Semester Reflection Part 2

I think that the greatest challenge facing our generation today is our increasing dependence on technology and our laziness and need for instant gratification. This was the topic of my Ampersand article, because working for an environmental organization over the course of internship really opened my eyes to the fact that so little people really care or are willing to make an effort for anything that doesn't benefit them directly. We are constantly designing new technology that lead us closer and closer to getting whatever we want without having to put in any effort. I don't think that this is healthy. I think if we continue creating new gadgets that will allow us to do everything the easy way, we will become so dependent on technology that we won't know how to live without it.

History has never been my strong subject, but I think that over the year my view of events in history and the way that they have shaped the culture of America has changed. After studying the different financial crises in our history, it really brought to my attention the poor economic state that our country is in right now and the way that it is affecting more than just my ability to find a summer job, it is affecting the entire country. I also now have a different view of war after reading the novel Slaughterhouse Five. War is usually depicted as a group of extremely brave young men who have chosen to fight because they are passionate about their country, but in Slaughterhouse Five the author Kurt Vonnegut points out that most of the men who join the war aren't particularly brave, or passionate about their country, or even ready to be in a war at all.

At this point in my life, there are so many carrer fields that I could see myself enjoying or prospering in, but I still have not decided which field I really want to pursue a career in. It is certainly possible that by Senior year I will be more sure of what path I want to take in life, but if that's not the case, I have decided that I am going to take at least two semesters off to travel after I have completed High School. By doing this I will experience new things, reflect on the what I really want in life and decide what I really want to pursue as a career. After I take a short time off to travel, I want to go to UCLA, Soka University in Orange County, or San Francisco State.

There are several things beyond grades that motivate me to do well in school. First,the freedom for personal expression that is given to us at this school helps motivate you to do well because you begin to use projects as an opportunity to present ideas that you have and get them accross to others, or to express your talents. For example, if you are a talented artist, you will be motivated to create a professional and well done art piece, so that you can show your talent. Another thing that motivates me to do well are my parents, and my future.

Semester Reflection Part 1

Working in a Project-Based environment can be both benificial and challenging. In a project based environment you are given much more freedom, you are given an opportunity to use your personal creativity and motivation to produce a quality product. This is benificial because it gives you an opportunity to use your personal interests and creativity to produce something that will be graded based on your full potential of talent, rather than recieving the same assignment as everybody in your class and being graded on your percentage of correct answers. This also gives you more of a motivation to do well on assignments, because you are given a chance to show your own personal talents. This is also challenging because the freedom that you are given can make it easy to procrastinate and choose the easy way out, two things that must be avoided.

Internship was by far the most valuable experience of my Junior Year. My internship experience at Pro Peninsula taught me many things. I gained direct insight on what it's like to work in the real world, and to be working for a large orginization in which your work will affect the lives of many peope, not just your own grades. Not to mention I now know how to edit a website, use photoshop, create a poster for an event, and work with children. Internship also really changed the way I looked at things. I interned in a field of work that I had never been interested in, and had never considered working in the future. But after working there, I became much more interested in that field of work and it is a type of job that I am considering working in sometime in the future.

One academic challenge that I was faced with this year was transitioning to using computers as the basis for all of my schoolwork. I have always been horrible with computers and have encountered many issues with images and videos that have failed to load, conflicting security and password settings, emails that have failed to send, and more. I also don't always have internet at home, which was a struggle for me because the majority of the time it is necessary to have access to internet in order to do homework. I often had to go to the library to complete my homework because I wasn't able to do it from home.

Writing Reflection

I would like to say that I have always put 100% into my writing, but as I look over pieces of my writing over the course of this year, it is apparent that over the course of my junior year I have learned a great deal about writing techniques and how to apply them. I have always taken my writing seriously, but looking over my pieces of writing that I have done over the course of this year, I noticed a darastic change in the quality and thought put into my writing. I chose my two favorite writing assingments to compare. The first piece is entitled "My Hero" and was the first writing assignment for our Junior year. I had an excellent topic and many good ideas, but I did not communicate them as well as I could. I used simple sentence structure and almost no writing techniques to get my point accross.

I compared this with my Ampersand article, one of our most important and most recent writing assignment. When writing my article, I paid very close attention to detail and revised it many times, looking for specific writing techniques, such as "concerts, not pancakes" and "make meaning early". I used more complex sentences that got my point accross without just bluntly saying it. To achive this higher quality writing, I used my knowledge of writing techniques that we had learned over the year and went through many drafts and revising processes, and had it by critiqued by many people, which made a huge difference.

For the future, I want to ensure that I get a rough draft of my writing as soon as possible, rather than procrastinating and trying to make a perfect final draft at the last minute, because over the course of this year I have learned the importance of the rough draft revision process. I will also ensure to go over the drafts as carefully as possible and have my writing by as many people as possible.

Historical Reflections

If I could choose any one Historical figure to come back to life so that I could run into them at college, I would choose Abraham Lincoln. There are several reasons for my choice of historical figures. I have always admired Abraham Lincoln for his perseverance and continuous effort to make something possible even when all of the odds are against him and when he is told he wont be successful. As Lincoln said himself,"The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just."

I would also want to show him how much things have changed from the time that he was president, because I think that he played a huge role in the anti-Slavery movement that made things the way that they are today.
I think that Abraham Lincoln would make a good professor, because he has proven that he is a very powerful leader and can positively influence a large amount of people. I think that Lincoln's wise ideas about life could be used to educate and give students a better view on life. For example, Lincoln once said "Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing." Quotes like this bring me to the conclusion that Lincoln would be a very successful college professor.

Literary Reflections

If I could bring any one character to life from a book that we have read this year , it would be a Tralfmadorian from the novel Slaughterhouse Five. A Tralfmadorian is an extraterrestrial being from the book Slaughterhouse Five who can see the whole span of time, and believes that there is no free will and everything that will happens is already predetermined. Out of all of the characters in all of the books that we have read, I chose a Tralfmadorian because he would have a viewpoint on life that is the complete opposite of mine, and is more interesting to me than any of the other characters that we have read about this year.
There aren't very many roles that a Tralfmadorian can play at a college, but I would have him as my roomate. If I lived with a Tralfmadorian, he could answer any questions that I have about the past or future, which could be infinitely benificial. I would want to learn more about the Tralfmadorian view on life, time and free will. I would also give him insight about how differently people see things on earth. I would want to be able to see things from a Tralfmadorian perspective, because I don't believe in their ideas of no free will and I would like to see it for myself.

I am a Japanese immigrant coming to America, I chose this character because I am interested in learning more about the struggles that Japanese immigrants were faced with when coming to America at this time of war.

Research:
http://www.archives.gov/genealogy/immigration/enemy-aliens-overview.html

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Japanese_American_life_under_U.S._policies_before_and_during_World_War_II

Out of the list of innovations came from the aftermath of World War Two, the technological advances that were developed over the course of the war. Some of the most famous examples of technology which were developed during World War Two and used heavily over the years are nuclear weapons, jet engine, ballistic missiles, and U-boats. These more advanced weapons made an extremely big impact on wars in the following years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_during_World_War_II

http://www.123helpme.com/view.asp?id=23618

http://www.bukisa.com/articles/85094_technology-advancements-of-world-war-2