Final Thoughts on Blogs and English Class

So here it is, the final blog in my high school. Just like any other blog, I have nothing creative to write about so I guess I will write about how I feel about blogs and the class in general.

Surprisingly, I enjoyed writing blogs (if I had a good topic to write about). It gave me an opportunity to discuss the themes present in my favorite game Final Fantasy X, analyze the lyrics in "Virtual Insanity" by Jamiroquai, and explain why The Count of Monte Cristo is basically the best book to be ever written. While writing about these highly interesting topics were entertaining, I must admit, the other blogs were boring to write. I went on tangents and filled it with fluff just to reach the word limit. But I must say that blogging was a unique experience, and I hope to do it in the future. In fact, I am planning to do one during this summer on the food that I encounter in Japan.

So, now onto the reflection of the class. This year’s English class was truly a different experience than my previous English classes in many different ways. It definitely had the most homework by far, and the material covered in class was by far the hardest in my English career. However, the class itself was interesting and it made me think about concepts in a way that I have never thought of before. I still remember the debate that we had about existentialism that lasted the whole class. I would not mind continuing that debate after the AP exam.

This year's English class, along with senior year as a whole, has prepared me greatly for college. I can’t wait to spend the next four years at Berkeley. I might blog here and then, I don't know. But until then, see you later!

The Revenger's Tragedy Reactions

About 22 hours ago, I finished The Revenger's Tragedy, my third and final book (well, play in this case) for my outside reading project. Before I give my thoughts on this play, there is one unusual thing about this play. That is the fact that the authorship of the play is unclear, in that there are two playwrights who are credited this play. While most critics credit the work to Thomas Middleton, some critics credit the play to Cyril Tourneur. This unclear authorship is something unique of this play that I wanted to point out.

Overall, I enjoyed the play. This is a straight forward revenge story, just like the master piece The Count of Monte Cristo. It is about a man named Vindice who is trying to avenge his lovers death by killing the Duke. He does everything to accomplish task, be it selling his sister into prostitution for the Duke's son or giving himself a fake identity to go by. In the end, Vindice does get revenge on the Duke, making it a "happy ending" for the play, even though the play ends with a massacre.

The fact that this story was a play had both its merits and demerits. Being it a play makes it slightly harder to read, but it makes the reading shorter in terms of page length. I believe if this play were a book instead, it would lose its appeal since the style of the play fit in well with the work as a whole. Unlike The Count of Monte Cristo, I believe this work does not need as much detail compared to Dumas' masterpiece.

If I get the chance, I would love to see The Revengers Tragedy actually played out. While it was exciting enough to read it on the pages, I know it would be overwhelming to see all the greed and killing be acted out right in front of my eyes.

As a end of a year field trip, I say we take the class to go watch the The Revengers Tragedy!

Reflection on Poetry

Since the poetry unit is soon approaching its end, I thought that I would blog once again about how I felt about poems, and if this unit has changed any of my thoughts towards the subject.

To make a long story short, I still do not enjoy poetry. A lot of the poetry is confusing, and I usually can not fully understand the poem. Additionally, the majority of the poems topics does not interest me. I would rather read an educational article that is full of information that would be useful to me.

While my attitude toward poetry did not change during this unit, I did discover one beautiful aspect of poetry that I was not aware of before. It is the rhyme scheme of the poems, which in other words is the sound aspect of the poem. I found the different patterns of stressing the syllables very interesting, since growing up with another language as a primary language that made my intonations different from the typical American. This unit helped me learn the stressing and unstressing in the English language. It also allowed me to appreciate the beauty of these poems, in that how two lines that do not rhyme with syllables instead rhyme with the stressing of the words in the line. I thank this unit for that.

I still do not understand poetry very well. I will not be able to identify conceits in the poem and completely understand it without more practice. However, now I understand (somewhat) how the sound works in a poem.  I did not really enjoy this unit (partly because of the poetry journals and MC practice), but I did enjoy the foot lesson.

College and Stuff

There is 6 more weeks, or 30 more days of school left until the seniors graduate. I know that these next 6 weeks will go by in a blink, and then I will be advancing onto the next level of education. I don't want to talk about poetry in this blog since I already wrote about it in my poetry response, so instead I decided to write about my next four years and plans for the summer.
For those of you that are not aware, I will be attending University of California, Berkeley starting August. I am planning to major in materials science and engineering, a discipline of science that combines aspects of physics and chemistry to synthesize new materials to continue improving technology. The MSE department is rather small at Berkeley compared to the other majors, so I get to enjoy both the large university feel that Berkeley has to offer with a concentrated group for my major.
This summer, I am planning to go back to Japan and spending about 6 weeks there. Hopefully, I get to experience my culture and help out with the country as much as I could. I plan to go volunteer in the northeast for the tsunami victims, and also backpack across Japan to further enhance my knowledge on my heritage.
I am really excited for this summer and Berkeley. However, I can't let senioritis get me too much since I need to maintain a B or higher in all my classes for Berkeley to not kick me out. I hope to finish the year out strong, enjoy the remaining 30 days of senior year, and then transition into the next stage of my life.

