It is a brand-new school year for St.Joseph High School. Everyone seems excited to see friends or to be engaged in the course they love. For me, I was very excited to be taking Math 31 with Mr.Abad being my course advisor. In the previous years, I was always fond of Mr.Abad’s teaching style because it always seemed to make sense for me. I was Excited and enthusiastic about taking Math 31, it was a strong contrast to another course I had in the same semester. This course was very intimidating for me. Unlike math and other science courses such as Chemistry and Physics, Biology is full of memorization. Elements like formulas and equations, that I am fond of and also good at, are disregarded completely in this course. What made this even more …show more content…
daunting was the fact that it was a thirty level course, meaning that I would have to write a diploma in January. Just like most students in St.Joseph, facing a difficult course may intimidate them and create an urge to drop out of the course. In my situation, Biology intimidated me so much, that I wanted to drop out of it completely, but there is something that can be gained by enduring these hardships. In the Poem, the “Dancer”, by Alden Nowlan, conveys a similar idea about enduring hardships as a way to learn and grow.
The poem is about a girl throwing a ball at her shadow, but what makes this poem so special is the way that Nowlan describes it. The shadow on the wall symbolizes an obstacle that the girl must overcome; the way she throws the ball at the shadow is out of anger, as if she is trying to remove it. As the ball is thrown “venomously” at the wall, it causes the ball to be hurled back in a unpredictable manner, making the girl “bolt in and out of darkness after it”. This shows that she is struggling with this hardship because as she chases after the ball, she is enveloped in her own …show more content…
shadow. Despite the struggle that the girl faces, she continues to throw the ball at her own shadow. This is shown through pausing “before each pitch”; this suggests that she has not just thrown the ball once, but multiple times. At the end of the poem, it shows the girl calming herself after chasing the ball in her shadow with the last line saying “But every ball’s more difficult to see”. This suggests that with every throw that the girl makes, the harder it is to find it. However, by enduring all her previous throws, she is getting ready for the next one. This brings up the theme of enduring hardships as a way to grow. With the “Dancer”, the girl endures finding the ball in her own shadow, but calms her mind and gets ready to throw the next increasingly difficult one; as if all the previous throws were preparing her for the next one. Similarly to the “Dancer”, I was able to learn by enduring the hardships that Biology has presented.
Basic Biology was something that I always wanted to complete. It would provide me a better understanding of whatever my family doctor says whenever I go to see him for a check up and how certain foods affect my body. However, this goal was not as easy I thought it would be. The first couple of seminars made me feel out of place. Fellow classmates seemed like they knew what was happening in the seminar; this made me question my ability to complete the course because I could barely understand what was happening. By not really understanding what was going on in class, it made me think that the easiest solution would be simply to drop Biology completely. Of course, dropping it would be the easiest solution, but would I actually gained anything if I did
so? SInce I was so determined to learn how my body functioned, I endured the difficult course. At the end of every class, I would review what I have learned in class by completing the associated textbook questions. At first, it would take days just to complete a couple of questions. However, as the course went on, I learned a couple learning strategies and received more from Miss.Desousa. This made studying much more effective and made answering the questions much more easier. By enduring the challenges of taking Biology, I was able to complete the diploma with a solid mark of eighty-five percent, develop learning strategies that I can use for future courses, and understand how my body works on a basic level. From my experience of taking Biology and the “Dancer”, by Alden Nowlan, demonstrates the human drive to learn and grow by persisting through hardships. Through these hardships, it creates an opportunity to develop new skills or become prepared for upcoming challenges.
Hoops by Walter Dean Myers takes place in New Jersey, a city where basketball may be the future of a lot of teenagers.Basketball is their only escape to success. Loonie is an All-Star basketball player but he just got a new coach,Cal.Cal was a professional basketball player but he lost everything because of drugs.Now Cal is trying to find his way back to basketball and in other part Loonie is trying to find his way to success.
Kim Addonizio’s “First Poem for You” portrays a speaker who contemplates the state of their romantic relationship though reflections of their partner’s tattoos. Addressing their partner, the speaker ambivalence towards the merits of the relationship, the speaker unhappily remains with their partner. Through the usage of contrasting visual and kinesthetic imagery, the speaker revels the reasons of their inability to embrace the relationship and showcases the extent of their paralysis. Exploring this theme, the poem discusses how inner conflicts can be powerful paralyzers.
The most preeminent quality of Sonia Sanchez “Ballad” remains the tone of the poem, which paints a didactic image. Sanchez is trying to tell this young people that we know nix about love as well as she is told old for it. In an unclear setting, the poem depicts a nameless young women and Sanchez engaged in a conversation about love. This poem dramatizes the classic conflict between old and young. Every old person believes they know more then any young person, all based on the fact that they have been here longer then all of us. The narrative voice establishes a tone of a intellectual understanding of love unraveling to the young women, what she comprehends to love is in fact not.
