Beloved Reflection

It is finally over. No, I am not talking about the 6 week robotics build season that just finished with two all-nighters (stayed at school until 1:30 a.m. on a school day), but I am talking about Beloved by Toni Morrison. I saw its academic values, but, to be honest, I did not find the book to be amusing at all.
I believe the main factor that made this reading seem forced and not enjoyable is Morrison's writing style. She makes things complicated, and writes in such a unique way that it makes it hard for the reader to comprehend what she is trying to tell. I was one of these such readers who was totally confused, since it took me a good hour to read 30 pages of the novel and feel like I the majority of what was written in the section.
Another factor that contributed to this novel not amusing to me at all is the plot itself. While I do understand the subject matter of the story is important, the plot seems too slow to tell anything and events that happen are minor. If you would recall The Road by Cormac McCarthy that we read before this, that novel at least had a decent story-line, even though it seemed like it was repetitive. The events in the story made it somewhat interesting to read, and I was continuously curious what was going to happen to the man and the boy. However, in Beloved, I did not get a similar feeling toward Sethe and Denver as I did for the travelers. I could care less what happened to Sethe and everyone else, since it seemed like everyone in the story was self-centered and did not care for the people around them (Sethe leaving Paul D in the rain after flirting with him, and so on).
To summarize, I did not enjoy the book. I am glad that I do not have read this book anymore, and I hope the next book that we will read in class be more enjoyable. I have high hopes for the next book since it is going to be Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, a story about revenge that I was going to read for my research project but got shot down by Mr.Mullins since we are going to read it in class.

Thoughts on Standardized Tests

I loathe the concept of standardized tests. I do see its benefit that it allows for easy comparison of standard academic abilities between the students for universities. However, I believe it plays a far crucial role than it needs to, since these test scores basically determine which university you will be attending.

Standardized tests do not successfully reflect the student's full capacity. Just like the student mentioned in the article, some gifted students are not capable of performing well under pressure. This should not be the reason that a talented young individual be barred from further education. Just like the student in the article, I do not perform well academically under stressed situations. Things tend to escape from my brain, and I am not able to show my full skills to the colleges. For example, I have a 35 in the ACT Math section, one point below the perfect score. If this is not under testing conditions, I am confident that I will be able to get a perfect since then I will be relaxed and will not make stupid mistakes like I do on these standardized tests.

I also do not understand why these tests needs to be timed. I do see that if there is no time limit, then some students will sit there for hours and even days to finish their test. However, I believe that these time limits are unfair to students that are slow readers or others that take time to comprehend the material. Just because a student can solve a reading passage in 15 minutes compared to another students 20 minutes, does that mean that the faster student is academically superior to the slower student? I do not think so. There are multiple types of gifted students, and being a fast problem solver is just one of them. Being this gifted type of student should not be the sole reason that they get into their desired college and the other types of gifted students not.

To summarize, I believe that standardized tests are not an accurate representation of the students academic abilities and that colleges should not use this as such an emphasizing factor. Instead, I believe colleges should focus more on daily grades, which really shows the brightness of the student.

Themes in Video Games. Part 1

After a long day of Robotics, I am sitting here trying to come up with something to write for my blog. I only have 30 minutes left, and I have came up with nothing to write about. Trying to get my brain thinking, I put my iPod on shuffle. The first song that came up was part of a soundtrack for the video game Final Fantasy X. I thought back about this game, and noticing it has lots of themes worth mentioning, I decided to write about it and how its worth playing.

Final Fantasy X is a RPG game developed by Square Enix and is the 10th game in its series. This specific game has been one of the highest selling game in the series, and also regarded as the best one in the series.

I would like to describe the story, but to describe it just enough so people would understand it, it would take a couple blog lengths to make it understandable. So, I would have to skip this part and go on directly to the themes of the game. (Summary of story: http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Final_Fantasy_X#Story)

As I mentioned previously, while this games purpose is totally commercial, it holds literal values just like a good book. While there are many topics worthwhile to be discussed, I will focus on one theme specifically. The literal value illustrated in this game is the concept of Gnosticism.

For those that do not know what I just said, Gnosticism is a belief that human existence itself is sinful and that the spirit world should be embraced. This idea can be seen throughout the game, such as with Yuna's summons (Aeons) and the setting of the world itself (Spoiler, so will not mention).

The antagonist believes in Gnosticism  and to make an extremely complicated story simple, the protagonists are trying to stop the antagonist from eradicating physical existence. This epic struggle between the characters makes the player think deeply about our own human existence, and just like the manga that I mentioned in last blog (Kiseijuu), the purpose of human existence.

I am running low on time here, so I will need to save additional discussions for a future blog. I STRONGLY recommend EVERYONE to play this masterpiece. I am a pretty hardcore gamer with experiences in a variety of games, but this game definitely makes it into my top 3. The story line is great, the music is great, the game play is great, everything is great about the game. Again, I wish that everyone would play this game to appreciate the grandness of this masterpiece of art.

P.S. - I legitimately cried at the end of this game, it is that good.

P.S.S - If you are not a gamer, give the music a try. Nobuo Uematsu is a charisma in the field of game music, and he did it once again in FFX. His music significantly amplifies the game experience.

Some samplers: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxRd_5ERYKw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xRCjjiTR7I

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C34BzC7rnos

Are Mangas a waste of time? Part 2

About 2 months ago, one my blogs was about a manga named Detective Conan (Case Closed in English) and how it was educational and benefited the readers. Today, I want to introduce another title that is not only commercial but has some other values in reading it. For this blog, I will focus on a manga called Kiseijuu (Parasyte in English).
The story is about a high school student named Shinichi. One day, worm-like aliens called Parasites invades earth and takes over the brains of human hosts through the hosts nose and ears. The parasite that tried to invade Shinichi failed due to earphones, so instead it digs into his right hand, failing to control the brain. These parasites feeds on humans, and Shinichi and the parasite that invaded his right hand decides to fight the other parasites, including the parasite that killed his mother.

Cover of Kiseijuu - Volume 9

You might be wondering, how does a manga about parasites might be beneficial to the reader? Well, this manga allows for the reader to think the purpose of human existence and the purpose of life.While these parasites kills humans, they themselves have no means of reproduction. So, their population is limited to the initial group that invaded on the night. Several intellectual parasites asks themselves: Why are we alive?

After I read this manga, it made me think deeply of why we exist. Do we exist to live in society and perform our citizen duties? To learn and reproduce? What is the purpose of life? The list of question goes on and on.

While Detective Conan provided useful tips of survival, Kiseijuu questions the reader the purpose of human existence. The series is short, with only 10 volumes, so I encourage people that are into grotesque stuff (this series is pretty grotesque) to give it a try.