Hello and welcome to my blog. My name is
Dominique Neal and I am a freshman at California State University Northridge.
First of all, I want to say thank you for taking the time out of your day to
read my essays. It has been a long journey for the past year trying to improve
my essays and my writing skills so it will be easier to have readers enjoy
reading my essays. The essays that I have written show that improvement. During
this semester, I worked on three projects that led up to writing my essays. They
were project text, space, and web. In each project, I did assignments that
helped me out to write upcoming essays that I have to write in my English
class.
During the spring semester, I wrote three essays. The
first essay that I wrote is called “Difference in Class.” In this essay, I
analyze a specific topic in the memoir Persepolis
by Marjane Strapi that caught my interest. I talked about how the different
social classes in Iran were being treated differently during the Islamic
Revolution. The title of my second essay is called “Shaping Our Lives.” In this
essay, I talked about how different spaces shape our perspective in our world
and change who we are based on my ethnography that I did. The last essay that I
have written is called “A Long Journey.” I wrote a reflective essay about how I
improve my reading comprehension from my first semester in English until now.
Thank you again for reading my essays and I hope you enjoy reading them.
The chapter “The Letter” is about
how Marjane’s family maid, named Mehri, is in love with their neighbor, and
Mehri asked Marjane if she can write the letters for her to send to their
neighbor. Mehri is part of the lower class and the guy she likes is part of the
middle class. Marjane figured out the reason that the Islamic Revolution
started was because of “the difference between the social classes” (33). In the
beginning of the memoir, Marjane didn’t really think about social class. She
realized later that people in the lower classes had to work at not-so-good
jobs, and that she was fortunate that she didn’t have to work at such a young
age. Mehri told her sister about the boy that she was in love with and her
sister was really jealous of her. So her sister told Marjane’s family about
this secret love affair, and Marjane’s father went to confront the boy about
what was going on. So Marjane’s father tells the boy that she is really his
maid and asked him if he wanted “to continue seeing her” (37). Marjane’s father
knew it wasn’t right for someone in the lower class to be with someone in the
middle or upper class. We don’t know what the father was thinking. He probably
was protecting Mehri from the heartbreak and didn’t want him or Mehri to get
killed if the government found out about this. Marjane’s father tells Marjane
that it wasn’t possible for Mehri and the boy to be together. Marjane didn’t
really understand why this had to happen in their culture. She asks “but is it
her fault that she was born where she was born?” (37). I agree with her because
people just don’t decide that they want to be part of the lower class and that
their family is part of the lower class. The last panel in the chapter shows
Marjane going to Mehri’s bed to console her. She said that “we were not in the
same social class but at least we were in the same bed” (37). The graphic shows
that Marjane doesn’t care that Mehri is not in the same class as her but at
least it was okay that she can be in the same bed with her. It seems like the
social class doesn’t mean a thing to either of them at that moment.
The chapter “The Key” tells about how young boys from poor areas received a golden painted key from school to represent that they will go to heaven if they die in the war. Their maid Mrs. Nasrine told Marjane’s mother about the key and she said that “in paradise there will be plenty of food, women, and houses made of gold and diamonds” (100). The government is trying to persuade these young boys that it is okay to fight in the war because they are fighting for their country and making them believe that good things will happen when they go to heaven with the golden key that they have. In the fourth panel on page 99, the background is pitch black and the author focus on the key that Mrs. Nasrine is showing to Marjane and her mother. This key tells the reader that it is very important in this chapter because most of the chapter deals with people going to war and that this key will be important later as the reader reads on. Marjane’s cousin Shahab, who is in the military service, tells Marjane and her mother about seeing all the young boys coming in the military. He tells them that “they convince them that the afterlife is even better than Disneyland” (101). It is sad that thirteen or fourteen year old boys are being told complete lies so they can take the place of upper class boys or men. These young men don’t really know what is going on, and they probably are thinking that this will be an honor because they know that something cool will happen for them at the end. The government would rather have boys or men from the lower class sacrifice their lives because they don’t have anything going on in their lives. The last two panels on page 101 show these boys are ready for battle and they were just thrown into something without them choosing to be in the military. Marjane said that “the key to paradise was for poor people: (102). The young boys made sure that they had their keys around their necks, so when they died they will be in their paradise. It isn’t fair that kids who are from the lower class have to deal with this at such a young age and be lied to by the people in the military.
