by Trenton Lee Stewart is the 8th one. The prompt says to pick a character that interested me, and I am to analyze he or she in depth. The character that I decided to analyze is Reynie Muldoon who happens to be one of the most important character in the book. The main reason why I chose Reynie as the character to analyze because of his unique traits that brings the book together. I would like to first start off talking about the basic description that the author of this book gave to him:

“He was an average-looking boy- with average brown eyes, legs of average length, nose an average distance from his ears, and so on- and he was entirely alone.” (Page 1-2)

This show that the author purposely make it seem that Reynie is a boring character, but I think there is good reason why the author did this in the first place. The reason is that by making Reynie Muldoon sound like an average person, all of the accomplishments that Reynie pulled off throughout the book would be put into more of an effect to the readers because the reader would have never expected an average person like Reynie can pull off something incredible.

Reynie Muldoon also show deep compassion and love toward his friend:

"The most important thing. however, was that it had been half a year since he had seen his three closest friends." (Page 2)

In my opinion, these kind of characters are key to a good story because this kind of compassion coming from a character brings out a really important strength to he or she has. It can bring out confidence, courage, and hope from a character. In this book, the power of friendship between the children is a really strong one. It pushed all of them forward with the knowledge that each and every one of their friends are there to support one another. This trait of Reynie Muldoon enable to bring hope to his friends, and ultimately helped them overcome any hardship that bestowed them in their adventure.

Book Review: The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Perilous Journey

The book that I chose to read for my English class is called The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Perilous Journey by Trenton Lee Stewart which happens to be the second book of the series. The type of prompt that I decided to write about for this book is the first one. The first prompt is about why the author wrote this book in the first place and what is the purpose of him writing it. In my opinion, one of the main purpose of writing this book is show the importance of friendship between a group of people:

“Constance, Kate, and Sticky were like family to him. It didn't matter that he'd met them only a year ago. Their friendship had formed under extraordinary circumstances.” (Page 2)

This kind of theme is really widespread in many famous books like in “Harry Potter” or in the “Lord of the Rings” and many more... Even though this kind of thing seems really cliché, I think this kind of main idea is essential for an adventure book. Does this mean that I'm saying that all adventure books have to have the main idea of friendship behind it in order for it to be good? No. Personally, I just like the cliché about friends helping one another because it makes me smile whenever I read those kind of books. The value of friendship should be appreciated by all readers because I think friendship is really important and I'm glad that there are still a lot of books out there that have this kind of idea behind it.

Another purpose why the author might have wrote this kind of book is that he wanted to write a book that is interesting and catches readers to enjoy reading something fun and interesting. There are many books that is like this, and I enjoyed every single one of them. One kind of writing style that the author of this book uses to make the book more intense and interesting is the way how he ends one chapter with a foreshadow or a cliffhanger:

“But whether Reynie needed it or not- and though he ad no way of predicting it- danger most certainly awaited him and his friends. And it would not be waiting long.” (Page 16)

Familia History: Connection

Hardship seem to run in many families, but we all in the end come to realize something important from those hardships. After reading many of my friends' family histories, I saw similarities between their family stories and mine. An example is from Crystal Lau’s blog:

"She wanted to show how there was a time when even attaining the basic necessities became a difficulty and how the modern people are often spoiled by the availability of whatever they need less than minutes away. She wanted us to really reflect on our current lives and see how fortunate we really are to be born in America during this era where we do not have to face the kinds of hardships that she had faced when she was younger at our age."

The hardship that her grandmother faced was a terrible one, but this quote shows that she learned something important from it. She learned that we should be grateful for our lives about living in America during a time where we don't have to face the terrible hardship that her grandmother had to go through.

Another quote that I found is from Jasiu Metkowski's blog:

“Whenever I hear this story, it makes me ask a question. It makes me ask “so am I lucky to be alive?” .if my grandma did not receive that miraculous message, then I would most likely not be here. But if I consider myself lucky to be alive, then that would mean everyone is somewhat lucky. We all experience life threatening situations.”

