Metacognition: First Semester

Helpful? Creative? New? Different? Exciting? Challenging? How else would I describe first semester English? Now that I reflect upon the impact of English so far this semester, it seems as if the whole process was natural... Sure, it's been tough in class at times, but in terms of the kind of thinking that I've done and literature and ideas I've experienced, it doesn't seem to have been forced. Making the whole process of thinking critically a more natural process.
       First day of English, I will admit I was curious, anxious, scared, and excited for another year of "upgraded" English, no more freshman material. I soon realized that as enriching the experience was going to be, my mind also had a lot of catching up to do. It was no longer just reading to get good grades on a test or writing with a false voice that would appease the teacher. It was all about developing your identity, in a way. Writing, is in fact just that. Writing to express your voice, your character, your ideas, and your mind. The first English writing assignment, I thought, was definitely something new and quite unexpected. A letter to the teacher, about an inspiration? What? However, as the days passed on and we began to dive deeper and deeper into the world of Husseini and Shakespeare, it was evident that digging for gold that deep was hard even though we were pretty much standing on the gold the whole time. It just took someone else to point it out, to open our eyes. That's what I think English class has done for me and my thinking so far. It has helped my thinking mature a little more and deepen the amount of thinking that I'll do while I'm reading or writing. For example, sometimes as I'm reading, I can't help, but to let my mind use some of the critique methods taught in English class, and it's often when I am able to use ideas (memes) and vocabulary outside of English. For me all my classes have begun to flow into one. It's no longer just English or just German. It's English and German. Seeing these continuations in ideas and thoughts just boggle my mind and keep me interested throughout the entire day. And when I find myself making that connection it's like reading Shakespeare and saying, "I totally know what Shakespeare's intentions were with that rhyming couplet there in relation to the characters." 
         Reading critically and in depth has opened up new doors in my understanding as well as learning the methodology on how to open those doors. However, what I thought was like the explosion of a door was the kind of writing we got to do this semester. Writing in English class has always been extremely stressful for me, but I found that given the opportunity to let my voice shine through in my essays was probably the best thing that's happened to me in English (aside from the awesome theatre we did with King Lear). By writing with my voice, I'm able to look at things at completely different angles, angles I would have never thought to have experimented with. As much as this freedom enriches my thinking it also reveals my weak spots in my thinking, spots where the critical thinking simply stops... So, that's my goal for second semester, develop my voice into a full-fledged one.
         Vive l'anglais!

Blogging Around

        After reading the many blogs, I can definitely say that I've changed even just a little bit, and quite blown by some of the ideas, ideas that I've never questioned. Among those blogs were Shawn's "iMedia: Children" and Chris Jenkins's "iMedia: Haiti."

        Shawn's post dealt with the differences in the observation of adults in comparison to the child in the youtube video. I agree wholeheartedly that, "It is never to late, to be a child."

Although the link didn't work, I've seen similar instances on other youtube videos, and you're right, it is truly amazing how much fun they seem to have. That is, in comparison to our daily lives and like you said even the professional conductors like Mutti, they seem to be so serious. I think a lot of it comes from our society, we have constant pressures, expectations, challenges, and I think that trying that hard daily sometimes takes the fun out of many things, and we tend to follow a moot, boring take on life. For the kid, he has no limits, no expectation, no pressures (except perhaps throwing on a good show :)). I think it's a little sad at times when we are so wrapped up in what we want to do and what we desire that we forget the happiness of a child. We are constantly telling little kids to grow up fast and mature, but isn't it time to tell adults to stop growing?
~ I really liked this connection, reminds us to be kids, and that it's ok to be a kid once in a while.  

             My response to Chris's blog post was definitely a bit emotional and disappointment with the human race, with myself. Chris talked about the idea that our mindset is clearly, "me first" and how that forces us to make decisions. That in the end really surprise us. It's incredible how even the role of photographers' is hardly questioned. Yes, it is their duty to take pictures and report, but even up to this point?

~ Wow. That's unbelievable. I agree with you one hundred percent. I feel that we naturally look at this picture and see it as, the photographer is just doing his/her job. However, we've never really asked what exactly his/her duty is when(s)he's placed in a situation like this. It's so easy to forget who we are, and we tend to forget our duty to other humans. It's really sad, in my opinion, that we are brainwashed into this selfish nature because we haven't experienced this kind of pain and hardship. Or even in general, the mindset is definitely, "me first, and my welfare comes before your." Where exactly has our world come to? As humans we naturally have the instinct to save our own skin first, but what good will that do for us as a human race and as humanity?

In all, I can say that reading these blogs had an impact on the way I view things now and will definitely be in my mind. All I can say, thanks for saying it out loud for others to hear!

