Category: Uncategorized

I love the smell of summer mornings

I love people watching

I love the sound of the ocean crashing 

I love the beach when it’s not crowded 

I love all seasons

I love only enjoying what the seasons have to offer for a little while 

I love hating the month March 

I love decorating for Christmas even though its different now 

I love Christmas

I love how I love Thanksgiving more 

I love how my dad still makes most of the gifts from “Santa”

I love when it first snows and how it looks on the trees 

I love when the air smells like snow or rain and the calm presence it brings 

I love how I only love the snow but only until the end of January 

I love New Years Eve 

I love how I hate New Years day because realization sets in 

I love sweaters 

I love reading on rainy days  

I love not having anywhere to be

I love movie night on Fridays with my roommates 

I love Starwars, specifically Revenge of the Sith 

I love Hallmark movies 

I love that all Hallmark movies are the same

I love listening to sad music and crying just because

I love Saturday mornings and making pancakes 

I love how I hate 8ams yet I still register for early classes 

I love challenging myself 

I love how proud I am to admit that I listen to classical music when I study 

I love how badly I want to travel 

I love the movie Mamma Mia 

I love laughing at my own jokes 

I love the stars

I love the stars so much that I sit outside with my dad and freeze 

I love how the stars remain untouched 

I love how i’m so much like my dad 

I love my dad

I love how you bond with my dad because I know he wished for a son 

I love the way that you laugh and how contagious it is 

I love how we both cry everytime we say goodbye 

I love how you hate it when I cry

I love how you care

I love how I only have been in love with one person 

I love concerts 

I love when I saw Lord Huron play “The Night we Met” live

I love that I went with my sister 

I love the song “Sweet Disposition” when the beat drops 

I love that I’m my sisters maid of honor 

I love when my sister and I were younger you couldn’t catch us dead hanging out with each other

I love how my sister still drives me crazy, yet I would do anything for her 

I love weddings 

I love love 

I love watching people love people 

I love how I absolutely despise Valentines Day

I love how small my dog is 

I love that I hate when he barks at leaves

I love cleaning 

I love how no one really understands why I love to clean 

I love giving gifts 

I love watching peoples faces when opening gifts 

I love sunsets

I love how the sun only rises over the ocean

I love laying down in the grass in the summer and looking at the clouds 

I love sundresses 

I love when the sun sets at 8:30pm in the Summer 

I love how endless the Summer feels 

I love going to a bookstore and picturing the characters walking around in the store 

I love flowers 

I love making flower arrangements 

I love gardening 

I love planting tulips in the winter and how they start to grow in May 

I love taking pictures 

I love how I also am able to mentally capture moments around me 

I love how as humans we can remember the most vulnerable moments but also the worst moments 

I love how pure kids are 

I love people that are good parents 

I love how I used to dance

I love the Nutcracker
I love the time in my life where I didn’t care what people thought 

I love that I hate what people think of me

I love walking around Portsmouth, going into the fancy stores and not buy anything 

I love not knowing 

I love that I hate not being in control 

I love imagining my life if I went in a different direction 

I love that I hate the fact that no one can slow down time 

I love time 

I love how I wish that I could turn back time 

I love daydreaming about my future 

My process of writing my chosen “Loves” was writing them whenever they came to me. I didn’t really have a specific process, but instead remembering some things in my life that have brought me joy and I truly find love. One of the first things that I did before I wrote my piece was I read Alex Dimitrovs’s poem three times. The first time I just read it and took it all in. The second time I read it, I made notes of how his love might have fit in his life, where they chronological, did some Love fit with the next after it? And the third time, I started to write some things that I loved using his writing as a guide. I found when writing this piece, I realized that some of my loves, some people might not understand, but that’s okay. I didn’t understand some of Alex Dimitrov’s, because he wrote them to reflect his life and his life only. I would write some of my “loves” down and then come back to the paper a day or two later and add on. I think that writing them all at once becomes less meaningful and that I was just trying to get the assignment done. This way it allowed me to think about what I truly love in my life. 

My piece interacts with the pieces that we have read and written about because it reflects my life and the experiences that I have that bring love in my life. It goes along mostly with Doyle, Gay, and Smith. This piece reminds me of Gay and Smith because it is all about joy and how you celebrate the joyful moments in your life. When writing this piece I really thought about the things and people in my life that bring me joy. I feel that there is a strong correlation between joy and love. My piece also reminds me of what Doyle writes, especially the “Hawk” because this writing shows this man through the observations from others, and it wasn’t until the end that you directly heard from the Hawk. In some way you are hearing what I have to say, but my “loves” are just observations from my life. They could look completely different to others.

