Blog Reflection

As anyone who has read my previous entries knows, this blog was for an English class at the university. Overall, I'd say I enjoyed it a little, but due to my tendency to leave things for the last moment, I didn't really keep it updated throughout the semester. I wrote some entries and ideas on my phone with the intent to post them here later, but I never really got to that last part (which, as you may imagine, is the most important one). Anyways, I think it would have been a more satisfying and maybe less stressful experience in the ends if each entry had a due date, rather than the blog itself. I know it's a pretty stupid idea; I could have imposed these due dates on myself. However, me and many others do this thing where we take as long a break as we can before doing our assignments, and well, if I were forced to do the assignment bit by bit rather than all of it for a specific date, I think I'd have enjoyed it more and the entries publishing dates would certainly be more spread out. Anyways...


The main idea for the blog was to speak our minds about some specific topics, and we were even given the freedom to choose some of these for ourselves. I ended up writing 13 blog entries, this one being the 14th, and though they were supposed to be between 300 and 500 words each, I'm pretty sure most of mine were longer than that (and I think this last one will be no exception). I guess for these kinds of things it's better to say more rather than say less though, right?

Anyways, throughout the blog experience, I feel I opened up to myself as to how I like to write. Obviously, I won't be as casual when writing an essay or a thesis or something as I am when writing here, but I enjoy writing in the way I think and speak throughout my normal life. As you may notice, I loosened up more and more after each entry, and I think I can speak my thoughts pretty clearly in a casual way better than I did before. I think one of my favorite entries, in terms of content, is the one about The Use of Force, due to its controversial nature. There can be a lot of opinions in regards to that story, and no one person can say that one of them is wrong or right. The one about my identity was pretty significant too, but I think the one about the journal is that meant the most. The journal itself was a great experience, and as I said in the entry, it even helped me out quite a bit in my personal life.

I think what changed most between my writing in the journal and my writing in here was the content. In terms of style, I wrote pretty similarly, though since the journal was only for myself, I didn't worry about making things understandable for others or explaining inside jokes or anything. I also didn't worry about censoring myself. I think I'll have to burn it down once its graded. Both were good experiences, but as I've expressed before, the journal was my favorite.

As for the commenting experience, I honestly have to say I felt it was a little too much. Commenting on all of our group member's blog posts (approximately 15 each, and my group had 6 members) felt tedious to say the least. I believe this task is still in progress for all of us, and I'm not really sure if any of us will manage to finish commenting on all the blog posts, due to the fact that they're A LOT and not all of us have even finished our blog posts themselves yet. The Peter Elbows method was very interesting though, and I think it would've been really helpful if we were to comment on 5 or fewer of our group members' entries so that it felt like we were choosing something we actually cared about or had an opinion on to comment.

So... As I said, the blog has helped me discover how I like to write most. It also helped me see how horrible I am at sticking to word limits. This post is probably way over 500 already. I'm finished though. So yeah. Good bye!

The 60's: Part 2

So! The white family in the 60's. 

The family's last name is a little weird, but after looking it up, I found out they are the Herlihys. So, in this family, the father is as conservative as a conservative can be, while the mother is submissive, as any 60's housewife would be. Their kids, Brian, Michael, and Katie, each get their own storyline throughout the movie/mini-series. Brian joins the Marines right after high-school, and is fortunate enough (note my sarcasm) to go to Vietnam, much to his father's pride. Once he comes back, he is visibly traumatized by what he saw and experienced. He ignores his father and his enthusiasm for a long time, and eventually lets the audience know that the war didn't really have a purpose; at times, he said he didn't even know who his enemies were or why they were fighting them. 

(I just realized it may be a little hard to tie all the stories up but I'll try.)

Michael, on the other hand, gets involved in politics and equal rights movements and has very different ideals from his father. He is a much more radical and progressive-minded person. He stands up for a woman who tried to voice her opinion in a student meeting, and ends up dating her. This storyline gets a little complicated, but she ends up leaving him for another revolutionary student, and after finding out she was wrong, tries to get back together with him (sort of) but doesn't want a serious relationship so he rejects her, and then she comes back to him once more and they get back together. So... I honestly don't know if there's something else to say about this storyline. Oh! He gets in a few confrontations with his father regarding the morality of the Vietnam war, and he inspires his mother to disagree with the father and vote in favor of a movement he was proposing. Or something like that.

Finally, Katie meets a singer at a concert, and after having sex with him, ends up getting pregnant. Her father kicks her out of the house and she moves with the singer to San Francisco and becomes part of the hippie movement. She is clearly not at comfort with this lifestyle, and this is most evident when her child is sick and she needs to get medicine for him, but can't find the money for it. She becomes a stripper, at one point in the story, in order to maintain her child. 

