Prompt #1
My favorite classes in the social sciences and humanities have been Spanish 141, Spanish 142,
Literature 150, Literature 183, and Biology 60 because they have been the ones who call my
attention the most. They inspire me to go to class and pay attention as well as take notes. They
taught me facts that I hadn’t thought about or didn’t know before I started the class. The
professors were interesting and always there in case I was confused about something or had
problems with the assignments.
The academic community that I aspire to join is the educational community. I plan to teach like a
teacher once taught me. I am intrigued by how one teacher/professor can teach you so much in so
little time. Therefore the attraction that it holds for me is changing other student’s life the same
way mine was changed.
The obstacles I anticipate is having students who are not interesting in what I have to say and
who do not care the same way I do. Another obstacle is that I do not get across to my students
and that they probably will dislike me as their teacher and therefore end up making my life
miserable. The biggest obstacle will most likely be that my students would not know how to read
and write in Spanish especially with accents.
Although I will have those obstacles and many more, my “plan” for my career in the social
sciences and humanities is become a Spanish high school teacher in the bay area. I plan to
graduate this spring and go to a CSU to get my teaching credentials and as soon as I earn them,
start working for the rest of my life.
The BIG question I have about my career path is…
WHAT WILL REALLY BECOME OF MY LIFE AFTER I GRADUATE IN MAY?
Replay Lidia
Since you and I have the same major I decided to replay to your blog instead of the others. Even
though we both took Spanish and Literature classes it’s interesting how you enjoyed both
Spanish and Literature classes and I enjoyed Literature over Spanish classes. I guess we all have
different taste in classes even though we are focused on the same pursuit. You seem to be really
interested in feminism, which is a subject I am also interested in, especially when writing essays.
When it comes to the attraction, we are somewhat in disagreement because we are attracted to
the major for different reasons. But I will have to agree with you on your obstacle, I am also
scared of not finding a job since the economy is so bad but we shall hope that more teachers are
hired than fired when we begin our careers as teachers. I believe it’s the right choice that we
become teachers since we are doing it because we want to inspire others and if we ever get a job
it will be worth it.
Prompt #2
As we all might know by now, The Yellow Wallpaper is based on the narrator’s point of view of
what’s going on in her life. She has been abandon after having her baby because her husband
thinks she will get better. Although she is not allowed to write, when she gets time she writes
what she feels and what is happening to her. Through her writing we see how complex her life is
getting and how much the wallpaper is affecting her sense of reality. The wallpaper is getting to
her mind because she has nothing else to focus on, she has no escape from that room therefore
she is becoming part of the room. We see how she is getting worse when she says she sees a
women trying to get out of the wallpaper and when she sees this woman outside during the day.
At the end, when the husband’s sister finally decided to move her from the room it was too late
because she had gone crazy and her husband was shocked to find this out.
Through out the reading I found various traits of feminism. First of all because the protagonist
was not allowed to write so she had to do it while no one was looking and she had to hide it
when someone was about to visit. Secondly, the husband made all the decisions and the wife had
to obey them. She had no say in what she wanted to do after having her baby especially because
the doctor was on the husband’s side. We can also see feminism based on the husband’s sister
that also obeys the husband and does not try to help get the protagonist out of the lonesome
room. The last feminism trait I found so far was that the protagonist ended up rebelling against
the husband, too bad it was after she had gone crazy. I guess The Yellow Wallpaper teaches us
about life as a women, mother, and wife during that time.
Replay Brittany
I quiet agree with you on this. You have a good sense of direction towards what you want to
write about for your first essay. You should include some concise examples on your essay and
quote the Yellow Wallpaper as well. Maybe you should talk further more in detail about how a
typical male was in the 19th century for those whom do not know. How did males suppress
women? What did they (males) do to them (women)? Does the wallpaper only symbolize society
or does it symbolize something else as well? These are some questions you could probably take
in mind to extend your essay if it is not long enough. Of course you will have to organize
everything like you said but good job, nice topic and direction. Good luck and hope I helped you
out a little to get your essay started and headed to the direction you wanted.