1.  Respond in your own words, and referencing your own experience, to the validity of Gay’s question: “what if joy and pain are fundamentally tangled up with one another?”

• I feel like what he is trying to say is if pain is not separate fro joy what are the distinguishing features of each? Can they be different? Is there a line that is crossed between the two? I feel like pain and joy aren’t the same thing but they could be fundamentally tangled up with each other. Pain and joy work well together which is a weird concept. An example that I have if I understand the question properly is that my grandma has been suffering with many illnesses for a while now. She’s on dialysis, she has heart failure, COPD, a lump that they had recently just found in her neck, slight onset dementia. Now I love my grandmother so much that when she is gone I’m not sure where ill be. The joy of still having her around is unbeatable. But I also feel pain or guilt that she is suffering. 

2. Gay advocates that we “lay down our swords and invite sorrow in.” What does he mean? Do you agree? Why or why not? 

• In this quote he is saying that instead of running away from our sorrow we should jus face it, because over time we accept what has happened to make room for the sorrow in our lives and eventually be joyful again. I somewhat agree with this statement, I feel like it is different for every person and how they deal with their sorrow. But eventually we all have to accept and face whatever we are going through and the sorrow that has consumed our lives for the time being. Allowing for you to accept what happened might let you heal and eventually be able to feel joy. 

3.    –     The feeling I get after decorating for christmas 

• The feeling I get when there’s a snow day 
• The feeling I get when I heard/saw Lord Huron play “The Night we Met” live
• Smelling the air when t smells likes it going to snow/rain 
• Driving in the car on a cool summers night with the windows down 
• Watching the leaves change color up north (vermont, white mountains)
• Being able to relax with no obligations that you have to do/get done for a while 
• Watching christmas movies 
• Memories as a kid coming in from playing in the snow with your sister and drinking hot chocolate after 
• Going home after a long day and eating my favorite meal. 

4. I tend to be filled with joy over the little things in life, or looking back at memories that I had as a kid. I feel like when I look at pictures as a kid it’s almost sad that I can’t relive that moment again and feel the joy that I felt. Which is why I feel like today I try to look at the little things in life to be joyful about. 

5. In what specific ways does Ross Gay’s essay interact with Zadie Smith’s? Whats the value of gays essay, through the lens of a college student?

• Some ways that Ross Gay’s essay interacts with Zadie smith is the nature of joy. As well as how a person chooses to feel joy. For example in this essay talking about sorrow. Everyone is different in ways in which they want to deal with sorrow, but accepting what has happened might allow you to feel joy again. In the eyes of a college student I feel like college can be tough for a lot of people, myself included, being away from home, family, pets possibly, it sucks. Some days I let the sorrow for myself get the best of me. But I, and all college students have to remember to accept what has happened, allow yourself to feel your feelings but don’t let it ruin your entire day, week, or even month. Allow yourself to do things that bing you joy. Just be mindful of how you see joy, even if its getting coffee with friends for an hour then going back to school work is allowing yourself to feel the “acceptable” amount of joy of a college student.

1. Zadies Smith is a British novelist, essayist, and short story writer. She is known for her expiration of race, identity, and cultural dynamics. She is also well known for her novel, “White Teeth.” We should pay attention to her essays because she is well known for her description of identity. To me, the feeling of joy is part of our identity. 
2. She states that most people think joy is the most intense version of pleasure. Although she explains that this is not the case for her and what has happened in her life. She thinks that she has had more pleasure in her life rather than joy, but she might have had more than the “normal” amount of pleasure compared to joy. Pleasure to her is more important than feeling joy. Feeling pleasure is her, to put it simply, to watch other people. The pleasure that they get out of doing what they want. This would be classified as pleasure and not joy. She believes that joy “multiplies itself dangerously” she gives an example that being in love or to love will eventually at some point be lost to you. Too much joy or happiness in your life will at some point lead to disappointment. 
3. According to Smith, joy is difficult to manage and live with because joy is something that happens not too often, and each time it is experienced soon after it’s forgotten, that the fear of that memory would eventually destroy everything else in your life. It’s almost a burden to have ever experienced joy. “Joy is such a human madness” I disagree with her on her view of joy. I feel like I experience joy more than I experience pleasure. To me her definition of both is the opposite. Joy is something that is nostalgic, it’s something that when it happens it sticks with you forever. Pleasure to me is a temporary feeling. I get pleasure out of submitting assignments because I know that it’s one thing off my plate, but I don’t get joy out of something like that because it’s a reoccurrence.
4.  The value of reading, thinking and discussing joy is the fact that joy has different meanings to people. Like discussed in this paper Smith tells us that joy to her is different and really not that meaningful compared to pleasure. But i disagree with her, joy to be is better than pleasure. It’s a temporary feeling. But talking about joy and discussing it, we can see how others view aspects of joy. Also, it allows us to appreciate life more deeply. Really lets us think about the small and meaningful moments of life and what brings  light/happiness to us day to day. 
5. Smith’s essay connects to some of the readings that we have already read this semester by having to do with relationships, connecting with one another. For example, Konniova talks about the meaning of what genuine true connections are, how they should be, what they would be like if we were solely connected through a screen. We all wrote a paper on how social impacts us and our daily lives, whether it was written on the side of social media or now, there had to be mention of true connection and what it means to us. Similarly this paper talks about what the true meaning of joy or pleasure means to specific people. Connecting with others in person and making connections bring some of us joy and some of us pleasure. It’s all in what you think the definition of each is. Doyle, The Hawk similarly relates to this piece because im sure the man that lived on the field was filled with joy that so many people took care of him, looked after him and what was described to be his home. I’m sure to others it brought the joy/pleasure when they were able to provide for the Hawk. Again, I’m sure joy and pleasure mean different things to many different people so it’s up to you whether you can agree with this statement or not.