One important thing that Jasiu realize after hearing about his grandmother's story is that he felt lucky to be alive. He is grateful that his grandmother survived and this show that miraculous things do happen, and that it is true that many people face life threatening situations.

In conclusion, these stories connected to mine because mine was about my great grandfather's hardship. His was about recovering his memories and searching for a new home, and this ultimately taught something really important to me. The thing that I came to realize is the importance of valuing friendship. The hardships that he faced may have been devastating but it taught us how important friendship really is.

Cycles in The Joy Luck Club

There are many important cycles that appeared in the Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan. One of the most important one that I see is the growth of the daughters throughout the book compared to the experiences that their mothers had in their past. The mothers had their own problem and their daughters seemingly follow them:

“And even though I taught my daughter the opposite, still she came out the same way! Maybe it is because she was born to me and she was born a girl. And of us are like stairs, one step after another, going up and down, but all going the same way.” (Page 215)

This show that the mistakes that the mother had in their past seems to repeat itself through their daughters also. This quote also happen to show another cycle form the book. This cycle is the relationships between mothers and daughters. Like the quote explained, the mothers passed on their fate into their daughters, and eventually those daughters becomes the mothers and pass their fate on to their daughters. It is just one big cycle. Another important cycle that I found is the feelings that the mother had for their daughters. Throughout the book, the mothers are there to teach their daughters and raise them in a way that they hope for their daughters to become better than them and not repeat the same mistake as them:

“'Of course you can be prodigy, too', my mother told me when I was nine. ' You can be best anything.'

(Page 132)

This repeats over and over again. Another cycle is the whole concept of going to America. Many of the mothers in this book came to America because they want to start a new life:

“America was were all my mother's hope lay. She had come here in 1949 after losing everything in China...” (Page 132)

They want to leave their past behind them, and look for hope in America. The Joy Luck Club consist of stories after stories about the mother's bad past, but all of them eventually ended up in America.? Why? I think they wanted their daughters to grow up in a place where their daughters could get a chance to become something much more than they are now.

Family History: A Vow of Eternal Friendship

When I was little, my grandfather would tell me all kind of bed time stories. These stories would range from stories about myths about princes rescuing beautiful princesses to stories about our ancestry. One particular type of story that I remembered and liked very much was the stories about his father, my great grandfather. Some nights he would tell me only a portion of great grandfather's story and some other night he would tell me another. Night by night, I learned so much new things about my ancestors that I have never knew before. Night by night, my knowledge on my family history grew more and more. When I was older, these stories eventually stopped. I “grew” tired of them and my grandfather knew this because I would fall asleep before he can even finish a story. So one night, my grandfather decided to tell me one last story about great grandfather. In this blog post, I'm going to share that last story.

This story took place around 60 years ago. My great grandfather was on his ship. This ship was magnificent. It was a beautiful ship with red sails that shine like the sunset. This was no ordinary ship, it was a ship filled with treasure hunters. My great grandfather was one of them. My grandfather told me that when my great grandfather was young, he had this wild dream of traveling the world looking for treasures from everywhere around the globe. My grandfather also explains that great grand father was a type of person that never give up on a dream. And so, my great grandfather bought a ship in Shanghai with the money that his father left for him after dying of illness.

My great grandfather started out with only one person in his crew- his best friend. At the time, everybody thought that my great grandfather was crazy. They thought his ideas and his crazy imagination was going to bring him to great misfortune and eventually to his deathbed. My great grandfather didn't care what everyone said because he knew that there was much more to the world than staying in the village farming every single day. He wanted some excitement and he was not going to let anybody bring his dream down. His mother who was still alive at the time, his deceased father, and his best friend were the only people that believed in him. His best friend was about the same age as him and have known him since childhood. They looked out for one another which is why his best friend stood right beside him when he started his grand adventure.