Metacognition: Organizing my Room + Desk

       My little project was simple, just tidying up my room and my desk that have grown so fond of the messy stacks of papers and books. I had books and papers lying all over my desk and sprawled on the ground, so I organized them into stacks and shelved books and filed papers. I had pencils in masses from the need of a sharpened pencil after the one I had used "died." Cleaning my room is, for me, not as a lot of people describe it (painful, boring, tiring,etc.) I actually enjoy it. So I began, with Mariah Carey's "All I want for Christmas is you" "jamming" in the background....

       Before the project, I felt really messy, I couldn't think straight, my eyes kept getting distracted by the unorganized stacks of papers and books. Something inside me was uncomfortable and annoyed at seeing my room disorganized. As I was cleaning my room up I felt little by little more "relieved" as in free from all the stuffiness. It felt nice and a bit less stuffy as I saw more and more books and papers disappear from my desk and from the ground. After I was done cleaning my room, I felt accomplished and ready to do other work. I wasn't distracted by seeing my room messed up. My thoughts calmed down and I could think straight and focus on the other work that needed to be done. No more distractions... The project made my mind a bit easier to focus afterwards. I felt comfortable and ready to work on other things. The organized piles organized my thoughts and I could look around my room and not feel like there was something that I had to do before I went to bed.

       I've realized time after time that I think I might be an obsessive neat freak... I can't stand a lopsided stack on my desk or little pieces of paper embedded in my carpet, or papers lying everywhere because I was too lazy to file away into their individual folders. "Yikes" I think when I see my room slightly different than the perfect state that I like. For everything in my room I have an exact place that I want it to be, or it's safely stored in a folder or in a neat pile. If the computer screen on my desk is a little shifted from its normal position, it will most likely bother me. For me one thing is quite certain, I cannot work if the workspace around me is disheveled and messy. I get distracted with asking myself, "When am I going to clean up? Where should I put that? Where does that belong?" When my workspace is clean and organized, I feel refreshed inside like starting on a blank sheet of paper rather than a doodled paper. So naturally, after I had cleaned my room I felt ready to do anything. While cleaning my room, I find that I do some of my life related thinking. Many say it's idle work, cleaning a room, or discovering old and lost treasures, but for me it's also a time of reflection. As I organize books, I organize my thoughts, thinking ahead what I need to accomplish and what I need to get done and perhaps get around doing... Music and cleaning my room are surprisingly the medicine for reflection on my life and giving myself a refreshing start!       

iMedia: Video Games Live

Civilization IV: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6GU5fNQq9U&safety_mode=true&persist_safety_mode=1

Halo Suite: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5aezS1FbiM&feature=related&safety_mode=true&persist_safety_mode=1

Kingdom of Hearts: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c94VLFEQqbA&feature=related&safety_mode=true&persist_safety_mode=1
These are only some of the many video games songs covered live.

       Playing this piece in orchestra and hearing it numerous times revealed to me how our society has shifted as well as our interests. In the end it also extends to how this kind of music affects our society. When I first heard this piece I was amazed at the power of strings and surprised at how much classical string instruments have evolved. Interestingly, our music reveals the postmodern nature of our society. For example, in the Halo Suite, as the strings hit those high sixteenth notes, the drums follow each beat. Each piece has all the instruments necessary to perform a symphony, but with minor adjustments, we have a rock orchestra. Ever since music became respected and composer after conductor passed through our history, music has been categorized. When we open our little itunes app, we see the fifty different genres of music listed: rock, pop, classical, modern rock, etc. We've had many crossovers between pop and rock, but generally classical music stays pure to its nature and we leave the classical genre alone to isolate the beautiful natural wooden sound of a violin concerto from the electronic piano and riffs. However as our culture continues to mix with other cultures, everything is hard to categorize; we've definitely entered the postmodern society. This affects some people in our society who had found classical instruments bland and "unexciting" in that it changes their views 180 degrees. They see that classical instruments have more flexibility than we have normally given them. Video games live is a mixture of powerful strings singing like a choir in the background even as an electric guitar riffs away.
       The fact that our orchestra, which is known to play mainly absolute classical (and some modern) pieces, picked this piece shows a change in our society. A larger integration between sounds made by nature and technology. It affects our culture in that after the Video Games Live tour plays for thousands of people and it's likely that the same people will go home and look up these songs to hear them again, and perhaps in the end become video game designers and end up inputting the very sounds into their new video game. The reaction as our orchestra conductor tells us to pull out this piece is not surprising, loud whoops and happiness is reflected in the students, and personally this piece is also one of my favorites. This composition as well as the tour will serve to encourage other "movements" towards combining technology and music that dates back farther than any ipod.
     For me, it was also a realization of the solidifying of the convergence between nature and technology. The fact the postmodernism has now penetrated through an art form that has been celebrated by Mozart, Beethoven, Rachmaninoff, Corelli, etc., is amazing. However, it's also a sad realization because the things that we have tried to keep pure are subject to the constant changes in our society and changes in interests. Depending on the individual, it triggers emotions to want to keep classical instruments and classical styles pure of any pop, rock, roll, rap, while others would argue and say that everything needs to crossover. No matter what the point of view this mix will spark greater interest and perhaps less interest, but progress nonetheless. For me personally, when I hold my violin to play this piece, I'm so thrilled to be suddenly able to play music that I had thought was only possible for drums, guitars, and singers.