So, after Brian comes back, he and Michael go to a hippie concert/party (I forgot the name) and Brian has a traumatizing flashback that ends with him covered in mud and unconscious. As luck would have it, the woman charged with cleaning him up is Katie, his sister. Once all three brothers are reunited, they go back home, and after a few struggling moments, the family is back together. 

Damn, this was much longer than I thought it'd be. Enough!

The 60's: Part 1

So I haven't done it much, but the professor asked us to use layers (images, videos, music, etc.) for our entries. I felt using music for an entry about The 60's movie is very appropriate, but I realized that the song I chose was the same one of my classmates chose... anyways, no shame. I'll use it too. 

Ah. Few things are more 60's than this. 

In class, we spent a few classes watching The 60's mini-series/TV movie (I'm not sure which it is, so I'll just say both). We're supposed to write two entries about it, but I honestly don't know if I can write two... I'll try though. The movie is mostly about two (presumably fictional) families living in the 60's: one white, and one black. The white family's story focused on their three kids and how their lives take different paths, while the black family's story focused mainly on how the father and son struggled living in the deep-south during this time period. A big theme for a chunk of the semester was discrimination. I think it's pretty obvious how much discrimination existed in the 60's, and a movie about the 60's isn't really complete if it doesn't talk about it. So, the father in the black family is a minister, and is constantly trying to guide his son through the right path, leading him to fight for equality without resorting to violence. His son, like most teenagers, is reluctant to follow his father's teachings, and they clash a lot. In one scene (and one of the most emotional ones in the movie), there is a riot going on, and the father (named Willie Taylor) is desperately looking for his son amidst the chaos. When he finally finds him, his son is stealing a TV and holding a gun. He reprimands him, orders him to drop the TV and give him the gun, and once he does, they hug. The police, however, spot them standing amongst the mess, and order them to turn around. The father is still holding the gun, and as soon as they see it, the nervous police fire at him, killing him in front of his son.

(I tried to find a Youtube video of the father's death, but I couldn't find any...)

The son escapes and moves to the city to join the Black Panthers, but his involvement in the story slowly fades away, as it begins to focus more and more on the white family (so much for a movie about racism). I'll discuss this a little more in the next one...

Trifles

So, Trifles. I just found out I start a lot of my paragraphs with "so." It's pretty funny. I only do it here though, 'cause it's a pretty casual writing. I think. Anyways...

Trifles is a story about three men investigating the death of a farmer at his house. Accompanying them are two women, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters. The women decide to look around a little, and the men criticize and make fun of them, saying that women worry about trifles rather than the important things. They allow them to take some things for the deceased man's wife, Mrs. Wright, as long as they're not important to the case. As you might expect, they end up finding incriminating evidence; a bird, strangled in the same manner as the dead man, was hidden in a box inside Mrs. Wright's sewing basket. This, along with the women's suspicion that Mrs. Wright had been unhappy after getting married, leads them to conclude that she had killed her husband, and had strangled the bird first for practice. They decide not to tell the men, however; I don't really know if they did it out of love for her or out of spite for the men's disrespect towards them, but they decide to hide the evidence, and the story ends implying that Mrs. Wright will not be incriminated.

I really liked the irony in the story, despite how clear and non-subtle it is. The men disregarded the women's opinions and intents, and they ended up finding the most important evidence due to their observational skills. The ending was a little predictable though, and in my opinion the best stories are those with unpredictable twists. I enjoyed reading it, but I must admit it's not exactly a story I'd re-read.

Skit Reflection

A reflection on the skit itself... I have a feeling this one will be a little short too, but I'll do my best to say every little detail about it. So, we had to make a skit about a modern problem related to discrimination. I wasn't present on the day the group chose the topic, but they chose to make our skit about discrimination towards the homeless, and I agreed that it was a good and relatively original idea. We wrote a preliminary script, and we found out it was hard to make a mini-drama about a serious topic without making it too dark or non-entertaining. We often found ourselves recurring to comedy, and though this is fine if used in moderation, it can belittle the seriousness of the topic if overused. We managed to stay between these lines, though I think with a few more rehearsals we could have improved it a little more.

So, our skit was about two guys (played by Alexis and Josue) discussing Game of Thrones in a car, when a homeless man (played by Dylan) approaches asking for spare change. They ignore him, but in their distraction they fail to notice that the traffic light had changed to green. An impatient man (played by Luis) honks his horn and yells at them to move and run the homeless guy over. This guy was named Richard (Dick, for short [I know, we're awesome]). So, the next day, Alexis' car breaks down in the same red light and no one around is willing to help him move. He calls a towing service, but since it's rush hour, the service operator (played by me) tells him he can get there in two hours at best. The homeless guy from before shows up and, despite having initial suspicions, Alexis lets him help. They push the car out of the road, and Alexis, feeling indebted to him, offers the homeless guy a meal and a smoothie at a nearby McDonald's and later offers him a job at his workplace. Throughout all this, the play was stopped every now and then so a thoughts guy (played by Melissa) would speak out loud the thoughts a specific character was having. Oh, and Alexis' character had a name, but it was never mentioned in the drama and I forgot. Oops.