1. The three main points of the DWF speech are you need someone to teach you how to think, being conscious and aware of what you pay attention to and lastly you get to decide what you worship. In summary this speech goes into detail about what he thinks life is based off this degree of liberal arts education. Although he states that “Liberal arts education is not so much about filling you up with knowledge as it is about “teaching you how to think” (Foster-Wallace 1). We all know how to think but we are then questioned if we know how, more so what to think. What time fill our heads with. 
2. (part of question one)..The last two go hand-in hand, in the text, “Or I can choose to forced myself to consider the likelihood that everyone else in the Supermart’s checkout line is just as frustrated as I am, and that some of these people probably have harder, more tedious and painful lives than I do (Foster Wallace 5). You are choosing how to think about a situation and forcing yourself to be empathetic. And be able to feel and actually feel someone else’s pain, even if it is through a shared experience. Foster Wallace also states that, “you get to continuously decide that has meaning and what doesn’t. You get to decide what to worship” (5). Both last two main points go together in a way. But in the end, you get to decide what you think, feel, and do in your life. But always know that there could be worse things, someone could be in a way were situation than you.  
3. I do agree with DFW’s main arguments. I subconsciously know that whatever situation that I’m in there is a person out there that doesn’t have a home, or food, or even a good education. Not that it’s not okay to feel crappy in that moment but try to have more empathy for the people out there that could be in a worse situation than you.  
4. I do believe that DFW is referring to empathy, even though the word is never used. The idea here is that you can realize that your problems might be the same as someone else’s. Maybe someone else is having a worse day than you and that’s why they are acting in public. You have no idea what is going on in someone else’s life, so we as people really have no place to judge. When Foster –Wallace gave the example of the people in the grocery store this set the tone for you and your life. You aren’t the only person that has a bad day, that doesn’t want to be stuck in traffic. To feel empathetic for others, that might be in the same position as you.  
5. “Or that the Hummer that just cut me off is maybe being driven by a father whose little child is hurt or sick in the seat next to him, and he’s trying to get his kid to the hospital, and he’s in a bigger, more legitimate hurry that I am: it is actually I who am in HIS way “(Foster Wallace 5). To support his statement, I personally have never thought about it in this specific way and honestly have only thought about the damn person who just cut me off. I think to myself about how rude that person is. To think about that one person that just cut you off in a line a traffic, in that moment is incomprehensible. But looking from an outside perspective you can see when in this situation the father would need to cut you off.  
6. On page four specifically I found that DWF related back to Blooms essay. In Blooms essay, it talked about biases and how that impacts what we as people are empathetic about. What is happening directly around us determines the empathy that we show, compared to something that is happening across the world. In “This is water” Foster Wallaces writes, “Because my natural default setting is the certainty that situations like this are really all about me. About MY hungriness and MY fatigue, and MY desire to just get home, and it’s going to seem for all the world like everybody else is just in my way” (Foster Wallace 4). The idea from Blooms essay was more about convivence of empathy. Comparatively towards the point of the quote in “This is water” it is more convenient for us to only think about our issues and what we are going through. Instead of thinking about the people that are also at that grocery store. And feeling empathetic for

1. Empathy is being debated if it is overrated. The issue with empathy is that there is a spotlight with only a focus on certain things that we feel the need to have empathy for. The spotlights are based on our biases and what is most convenient for us as people. Bloom writes, “… it’s far easier to empathize with those who are close to us, those who are similar to us, and those who we see as more attractive or vulnerable and less scary” (2). It is more convenient for us to be emphatic for our loved ones or people that we have come across, rather than someone all the way across the world that is suffering because they don’t have food. Empathy focuses on limited groups of people and even individuals. It goes back to our biases and who are specifically in our groups. Bloom talks about the Sandy Hook case, where there was a school shooting. Where 20 children and six adults died tragically. Although there was another case in Chicago where more people were murdered. We don’t talk specifically about that case and our minds go to the Sandy Hook shootings (Bloom 2). 

