"I was scared, tired and under prepared...."

So because I'm terrible at coming up with titles I usually title each blog with lyrics that remind me of what I intend on blogging about. I do this because it is often how I deal with most thoughts I have floating around in my head or events that happen in my life - I automatically relate it to music. Anyway, today the title of my blog perfectly explains how I felt about taking my last and final teaching certification exam, the CST. Unlike the experience of taking the LAST and the ATS-W, I have this terrible feeling that I will most likely be re-taking the CST.

While I don't consider myself anywhere NEAR a literary genius, I did graduate with a Bachelors in English with a concentration in Literature. So when I opened the book to study for the CST I expected the practice questions to be somewhat easy for me. Well I was completely wrong! The sample questions were difficult and I spent a decent amount of time trying to familiarize myself with the format of the test, the types of questions, and the material that would be on the test, however for this type of test cramming information would be useless so I tried not to stress too much and opted to go to bed early the night before the exam. The next morning for whatever reason even when I began the test at 8:15am I was still half asleep. In fact I was so tired that I took off my sweat shirt and took the exam in a spaghetti strap tank top hoping that feeling cold would help me stay awake. As I was reading the test questions I felt myself not paying attention and not caring, all I could think about was leaving and speeding home to my nice comfy bed. Some where in the middle of the test I felt myself  completely stop caring, I tried a bit but ultimately I felt that I was too under prepared for this exam and will have to re take soon.

Although I admit that I was not as prepared for this test as I could of been, I definitely think that having to use my brain so intensely at such an early hour on a Saturday was a huge part of my ability to take the test. Not only did it cloud my thinking, it completely demotivated me even when I knew that it was the last and final test I would have to take for certification AND that I paid $80 just to take it.     

My father is....STAR applied

My father is a strange fellow. I can't sincerely say me and him have, in my 22 years of existence, ever truly understood each other. His line of thinking remains an infinite mystery to me - an unreasonable tradition of logic in today's world. Even with his earnest attempts to communicate I feel as if I'm trying to decipher ancient artifacts - piecing together  the rare shards of his behavior I have collected and studied through out the years. The distance between my father and me is excessive, and I'm ashamed to admit a large part of this riff is my fault. But no matter how far my father seems I have always felt his love - I hope he feels mine too. Is it possible to love something you barely understand? I suppose that is one of the feats of the parent/child relationship.

My father is....original from journal

My father is a strange fellow. I can't sincerely say me and him have ever in my 22 years of experience truly understood each other. His way of thinking is a complete mystery to me, an unreasonable tradition of logic. Even when he tries his hardest to communicate with me I feel like I'm trying to decipher ancient artifacts, piecing together the little of what I know about him to make some sort of sense to me. The distance between us is great, and I'm ashamed to say a large part of that is my fault. But no matter how far my father seems I have always felt his love - I hope he feels mine too. Is it possible to love something you barely understand? I suppose that is one of the miraculous feats of the parent/child relationship. 

I taste blood... literally.

So Halloween is usually my favorite holiday! However this year because of work and unexpected snow most of my plans were cancelled and I was not able to celebrate Halloween the way I usually do every year. On top of the terrible weather Saturday, the next morning around 3am I woke up with a terrible throbbing pain in my mouth! The pain was so unbearable that I could barely sleep. After popping about a million and one Motrins the pain became some what tolerable and I counted down the hours until the dentist's office would be open, only to realize that it was Sunday and the office would be closed all day.

Now I've had toothaches before (I have a horrible record with teeth. I had four root canals done by the time I was 17 years old.), but this one was just plain annoying. It wasn't completely unbearable, it was just distracting. I couldn't sit in peace without thinking about the pain and wondering what was causing it or when would it disappear. When Monday morning surely but eventually arrived I called Dr. Hakimi at exactly 10am, when their office opened. Luckily, they were able to squeeze me in and within the next 15 minutes I was sitting patiently in the waiting room.