My great grandfather knew he needed a crew and so he started out his adventure finding people to go along with him. Starting out with only his best friend, the numbers of his crew mates began to add on. One by one, as he traveled to new places, people started to get added on to his crew. Each of these people became one of my great grandfather's greatest treasure. They became a family to him. After many years on adventures with his crew mates and after years of finding all sort of riches and treasures, he decided to head back home. He went to the place where everything began: Shanghai. His crew mates stood by him because none of them wanted to depart from each other so they all decided to go back to Shanghai with my great grandfather before finally departing from one another as a final honorable farewell to my great grandfather. As they were getting close to Shanghai, a giant storm clashed with the ship. My great grandfather soon woke up on a unknown land. That clash with the storm took everything away from him. His ship, his friends, and even his memories.

When my great grandfather woke up, all of his memories were gone. He looked around and saw thousand of scattered parts of a ship's remaining. He couldn't remember anything not even his own name. The only thing that stood by him was a certain thought of mind. A thought of a promise that he made with a group of people. He couldn't remember who these group of people were but somehow he knew that these people were very important to him. He couldn't remember the promise that he made either, but nonetheless he knew it was something important too. After a long while of confusion, people began to show up. They started yelling in their native tongue and soon enough more and more people began to show up. Everybody looked astonished about what had happened by their shoreline. They took my grandfather to their village, and began asking him thousand of questions. Strangely enough, these villagers seem familiar to my great grandfather. He understood perfectly what the villagers were saying. My great grandfather soon began to ask the villagers questions of his own. He asked them where he was and the people replied that he was home. My great grandfather was confused, but somehow he knew that these villagers weren't lying. The village and the houses all looked so familiar and soon a piece of his memory flew back into him. He was in Shanghai. The place where everything began, but that was all he remembered. The villagers soon came to realized that my great grandfather had lost his memories, and so everybody decided to help my great grandfather regain his memories back. Years had passed but nothing new came to my great grandfather. He began living a pretty comfortable life at the village and had a honest living.

Many people that have knew my great grandfather when he was little told him all about who he was. They also mentioned that his mother had passed away a few years after he had left on his ship. My great grandfather stared at them with a confused look on his face. Tears would always start to fall whenever he hear of these stories from the villagers. He wanted his memories back, but nothing helped. My great grandfather remained “broken” for years until he met my great grandmother. She brought life back to my great grandfather and they started a family together. They had a daughter and two sons. One of their son is my grandfather. Day by day, my great grandmother would think of crazy ideas of helping my great grandfather gain his memories back. My grandfather told me when he was little, he can remember that his mother would always come up with weird methods of helping my great grandfather to remember his memory. None of the methods really worked, but grandfather told me that his father was really happy nonetheless because someone was there to entertain him everyday.

One day, great grandfather took his family on a vacation. They were on a big ship filled with many people. That was the day when my great grandfather got his memories back. How did this happened? Well, there was something about being on a ship with the wind breezing by every few second that got to him. My grandfather told me that he remembered on that the day of vacation when my great grandfather entered the ship, he stood really still with his eyes closed. My great grandfather stood there for hours without saying anything. After a long time passed, my grandfather slowly opened his eyes. He looked straight up into the sky. Tears began to fall right from his eyes. He had remembered everything.

From that day on, my great grandfather always go to the the shoreline where his broken ship was and looked out into sea giving out tears into the empty air. One day, my grandfather asked him why he always go there. And so every night, my great grandfather told my grandfather how everything started. Each night, he told him different adventures he had went on. My grandfather would listen intently to his father and memorized every word that my great grandfather had told him. One night, my great grandfather had finish telling my grandfather every story but one. The last one was the day of the tragedy. He told my grandfather what had happened within the ship the day that the ship clashed with the ship that took everything away from him. He told my grandfather that he had made a promise to his friends on the ship that night. Years later, my grandfather told me that great grandfather died with a smile on his face.

At the time when my grandfather was telling me this part of the story himself, I immediately asked him what was my great grandfather's last promise to his crew mates. My grandfather remained silence when I asked him that, and just told me that I already knew the answer. I didn't know what he meant by that when I was young. Now that I'm older, I came to realize that this promise was much more than just a promise. It was a vow of eternal friendship. I knew this now because I know how it felt to be with a group of friends that you see as family. Laughing with them everyday made me realize just how precious the moments that you have with them really is. This story made me realize that my great grandfather was not a ordinary "treasure" hunter of gold and jewelries, but instead a "treasure" hunter of friends that he can consider as “family”.

