“Blog vs. Journal: My reflection on my blog" 

Home Written Stream of Consciousness

This semester in Journey in Literature I’ve had one of the best experiences with my writing assignments compared to my most recent literature classes. The journal and the blog are a great way to express one’s self in the form of creative writing. If you enjoy writing, and like to travel or to reflect on your previous adventures, than this is definitely the class for you! Besides the essay that we had to write (which was a good assignment, in my opinion) the journal and the blog have been the remainder of the work that we've done this semester.

The journal is where most of the work has been done. It has helped me to expand my creative writing technique in a great manner. In the beginning, I could only write around a page, maybe a page and a half of pure narration. What I mean with that is that I told everything as if it were a travel itinerary, in a synchronized order. However, towards the end of the semester, I learned to actually analyze what I have done in my past travel experiences, and comment on how that can make me a better traveler than I’ve ever been. On the other hand, the blog project has been less work, but it has inspired me a lot more than the journal. In fact, I even started my own personal blog where I can share my thoughts about life and the random occurrences that I have during the day. Writing is a very good exercise for the brain, and there are scientific tests that have proven that writing helps a great load with your brain plasticity. If I had to make a decision in which one of the projects I preferred, it would be the blog project, because it inspired me to keep writing creatively and to expand my creative capabilities, and I thank this class for that. 

Before I started this project I was never into creative writing, but the stress that it takes off your back is enormous. It really is a form of meditation, when you grab your laptop, and start typing away, its liberating! It's also a good way to express your feelings if you have no one to talk to, or write down good memories that you want to remember in the future. That's actually really important; this blog sort of works as your legacy, and it's the narration of your life through your own eyes, somewhat of an autobiography. I found this to be a great project, and I'm hoping to get this assigned for some of my other literature classes.   

“The application of Daisy Miller in Modern society”

Home Written Stream of Consciousness

The identity issue plays a very important role in Daisy Miller. She is somewhat excluded or criticized for the way in which she acts, when it’s really just her being herself. It’s not fair that people take the liberty to judge other people just because their attitudes or their social practices are different. This type of behavior occurs nowadays, and it’s a major cause of bullying which can lead to many problems in the people that are being bullied. The thing is that finding yourself and your identity is not an easy thing to do when society is organized into different cliques, and when the concept of sameness is applied. Once it’s applied, the exclusion begins, because people start to compare themselves to others, which always leads to trouble.   

In the novella, Daisy is going through this exact same process that I’m trying to explain right now. She is a young girl, and she’s in the process of discovering herself and what she wants to do with her life. Because she acts the way she does, she gets excluded and prejudiced by society, which is another problem that is reflected in modern society. You can also see that she’s discovering herself because she tries different experiences, and tries to meet new people. She meets Winterbourne, which becomes a good friend of hers, and she also meets Giovanelli which she also gets along with, and has a connection with.

People should not be so quick to judge, because they don’t understand what people may be going through in a particular time frame. I guess that society is just built that way, and humans are met to get into groups with the people that have things in common with them. It’s like people don’t even notice how cruel and sad it can be when a person is excluded.    

“I love riddles!”

Home Written Stream of Consciousness

HI! Today I read one of my friend Eduardo’s blog posts (for this class, in fact). In his post, he talked about a movie called Fermat’s Room and about riddles in general. I need to say that I ended up taking a good three hours of my day based on that small three hundred word post that he did on his blog. It’s funny how things can influence you to do things by just receiving minimal stimuli, I think that’s especially highlighted in me, because of my ADD problem. So I watched the movie, and I totally loved it, and the concept behind it. The directors did a great job keeping tension and keeping a great cohesion in the story. (Although, I don’t know if we saw the same version because I watched the original one from Spain.)

After I was done watching the movie, I went back to his blog to finish reading that particular post, and as I started to finish it, he started talking about a riddle developed by Albert Einstein. I looked it up and I started to try and solve it, and it is truly challenging. The page that I found it in said that supposedly only two percent of the population is able to solve it. I DID IT! It took me one hour and twelve minutes, but I was able to do it. I was very proud of myself when I finished, and I shared the riddle with everyone in my family. The truth is, the riddle is not that hard, it’s just complex. It has about twenty components, and you have to build up on them slowly. I think that if only two percent of the earth’s population can solve that riddle, it’s all in the patience factor, because I thought about checking the answer, or giving up a couple of times, but since I didn’t have anything better to do, I soldiered on. It’s one tough cookie!! 

“The Island”

Home Written Stream of Consciousness

The movie that I chose for the final class assignment is The Island. It is loosely based on one of my favorite books of all time, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. The novel is amazing, and the way that Huxley writes it really makes your imagination run wild. At least, when I read it, I created a really good mental image of what was going on during the story. My choice was originally going to be The Kite Runner, but I found out someone wanted to take that as their choice, so I decided to go with The Island. It’s about the way that society learns to accept things that people say are normal, when in reality they should be found morally and ethically questionable.