So yeah, that's about it... It was honestly pretty fun, but if I were to do it again, I'd like it if we performed it a few times in class or something and get recommendations from the other classmates on how to improve it. And I think I've said all I can say, sooo... yeah.

Semester Group Project

I've honestly never been a fan of group projects; I always feel like some people end up working harder than others, and then the hard-workers' grade ends up being worse than it should be because of the not-so-hard-workers. I also tend to leave my work until the last possible moment (I've tried to change, but damn it, it's not easy! Don't judge me.), but when working in a group I consider it disrespectful and unfair to my classmates, so I feel forced to do it a bit earlier. This is annoying, of course, since it forces me to go against my nature, but in a way it's also good; I'm not exactly proud of being such a lazy guy half the time, so at least in group projects I can say I did (most of) my work on time. In this group, like in all others, there were some disagreements, but overall it was a good experience. Communication wasn't always easy due to our very different and very busy schedules, but we found a way. The skit was much more fun than I thought it'd be, though with a little more time or a few "test-runs" I feel we could've done even better. We also had a pretty intense discussion the last class when discussing the movie, but it never got out of hand and I felt everyone was respectful, so I'd say it was a productive debate. We never reached an agreement though, and I don't think we ever will, so it's better if we never speak of it again. Ever. (Just kidding, comedy is important too, blah blah.)

So... yeah! I hate group projects in general, but this one wasn't so bad. I guess I wouldn't mind doing it again, though I'll always prefer individual work. (Short entry. Not really much to say.)

Serving In Silence: Reaction Questions

1. Describe these reactions:

A. Military: Due to military regulations, it is seen unacceptable and immoral. Some of her friends in the military don't seem to be bothered by it, but most agree that she should be removed due to the regulation that forbids homosexuality. 
B. Father: He initially seems to not know how to react (he responds to her letter with a mere two sentences) and doesn't accept it. When he finally does, he wants it to be a secret.
C. Children Each Son (s): The three oldest ones are completely okay with it, and they even say that they already knew. The youngest, however, is in denial right up until the end of the movie, when he finally reconciliates with his mother. 

2. Margarethe's decision to tell 

A. the military: Surprisingly to her, they asked her during an interview for a promotion and she felt she shouldn't lie. 
B. her children: She feels forced to tell them due to the potential lawsuit; she'd rather have them find out from her.
C. her father: Same as above, she tells decides to tell him before the confrontation with the military. She lets him know through a letter that takes her a long time to write. 

3. What is your reaction to this true story? Do you believe that she should have kept her secret or told it to everyone? Explain your reasons why. 

I enjoyed the movie, though I admit I was a little shocked at how relatable it is to recent events in my life. I'd rather not elaborate much on this due to their private nature, but I will say that I thought the movie was good and the story was a very interesting and important one that I had not heard of. I believe she did the right thing by letting everyone know; there are few worse pains than having to hide an important part of yourself from your family and loved ones. (EDIT: I don't know why this section looks smaller on the blog, but I can't quite find how to fix it. Sorry.)

(Stole an idea from a classmate again, though I used a different pic.) On the left is Margarethe Cammermeyer, and on the right is the cover art for the movie, featuring Glenn Close, the actress who portrayed her.

5. (?) How would Dr. Kinsey explain the Margarethe Cammermeyer's sexuality?
She is a mother of 4 boys so how can she be lesbian? Is it her choice?

We debated this extensively in class, and we couldn't come to an agreement on exactly where on the Kinsey Scale she could be classified. I find it hard to use this scale because I believe one moves through it. I think it's possible that she didn't know she was homosexual until she fell in love with a woman; this could help explain how she is a mother despite being a lesbian. I don't think she is "any less of a lesbian" (as odd and ridiculous as that sounds) because she has kids; if she feels she is a lesbian, then she is. Ultimately, I believe she would be a 4 on the Kinsey Scale due to the fact that she lived as a heterosexual woman until the events in the story. Finally, I don't think anyone chooses to be heterosexual or homosexual; I certainly don't remember choosing to be heterosexual. Therefore, I don't think it's her choice, it's just who she is. 

6.What does Margarethe believe about her sexuality as it relates to her identity?

She believes that it is an important part of her identity (hence her decision to expose it to the world), but that it doesn't change the rest of her identity and personality.