I would like to investigate the many struggles of women, whether it be race that differentiates them or an event that any woman could experience that brings them together. Beauty is not easily defined, and women everywhere struggle with not only pleasing the people around them, but themselves. Wanting to describes themselves and feel beautiful is one of the many struggles women experience throughout their lives. “Las Rubias” by Diana García from Fire and Ink represents a common example of what women of color experience while comparing themselves to the “beauty” of white women. The poem is divided into eight numbered sections, each containing their own experience or thought. This is effective because by the end of the poem, the reader has almost
Literary elements are the components of a written piece formed by an author. For example, a poem or short story, in which all of them have settings, plots, and themes that are used to help elaborate their compositions. They help depict the author’s intentions and encourage insight or understanding of the overall meaning even if it’s not easily understood by the reader. “Blue Winds Dancing” by Tom Whitecloud and “The Victims” by Sharon Olds both show examples of conflicts that evolve dynamic characters as a product of growth from their previous experiences.
“Your beliefs don’t make you a better person, your behavior does.” This quote comes from a picture found on flickr and makes me think about my younger days as I learned how to be a leader in scouting and it’s similarities to the poem, “A Little Scout Follows Me.” The moral of the poem is that there are always younger eyes watching and learning from those they look up to, even those that don’t realize they are being watched.
This course and as in Honors Biology, we were taught in a more oneself teaching rather than a lecture. I like the idea of not having a lecture, but when the teacher took a day to do a quick overview of each chapter, I learned the material and understood the material the best. I wish that we had that in each unit because I truly do like biology and when I understand a new concept fully it made me feel 10 times more comfortable on the test and the
Sonnets is a type of poetry that originated in Italy. There are many different types of sonnets, such as the Shakespearean sonnet, Petrarchan sonnet, and the Spenserian sonnet. Despite their differences, these sonnets share some similarities. “Harlem Dancer” by Claude McKay and “In an Artist’s Studio” by Christina Rossetti share many similarities and differences such as the form, the portrayal of women, and the way the woman is objectified.
Making difficult decisions show up in life more often than realized. These choices can alter a person’s life in good and bad ways. “The Bicycle” by Jillian Horton is a story that focuses on a young talented pianist named Hannah. Throughout the story Hannah deals with the strict teachings of her Tante Rose, which leads her to make ironic decisions. Similarly, in the story “Lather and Nothing Else” by Hernando Tellez, the barber undergoes a dilemma in which he must consider his moral values before making his final decision. Both stories have a protagonist that face conflicts which lead to difficult decision making, and in the end leads the characters to discover themselves. In both stories the authors use the literary devices theme, irony and symbolism to compare and contrast the main ideas.
"Poetry is the revelation of a feeling that the poet believes to be interior and personal [but] which the reader recognizes as his own." (Salvatore Quasimodo). There is something about the human spirit that causes us to rejoice in shared experience. We can connect on a deep level with our fellow man when we believe that somehow someone else understands us as they relate their own joys and hardships; and perhaps nowhere better is this relationship expressed than in that of the poet and his reader. For the current assignment I had the privilege (and challenge) of writing an imitation of William Shakespeare’s "Sonnet 87". This poem touched a place in my heart because I have actually given this sonnet to someone before as it then communicated my thoughts and feelings far better than I could. For this reason, Sonnet 87 was an easy choice for this project, although not quite so easy an undertaking as I endeavored to match Shakespeare’s structure and bring out his themes through similar word choice.
I know that I want to have a career in the medical field, so to prepare for that I have taken many high school science classes, including biology, chemistry 1 and 2, and physics. I’ve also taken many math classes, English 101 and 102 though Grand Rapids Community College and heath classes through Grand Valley State University. These classes have helped prepare me for a medical degree by exposing me to math, science, and college level classes; all of which are particularly important when it comes to trying to receive a medical degree.
In the poem, the speaker, setting, and imagery depict the style of romanticism. First, the speaker of the poem is interpreted as a Romantic poet who is intelligent and lonely, but he is able to keep himself fulfilled by simple beauty. Wordsword accentuates this by writing in the first person. Next, the setting is richly presented to demonstrate the beauty of nature. Wordsword writes, “Beside the lake, beneath the trees, fluttering and dancing in the breeze” (Wordsword, 5-6). The setting is interpreted to be in the countryside with daylight. Through this use of words and setting, Wo...
Whenever asked what my favourite subject is, Biology has been, and will always be, my only answer. It was bewildering to compare my body to a machine working harmoniously. The digestive system, the respiratory system and the circulatory system are coordinating with each other right underneath my skin. Realising that the 'blue lines' visible beneath the flesh of my hands are actually veins carrying deoxygenated blood fueled my desire to know more about how my body functions. To me, it has always been about getting to know my self better.
In the beginning of the semester, I thought it would be enjoyable to take Anatomy and Physiology since I had already taken it in high school and actually received a high grade. I had heard from many students that this class is much harder in college and will often have a big lecture setting with more than three-hundred students, but I brushed this off and went into the classroom with a positive attitude. I quickly learned that big lectures were not the classes that I would succeed in, instead I preferred a small classroom setting where I am able to ask questions whenever needed. Throughout the semester, I also learned that I prefer online classes when it comes to mathematics and social sciences because they can be self-taught and I found myself often uninterested during the
Throughout out this semester, I’ve had the opportunity to gain a better understanding when it comes to teaching Mathematics in the classroom. During the course of this semester, EDEL 440 has showed my classmates and myself the appropriate ways mathematics can be taught in an elementary classroom and how the students in the classroom may retrieve the information. During my years of school, mathematics has been my favorite subject. Over the years, math has challenged me on so many different levels. Having the opportunity to see the appropriate ways math should be taught in an Elementary classroom has giving me a