Your life is your life

Textbook Notes pgs 2-14

Vocab #1

adumbrate - verb give to understand;describe roughly or briefly or give the main points or summary of

 - I will adumbrate the essay so that you have a brief understanding of what you will be learning over the next few months.

apotheosis - noun the elevation of a person (as to the status of a god); model of excellence or perfection of a kind; one having no equal

 

-The dancer felt like and apotheosis when the audience gave her much applause.

ascetic - adj. practicing great self-denial; pertaining to or characteristic of an ascetic or the practice of rigorous self-discipline

 

-Body builders are very ascetic. 

bauble - noun a mock scepter carried by a court jester; cheap showy jewelry or ornament on clothing

 

-The fake woman wore very bauble jewelry while trying to fit in. 

beguile - verb attract; cause to be enamored; influence by slyness

 

-The man was trying to beguile the customers with his complimenting words. 

burgeon - verb grow and flourish

 

-The dog needs food and water to burgeon. 

complement - noun something added to complete or make perfect; either of two parts that mutually complete each other

 

-Husband and wife complement each other when raising their children. 

contumacious - adj. wilfully obstinate; stubbornly disobedient

 

The spoiled girl was very contumacious towards her babysitter. 

curmudgeon - noun a crusty irascible cantankerous old person full of stubborn ideas

 

-The old man was very curmudgeon when it came to his granddaughter dating. 

didactic - adj. instructive (especially excessively)

 

-The man was didactic when he was coaching the soccer team. 

disingenuous - adj. not straightforward or candid; giving a false appearance of frankness

 

-The candidate gave a disingenuous speech about what he could do for the school. 

exculpate - verb pronounce not guilty of criminal charges

 

-The man was exculpated from the crime when video footage proving him innocent was found. 

faux pas - noun. a slip or blunder inetiquette, manners, or conduct; anembarrassing social blunder orindiscretion.

 

-Many teenagers experience a faux pas before graduating high school. 

fulminate - noun a salt or ester of fulminic acid; verb cause to explode violently and with loud noise

 

-The volcano fulminated when the sun reached it's peak. 

fustian - noun a strong cotton and linen fabric with a slight nap; pompous or pretentious talk or writing

 

-The prince could not convince his mom to forgive him for being fustian. 

hauteur - noun overbearing pride evidenced by a superior manner toward inferiors

 

-The old man was hauteur towards the children. 

inhibit - verb limit the range or extent of;to put down by force or authority

 

-The police inhibited the teenagers for parking in the wrong area. 

jeremiad - noun a long and mournful complaint

 

-Many teenagers make a lot of jeremiads in one day. 

opportunist - adj. taking immediate advantage, often unethically, of any circumstance of possible benefit; noun a person who places expediency above principle

 

-Being an opportunist lost Maria many friends when she took advantage of their connections. 

unconscionable - adj. greatly exceeding bounds of reason or moderation; lacking a conscience

-The 40 year old Olympic swimmer did the unconscionable when she won in multiple events. 

Reflections on Week 1

1. The only factor that might affect my participation in this class would be my involvement in sports because they take up so much time during each week. Other than that there shouldn't be any outside factors directly affecting my participation and experience in this course.
2. The only learning experience that I could think of was just last week when we learned about limits in math; something that I've never understood before. I think this taught me that I don't understand some concepts in the way that they are normally taught. Sometimes I need it to be explained in way that might be far out in left field.
3. I'm most concerned about the blog and that everything is online because I am not a techy person at all. It is difficult for me to figure things out on the computer and even sometimes on my phone. One thing that will slow me down in this class is my inability to type well and quickly. I hope to improve upon this as the year goes on.

I CAN READ!

 

So, I put the wrong name when I posted it to youtube.. but I read it in about 5:32 with about 10 mistakes.

 

Montaigne/Austen Essay

Everyone has a different perspective on life and if one person was to try to understand every aspect of someone else's they would miss the big picture and they would be easily confused. This is similar to something that David Foster Wallace said in his 2001 story, "Good Old Neon." After reading Montaigne's essays, it is easy to see that he thinks the same way. Montaigne jumps around with his ideas and perspective on everything while Jane Austen is very much to the point and uses a lot of structure.

