But it's November?!

This is ridiculous, I never thought I could endure a period of commercials that were worse than political ads during an election year, but it seems even those have been bested. Okay maybe that’s a little extreme, nothing is worse than political ads, but this year’s round of holiday advertisements is absolutely out of control. If TV controls the voice of the population of this entire country, than we all have forgotten about Thanksgiving. Oh yeah, Thanksgiving, it is still a holiday! Since its establishment, it has been considered one of the more important holidays in our society. Because for one day we take a step back from all our busy lives and for just one day we are thankful, for our family which we are blessed to spend time with (for some, not so lucky), all that we have achieved, and all that has been given to us since there are many in this world who are not as lucky as we are. But this selfless holiday has been overlapped by a spectacle that is absolutely selfish: shopping and black Friday. Don’t get me wrong, Christmas is probably the greatest holiday for its central meaning as well, but the shopping has ruined it, since it is all about gifts now, and not about the spirit. But now they have started it way early, and now it is starting to affect the spirit of Thanksgiving. I saw a commercial today for some store that was probably advertising for black Friday, but it said that is was the night before Christmas, it’s not even the night before thanksgiving yet!!!!!!! I understand that Black Friday is a big day for business as well as for people to get good deals on gifts for loved ones, but the spectacle they make out of this one holiday, and now since they have started advertising irrationally to early, it seems that it could ruin the spirit of two holidays.

Life

What the reason is for people to be on this earth can be seen as a relative opinion, and has been argued since the birth of mankind. Literally, humans are set upon this earth for the sole purpose of reproduction, but it has many other meanings that have been implied by people over time. Today, as cliché as it sounds, it seems we are set on this earth to achieve our destiny. Before we are ever even conceived, a greater power has decided what we are to spend our lives, and in turn we spend the course of our lives attempting to find and achieve that purpose. Even as industrialized as our society has become, with the probability of becoming a success diminishing as the years go by, life is still a beautiful and fascinating institution.

And in this fascinating world, I simply do not understand a person could ever be bored. I once heard a saying, “How could you ever be bored when there is so much to see?” This exemplifies our world, which is full of opportunity and extraordinary things. In order to achieve a dream, work is required from a fairly early age; it is as simple as that. As much as it is portrayed in movies, success doesn’t just fall into your lap, the gap between dreams and reality includes you, and the work you put in along the path. If you’re bored at any time, you probably could be doing more to achieve your goals. Even if it doesn’t benefit you right away, all good things come in time, that’s karma.

Generalizations of our reality.

Since the invention of the television and the modern sitcom, American life has been glamourized as an institution that is perfect all the time, or what has been dubbed “the American dream”. We’d like to think that this is the truth, but sadly it could not be more wrong. So we live our everyday lives the way it was intended, but even the idea of what is defined as a hard or stressful life to a person has been so generalized that a normal level of difficulty or stress can seem out of this world. But the question arises (rhetorical of course), how can you generalize any part of human life when we live in a world where every individual is so unique, possessing their own personality and tolerance level when it comes to these things? Therefore, it is impossible to gauge just how “hard” a person has it because one person could be the busiest and most stressed individual in the individual on the face of this earth, but doesn’t say a word about it simply because it does not bother them. Then there are the people that probably don’t have much going on but they act like they have the world weighing down on their shoulders; so it really possible to feel sympathy for others when they discuss their lives in such a way when it is impossible to know which of the people listed above they are? That is the cause of our modern world, where sitcoms and reality TV has generalized almost every human emotion.