Dr. Hakimi took x-rays right away and to my surprise it was not a cavity, it was my wisdom tooth. My upper wisdom tooth had been growing in crooked, hitting my back molar and causing a lot of pain. The dentist said he would extract it today. This had me scared senseless because my last experience with getting a tooth pulled was painful. The dentist had not used enough Novocaine and when he yanked at my tooth I felt the pain shooting through my jaw. I reluctantly signed the form allowing Dr. Hakimi and his assistant to do the tooth extraction. The procedure went well, Dr. Hakimi used enough numbing medication. However after the novocaine wore off, my mouth was swollen and sore all day. The worst part however was the blood. All Halloween long my mouth bleed and bleed, and I was forced to taste my own blood all day long instead of munching on candy like everyone else. Sometimes there would be some much blood that it would stain my teeth. I suppose this look was fitting for Halloween.  
 

Tired and anxious...

I'm tired of school and sick of Adelphi. I just want to get into a classroom and experience teaching already. I'm sick of the theoretical bullshit we read about and discuss in class, because it is THEORETICAL. And thanks to the awesome STEP program all I have learned is based on textbooks and class discussions. I mean it took four years for me to observe a real classroom, like really? And now it's not until my last semester of my Masters degree that I'll get a little taste of student teaching! What if I'm horrible at it? What if I'm not cut out for it? I'm a very hands on learner, and after semester of semester of TALKING about being in a high school classroom I just want to spend some real time in one already!

Well that's pretty much all I have to say for now, I don't really know what to talk about on this thing... I'm not in the mood for blogging right now, or ever really. Sorry.

Revised Critial Lens

Duff Brenna argued that “All literature shows us the power of emotion. It is emotion, not reason, that motivates characters in literature.” In other words one of the main purposes of literature is to prove how emotion ultimately dictates human behavior.  Through literary devices authors are able to create stories which realistically portray the true, motivating power of emotion over reason and intellect. This can be shown to be true in the novels The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien and The Great Gatsby by Scott Fitzgerald.

For example in The Things They Carried  many of the soldiers, like the character Tim O’Brien, did not find any reason to participate in the war, they were motivated to fight in the war by their overbearing feelings of fear and shame. The author uses symbolism, metaphor, and repetition in order to invoke within readers how emotionally burdened the soldiers felt throughout the novel. The soldiers carry weapons, equipment, and rations, all of which the readers are given the physical weight of in order to clearly understand how literally heavy and burdening carrying these items around were. These items are metaphoric for the heavy and burdening emotions and feelings the soldiers were also forced to carry with them, such as guilt, fear, and shame, as a result of the war. O’Brien uses repetition when listing the different literal and figurative things the soldiers were forced to carry in order to emphasize how consuming and inescapable these feelings of guilt, fear, and shame were for the soldiers. Like the repetition of the list of things the soldiers carried, the burdening emotions they felt seemed endless and forever oncoming.

Likewise in The Great Gatsby Scott Fitzgerald accurately portrays how desire and longing for love and happiness is more motivating than logic and reason.  Fitzgerald uses symbolism and characterization to convey how self-destructing and powerful human desire, love, and naivety can be. Fitzgerald creates an overly-romantic, perpetually hopeful, and naively driven protagonist through the character of Jay Gatsby. Jay Gatsby has turned himself from the poor, lower-class James Gatz, into the well-known and wealthy Jay Gatsby, all in order to win back his true love Daisy. What is striking about Gatsby is his extreme idealism in the romantic notion that he can repeat the past, win back Daisy’s love, and be truly happy. He believes through hard work and success, anything is possible yet, like the narrator Nick Carraway and readers both realize, Gatsby is chasing a dream that does not and never could exist.

In both The Things They Carried and The Great Gatsby, the authors convey the power of emotion through main themes. The Things They Carried has an ongoing theme of courage and cowardice, in which O’Brien uses irony to show the true nature of cowardice and the hypocrisy of society’s idea of courage.  In many instances, characters in The Things They Carried do things that seem to be courageous not because they are brave or honorable, but because they are afraid of appearing as cowards. This fear of shame and appearing cowardly, instead of bravery and valor, is what motivates the soldiers in many of their actions. In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald uses the theme of the American Dream and the inevitable failure one will meet in chasing it. Gatsby’s hopeless chase of his delusional dream of love and happiness with Daisy is representative of the American Dream; it accurately mirrors how Americans naively think wealth and status will bring them true happiness. Through this notion, Fitzgerald perfectly portrays how it is human nature to override reason with emotion and desire.

