Junior Year Reflection

a. This year I learned to work better under a time limit and expand on my essay writing abilities. I also learned that people are fake.

b. My favorite creative thing that we did this year was the black out poems. It was interesting to see how we can pick out words that stand out to us and everyone finds something different.

c. I am most proud of my op-ed about feminism because I had never really spoken out about my opinion towards the movement because it is an unpopular opinion.

d. My biggest challenge this year was trying to get 80’s and above in APUSH. I procrastinated so much and slacked off because it seemed like too much work but in the end I made it through.

e. I wish someone would have told me at the begining of Junior year that this is not the year to slack off because it is so easy to fall behind and fail because AP is much harder than Pre-AP. Also, it is best to turn in every formative because every little extra point helps.

f. My biggest goal for next year is to keep the pattern going that I’ve been keeping every year to improve my rank. I also plan on having fun and making friends with those I didn’t talk to as much and keep the real friends I have around even after graduation.

A different perspective

 I felt as though my parents and the rest of my family were getting bored of my predictable achievements. My parents and family no longer awarded or congratulated me as often. They didn’t ask me about school because they already knew I was doing fine. Being a rebellious teenager, feeling as though I couldn’t possibly satisfy anyone anymore, I started to slack off on my school work. They didn’t seem to care anyways. 

My family has what we have because my parents taught my siblings and me one big thing: Race, stereotypes, reputations, none of them mattered. They found a way to overcome everything everyone else expected them to turn out to be. I was taught that it is possible to take all the good things from a struggle and create something admirable.

However, having everything I needed materialistically, I always resented my parents for the rules and restrictions they placed on me. At many times I realized that the strictness varied between my siblings and I. When I would point it out to my parents, they would always respond with, “Everyone is different”. Throughout my life I always looked at the negative that came out of not being able to be as “free” as my friends. I am shy and struggle to communicate and build relationships with others. I connected this with how my parents brought me up, telling myself that the reason I have public speaking anxiety and social awkwardness was because I never got to hang out with more people outside of school. I also never received everything I asked for or that my friends had. The response to my questioning of this was, “You aren’t like everyone else”.
 As I got older, I realized that there was actually a logical reason behind my parents’ rules. Most of the people in my generation are spoiled and brought up to think that the world revolves around them, that it is okay to be disrespectful. I am now grateful that I was brought up to respect anyone, no matter their previous response. However, around the time I started high school, I started to realize something that shaped who I am as a student today.

After all the punishments for my lower grades and missing work, I came to realize that all my life I had been living to please everyone else. I hadn’t done one thing because I wanted to do it for my own good, but instead I did it to impress others. So I decided that these last years of high school I would make decisions for myself. I had to choose my career path, make a plan, and work as hard as possible to achieve what I wanted for myself. I am choosing to focus on what is best for my future and ignore the pressures of what everyone expects of me.
               
               

College Essay Proposal

1. I will be responding to prompt A which is “What was the environment in which you were raised? Describe your family, home, neighborhood, or community, and explain how it has shaped you as a person.”

2. I chose this prompt because I have already started a draft with this same prompt and I want to expand on it and make it better. Also because I feel like it is the one I can most express myself and connect with.

3. I am going to attempt to respond in essay and animation video form. I want to make it into a story and tell it through the visual video.

4. I chose this genre because I am not very good at writing or performing music or poems and I feel like it is the easiest for me.

5. I plan to make progress everyday to get it done by May 25th. I am going to ask Mrs. Dille to read the draft I already have and point out which part sticks out to her most, and that she feels I can write the best story/essay on.

About Me/Drawing of my Story

Monogamy Infographic

Rhetorical Analysis 1-Brave New World

a. “But at your age, Lenina! No, it really won’t do. And you know how strongly the D.H.C. objects to anything intense or long-drawn. Four months of Henry Foster, without having another man–why, he’d be furious if he knew . . .” (27)

b. This is an example of hyperbole which is an exaggeration for effect. 

c. This passage shows the reader the way in which the people of the society in the story think. Monogamy is frowned upon. They encourage sexual relations starting at an exaggerated young age with many, many different people.

d. This book was written around the 1940s when people were just starting to accept people who had affairs apart from their significant other and women were just starting to not just be someone’s property. The author foresaw this image of monogamy losing it’s value and sexuality getting out of control. He exaggerates the effects of giving people the freedom to an open love life to get the reader to think about the possibility of this happening in real life. Although it is not to this extremity, we see this in our society today. Monogamy is not something expected in a relationship because of the popular thought of how having many partners makes a man “cool”.