Prompt #3
The perspective I took in my analysis of “The Yellow Wallpaper” is from a feminist point of
view because I believe the nameless narrator’s state of chaotic emotions have a connection with
feminism during the nineteenth century. So my major field of interest is feminism and how it
affected women emotionally because it is interesting finding out how much it can affect someone
that it actually drives them insane. My perspective falls within my certain academic field since
my field is literature, feminism falls under that same category. Since I started my literature major
I have been interested in feminism and how it affected women especially those ones who wanted
to have the freedom to write. After reading the story I realize how much emotions have to do
with feminism as well, which is interesting because emotions also fit into my academic field,
everything in literature has to do with feelings.
The area of research that most intrigues me is reading Susan S. Lanser’s article, “Feminist
Criticism, ‘The Yellow Wallpaper,’ and the Politics of Color in America”, because it is
interesting to know what other writers think of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s story. The prevailing
lines of thought that characterizes it is how Lanser talks about how the white, middle-class wife
was driven mad by her husband because he was supposedly doing it for “her own good”. In other
words, she admits that the wife ended up insane because of the husband. The challenges I
anticipate that I will face in pursuing this line of research are that it will not be enough to support
my essay. What happens if I cannot get across to my audience the perspective I have in mind?
Replay to Lidia
I also took the “The Yellow Wallpaper” from a feminist perspective but I went more in depth
emotionally wise while you took it from they way women were treated and how Gilman
represented that. Although we share the interest of feminism, it is very interesting how you took
the house, window, and the wallpaper and converted them into symbols while I focused more in
the wife’s feelings. This is good because we show two distinct perspectives of feminism using
the same text.
So feminism fits into our major field of interest for sure because we are literature majors. It’s
interesting how we both use the same article but use it in different aspects so we’ll see how our
essays come out using the same article. I believe you have a clear idea of what you are doing and
that the symbols that you are using are perfect especially if you want to relate them with
feminism. You can also use the women trapped in the wallpaper that the wife supposedly sees.
Prompt #4
Through out the years, Intelligence has been a word used with various meanings, which is
difficult to understand if you do not know how it is used in the present. So to understand
intelligence I searched for the present meaning of this word. Before doing the search I found
some connotations of the word, for example, knowledge, reasoning, learning, understanding, and
the “gathering of information” (dictionary.com). After that I started searching for meanings that
would help me understand how the concept is used and its meanings Even though I already have
a definition for intelligence it is interesting to find out what other people find as intelligent.
Professor Kalhert gave us a great source to look at intelligence in a distinct way besides
Webster’s Dictionary. Howard Gardner’s idea of multiple intelligences brought him to a whole
new way of looking and thinking about the word. Gardner assures in his theory that "we are all
able to know the world through language…” which he supports by giving us examples of ways
individuals can learn more by using simple factors. Gardner lists seventeen factors that
contribute to one’s learning but I am only going to talk about the three that called my attention
the most. According to Gardner’s research, students learn when teachers use interpersonal which
means understanding and interacting with others, visuals which helps them acquire concrete
concepts, and bodily kinesthetic which is using the body to communicate. All three of these
factors help me understand how the concept of intelligence is used in our society and its various
meaning.
Replay to Preet
I agree with you. The word has changed through out the years and well now we are more
familiar with it since we need to have some sort of intelligence to be where we are. Those are
some good definitions of the word but it would have been nice if you had gotten a different
source so we could have learned a different meaning. Maybe you could have used examples of
each one to make your prompt longer as well. I like how you used examples from the book, way
to go, good thinking on that if I would have read your prompt before doing mind I would have
probably used examples from the book too to compare and contrast between the book definition
and the online definition. At the end of your prompt I agree with you more and more because it’s
true the concept of intelligence has almost remained the same so there is not much difference
from time to time.