Montaigne, like Wallace, scatters his thoughts and makes it difficult for the reader to keep up with what is being read. However, Montaigne's essays are a window into his life and views on a number of topics.  The reader is able to picture almost exactly what Montaigne writes. Montaigne uses stream of consciousness throughout his essays while writing about his feelings towards death, life, friendships, religion, politics and education. This is very evident when he is discussing something then drifts into another topic as it comes to his mind. He will be writing something very specific which will lead him to a number of new thoughts and ideas with a broader spectrum.  Montaigne shows his vast knowledge by making many references to the bible, philosophers and other writers. On the other side, he is also able to write about personal topics that some may not expect because they could be considered too personal for the public to know about. In all of these scattered ways, Montaigne writes very similar to David Foster Wallace's view on the world.

On the other hand, there is Jane Austen, who writes very organized and with a lot of structure.  Jane Austen writes with a plan; she knows exactly what she wants to say and how she wants the reader to feel when they read her work. This is almost the exact opposite of how Montaigne wrote his essays. Austen's Pride and Prejudice flows smoothly from one chapter to the next and the whole story is connected together by one overall plot and theme. One aspect of the two works is that they both have a single narrator; Montaigne in his essays and the character Elizabeth Bennett in Pride and Prejudice. Jane Austen's novel, Pride and Prejudice was restricted in some of the things that could have been incorporated because of the time period that the story was set in however Montaigne's essays are timeless and anyone can relate to them no matter what year it is. In this way, I would say that Montaigne's essays serve a greater purpose because they can help anyone gain a wider perspective of the world and it doesn't matter what time period they are accustomed to.

The statement,"What goes on inside is just too fast and huge and all interconnected for words to do more than barely sketch the outlines of at most one tiny little part of it at any given instant" by David Foster Wallace has so much meaning in both Montaigne's essays and Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, yet the two works are on opposite ends of the spectrum. One is free thoughts put into essays about so many important ideas while the other is a fully structured novel with complete organization. The wonderful thing about one single idea is that there are so many pieces that are completely different yet they can all perfectly portray this idea in all of their different ways.

1987 AP Exam (notes)

For many of the questions I was torn between two answers and I ended choosing the incorrect one.  Also, for many answers I have would have the correct one in mind but find it too simple for the question and choose against it. This would also happen vice versa, where I thought the answer was something very simple when it was actually very intricate. The last two poems were written in a very different way which I found very difficult to comprehend, so I took longer than I had hoped to answer the questions. This started with the second poem, so when reading and answering the questions for the third poem I was rushing slightly because I wanted to complete the exam in the recommended allotted time. The time should not have been a problem, though, because there were about fourteen or fifteen less questions than there will be on the actual exam. 

These were a few questions that stood out to me:

#3. There were multiple questions similar to this one in the way that they were basically literary devices/terms that I should know in order for this question to be easy.
#7. Sometimes it is difficult for me to relate specific ideas together because I am not looking at the question and answer critically.
#54. The choices and questions contained some vocabulary that I am completely unfamiliar with; this is something that I hope to improve upon this year.

I got 21 out of the 47 correct.

The Big Question

Why are we here? What is our purpose in life? Are we really supposed to find true love or are we just here to evolve for the next generation? Is there such thing as true love or even evolution?? 

Poetry #1

1. The poem is "The Laughing Heart" by Charles Bukowski.
2.  It is ironic that the commercial chose to use this poem because the poem is about living your life the way you want to, yet the commercial is trying to get you to change that and buy their product.  Commercials are used to convince people to change their life and live the way the seller wants the buyer to live.
3. I think that the poem reflects the author's childhood more than his reputation because many of his writings are about Los Angeles. When he was a child he was abused verbally by his father, friends, and classmates which gave him self confidence issues. This poem expresses how he feels that he needed to believe as a child in order to not be hurt by rude comments.
4. In order to find this information, I googled part of the poem that I heard in the commercial which led me to the author and the name of the poem. After that I looked up Charles Bukowski and found background information about his work and life on Wikipedia and goodreads.

Summer Notes

The Complete Essays of Michel de Montaigne

 

Pride and Prejudice