The three main points that the author argues is that spotlights only illuminate what they are pointed at, so empathy reflects our biases, empathy is particularly incentives to consequences that apply statistically rather to specific individuals, and what really matters for kindness in our everyday interactions is not empathy but capacities such as self control and intelligence and more diffuse compassion (Bloom 4). These points are what the essay was mainly about. Putting these ideas together and then making the claim that empathy is not actually used within our everyday interactions. Blooms states, “if you absorb the suffering of others, then you’re less able to help them in the long run because achieving long term goals often requires inflicting short term pain (Bloom 4). If you try to help others by being empathetic and try to feel someone else’s pain you realistically aren’t helping them because you are now hurting yourself. Short term pain is better to achieve a person’s long term goals. 

2. I disagree with what the author has to say about empathy. I agree that trying to help the millions of people in the world by taking away their pain is exhausting. Most of the time to be empathetic you really have to give yourself time to heal by taking on someone else’s pain. I disagree that empathy is based on our biases. Maybe it’s just me and I’m being selfish, but I try to see people and hear people with an open mind. Letting myself be empathetic. There are only a few people in my life that I will not be empathic with. In the example that Bloom gave of all the people around the world, yes you can be empathic to their pain but how exactly are you supposed to help them across the world?
3. One way that Bloom’s essay challenges my initial understanding of empathy was brought on by the statement, “Making children suffer temporarily for their own good is made possible by love, intelligence and compassion, but yet again, it can be impeded by empathy” (Bloom 4). I guess I never thought about the “tough love” aspect when it came to empathy. To me empathy was always making the pain go away and sympathizing with someone, not necessarily letting them figure it out but also being there for support. 
4. “…Here your empathy is silent – how can you empathize with a statistical abstraction? To the extent that you can appreciate that it’s better for one specific child to die than an unknown and imprecise larger number of children to die, you are using capacities other than empathy”(Bloom 3). In this specific quote, an experience comes to mind, when in my hometown just a few weeks ago, there was a shooting at a country club. I believe it was the rehearsal dinner or the dinner after the wedding where a man comes in and inflicts harm. The dad of the bride stepped in front of his wife and his daughter and got shot, he died that night. Two other people were injured but not killed. Now for me i want to empathize with all of the people that were there. But in a messed up way, it’s better that only one person died and two injured compared to the whole wedding party. I empathize with the mom and the daughter for losing their dad and husband, and for the people they were injured that night, the fear they must have faced.

1. Based on my own personal beliefs and experiences, regardless of intentions, relationships cannot be formed or maintained solely across social media. Some strengths of my thesis are that it takes a stance. There is no room for questioning what side/ what I will be writing about. A weakness that I had was trying to find a good sentence leading up to my thesis. I will introduce the two writers briefly and then go right into the thesis. I needed a sentence to tie in my ideas from the thesis to the explanation previously. In my thesis I believe that it was focused enough, but there is always room for improvement. Finding a sentence or sentences that capture all the aspects of what you are going to be writing about is difficult. I could have done a brief list and explained or talked about what specific experiences have I encountered to make me believe that social media can’t be the place where relationships can be Soley formed.  
2. In writing my own writing process, some things that I learned was to just get words and ideas down on paper instead of dwelling on what you should say or how you should say it. I also learned that I’m good at referencing the “I say” parts in the contexts of the quotes, but I tend to summarize too much. I don’t focus enough on some of the simpler tasks like sentence level stuff. But enjoyed getting feedback, I was able to see what others were writing and think about how can I make my paper better. Based off some contradicting views that peers had, I was able to write a much more compelling argument. 
3. Some of the things that I focused on the most were more of digger deeper into the I say parts of my essay. I was able to connect and tell my story, but I needed to add more detail. I Also focused on the explanation after the quotes and relating it back to my original thesis. And towards the end a big chunk of my revision process was more of the sentence level work. Working on passive versus active voice. I also needed to use better words to better explain what I meant to say. I also needed to add a few sentences before quotes or even leading up to my thesis, that way the paragraphs had a better flow to it.  
4. For essay two I will look at the prompt and make a list of things that i might want to talk about in that essay from the readings. Once I do that, I will find some quotes that go along with those specific topics and ones that I just really like. This way it’s something that I want to write about, and it might be easier for me to see where I can add in the I say parts. Reading my essay over again also might help me with hearing the essay to see what flows, which will allow me to really work on sentence level skills. Also letting others read my essay to me, and comment on things that they might have noticed.  

