Final Blog Posting

·         Which in class writing was your favorite? Why?

·         Which in class writing was your least favorite? Why?

·         Review all your writing chronologically (earliest to latest). List three interesting observations or changes in your writing. Which are the most profound (obvious and important)? Why?

·         If you could change anything about your writing this semester what would it be? Why?

·         What did you like best about this course?

·         What did you like least about this course?

·         What would you have done differently this semester if you could have a do-over?

·         What did learn about yourself as a student, a thinker, a writer this semester?

·         What could I, Ms. A., have done differently to improve the course?

·         You begin this course with an engagement and participation score of an A.  Attendance, participation in activities and group work help you to maintain this grade.  Evaluate yourself and assign yourself a grade for the in class portion of this course.  Don’t forget the reasoning behind your self assigned grade.

 

 

This semester I wrote a couple things about happiness and those were probably my favorite. One of my essays was titled “Smile and just be famous” and when reading this essay today, I still totally agree with the fact that a smile can make my day! Smiling is communicative and it shows people what kind of mood you are in. I mean even if you are having a bad day, don’t see everything red and decide that the world is against you. I don’t. I just smile and try to think about something else to feel better.  Writing about happiness made me realize how easy it is to be happy in life, even with simple things. Happiness is accessible to anyone at any time.

My least favorite writing was the one about “What is in the way…” I talked about money and how it is financially difficult as a student to survive and pay bills, afford college, pay for gas, food, and all those things we wish parents were still buying for us. I just hate talking about my financial situation right now because I do not and cannot have a job this year, since it is my first year as an international student (Thank you US government).

While reading over my writing chronologically, I noticed that I expend my vocabulary a lot. I mean WOOOW. I found ways to express myself differently and more specifically. I also started using synonyms so I could sound less repetitive. Free writing definitely helped me improving my English level and also expressing more precisely what I wanted to write.

If I had to change one thing, that would be my grammar obviously,. As an international student whose native language is French, it is not easy to think, translate, write and be grammatically correct and a totally different language than my own.  But still, I would like my grammar to improve so that I do not make (basic) mistakes all over my writings.

What I like the best about this course was our free writing. At first, I thought my English class was going to be a bunch of grammar and vocabulary exercises, a lot of book analysis,… But no! Instead we had the chance to express ourselves through personal free writings. I liked the idea of sharing most of our writing with our classmates and also the group activities we had. This class was a lot more fun than I thought it would be. There is nothing that I did not liked. I learned new things every day.

I think I took a few weeks to really decide to put myself into those free writings and try to improve my writing style. So if I had to do it over, I would start working hard at the very beginning of this class.

I learn about myself that I was a lot more mysterious than I appear. Writing those free writes made me discover myself more deeply about the ways I can see things and how I can express them to my audience.

NOT MISS ONE DAY OF CLASS. Ms. A is an awesome teacher and one semester of class goes by fast. There is no reason to be absent or skip class!  

If I had to assign myself a grade for this class I would give me an A. I think I only missed class once in the winter because the roads were very bad. But besides that I have never been late and I always try to give the best of me in class and to my best in the writings we had to do. I always tried to improve myself in my writings class after class by expensing my vocabulary and, even if we did free writings, I tried to improve my grammatical skills as well

 

"We've always defined ourselves by the ability to overcome the impossible. And we count these moments. These moments when we dare to aim higher, to break barriers, to reach for the stars, to make the unknown known. We count these moments as our proudest achievements. But we lost all that. Or perhaps we've just forgotten that we are still pioneers. And we've barely begun. And that our greatest accomplishments cannot be behind us, because our destiny lies above us."

 

-Interstellar-

 

 

Social Issues through Art

I think most of the artists of today's world want to express something about their personal opinion on any social event they might like or not. Those artists can encourage that social «event» or be against it. Besides mass media, social networks and entertainment like music, movies or painting are the kind of doors through which a lot of information goes to the public.

Artists have definitively a great opportunity to use their crafts to address social issues.

We learned in class that the invention of Rock n' Roll and the immersion of that new kind of music broke the barrier between black and white and started to change the debates on racial equality.