Virtual Insanity

As I was perusing through the other blogs, I noticed a lot of people made connections of song lyrics to poems. I believe that this connection is valid, since the right song lyrics contain a meaning as deep as certain poems. So, for this blog, I want to analyze the lyrics of a song that I believe has great lyrical value - Virtual Insanity by Jamiroquai.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JkIs37a2JE

While the video is visually attracting, what I want you to focus on it the lyrics, especially the chorus of the song, which is as follows.

Futures made of virtual insanity now

Always seem to, be govern'd by this love we have

For useless, twisting, our new technology

Oh, now there is no sound - for we all live underground

I believe that this chorus has great academical potential and is worthwhile to analyze, just like a poem. Now, I would like to break down this poem, line by line.

The first line indicates that our future is totally corrupted, in that it is composed of "virtual insanities". I believe that this virtual insanity is symbolizing our new technology that we keep developing, which is mentioned in the third line. Jay Kay, the writer of the song, I think believes that the new technology is corrupting our society and also our future, which I totally agree. While technology is useful and makes life more efficient, it also has a lot of negative consequences which the general public usually does not notice.

The second line states that while our future is full of technology that corrupts us, there is love that governs us all. I think Jay Kay is trying to say here that no matter how much we become corrupted by the virtual insanities, there would still be our fundamental love towards each other that would regulate our actions to a certain degree.

The third line links with the first line in that the virtual insanity points to the "useless, twisting, new technology" that humans keep developing. This corrupts our society, along with our future.

Finally, I believe the fourth line describes the consequences of the virtual insanity. Humans will be corrupted, and society will not function. Thus, there would be no sound since society is not functioning properly. The second part of the line about where it describes how we all live underground now, I think this is showing that humans are now living differently than before and now technology is on the ground while humans are underneath it.

While I only focused on the chorus, the whole song contains lyrics that is worth analyzing and makes you think. I would recommended everyone to go listen to Virtual Insanity by Jamiroquai since their music is awesome, and their lyrics are highly worth analyzing!

My Thoughts on E-Readers

http://cdn.pocket-lint.com/images/CmPW/no-kindle-fire-touch-uk-0.jpg?20110929-092519

I am a technology person. I love the gadgets that make my life more entertaining and make tasks easier to do. Recently, I have noticed a lot of people utilizing e-readers instead of actually carrying a book in print. While I do love technology, I am not fond of the concept of e-readers.

I do understand that e-readers have their benefits. They are compact, in that you can store hundreds of books in a small device. It is also thin, making it easy to carry around and hold it in your hand. Additionally, some e-readers are capable of accessing the internet and playing games, making it seem like they are tablets.

The biggest thing that bugs about me about the kindle is that it doesn't give me the feeling that I am reading a book. The other day I tried using my dad's kindle to try to read, but I was not able to handle it. I physically need to flip through each page of the book to feel like I have actually read through the book, even if the text is the same. The action of sliding your finger across the screen is convenient and efficient, but for me it doesn't suffice.

Our society is continuing towards absolute technopoly. This would of course affect books in that basically print would be gone, and then everything would be web. While this would save resources, readers around the world would be depressed and then not be able to read since they would not be able to handle e-readers. So, I hope that in the future printing books would still be a thing, and not everything go digital.

Definitions of Poetry

And so it has begun. Poetry, the unit that I have been least looking forward to in this class. I do not find appreciation in poems, and I only like poems that rhyme (for now). I was looking forward to reading Wuthering Heights in the class, but I guess we need to save the best things for last. Looking through the vast list of definitions of poetry in class yesterday, I thought I would reflect on some that resonated in me.
The definition that resonated within me the most yesterday and thus the one that I wrote about in the warm up was #12, where it describes poetry as " a kind of ingenious nonsense". Noticing that it came from the great scientist Sir Issac Newton, I could have not agreed more with the physics genius. To me, poems are a jumble of random words that might rhyme from place to place, and might tell a story or portray a scenery  It also seems like it describes the same thing in 20 different ways. Even elementary school kids can write poems that rhyme, and that is why I agree the most with Newton's definition of a poem.
Another definition that I liked alot is #32, where it describes poetry as anything that calls itself a poem. Poems have many formats, such as haiku and free verses and rhyming poems. This definition struck me since it allowed me to realize that a piece of literature can be classified as poems for the majority of times. I have once read a book about 200 pages that the book itself was one large poem. I have also seen poems that the layout of the words illustrated the object that is describing. Recalling these examples, #32 struck me as true and a good generalized way to describe poetry.
After looking through the list one more time, a definition that stood out to me was #47 where it describes poetry as an "orphan of silence [and] the words never quite equal the experience behind them". This quote struck me as significant, since for some poems, the poet writes about his or her experience in a couple of lines. Compressing all the thoughts, observations, and senses during the experience into a couple of lines do require skill, and however good the poet is, there are still going to be information left out. Definition #47 has allowed me to realize how experienced skilled poets are, being able to describe their experience in a couple of lines.
I still hate poetry, and I am not looking forward to this unit. However, I do hope that this unit will allow me to encounter poems that I will be able to enjoy and assist me in discovering the beautiful aspects of poetry.