Social class is always important to different cultures no matter where you live. Some families might not want their child to be with someone who is in a different class then them because they think that they don’t have nothing going for them or it can maybe be embarrassing for the family. In the United States, social class plays a big part in a lot of things. For people who are in the lower class, they don’t have as many resources as the people who are in the middle or upper class. For example, people who are in the lower class do not get the best benefits such as health insurance, or sometimes have to wait such a long time at the doctors to get checked in. the people who are in the middle or upper class, they get the best services and can get the medicine that they need without waiting. No matter what country you lived in or what your religion is, the lower and middle and upper class get treated differently.
As we can see, in the Iranian culture, social class plays a big part during the Islamic Revolution. The lower class was being treated really differently from the upper class. The government made sure that the lower class were first to be sacrificed as puppets in the war. People who want to have a relationship together cannot be together because of the difference in social class. In my opinion, it was wrong for the government during the Islamic Revolution to treat the lower class differently because they are worthless. It was wrong for them to use young boys to be put into war rather than having older men joining the military. The Iranian government made sure that these social classes were separate from each other. The stories in these two chapters show that people in different class were being treated differently during this time period.
Today, cyberspace is a huge part of people’s daily life. Some people go on the internet to pay bills online, watch movies, go on social media websites, or to shop for some clothes. Even though people can do wonderful things on the internet, it is taking over the lives of people who are addicted to things on the internet. Majority of people get so caught up in the internet craze, where we stop communicating with people in the real world. When the fans of celebrities hear about what they are wearing, they make sure that they buy the latest outfits and look for laces on the internet to find where their favorite stars like to hang out so they can see them. Cyberspace gives the freedom for society to have a voice and the opportunity to do blogs about the celebrity that they don’t like and post videos that showcase their talents hoping to be discovered by a record company. In his book, Lawrence Lessing said that “we think of the Internet as a place” (Lessing 350) instead of another way to communicate with people in the world. It has gotten to a point where there are virtual worlds that you can interact with people on the internet, where you can create an avatar of yourself and do whatever you want or be whatever you want there. In the games such as World of Warcraft and The Sims, people can build their own empire within these games. People can build as many houses as they want, have sex with anyone in the game, and can also kill someone without being put in jail for it. When people play these types of games, it is an escape from the harsh reality of the world and its gets to a point where that the only think about going straight home and playing these games. The reality is that people have become addicted to playing these games and will start playing these games up to “40 hours a week, skipping meals and social engagements” (Koppell 358). With these online games such as World of Warcraft, it gives us an opportunity to have an alter ego. It also starts to change who we are as a person and how we interact with other people.
Mental space gives us an opportunity to come up with ideas in our minds. Mental space deals with a person’s imagination. What we see or think about helps us expand our imagination. Since we were little kids, we have the biggest imagination in the world. We create our own imaginary friend to talk to and the “friend” has similar characteristics as we do. In our mind, it is our own space to think, dream, and create without anyone judging or critiquing us. As we get older, our imagination starts to grow inside our minds and we find a way to put it into reality. Even though some people might use their imaginations to build something that will help a child that has autism or come up with an idea to make a new technology to make it easier for people in their daily lives, it can have some negative effects when it comes to mental space. Some people think about ways to be just like their favorite celebrities or just change their appearance. People can imagine what their life will be like if they change their whole appearance and attitude so people can like or appreciate them more. In our society, media is a big part of our lives. Seeing all the ads out there, inside the minds of some people tells them that they have to change and it is better for them in the long run. In Will Wright’s essay “Dream Machines”, he talks about how video games help us with our imagination. Video games are meant for people of all ages to play something that they think is fun to play. Of course there are people, who are against video games because of the violence, or people might play a game all day, and that it is a waste of time. Wright states that there is more to video games then just being a waste of time. He says that “games aren’t just fantasy worlds to explore; they actually amplify our powers of imagination” (Wright 341). Thinking about it for a while, this is more than just something to play with. In our minds, it helps us create things that can showcase our talents or what we love. When I went to Madam Tussand’s Wax Museum for my ethnography, it had to take a lot of imagination to build something so amazing to showcase different celebrities that we love so much. The people that designed this museum had to come up with the color, how they want the museum to look, and how they should build the museum. The creation of the museum was such a huge success that they built more of this museum in other countries in the world. Even though mental space involves our imagination, it can have negative and positive effects at the end.