Prompt #5
According to “Summarizing Trends in Child Poverty” by Jonathan Marshall, the U.S. is number
one in many things but rated highest in child poverty due to its economic structure. The reading
explains how Australia, Sweden, Switzerland, and Italy are the next closest countries to the U.S.
to have child poverty. “Summarizing Trends in Child Poverty” also includes percentages that
indicate why the United States has a greater amount of child poverty and why the other countries
are close to it. To assure this is true, the reading incorporates evidence from researchers,
economists, and articles/magazines. Based on the evidence, wages, welfare, family size, single
mothers, and the difference “between rich and poor is much narrower” are some of the causes
why the United States is number one in what it shouldn’t be. Almost to the end of the reading, it
explains how single parents affect child poverty the greatest because they are more likely to be
poor. Since twenty-three percent of parents are single in the United States then that is also a
cause of it being number one in highest child poverty. Marshall argues “welfare reformers have
paid more attention to changing the behavior of nonworking parents than giving more resources
to needy kids” therefore more of the United State’s money is lost on the parents than on the
children so that’s why there is child poverty.
The moments of difficulty I had were trying to figure out which aspects of the reading were
important so that the reader would understand and which parts to include and exclude. I didn’t
know if I had to include examples from the text so I didn’t. I just gave a basic/overall idea of
what I thought the reading was about.
Response to Mercedes
I agree with you that economic structure is the reason why there are poor children. I had trouble
including quotes from the reading but I see that you used them quiet well. I like how you used
them to support your summary. The quotes also show that you did not plagiarize because you put
them in quotation marks and included the authors of the book. Although I cannot agree or
disagree with your difficulties because you did not include any, I am sure you had some kind of
difficulties writing this summary especially because the reading we had to do was about two
pages long and you summarized it in like four sentences. At least I can imagine you did because
I had trouble figuring out what information to include and which one to exclude and even with
that my summary was pretty long because I believed everything was important. But overall I
believe you wrote a great summary.
Prompt #6
Step 1: (I had already done it before class butt didn’t post so might as well include it for my
blog):
First of all, on Monday, February 29, the Lindbergh’s decided to change their usual
routine when they got back from Englewood. On Sunday, Mrs. Lindbergh kept him in his room
since the baby was getting over a cold. Two days later, Mr. Lindbergh arranged for the baby’s
nursemaid be driven to Hopewell. On Sunday and Monday night, Mrs. Lindbergh checked on the
baby periodically.
On Tuesday, Betty Gow had lunch and then played with the baby while Mrs. Lindbergh
walked around the estate. That same day, Mrs. Lindbergh threw pebbles at the nursery windows
and waiting until Gow appeared at the window with the baby. Later that day, the nursemaid took
the baby to the nursery for his supper. After that, the baby was put to bed. Sometime later, Mr.
Lindbergh got home and then Gow decided to check up on the baby. This is when Gow saw that
the baby was gone. Next, they checked the house until they decided to call the police. Finally
when the police arrived, they discovered footsteps and found where the ladder the baby robber
had used to climb up to the nursery.
Step 2:
The effect that the presentation of events had on me was shocking as I came to the end of
the story especially when Fisher doesn’t say what happened to the baby. At first I thought there
was going to be a happy ending because I had never heard of the Lindbergh case but as the
sequence unfolded that wasn’t the case. Then, I felt sad for the parents because I wouldn’t like
something like that happening to anyone I care about or to me. Later, I thought why something
so cruel could have happened to them, what did Colonel Lindbergh do to that person so they
could kidnap his baby. Next I thought how can there be so much anger/hate in a person for them
to rob a baby especially because they aren’t just hurting Colonel but the mother as well. Last but
not least, the presentation of events was well organized and described because I would follow
each event like if I were part of scene.