Original: 

For the younger generation they don’t know the difference between online friendships and the ones in person. Many kids are stuck with tablets to help keep them busy, instead of going to the park and playing. It wasn’t until 7th grade  that I ended up getting a phone and I believe that it shaped me into the person I am today. I would be lost today and probably wouldn’t have the same aspirations as I do now, if I had been subjected to the false relationships that so many of my peers were getting into online. Having a screen shoved in your face does more damage than we know, and with the younger generation that’s all they have been handed.  In “The Limits of Friendship” Konnikova points out the details of the negative effects that social media has on the brains of children now. Social skills do not develop as they would if they were made in person. Many of us learn from watching our parents, friends, family, and if we don’t have that aspect then social awareness is harmed. Dunbar is afraid that as time progresses, more people will grow up in a less social world and fully turn to using social platforms to communicate (Konnikova 7). The thought of having a fully electronic world scares me. What does this mean for the next generation, how will they be able to communicate or handle difficult situations? Our world needs help as we speak and then add the lack of communication, problem solving, and forming genuine connections. Social media also lacks the sense of physical touch that is represented in our lives. In my opinion social media cannot recreate getting a hug from your mom or dad or a friend that you haven’t seen in a long time. Nothing is better than getting to see that one person in a while after being away at college and being able to share an embrace. Konnikova says, “Words are easy. But the way someone touches you, even casually, tells you more about what they’re thinking of you”(Konnikova 5). All of us can send a text on instagram or snapchat but really no matter how you say it or what you say will even be able to copy that feeling that comes from contact. 

Naysayer:

To the point that the younger generation is being destroyed by social media and the screens they actually might be helpful. There are so many online platforms in addition to schooling that these kids can learn from. Also, shouldn’t they be learning social skills from their parents, maybe their siblings, or even their  teachers. Why is it that if a child has a phone or tablet that they are going to be utterly destroyed. And isn’t it awful to assume that the only reason why they might be a little socially awkward or shy is because of the phone? Why can’t a kid just be a kid, and learn by others on how to act. Maybe the future generations will figure out how to incorporate social media and technology better within our lives. Physical touch is important to grow up with, from your parents, siblings but it’s not everything. What if social media is that kid’s way to feel loved as silly as that sounds. You can’t possibly tell that everything a child that grows up with social media is being deprived of contact. So, is social media all that bad as it is shown to be?

Response:

Proponents of the naysayer are right to argue that social media cant be all that bad for children and cant be the sole reason why they become the way they are. But they exaggerate when they claim that kids should be learning social skills from their parents, siblings or teachers. What happens if a child does not have a proper home life and they live in a city that doesn’t have a good education system. What happens if that education system doesn’t have teachers that care enough to properly teach their children how to behave, or the social norms of society. What if they don’t have anyone to teach them that being on social media 24/7 is bad for their brain development. While it is true that a kid should just be a kid, it does not necessarily follow that kids should be outside playing with other kids. Enjoying the sunshine, and not in their bedrooms sitting in their racecar beds talking to their “friends” from school on social media.

My first experience with college peer review was a lot better than high school. I liked how it was the whole class time and not just five to ten minutes. Usually in high school the comments would be really vague and didn’t give clear direction of what was good about our writing and what we could improve on. During the revision process I felt it was most helpful that my partner and I read through the essays once to get a feel for their writing and what it was about. Then going in again and marking up some things that were noticed. I had my partner look at the flow in my paragraphs and give feedback on something that I was less confident in. I also appreciated the specific suggestions that were given after commenting on what could be worked on and how to make it better.

Something that I noticed in my partner’s work was the different view that she had on the two papers and connecting them together and connecting it to her life as well. She mainly talked about religion and how that aspect of her life was being shown negatively through social media. I never thought of that kind of perspective, and I thought that it was very interesting. And it shows that personal life experinces can make your argument or paper that much stronger. Some challenges that I faced during peer review is that I wasn’t too comfortable giving them negative feedback. And as odd as that sounds most of the time when I’ve done peer review it focusing on the good and not giving constructive feedback, but this peer review session was helpful. Now I know that people enjoy constructive criticism, as long as you’re not changing their entire idea. I know that it was helpful for me and how to expand my writing and make it better.  

 

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