The way how Asian Mothers Raise Their Daughters

In the book “The Joy Luck Club” by Amy Tan, I saw many similarities between the book and the article that was about over obsessive Asian mom's parenting that we had to read awhile back. One similarity that I saw is the high expectations of the mothers in the book compare to the one in the article. In the story “Two Kinds”, Jing-Mei Woo has a mother that has huge expectation for her:

“'Of course you can be prodigy too,' my mother told me when I was nine. You can be best anything. What does Aunt Lindo know? Her daughter she is only best tricky” (Page 132)

This show that competition has a lot to do with a mother's nature of parenting. The competition between Wavery's mother and Jing-Mei's mother is a competition to show whose daughter is better and is more successful. They use their daughter to represent themselves and show off. This is what I probably guess the main reason why Asian mothers act the way they do toward their daughters.

Another example of a similarity that I saw in both the book and the article is the relationship between the daughter and the mother. I think the daughter is tire of the mother's way of raising her which have been shown in the book numerous times. In the “Rules of the Game”, there was an argument between Wavery and her mother:

"'I wish you wouldn't do that, telling everybody I'm your daughter.' My mother stopped walking...'Aiii-ya. So shame be with mother?' She grasped my hand even tighter as she glared at me." (Page 99)

This show that even though being a chess champion makes her mother really happy, Wavery is finally fed up with her mother always rubbing her accomplishments in other people's faces. This kinf of similarity also showed in the story “Two Kinds”, Jing-Mei gave out actions of defiant toward the way how her mother is parenting her:

“She yanked me by the arm, pulled me off the floor, snapped off the TV. She was frighteningly strong, half pulling, half carrying me toward the piano as I kicked the throw rugs under my feet."

(Page 141)

In conclusion, the “Joy Luck Club” expresses pretty well the overall strictness and over demanding parenting from the mothers toward their daughters.

The Twenty-Six Malignant Gates Introductory Response

In the “The Joy Luck Club” by Amy Tan, I think there two main purposes of why she wrote a introductory piece on page 87. One purpose that I think she want from writing this introduction is to introduce a relationship between a Chinese mother and her daughter. This allow the readers to predict that the stories in this section of the book is going to based around that kind of relationship. In the “Rules of the Game”, Amy Tan showed the reader the relationship of Waveryly Jong and her mother:

“I knew it was a mistake to say anything more, but I heard my voice speaking. 'Why do you have to use me to show off? If you want to show off, then why don't you learn to play chess.' My mother's turned into dangerous slits.” (Page 99)

By reading the introductory piece, we can tell that the relationship of the daughter and mother in one of these stories is not going to be a peaceful one. In my personal opinion, I tend to think that it is a wonderful thing for a parents to show off their children like how Waveryly's mother did for her. The reason why I think this is that when a parent show off their child like that, it usually mean that the parent is very proud of their child. Who doesn't want their parent to be proud of their child? I guess Waveryly didn't see it that way which is probably why she said all those things to her mother.

The second main purpose of the introductory piece is give out a foreshadow. There was one part from this section of the book in the “Half and Half” that mentioned The Twenty-Six Malignant Gates which was introduced in the introductory piece:

“My mother had a superstition, in fact, that children were predisposed to certain dangers on certain days, all depending on their Chinese Birth date. It was explained in a little Chinese book called The Twenty-Six Malignant Gate.” (Page 124)

The little Chinese book that was mentioned in the story and the introductory piece both gave out a vibe to the reader that something bad is going to happen and true enough, something bad did happen in one of the stories reflecting on the superstitious Chinese book. In the “Half and Half”, Rose Hsu Jordan was ordered by her mother to watch over Bing who was Rose's little brother at all time because of the superstitious thing that her mother got from The Twenty-Six Malignant Gates. Rose didn't believe in that nonsense and so in the end, the family lost Bing to the tides in the beach because rose was not careful enough.