As Duff Brenna once said, “All literature shows us the power of emotion. It is emotion, not reason, that motivates characters in literature”. This is proven true through the use of symbolism, metaphor, repetition, characterization, and theme in the novels The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien and The Great Gatsby by Scott Fitzgerald. Through these literary devices, Tim O’Brien conveys how fear and shame can be more motivating than reason and morality. Fitzgerald uses these devices to create a novel that represents how truly vulnerable human nature is to emotion, and how desire for love and happiness can be more motivating than logic and reasoning.   

Critical Lenses Essay - Five Paragraph Essay

Duff Brenna argued that “All literature shows us the power of emotion. It is emotion, not reason, that motivates characters in literature”. In other words one of the main purposes of literature is to prove how emotion ultimately dictates human behavior. Through literary devices authors are able to create stories which realistically portray the true, motivating power of emotion over reason and intellect. This can be shown to be true in the novels The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien and The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

In The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien uses symbolism, metaphor, and repetition in order to invoke within readers how emotionally burdened the soldiers felt throughout the novel. The soldiers carry weapons, equipment, and rations - all of which the readers are given the physical weight of in order to clearly understand how literally heavy carrying these items around were. These items are metaphoric for the heavy  emotions and feelings the soldiers were also forced to carry with them, such as guilt, fear, and shame, as a result of the war. O’Brien uses repetition when listing the different literal and figurative things the soldiers were forced to carry in order to emphasize how consuming and inescapable these feelings of guilt, fear, and shame were. Like the repetition of the list of things the soldiers carried, the burdening emotions they felt seemed endless and forever oncoming. While many of the soldiers (like the character Tim O’Brien) did not find any reason to participate in the war, they were motivated to fight in the war by their overbearing feelings of fear and shame.

In the novel The Great Gatsby, Scott Fitzgerald uses symbolism and characterization to convey how self-destructing and powerful human desire, love, and naivety can be. Fitzgerald creates an overly-romantic, perpetually hopeful, and naively driven protagonist through the character of Jay Gatsby. Jay Gatsby has turned himself from the poor, lower-class James Gatz into the well-known and wealthy Jay Gatsby in order to win back his true love Daisy. What is striking about Gatsby is his extreme idealism in the romantic notion that he can repeat the past, win back Daisy’s love, and be truly happy. He believes through hard work and success anything is possible. Yet, like the narrator Nick Carraway and readers both realize, Gatsby is chasing a dream that does not, and never could exist. Through Gatsby Fitzgerald accurately portrays how desire and longing for love and happiness is more motivating than logic and reason.

In both The Things They Carried and The Great Gatsby, the authors convey the power of emotion through main themes. The Things They Carried has an ongoing theme of courage and cowardice, in which O’Brien uses irony to show the true nature of cowardice and the hypocrisy of society’s idea of courage.  In many instances, characters in The Things They Carried do things that seem to be courageous not because they are brave or honorable, but because they are afraid of appearing as cowards. This fear of shame and appearing cowardly, instead of bravery and valor, is what motivates the soldiers in many of their actions. In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald uses the theme of the American Dream and the inevitable failure one will meet in chasing it. Gatsby’s hopeless chase of his delusional dream of love and happiness with Daisy is representative of the American Dream; it accurately mirrors how Americans naively think wealth and status will bring them true happiness. Through this notion, Fitzgerald perfectly portrays how it is human nature to override reason with emotion and desire.

As Duff Brenna once said, “All literature shows us the power of emotion. It is emotion, not reason, that motivates characters in literature”. This is proven true through the use of symbolism, metaphor, repetition, characterization, and theme in the novels The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien and The Great Gatsby by Scott Fitzgerald. Through these literary devices Tim O’Brien conveys how fear and shame can be more motivating than reason and morality. Fitzgerald uses these devices to create a novel that represents how truly vulnerable human nature is to emotion, and how desire for love and happiness can be more motivating than logic and reasoning.