Brave New World Project Schedule

 
 

Can money really buy happiness?

It has been said for many, many years. “Money can’t buy you happiness.” But is this statement very true?

A two dollar bill can amaze anyone because they aren’t seen very often. When you actually get your hands on one, your first instinct is to keep it safe somewhere and never actually spend it. Why do you think this is? Could it be that simply being able to say “I have a two dollar bill” brings satisfaction or maybe even happiness?

If you were to receive a million dollars you would probably be extremely happy. If you were to lose a million dollars you would be very angry. For some people it doesn’t even have to be a million dollars; the same feelings would happen if it were only one or two.

Money can also be spent on things that can make you happy. For example, pizza. If I could eat pizza for the rest of my life, I would. But it costs money.

This is Simba. I don’t think I’ve ever been as happy as I was the moment I got him. Of course, he costed money. Without money, I would have never met the love of my life.

This girl started working at age 16 to finally be able to make her own money and buy anything her heart desired. Although she later found out that working is way harder than she thought, she still works every weekend. She hates her job very, very much but finds it all to be very worth it every other Friday when she holds her check in her hands.

 

Along with the happiness that comes from the things we spend our hard, earned  money on comes feeling of distress, guilt, anger, and depression when these things break or get lost. We start thinking of what we’re going to have to go through to replace or repair.

 The girl who once owned this phone was literally in tears when someone threw her phone across the room and later found it in pieces but was very happy when she got the money to get a new phone.

For the most part, the answer is yes; money can buy happiness. But to a certain extent. Too much money or an inaccurate version of happiness can also play in to part.

http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/news/entertainment/heath-ledger-found-dead/2008/01/23/1201024937476.html

Heath Ledger, who many know as the Joker from The Dark Knight, was found dead on January 22, 2008 in his apartment from combined drug toxicity and is suspected to be a victim of suicide.

Robin Williams, a well known actor, was found dead on August 11, 2014 due to suicide.

These celebrities, along with many more who fell in to suicide, were very wealthy. So why weren’t they happy? It could have been many things.

Money does not guarantee eternal happiness and is not the cure to mental illnesses such as depression or addiction.

There are many more sides to happiness than what we get from materialistic things. Money can only buy a temporary happiness.

The most important kind of happiness we can have is the kind that money can not buy.

 

 

Photography Project Proposal

This six weeks we have to choose a topic for a photo essay. While researching possible topics, I came across “Can money buy you happiness?”. This caught my attention because it reminded me of a song called “Buy me a boat” by Chris Janson. He says, “You know everybody says money can’t but happiness but it can buy me a boat. It could buy me a truck to pull it…” And he goes on to explain things that money can buy that is equivalent to happiness. Therefore, I thought it might be interesting to get different people’s points of view on happiness and how money can give you happiness. I will argue on how money can get you a temporary happiness but it can’t give you an eternal or complete happiness.

I will use pictures of the people I ask about happiness. I will also take pictures of people selling things or unhappy people because they couldn’t buy something. Also, screenshots of online shopping websites of certain popular items people might buy. 

A good photo essay includes different views, many different examples, any citations from websites, common, real life issues, specific pictures, quotes, and opinions on your topic.

 

Catapult Project – Natalie Cerda and Alan Gomez

We were studying projectile motion which is the form of motion in which an object or particle is launched or shot and the only force working on it’s motion it gravity in which it moves in a curved, downward path. The purpose of this catapult lab was to better understand how it works and what it means. Our goal was to set a target and make calculations to which would help us
land our ball on the target. At first, we couldn’t get our original catapult to work at all so we borrowed Giovanna’s catapult.

Materials:

• 12 sticks
• A spoon
• 3 rubberbands
• Hot glue
• A small ball

 

Procedures:

1. Lined the catapult with the protracted to measure the angles
2. Put the catapult at 0 cm on the meter stick
3. Pulled the catapult back and measured the angle the lever was at
4. Launched the cork
5. Timed its aerial flight
6. Measure the distance it landed at
7. Repeated 3x for 3 different angles
8. Calculate averages for each category by adding them all up and dividing by 9
9. Find the percent error