It was adapted into a movie that I watched (after I took the test on this book) and I found that the movie was very unfaithful to the book. However, the movie is a journey all by itself and it makes you reflect about society and how people are easily manipulated into assuming that things that are found socially acceptable are right. This is clearly not always the case, and the moral behind this book is that you should learn to question the system, and to make your own decisions in situations that normally would be considered wrong.    

Even though I really liked this novel, I’m going to have to watch the movie again because I forgot most of the details from the movie. Also, if have enough time I might be able to re-read the novel as well, so that I can compare both story lines with a fresh notion of what happens in the story. This also has to do a lot with science, which is what I’ve lived for, for the major part of my life.  

“About a picture”

Home Written Stream of Consciousness

We've all heard of the phrase “A picture is worth a thousand words”. This is sometimes very true, but it all depends on the point of view that a person has when observing the actual picture. A good example of this is the Rorschach inkblot test, where patients are shown a distorted image that is painted using ink, and they are asked what they think the image is of. This a perception test and it’s used to see how people perceive different images. The same concept may be applied to a picture, because different people apply different life experiences that can serve as a bias or as an inspiration for what they are seeing in the image.

Take this image for example, if different people are asked to describe the image people will probably have a very different opinion on what they see beyond the obvious detail of the flower. This occurs because everyone has a different type of perception, especially when what you see in the image is not a usual object or has unusual colors or shapes. Instead of thinking about the ordinary, and what you’re used to, you try to make up different traits that you can attribute to the image.

One cool activity that I did once in my 11^th grade AP psych class was an awareness test. During this test you were asked to perform a task (to count the amount of passes that a few players make while playing basketball) but then you’re asked if you saw a background activity, and the results are surprising. In fact, I will leave the video for you to watch, it’s really interesting and I can almost guarantee that laughter will come out at the end of the video. So maybe a picture is worth a thousand words, you just have to choose the words according to your previous experiences.            

“I wish I had a time machine”

Home Written Stream of Consciousness

I’m nearly half way through my college work in order to achieve a degree in biology. It really feels like I’ve hardly spent any time studying here in the UPR. Time goes by in a flash, and before you know it you already have a job and a ton of responsibilities. So, before I finish my first official college degree and I head off to medicine school, I want to do some things that I won’t have time for in the near future.

I want to do a semester abroad, so that I can get in touch with some other culture besides my own. I’m thinking of going to Australia for a semester, or maybe to the U.K. I want to visit a country that I can explore, but that I can easily move from in order to explore other countries. Australia is enormous, so just exploring it will be an adventure. On the other hand, the U.K. is much smaller, but there are many places to explore nonetheless. In addition, I can move from the U.K. to Europe in a matter of hours, which is excellent. In terms of travel, I would also LOVE to go to Brazil during the summer of 2014 in order to experience the FIFA world cup. This is something that I feel I have to do in my life, because I love soccer, and going to a world cup is the pinnacle of the sport.

After I finish my B.S., I plan to attend medical school in order to obtain my MD. I know it’s going to be very challenging and rigorous, but it’s what I want to do and feel that I’ll be good at it. I’m looking at several medical schools, but among my top choices are Brown, Columbia and the medical sciences campus of the UPR. I really hope my med school career goes successfully and as planned. After med school, I plan to specialize in Invasive Cardiology.       

“Student conference”

Home Written Stream of Consciousness

I’ve had very few opportunities to speak in public since I graduated from high school, because in High school there are many more extracurricular activities that involve speaking in front of an audience. I really like to speak in front of people, so I was glad when the professor told me I could read my essay in the amphitheater. The only problem with the whole thing for me (my presentation I mean) was that I was very sick, and after the first page my throat got really dry. After I paused for a drink of water, I got really nervous and I started to sweat, a lot! It was horrible, my face was covered I sweat, and because I was conscious that I had a crowd in front of me. Nonetheless, I tried to maintain my composure and I kept reading my essay as calmly and clearly as I could.

The idea of making a conference where students can share their thoughts is really cool. It’s good to be able to express yourself, because you can share your thoughts on assignments or life experiences with other people that have experienced similar situations. It’s also a great opportunity to foment student’s creativity and the fact that people pay attention to what you write. I think that for the next activity, the strategy for promotion has to change. This time around there was very few spectators in the crowd, but with the right promotion, a big crowd could be built up. By going to this conference, you can also observe that diversity that there is in the English department, in terms of the courses that you can take. In fact, since I have to take another English literature course for med school, I might just take one of the courses that I learned about that day during the conference.