Public spaces are the most important of all spaces because it involves changing who we are significantly to please other people. Without realizing, public spaces change us inside and out. The majority of people might have to dress differently, talk differently, or even just alter their whole personality so they will not be stared at and be treated differently. Some people in our society is obsessed with the celebrities, that they will change who they are as a person to please themselves because they know that they will get a positive response from people if they change their appearance to look like someone else. What is worse is that today’s young women are being pressure to become perfect and look a certain way because of what the media puts out there for the young women to see. People hear about these young women who have eating disorders because what they see in the media and being pressured by the people that they surround there selves with. In the essay “Inside Miss Los Angeles” by Jerry Stahl, he talks about how one of his girlfriends, who is Asian, had plastic surgery but things went wrong in the operating room. One side of her face looked like Farrah Fawcett and the other looked horrible. The girlfriend probably looked beautiful before she had plastic surgery but she was obsessed to have the perfect face and body so she can make it in Los Angeles. The truth is that even though she thought she did the surgery for herself, in realization she changes to please the people in Los Angeles. Changing ourselves in the public spaces that we are in is getting worse day by day. In Brent Staples’s essay “Just Walk on By: A Black Man Ponders His Power to Alter Public Space” he talks about how people treated him differently and judge him just because his is an African American man. He mentions that while he was just taking a nice walk in Hyde Park, a white woman kept glancing back at him over and over. She had a worried expression on her face and started running for no reason. In her mind, her first thought was that he is going to rob me or do something worse just because he is an African American man. African American men are portraying negatively in television as a criminal. So some people in society will have that in their mind that every time they see a African American men, they assume that they are going to do something horrible to them. So Brent Staples say that in order to be less threatening, he started to change who he was as a person. He changed his whole appearance and when he walks by people, he will hum classical music so people can be comfortable around him. Public space can have a negative effect on a person when they are put in a situation to change who they are as a person and act a certain way to make other people feel comfortable and not be judged.
The mental, cyberspace, and public space has a tremendous contribution of shaping who we are as a person, how we think, and how we perceive our world around us in general. As a society we are fixated to be the perfect person to everyone and to have the perfect look. It has come to the point that we have to sit back and really see the true reality that surrounds us every day of our lives. The different spaces around us truly change our perception and well-being in this world.
Project Web: A Long Journey
During the first semester in my English class, I had the confidence that I would do well in this class and that I would understand the reading material easily. In my mind, I was thinking that since I passed my English class in high school, college English shouldn’t be any different. What I came to realize is that my reading comprehension was still a struggle for me even in college. Throughout the first semester, my classmates and I had to do these progression assignments that led up to the essay that we have to write about. Our first assignment that my teacher gave to the class was a poem called “Its A Woman’s World” by Eavan Boland. I already knew that I wasn’t going to like this because I didn’t like analyzing poems at all. When my classmates stated breaking down each stanza of the poem, I had the most confusing face ever and had no idea what they were talking about. I was trying to figure out how my classmates came up with these ideas and knew what it was between the lines. I remember asking questions about this poem over and over again because I didn’t understand at all. When I analyzed the poem myself, I was getting so frustrated and pretty much gave up because I knew I wouldn’t be able to understand this poem at all. I knew right then that I was going to have such a hard time in my English class, and thinking that I was not going to do so well on my essays on in the class itself. That was my mindset during my first semester in English in college.