Connection: Dvorak's New World Symphony and The Tragedy of King Lear

(Before reading this entry, becoming familiar with Dvorak's New Symphony would help the reader to understand this blog better)
Mvt 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OAXCy3YS54
Mvt 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ENf4VEhI40&feature=related
Mvt 2 (part 2): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phbYpnPlYq0&feature=related
Mvt 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cp0-FVuLtOk&feature=related
Mvt 4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yctfXIqugXc&feature=related 

       Content, phrasing, form, and transitions are all important pieces in both music as well as books, especially plays. An art piece that masters these proponents would make it what we call, "successful," lucky for us history and time has brought us people who can tie in most or all of these components, i.e. Shakespeare and Dvorak.
      In Dvorak's "New World Symphony" we start by analyzing each movement, each expressing a multitude of emotions and sections. Similarly, in King Lear, we notice that there are different sections in the play that call for different emotions. For example, sadness (as Cordelia is disowned by Lear), regret (both Gloucester and Lear as they realize what they've done to their children), and hope (Not all the bad stays bad - Albany). In the "New World Symphony," the 1st movement, the ending is much more energized with powerful string parts and the band instruments blowing the melody, compared to the beginning of the 2nd movement where the oboe is a solo along with an quiet and peaceful harmony in the back. These differ as a section in King Lear might differ. For example, the oboe solo could be seen as some of the soliloquies delivered by Edgar and Edmund, while the beginning of the 1st movement can be seen as the fanfares made in King Lear as Lear decides to hold a contest among his daughters. An interesting parallel is that the 1st and 2nd movement start out very quietly and somewhat establish a melancholy and quiet atmosphere, however as the symphony progresses the beginnings of both the 3rd and 4th movement are empowered by strong string sections and in general a much louder entrance. In King Lear, this can be seen through the acts, in the first couple of acts there isn't much "action" occurring, simply the stage is being set up and warming up the audience for what is ahead. After act 2 we start to climb towards the drive of the play everything is set up so the piece just drives full speed ahead. For example, the actions being fulfilled by Edmund in order to get rid of his brother. Just like how the 3rd movement and 4th movement are essentially the driving forces of the piece after the audience has been warmed up by the first 2 movements, which are mixtures of the excitement seen in the 3rd and 4th mvt. In acts 1 and 2, we see glimpses of the action in the future, Edmund's plan, Cordelia being sent off, and the two sisters having a discreet discussion.
        Interestingly, the "New World Symphony" has quite instantaneous transitions, it'll go from heavy woodwinds to a quiet choral of strings. This is quite similar to the transitions in King Lear, where many scenes and acts have no solid transition, rather it's just one event happens and then moves onto the next important detail to mention. It's very direct, which is what Dvorak's symphony also accomplishes, moving swiftly from a slow 30 measures to 30 measures of sixteenth notes for the strings and scales up and down for the wood winds. In King Lear, even though we know there was a lot of preparation to set up Edmund's plan (the soliloquy, the letter), but when the events actually occur, we are taken aback by exactly how much Edmund is willing to do. Similarly, although the build up in the 1st movement might have shown us what lies in movement 4, when we reach movement 4, it's very different than what we might have expected, with the sudden Jaws-like theme.
       In my opinion, when we see parallels like this between a symphony and a play it says a lot about the pieces as well as the writer and composer. The fact that a play can be compared to a symphony, that says the play is in some ways like music. Overall we may not see the entirety of the play as a song, but the sonnets and when Shakespeare uses heightened language, that translates into music. This "New World Symphony" like King Lear can be seen as battles within each movement and battles between the different instruments as well as "allies." For example, we hear some little battles between the woodwinds and the strings in the 4th movement, as the strings are involved in high fast notes, the winds will either support them, or have their own melody on top of the strings. (Where the strings have short notes while the winds are playing the melody) In King Lear there are battles among the characters as well as alliances (Goneril, Regan, and Edmund vs. Cordelia, Albany, Edgar). This says also a great deal about this symphony, it tells a story it has conflicts, a climax, and the filler parts. I think that whether we write a story or compose a song, there are so many similarities, conflicts, battles, climax, a set up of the climax. So the techniques used in writing is not exclusive to simply writing, but to the arts as well, and vice versa.