In conclusion, the introductory pieces that the author give to the reader show connections to later stories. This allow the reader to get a sense of what the upcoming stories are overall about.

The Ever-changing Story

In the book “The Joy Luck Club” by Amy Tam, Suyuan Woo's mysterious Kweilin story changed many times:

“The endings always changed. Sometimes she said she used that worthless thousand-yuan note to buy a half-cup of rice. She turned that rice into a pot of porridge. She traded that gruel for two feet from a pig. Those two feet became six eggs, those eggs six chickens. The story always grew and grew. In other versions of the story, Suyuan Woo would changed that half-cup of rice into a pot of porridge, and this would keep changing for different versions of the story.” (Page 25)

I have many theories on why the mother would keep doing this to the story when telling it to her daughter. One theory that I have is that the mother wanted to teach a lesson to her daughter of that she shouldn't ever stop at something and that she should always persist on no matter what just like how the stories kept going on even though it was thought to be over. She wants her daughter to keep growing and growing and never stop.

Another theory that I have of why Suyuan Woo changes the Kweilin ending so many time is that she wanted to keep the story interesting. Maybe she was afraid that her daughter would get bored and lose interest in the meaning of the story so she kept changing the ending up to make it interesting for her daughter. This would make her daughter look forward to hear the story again and again since the story ending would change and won't be the same.

The last theory that I came up with is that her mother uses the story as an excuse to persuade and change the view of her daughter. For example, in the story, the daughter said that she begged her mother to buy a transistor radio for her, but her mother refused and begin telling a story:

“And then one evening, after I had begged her to buy me a transistor radio, after she refused and I sulked in silence for an hour...And then she told me a completely different ending to the story.” (Page 25)

The way how Suyuan Woo manipluate her daughter is by manipulating the stories. She changed the story benefiting the situation that she is facing with her daughter at the moment . This would allow Suyuan Woo to have control over her daughter because her story would changes the views on the whole problem.

Respond to Why Chinese Mothers are Superior

In the article "Why Chinese Mothers are Superior" by Amy Chua, I found an interesting paragraph to talk about:

"Chinese parents can order their kids to get straight As. Western parents can only ask their kids to try their best. Chinese parents can say, "You're lazy. All your classmates are getting ahead of you." By contrast, Western parents have to struggle with their own conflicted feelings about achievement, and try to persuade themselves that they're not disappointed about how their kids turned out. I've thought long and hard about how Chinese parents can get away with what they do."

I think the comparison between Western parents and Chinese parents that the author uses is an interesting one but a very controversial one too. In my opinion, I don't think this is always true because I know a lot of Chinese parents and western parents that are not like how the author describe them to be. My parents for example are Chinese but they don't "threaten" me to get all As or else. Instead, they just gave me support whenever I need it and just tell me to do my best. In some ways, this is just like how the author of this article describes Western Parents to be. Are my parents Westerners? I don't think so.

Another example is my friend's parents. They are Western Parents and they are really strict just like how the author describe Chinese parents to be. They are not carefree at all instead the force my friend to do all sort of things that would benefit his education, and they make him do things that I personally think is just too much for any teenager to handle. In conclusion, I think the parents owe it their children to raise them well, and the children owe it to their parents to obediently listen to them. Every parents have their own views on how they think is the best way to raise their kid therefore I don't think it have to do with race at all.

Connections

After the few first minutes of glancing over the answered questions about Egypt during the gallery walk, I saw that there are a lot of connections that I can draw upon between the incident in Egypt compared to the ones in the book “Animal Farm by George Orwell. One important connection is that I can see that they both undergo a revolution. A revolution is something that I think is pretty rare to come by because all revolution in my opinion need a really strong cooperation between every single citizen which is not very common.