If I have to think about an artist that is trying to express social issues recently, I cannot prevent myself to talk about one of our Belgian artists. His name is Stromae. He is well known over in Europe and start becoming popular over here in America, mostly along the East and West cost. He is a Pop singer and most of his songs talks about personal issues he had in his childhood or social issues we have nowadays. One of his last songs is called Carmen. It talks about Twitter and how people are not only addicted by social networks but have a huge thirst for “social popularity”. The goals is to get as many likes and followers. This is such a true fact today. How do most people want or think about getting popular? Though social networks? The more likes you get, the more attention and popularity you have. The video for that song is amazing because we can see the little Twitter blue bird coming to a person. The bird follows that person his entire life and become bigger and bigger (meaner and meaner) with all the likes that person gets through the social networks. We always want more and more. Get as much popularity as we can, right behind our screen. Look at teenagers now. Who doesn’t have a phone with social networks apps on it? I look at my little brothers. They don't go hang out with friends everyday until sunset anymore, they don't go in the street and play simple games. They are on their phone, on Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat,... talking with their «Friends». Friends? I don't think so.

Anyways, I know other artists express social issues like that too. Of course it is effective! Because their message gets forwarded daily to millions of people. They could change minds...

 

 

History WWI Propaganda

 

 

 

1. The message in this poster is to push American people to go fight for their country. One way to respect their flag is to take their hats off, like during the national anthem (that is what represents the shadows of the people on the back), but at that point it was also sleeves up, which meant getting ready to fight for the flag, the nation, the United States of America, which is represented by that men up front. Fighting has a larger meaning than wearing a uniform and hold a gun. It was fighting in every meaning of the term, in order to keep the nation safe.

 

2. The target is pretty much all American citizens. I think the idea of fighting for the flag is « do whatever you can do to help and fight », either buy going to war in Europe or working in factories to build weapons, provide food or financial support to the army,... Women and men were asked to fight for their nation and be ready to protect it.

 

3. This poster is supposed to make the audience feel proud of their nation. If they respect their country and want to keep their freedom, they have to do something and help as much as they can. If think this poster can also scare a little the citizens. The propaganda poster was a way to make them understand that even if the war wasn't happening on the American ground, if was still a threat for the US and people needed to do something about it.

 

4. Well, today that poster could be update and used to remind people that there still are conflicts around the world. Still today, America's government tries to get a lot of people enrolled in the army to serve their country here in the US or abroad. This poster could be used against terrorism for example. People have to be ready to fight and protect their country, their flag.

Dropping the atomic bomb on Japan?

 

            The arguments in favor of dropping the atomic bomb on Japan are that the bomb would have brought peace quickly, it would have saved many soldiers lives (American and Japanese) and it would have prevented Japan from being invaded.

The atomic bombs definitely brought peace after they felt on Japan. The powerful and destructive explosion made the other nations think twice about keeping the War running around the world. The US achieved superpower, and peace talks and negotiations quickly came up on the table. The US kept peace balanced across their different allies around the word.

Dropping the bomb also prevent hundreds of American soldiers to die in fighting over in Japan but also around the entire world. By striking Nagasaki and Hiroshima, the US showed to the international stage how powerful they were and that it was time for peace.

Finally, dropping the bomb prevent the US from invading Japan.  The us had planned to make Japan a colony. Instead, the bomb became available and the US decided to use it in order to save Americans lives and also time.

 

            The arguments against dropping the atomic bomb on Japan are that first, the US noticed how powerful the explosion was going to be and how destructive it was going to be when they had their first try in the dessert. The Atomic bomb was definitely going to kill a lot of people, not only soldiers but innocent civilians. The US knew also the radiation effect the bomb was going to produce (long term damage).

Secondly, even if Hiroshima was necessary, the US did not give enough time for the wold to find negotiation and peace before striking a second time Japan (Nagasaki). Furthermore, the two cities had almost not military values. Those two cities counted mostly civilians. A lot of Japanese lives were scarified simply for power politics between the US and the Soviet Union.

Some sources say that conventional firebombing would have caused as much significant damage without making the US the very first nation to use nuclear weapons.

Finally, the Atomic bomb was a very expensive project : over $2 billion spent on its development.

            Personally, I think the Atomic bomb was only necessary for one thing : bring peace quickly and stop the war. Besides that, I am against the fact the dropping of the bomb. It destroyed so many lives. Not only at that exact time because of the explosion but also on the long term effect. It provokes radiation, illness, cancer, starvation, massive deaths ! Also, I don't think dropping two of those bombs was necessary.