the shift

Oh Collegeboard people you have done it again, your logic never ceases to amaze me. We start off reading Hamlet, a classic renaissance play illustrating the greatness and absolute, infinite demise that lies that lies within us all. Now all of a sudden we have switched to the period of Romanticism; if there is a connection between the two, I must be blind and should go back to my freshman English class. Before staring on Mary Shelly’s classic novel Frankenstein, we have been tasked with reading a passage from John Milton’s Paradise Lost, which is about as biblical as biblical can get. In this, John Milton explains how the evil of this world came to be, elaborating that it all started with Adam and Eve. In the beginning, god knew there was a potential for evil to roam the world, but he gave Adam and Eve the choice of which path to follow, god’s grace or the path to evil. When they chose the latter, and then their children decided to follow them, evil was born in the world. Milton then moves to the story of how Satan came to roam the depths of hell. Originally, he was one of god’s angels; but, when he tried to overthrow the will of god in an effort to gain his thrown, god sentenced him to eternal damnation. After a while, Satan would allure men by telling them that hell is the only place where you can truly be free, and that you are only ruled by yourself. This is very ironic, as it explains, because god lets Satan believe it is a place free from his grace, when in fact its sole purpose is to fulfill his will.

 

How these stories are connected, or if they are even connected, I have not a clue. I guess I must stay tuned for the next episode of AP English Lit.  

Why not?

People in modern society have become very desensitized to all that life has to offer, with advancements in technology, it has become very easy for humans to lose that connection to living. One ever-so growing issue is that people are afraid to experience knew things; and what they do not understand is that this is one of the essential feelings to know that you are living, experiencing that fear. Not knowing what is unknown, pun intended, or what might happen in a new situation terrifies the human species, and understandably so. What often goes unrealized though is that there are so many opportunities that are missed out on because we are afraid of what the result may be since we have never done it before. But, when that fear is pushed aside and that persons experiences whatever it is that they may be doing that they have not done before, a feeling of exhilaration comes over them that cannot be denied. Sometimes overcoming this fear will not bring any kind of considerable gain, but sometimes it can bring unimaginable gains, both material and emotional, even change a person’s way of thinking or even their whole life. For example, a common fear is the fear of public speaking. Most people would just change their life to cope with this fear and move on, while a select few decide to change it. Fear aren’t just fixed overnight, however, it takes practice, and a time or two thousand in front of anywhere from five-to-six hundred people. One day something just clicks, and it doesn’t even matter anymore, so why not fight your fears and experience that part of the world you never knew?

Equal.

     In each work of Shakespeare, Act 5 of each play elaborates how his works have come to be defined as “tragedies”. In Act 5 of Hamlet, nearly everyone but Hamlet’s right hand man die, but Shakespeare does not simply kill these characters off however, he leads up to the dramatic climax by enlightening the audience on the abstraction of death. He alludes to the fact that no matter what your position or social class is, all men shall be sentenced to death, and men of prestige shall end up in the same place as the poor.

     To exemplify this notion, Hamlet stumbles upon the skull of Yorick, a childhood friend/mentor who acted as his father’s jester, or a fool of sorts. He could not understand how such a “fellow of infinite jest” could end up in the state that he was currently in. This illustrates Shakespeare’s first rebuttal that no matter how rich in humor a man may be in in life, or even how insufferable for that matter, these two men of different backgrounds are both doomed to the same fate.  Shakespeare then proceeds to use several more examples to reassure this central meaning, as it acts as one of the major themes of the play. With an allusion to Alexander the Great, a noble figure in the time Hamlet was written, Shakespeare exemplifies that even men that are seen as immortal must die, which makes the audience think of an earlier assertion in the play that the king is no better than what goes through the guts of a beggar. In Hamlet, William Shakespeare uses symbolism to explain that death is inevitable regardless of social rank, and hints at the fact that maybe these ranks are pointless and maybe all men should be seen as equal.

  

Dysfunctionality.

I doubt that is even a word: dysfunctionality, it sounded like an awesome blog title though. The day some of us have been wishing for, and the rest of us maybe not, but the conclusion of Hamlet has approached with such a sense of cunning that one may not know how to act or even feel about it. Other than the fact that it is one of the hardest pieces of literature of the modern age to understand, if you do actually understand it, Hamlet is actually far better than any television drama or movie (ironically, many Directors have made Hamlet into a movie with their own unique twist). One conclusion that is pretty evident from Shakespeare’s plays, although historians do not know much about him, is that he must have had one dysfunctional personality, because his plays would certainly suggests so. He creates families, invests the emotions of the audience into this fake family made up of actors, knowing full well what his intentions are, and kills them. In Hamlet this is the most evident, it is the most dysfunctional piece of writing I have ever read! A prince has an uncle-dad that he can’t decide whether or not to kill him; wouldn’t you want to kill him to rid yourself of the confusion in your relationship to him. He also has a promiscuous mother, who decided to “keep it in the family” in a sense, and a plethora of other insane characters to compliment these, as if this wasn’t enough already. In the end, they all end up dying, because of a plan that worked, but didn’t work that involved a stabbing and two different forms of poison, very confusing. Is this not the definition of dysfunctional?