Both the people of Egypt and the animals within Animal Farm had a really strong cooperation. For example, the people of Egypt stood together to protest, and they didn't give up even when things looked bad. In order for the protest to work, the people of Egypt had to have a strong will for one another since if one of them gives up, others would soon follow which is why it was essential that the people of Egypt had to stay strong and fight for what they want as “one”. In Animal farm, the circumstance was similar. The animals saw a opportunity to change things in the farm and so they worked together as one to fight off the bad farmer that was ruling over them. The animals needed one another because if one fell, others would decide to fall too. This wasn't the case in Animal Farm, the animals fought bravely not only for themselves, but especially for each other.

There is something that I found in New York Times about the latest news on Egypt that gave an estimation of death in Egypt since the incident began:

"More than 300 people are estimated to have died in Egypt since the turmoil began, according to human rights groups."

This made me realize another connection between Animal Farm and the incident in Egypt. That connection that I saw was that death is something that is necessary for a revolution, and it just go to shows that the people or animals are willing to fight for what they believe to the very end.

I also found other websites that gave recent news on Egypt, and I also found connections within them between Egypt and Animal Farm. The connection that I found that I thought was the most important was that both the people in Egypt and the animals in Animal Farm wanted a better life. That is the main reason why the revolution ever got started. They wanted changes that would make their life better such as getting a better person to lead them or building a better system that is more fair for everybody.

Chapter 11

After much argument, the farmers stormed out of the house. They soon rushed out of the house and not far behind was Napoleon trying to apologize. "Its too late!" One of the farmer said with great emphasis. "Get ready animals because we are going to assemble more farmers then ever to take out animal farm once and for all." The war between farmers and animals was on. Napoleon looked at the animals and thought for a moment. For the first time, he looked genuinely worried. Napoleon finally spoke and said: "Comrades! We must protect our freedom. We must fight like we never fought before!"

After his short address, Napoleon rushed into the house to make plans. the animals gathered and decided on what to do. some animals seemed brainwashed and insisted on fighting. However, many of the old animals were tired of their treatment. Their plan was to surrender when the humans returned and not face anymore bloodshed. The younger animals didn't, and persisted on with Napoleon's lead.

Before long, the humans arrived in a van. At least twenty farmers emerged. Napoleon had prepared for this by standing on top of the house giving our orders to the animals to attack. The older animals did not move for the reason of that they were tied of all of this. the younger animals didn't move either. They were scared because never had a real battle before. Napoleon was furious. he started yelling with the rest of the pigs at the animals threatening no foods, freedom, etc... the animals stayed where they were. The humans held off shooting the animals and slowly walked the pigs. A sudden shot from one of farmer's gun went off. blood was spurting out in the air, and Napoleon fell right to the ground. The animals were silent after they saw their leader, Napoleon, fell to the ground. The humans stepped even closer to the other pigs. One by one, gun shots were fired. One by one, the pigs begin to fall. Blood from the pigs was spilled everywhere while the animals just stared in silence.

The silence from the animals were soon broken and they went wild. Each and every animal ran for their dear life. two days later, Animal farm was completely annihilated. Moses the raven had led the animals to safety. News had broke out everywhere that great Napoleon was no more along with the great animal famr. All of the animals that managed to escaped with moses camped by a nearby waterfall. They were all confused on what to do next. When Moses saw that they were all in such turmoil, he shook his head and flew right above their head. he began to talk:

"Comrades! Don't let this defeat saddens you! Napoleon was a cruel and hateful leader along with all the other pigs. Don't let their death turn you down!"

At hearing those very words, the crowd of animals grumbled in disagreement. Moses continued on:

"Comrades! Let us start a new life and we shall soar to freedom! I promise great fame and glory for those of you that decided to follow me!"

All of the animals turned to each other, and wondered if they should listened to the raven. Moses persisted on:

"I have lived in the farm for many years now. I know what is necessary for us animals to live in complete freedom."

He soon flapped his wings wildly. The animals looked amazed at the raven. They were surprised that they have never notice how amazing flying really is.

"Comrades! I'll teach you how to fly and I promise you that it will bring you eternal glory! Follow me to the edge of the waterfall."