360 Degrees: Number of Kids in a Family

For as long as I can remember, when someone asked me how many kids a family should have, I always answered, "a lot." No question, no doubt about it. It was always about having a lot of "play friends," after all what else mattered? However, now that I look at the significance or meaning in number of kids there's a lot to think about....
       In many different cultures, for example, Chinese, the number of kids you had was a sign of welfare, of wealth. On the farm, the more hands you had to help, the better off your family would be living. So exactly how did this affect our society intellectually as a whole? Had we decreased the number of kids we had then, possibly brought the era of technology a couple of decades earlier? After all if we hadn't removed so many children out of education to work on the farm, many kids would be contributing to the science, technology, research, development part of our world. Then, the Great Depression hit the U.S. and we saw a sharp decline in the number of kids in a household. During that time the perspective changed, and saw a large number of kids as a burden. In that situation, if we hadn't increased the number of kids in a family, what would be the result now? We are already spiraling towards a depletion of resources, including drinkable water, what would've happened if we had a baby boom rather than a bust during those years? The truth is that many things could have happened, either we would be that much closer to running out of resources, or we would have proceeded into a new era of technology and discovery. It's difficult to decide whether having a child boom or bust is ever a good or bad thing. For one thing it is quite paradoxical. Take our recession, we are statistically experiencing another bust in the number of kids families have, we see many single-child households, households with no children, and we have yet to fix the economic problem. Economists, Wall street businessmen toss and turn in their sleep waiting for anyone who could fix this problem, and ideally it could be the kid that would have been born had it not been for the high cost for maintaining and caring for a kid.
      The question is, is this topic meaningless because there isn't much that can be done to regulate it? Should it be regulated? I feel that if this situation were to move towards law, it would be a violation against our rights as humans, but when mothers are moving towards abortion because they can't afford to have a child, where does the situation lie then? Is there a way to address the paradox, or should it even be addressed? The way I see it, it would be extremely difficult and unreasonable trying to construct a law against/for the number of kids a family should have, but rather we should use the information as data. For example, I believe that by observing the number of kids a family might have it tells us a lot about the time of the society. For example, during the bust of number of kids born could tell us about the economic situation, the political situation, etc. However, the decisions are simply subject to each individual household, and should stay that way. It's just interesting to see it happen in real time and see exactly the extent of how our decisions may affect the future.
          From all these different booms and busts, it's safe to say that the number of kids that a family has depends on the conditions of the world, which is beneficial for those living at that moment, but who knows maybe by doing that we may have prohibited another Einstein from being born... 

Metacognition: Kite Runner Essay

The first thing that ran through my head as I began writing this essay was exactly how the puzzle pieces were going to fit. I had a general idea of how things would sound especially the tone and sound of my voice that I wanted to portray in this essay. I really wanted to to get across formal and yet sounding as if I was holding a conversation with someone. I wanted the ideas to come out naturally and playing on the string of phrases not each letter or each word. I think one aspect that I find interesting is that I come across new (sometimes better) ideas as I'm writing, and unfortunately as much as it is a boon it is also a demise. I find myself having so many ideas that I want to tell the world and explain, but this causes me to go astray. This is the one thing about myself that I wish I could fix; I get lost in my own ideas and that causes the most panic, anxiety, and frustration for me. As a result, I can't focus on the singular idea that I first thought of. This part of my thinking is the most flawed, in my opinion, and I would like to work on it so that I can still come up with these ideas, but keep my thinking focused on the original idea that I have. On top of that, the reason why my thinking goes astray with these new ideas is because I want to continuously relate my original theme to these underlying layers and most of the time that requires a lot of extra time to think in order to find a good way to connect them, but there is also a time limit. So as a goal I think I need to find a way to restrict myself to keeping myself intact with the original points. That's one of the major things that needs a little work on. However, there are a lot of aspects of my thinking that I'm glad of having. I'm able to think artistically as well as a generic student, which I think is beneficial depending on the writing piece, and I find that the best pieces involve a mix of both. For me personally, I noticed that with a little bit of time my thinking can be deepened and that I could think with a mix from outside influences, like history, languages, and other subjects.

           Specifically, for this essay, I had to think about how the evidence would have to directly relate to the thesis and how it would support it. At first I saw the literal (the language aspect) of each evidence, but then I saw the overall effect on the book. For example the parallel between the bond, no bond, bond, and the appearance of the kite solely at the beginning and the end, and missing in the middle. However, I think because this essay had such a strict formula, I found it difficult to incorporate other ideas in fear that it would distract the reader and the purpose of this essay. That was a little irritating, but I also found myself pleased that I was able to think of the overall picture. I think one obstacle that I was faced with was trying to find the "So What" of the essay. I found that my thinking in another way was limited in that it took me a great deal of time to try and figure out why my ideas were so important. I think we take our ideas for granted in a way that we never have to explain why they're important. So, I think one thing I should work on is developing that hidden factor, trying to expand my thinking before I dive into writing a piece or try supporting it.