Replay to Lizbeth Cervantes
I got to agree with you on how the narration makes the reader feel like if they were part of the
story because that’s how I felt as well. The time (hour) did help understand what was happening
as time passed by and it did make it easier to follow because we knew it was in chronological
order. I think that even if time were not used in the story, the story would have caught our
attention because there was a lot of suspense going on. Maybe time just made the story a little bit
catchier and it would have been. I agree the story was intense and Fisher did make the story
engaging therefore making the information exciting as you say. At the end of it all, you were
right and I agree to you arguments of serializing, sequence, and time. And to answer your
question, I think his style is engaging and he knows how to use dates/hour/days of the week to
make this happen.
Prompt #7
Some assumptions I had about immigration before I began working with the charts and tables
were that as time (years) went by the number of immigrants would increase. I didn’t think there
was going to be a significant difference between each chart and table because it wouldn’t matter
how they classified it the result would be similar. I thought it would be easier to combine them
using classification and finding one thing that they have in common to make my own chart or
table. I also believed it was especially going to be easier because it was five of us in a group. I
thought the more people the better because people always say, “two heads think better than one”
so I figured five heads would think twice as better but that wasn’t the case.
My work confirmed that my assumptions were all wrong; I didn’t get anything right because
everything I thought seemed to be the total opposite. Each decade the numbers either went up or
down so they didn’t increase every time. Each chart were different, the numbers weren’t the
same or even close to being the same. The hardest part was finding a way to combine them using
classification even though it was easy to notice that they had a timeline. Another difficult thing
was to agree on how to classify the charts and tables because we each had different ideas so it
was hard to find one way to do it. So that’s when I found out that sometimes it’s better to have
two heads thinking instead of five heads.
Replay to Daniel Peck
I thought the same thing you did that immigration would rise but I never thought it would fall I
guess you thought way beyond the charts when you figured it would fall during the Great
Depression. I didn’t realize that the majority of immigrants were Irish, German, and Italian I
never even looked at what ethnicity they were. Now I notice how you were right on that aspect
of the charts. I agree with you on the classification scheme, it was beneficial to get informed on
how immigration happened depending on the years and jobs. It does become easier to sort
through the information when arranged correctly even though it was kind of hard to sort it
because it was difficult to decide which aspects of the charts to use. Well there was not much
questions to ask as you say because the charts and tables were pretty specific on the dates and
numbers. Overall you did a better job than I did on classifying and it seemed like you had an
easier time on doing so.
Prompt #8
After reading The Collector I thought John Fowles was explaining a situation where the woman
protagonist was leaving her boyfriend because she did not love him anymore. I thought her
boyfriend did not want to let her go therefore he would not let her out of his sight. She was held
captive even though she had hurt the man’s feeling by treating him bad and making him feel sad.
I also thought she told him the fairy story of the ugly monster and the princess to convince him
to let her go. After it did not work I figured she had convinced herself that she would be with
him even though she did not love him. The boyfriend did not seem to show any emotions
through out the story so he must have been sad the whole time because she treated him bad. This
was my analysis before observing what Rose and McKiniry think.
After reading through what Rose and McKiniry observed, I believe that it doesn’t have to do a
whole lot with the Stockholm syndrome because the woman protagonist (captive) does not seem
to be afraid of the man who is holding her captive. There is also the fact that the captor is the one
who is acting immature while the woman is being the mature one expressing how she feels
sympathy for the captor. In addition, according to what I think, the captive does not fall in love
with her captor therefore there is no link with Stockholm syndrome.
Replay to Mercedes
When I first read The Collector I thought the same way you did that the woman had hurt the guy
in some way because it seemed like he was sadder than her. It is interesting to know that you
thought of Beauty and the Beast while I got into the story she was reciting and imagining how
the characters looked and I felt like if I was in it with them. After the woman finished reciting the
story, it did occur to me that the man held the woman unwillingly because it seemed like she told
him that story so he would let her go like the ugly monster did. But like you said the man told her
“I love you” so that makes us think that he doesn’t have her captive.
The story does make more sense after we read how it can be examined in different point of views
and if we applied Stockholm syndrome. It is nice how you remembered a program you used to
watch and applied it to this story because I didn’t relate to the story to anything that I have seen
in the past. I agree with you that people do crazy things when they are in love and this story fits
into that category.