The animals was brainwashed by those incredible words coming out of the raven. They soon followed and stand right at the edge of the waterfall. They began to follow Mose's instructions. It went the following:

1. Lay flat on the ground.

2. Stick out your legs forward.

3. Hop out of the edge of the waterfall.

4. Say the following: "long live Moses!"

And so the animals did just that. One by one, they mindlessly began to fall off the waterfall while at the same time yelling "long live Moses". Moses gave out a snicker and flew toward the sunset squawking.

Wikileaks Debate: Opening Statement

I decided to debate about the topic of whether Wikileaks is overall more harmful or more beneficial to society. For those of you that don't know what Wikileaks is, it is an international non-profit organization that publishes secret materials from unknown news leaks that the government and the media are trying to hide from the general public. As for the side I'm going to debate for, I decided to debate for the side that think Wikileaks is overall more beneficial for society. The main reason why I decided to choose this side is that I'm one of those people that truly believe in the word “truth”. I believe “truth” is really important because “truth” is reality; if we live in a world without truth, we are not truly “living” at all because we would be living in a world of lies.

Wikileaks symbolizes an opportunity; an opportunity to escape from a fake world that our very own government has created. I don't understand why some people have the power to know the truth while the majority is left in the darkness. I thought this country was built upon the idea of that “all men are created equal”; if that is true, why some some people get to the know the truth while others don't? I don't think this is right at all. Everybody should be entitled to know the truth or at least be able to seek the truth without being criticized or hated. From what I assume in history, one of the reason why we decided to create a government in the first place is that we gave our trust to the people that deserved to lead us. We sure have gone a long way from then. Now, instead of respecting the people in the government, we have come to a time of when people are living in fear of knowing the truth. People are afraid that the government will “hunt” them down if they learned something that they shouldn't have or if they have shared the "wrong" information to the public when the information is only reserved for the higher ups. Overall, I admit that Wikileaks is not completely beneficial, but I believe that it is way more beneficial than it is harmful.

Political Power

This blog post is about whether the gaining of power corrupts the person or not. In my opinion, it really depends on the person or in this case “the animal” to see if they get corrupted when attaining a lot of power. There are good and bad people all around the world which means there would always be different possibilities of what the outcome of a country would come to depending on the person ruling it. If a person has a bad sense of moral then the country would most likely is doom to fall while a country is being rule by a person with good sense of moral, the country probably flourish and stay harmonious.

There are many reasons why people would abuse this power and it doesn't necessary mean that certain person have to be bad person. One reason that a person might be corrupted by power is because of greed. All human contain greed within them and depending on the person, this greed can either be really big or really small. When a person has a big sense of greediness, that person has a high chance of being corrupted by power since that person would always want more than they already have which ultimately would cause a country to be destroyed. Another reason why people would abuse their power is because some people are really selfish. Similar to greed, a person that is really selfish would not able to create a “equal” society, instead it is most likely to cause a country to be destroyed also.

If I could gain this kind of power, I would share this kind of power with friends. This way I can stay away from being greedy and selfish which would overall be good for a country because I believe a country should be ruled by different people which thus enable the country to grow and prosper.

If George Orwell would answer this question, I think his answer would probably similar to mine about that it really depends on the person. Two examples of this is when he uses a old pig named major in his book “Animal farm” to reveal the idea of animalism:

“And above all, no animal must ever tyrannies over his own kind. Weak or strong, clever or simple, we are brothers.” (Page 31)

and

“No animal muse ever kill any other animal. All animals are equal” (Page 32)

These quotes form the story show that in a way, George Orwell believe that there could have been a different way of how this book would ended up if major was still alive. By killing the pig off, Orwell was able to create new possibilities of new animals being the ruler with a bad sense of moral which causes the idea of animalism that old major explained into contradiction within itself.

Response to "Free Topic-School"

This is something that I found in one of Jackson's blog post that I thought was interesting to write about:

"School is the basis of your life because your future is based on your career. If you mess up school now, you will have a bad career in the future. School has allowed me to realize that my current life is a basis for my future career and how I live it. I know to get good grades and have great study habits. I am preparing myself for my future career and life."