Berkeley essay 2

Tell us about a personal quality, talent, accomplishment, contribution or experience that is important to you. What about this quality or accomplishment makes you proud, and how does it relate to the person you are?

 

     In every success story since the dawn of the modern age, people have been asked “what drives you?” or “what is the secret to your success?”, in other words. Every answer is usually very different; so far in my very young life, can be measure by two items: ambition and self- discipline.

     In my young years, I witnessed some very trying times; times that decided the outcome of my life based on how I reacted to them. Witnessing events such as a death in the family, or a relative having a run-in with the law, sorrow can take its effect on a young boy; even cause him to give up on his dreams and aspirations. That was never the case for me, although, I guess because it never really affected me directly. What I did instead is use that as a “fuel” to apply myself even more, even more compellingly, to pursue ultimate goal; and in a way to let my light outshine the dark times in my family.

     Now that I am in high school, my ambition and self-discipline have grown together and I have taken them to a whole new level. I very much enjoy challenging myself, so I took every possible AP class that was available to me. Multiple AP classes brings a ton of homework, but it’s all part of challenging myself until I hit that breaking point, and I haven’t hit that point yet. My teachers and counselors tried to talk me out of it, calling me absolutely insane, but I just saw it as an opportunity to add credentials to my college resume, and it wasn’t really that difficult.

     My junior year I was promoted to project manager of our moonbuggy team at school, which was a whole other load of work added. I was responsible for making sure we had all the material needed to complete the project, distributing different tasks to all the team members, and making sure the project was completed on time. This meant for about twelve weeks in the middle of the year, I was at school six days a week, an extra 35 hours working on the project. This alone was considered a full-time job by most of my peers, and even that was before being a full-time student came into the equation.

     Now I am heading to college, and no matter how difficult it may be I know I will be able excel. The reason is that I have already tested it; no matter what life throws at me or how difficult my studies are, I know I will be able to perform to the best of my abilities and move that much closer to realizing my dream of becoming a mechanical engineer.

To be or not to be

Throughout history, man has been surrounded by other organisms that directly threaten the lives of mankind, which has left man with a decision to make a decision every day: whether to live or die. In Act 3, Scene 1 of Hamlet William Shakespeare confronts this vice within every man, but takes it to another level at the same level, suicide. In the plot, Hamlet has developed a pessimistic view of the world, to the say the least, and is conflicted whether or not he will continue his existence. Specifically, whether or not he should continue to suffer through his life, what the beggars call his fortune, or stand up against it and by doing so end his life. This is very ironic to the audience as they witness him engaged in this inner conflict, as they have already seen that he has an inability to act in situations involving murder or death.

     What conflicts Hamlet, however, is that he would immediately end his life and suffering, if he knew what was to come after life. He finds it ridiculous how anyone would bears the scorns of life or the “oppressors wrong” if they knew what kind of life they could go to. This is an allusion to an often natural human emotion that this life is not worth leaving but whether it is worth it to witness whether or not the next is any better.  

     This inner argument of thoughts and deciding to deal with the scorns of life can be thought of as honorable, since life is thought as such a gift. Also, this decision can be thought of as cowardly, as the fear of the unknown leaves people helpless and causes them to continue to suffer through the trials of life (which everyone must endure ironically) and live their lives until its conclusion. Ultimately, Hamlet decides that he is the coward, because he cannot bear the thought of a life that is more insufferable than the one is already living in.

     In Hamlet, William Shakespeare alliterates that humans are almost inevitably conflicted with the question of whether or not to continue living, and nearly always the choice is to continue living for fear of the unknown.