I was struggling a lot during my first semester in my English class. My classmates and I had to do these progression assignments and I didn’t get why we had to do these assignments. In my mind in the beginning, I thought none of these assignments helped in any kind of way to prepare for the essays that I had to do. Doing the first progression that I had to do in class, we had to write letters to the speaker of the poem, the author, and to a family member and explain what I understood about the poem. I was thinking, how can I write a letter to someone about a poem and I have no idea what I understood about this poem. When I was listening and reading other classmates letters, I get so frustrated inside because I couldn’t analyze a simple poem to save my life. Watching clips that were posted online and reading other material that was related to what we were doing wasn’t helping me at all. I didn’t understand how it related to what we were reading sometimes and how I can write an essay based off the poem and the extra readings and clips our teacher gave us. I remember writing my first essay that was based on the Eavan Boland’s poem; I was completely blank on what to write about. I was going over all the notes and trying to analyze the poem all over again, but there were no ideas popping up in my head. In a way I knew what I wanted to write about but at the same time I knew this was nothing that my teacher wanted to see in the paper. At that point, I felt like I was a gambler and had to take the bet that whatever I wrote in my essay was good enough. In my essay, I decided to write about how today’s women are stronger than ever and had to overcome obstacles to get where they were at. Even though I had a topic to talk about, I had no evidence to back it up or how to use the poem to enhance my essay to make sense to the reader. It took me a whole weekend and a day to write an essay based off the poem. Since I didn’t really understand the poem, I didn’t get a good grade on my essay.
There was another progression that I did in class that I was confused and had the hardest time trying to understand the concept of doing this progression. In progression 2, I had to deal with using the rhetorical devices and applying them to what I had to do with the different assignments within this progression. The rhetorical devices that I used were logos, pathos, and ethos. When I first heard about these three rhetorical devices, I thought it was confusing and probably it is going to be hard to relate it to what my class was going to do. I knew what each of the devices means and how each of them in a way intertwine with each other. But I could not figure out how to make them related to the readings. I was told that the rhetorical devices can help us analyze the reading texts better. The rhetorical devices were the most confusing and hardest thing that I learned during my first semester in my English class. Even though it was confusing and hard to understand the concept, I did get the hang of it when my group and I had to apply these devices in a commercial. It seem a lot easier to work in my group and actually use it on a commercial and it also helped me to understand the rhetorical devices because commercials use it a lot on TV to sell something.
When the second semester came around, I tried to have high hopes that it will be a little bit easier for me when it comes to understanding reading. My classmates and I had to read a graphic book called Persepolis by Marjane Strapi. I usually can’t concentrate on the reading because I am more focus on the pictures that are inside the book. I thought it was an okay book since I am not a really big fan with graphic novels, and I understood what was going on in the book but didn’t analyze it piece by piece. When my classmates and I were discussing each chapter in the book, my mind started racing again. In the beginning, I had kept beating myself up because I couldn’t get it right. What I thought was right, it was wrong. I got so stressed out about not understanding this story that I just wanted to give up again. So I decided to not think so hard and just have an open mind about this. As my classmates and I went on throughout the book, surprisingly I started getting the hang of it a little bit. For each chapter, I worked in groups when discussing the book. Afterwards, we will discuss the chapters with the whole class and get their thoughts on what they think about the reading. This helped me a lot because I got different opinions from my group, the class, and also my teacher. It made it easier for me to write my essay based off this book.
My greatest accomplish was when I worked on Project Space and as a class we talked about what we think is L.A. I had to read a short story called Minnie Riperton Saved My Life by Luis Alfaro. This was my all-time favorite story to read in my English class because I could somewhat relate to what he was going through. I read this story over five times and I understood the reading like it was nothing. When I thought about it for a while, I also use rhetorical devices to help me analyze this story without even knowing that I did. In the beginning, I struggled with understanding rhetorical devices, but this story made it easier for me because I could relate to it and I like the story. The other stories and poems that I had read during the second semester, I really felt at ease because I was at the same pace as everyone else in my class in understanding reading.
In the beginning of my freshman year in English, I knew I had a problem with reading comprehension and that I would fall behind for a while but I didn’t let that stop me. The different strategies that I used from the first semester to the second semester helped me a lot in bettering myself in reading. I’ve always loved to read since I was a little girl, it’s just the understanding and trying to analyze that was a problem. I stressed, fussed, and sometimes wanted to give up because in my mind I knew that I couldn’t do it. I am happy where I am at right now. Of course I might have some readings in the future that will be hard for me to understand, but I know that in the long run it will turn out great.
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