Even though Jackson see this kind of thing of going to school in order to get a good career as a positive thing in life, I see it the other way around. The way how school work in society is somewhat tedious. Why do I say this? First off, I can see why going to school and learning new things is really important in life, but the concept of when a person happen to fail, they would lose a lot of their chances of getting a good job which thus may lead that person to other alternative road which can be pretty ugly.

An ideal kind of system of a school that I would like to see is that everybody deserve to have the opportunity of getting a good job even though if the person didn't do as good in school. I think school should be a place to learn and not competition of whoever get a better grades get the better job offer. This of course is one of the main reason why people cheat in school in the first place. They forget about the learning and rather cheat their way around without actually learning the actual content of just to getting the grades needed to beat everybody else the on opportunity to get into a better college or get a better job offer. This saddens me when I see the tremendous pressure that school pushes down on kids.

In conclusion, I can see why school is a good thing of giving a person chance of being successful in life. The only thing that I wish would be better is if society don't put so much emphasize on school since it causes so much pressure to students which lead to them forgetting about the learning and focus more on the grades.

My Opinion on the Articles About Elite Colleges

Out of the articles that I read this week that was about the debate of whether going to an elite college is better for a person's life or not, my favorite one have to be the article “Skip the Admissions Game” by Kevin Carey. It was a pretty interesting and convincing read compared to the other articles. The main reason why I thought this article stand out from the other ones was the fact that this writer did a fantastic job at engaging the reader by using a somewhat humorous tone toward the readers and actually used support that the readers can actually look into:

“The Community College Survey of Student Engagement, for example, identifies public two-year institutions that are unusually good at employing the teaching practices that research show lead to learning and graduation. Most community colleges participate and you can look up the results at www.ccsse.org."

I also liked the way how he wrapped up his article with an conclusion that restated his main point into a single completed sentence:

“That means that even if you're not among the chosen few, you can still get a great college education -- if you know where to look.”

The article that I least favorite is “The Specialization Trade-Off” by James Shulman. The main reason why I didn't like it so much was because there was no evidence whatsoever in the article that state that elite school focuses more on sport then education. I don't think this is completely false, but when a debater states something such as this, I think it is only fair for the him or her to provide the readers evidence such as a list of colleges that actually prefer sport accomplishments over education accomplishments. Another thing that bugged me about this article was the assumption from the writer about how sport is great enough to actually overshadow education about which benefit a certain elite college:

“But if you’re a school that is trying to beat Yale in swimming, then selecting someone on the basis of her potential in the 100-meter butterfly is a rational investment for the college.

”

Response to "How animal testing is minimised"

After scrolling around reader, I came upon an article about animal testing from the World news that caught my eyes. This is something that I found within this article that I thought is interesting to talk about:

"The approach to finding alternatives to animals in scientific procedures is widely referred to as the three Rs: replacement, refinement and reduction. Practically speaking, this means trying to avoid the use of living animals, minimising the number used, and reducing their suffering and distress during any experiments."

I thought this approach in animal testing is awesome (even though if it is just 'minimize') because I'm glad people finally starting to realize that animal cruelty is just plain wrong. The way how I see living things is that every single one of them deserve respect. I feel it is a responsibility for humans to take care of other animals instead of abusing or killing them. I believe that "something" out there chose us humans to be the dominant species in this planet. Even though I don't really believe in any specific religion, I do believe that since whatever reason why humans were chosen to be the top class in the animal kingdom, we should have the responsibility to take care of all other animals because technically we all are one big family since in one point in time, we shared a common ancestor.

When I first heard about scientists using animals such as mouses for experiments, it just sickens me that people do such a thing to animals. Although animal testing always been for good causes such as finding a cure for a certain disease, I can't see why people are not smart enough to invent something that allow them to figure these things out without using innocent animals like tools.

I do not know for a fact if other animals have any feelings or not, but I can think examples of animals showing expression. For example, when a dog is happy or excited, they would stick out their tongue and wag their tail around. This obviously shows that some animals may do have feelings within them. In conclusion, I'm glad that animal testing is minimised because after finding that out, my worries for animal abuse lessen down a bit.