Prompt #9
After reading “From The Buried Life of the Mind: Writers’ Metaphors for Their Writing
Processes” I would say the different ways the writers talk about the act of writing is before,
during, and after they finish writing. They each describe something different that has to happen
when they begin until the end of their writing.
Before the process: 1, 4, 14, and 15 talk about what they think about writing before they start.
Words like “sculpture”, “birth”, “construction”, and “seed” made me think as a beginning rather
and during or after the draft.
During the process: 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 17, 18, and 19 explain how important it is to
revise and go over their drafts so it turns out better than what it should. Some words like:
“rewriting”, “ideas”, “painter”, “car…working on”, and “draft” remind me of when one revises
their drafts before saying the writing is finished.
Finishing process: 2 and 3 are the only ones I thought talked about when the book/writing is
done. When Nelson and Joan said “finishing” and “end” the first thing that came to my head was
exactly that, the end of the writing.
What made me define my classification scheme as I did was based on the first thing that came to
my mind when I read the metaphor. I may be totally wrong but this is what I thought was the
classification of before, during, and after the writing; who knows maybe the writers of these
metaphors had something different in mind when they wrote them than what I thought when I
read them.
Replay to Lizbeth
I enjoyed reading your blog; you really put more work into classifying than I did which makes
your answer sound ways better than mine because you put it into better categories. I liked how
you put each number into each category you thought it belonged to therefore I went based on
your style to do mine. In addition, I like how you included quotes from the pages to support your
categories therefore it lets us know that you are not plagiarizing whom you know is important
not to plagiarize. Your last category was the most interesting especially the way you called it
“miscellaneous” and how you explained why it called your attention the most. I didn’t have
metaphor either and I really didn’t feel attached to any of them but it’s nice to know that you did
feel that connection to Barthelme’s metaphor. Great job on your blog this week I truly enjoyed
responding to it and giving my feedback.
Prompt #10
The first moment of difficulty I had with my research argument paper is deciding what topic to
write about and decide to focus on one clear thesis. Then I had trouble researching articles that
relate to my thesis since my senior thesis is in Spanish and I had to translate them to English
since I couldn’t find any articles in English. Another difficulty is acknowledging if it was okay to
translate so it wouldn’t seem like I was plagiarizing because I know that is very important
especially because I don’t want to fail the class just because I translated from Spanish to English.
After I found the articles I had difficulty making an outline since it has to be an approximate tenpage paper so I had to figure out what I need to include in my outline to make it easy to
understand. I believe the next couple of difficulties are starting my research and making my
argument come across as clear as possible besides I’m not a transitioning from paragraph to
paragraph but I will try my best. I’m also sure that I will be having a lot more difficulties than
these when I actually start writing my paper.
I’m sure I’m not the only one that has and will have all these difficulties because it is not easy to
write a research argument paper especially because plagiarism is the number one thing the
professor looks at. I advise you all to think about not plagiarizing first and then go from there
when starting your paper. I haven’t started mine but I always keep in mind what the professor
has told us over and over. The Power Points should be helpful too if not it’s always nice to ask
for help when you are having trouble.
Replay to Lizbeth
The first topic you had in mind sounds like it would be interesting to have read too bad you
could not find enough sources to back up your thesis. It was nice that the library section helped
you out, I did not go to that class that day maybe that is why I had a little bit of difficulty
deciding which articles to use and which ones not to use. At least you have all the sources you
will be using even though you are getting left behind but then again many people are too so you
are not the only one. As long as you catch up on the annotated bibliography and literature review
you will be okay. In addition, it is nice to see how you realize and recognize that it is your own
fault for being left behind even though it seems like you had a good idea of what you wanted to
write about. I think since you could not find enough sources to use, it made you get behind and
not focus as much as you should have. Good thing that you have your sources finally and that
you are ready to “dive into” the research paper…Good luck!