Career Project III -- Reflection

Before you begin this part of your career project, you should be completly finished with parts I and II.

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The third part of your career project is a reflective piece of writing. You should done some substantial learning about your career choice in the past few weeks, and now it is time to sort out what it all means. Your reflection should be two pages of double-spaced 12pt Times New Roman and address the following:

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1. Are you still interested in your choice as a possible career? Did you learn anything that strengthend or weakened your desire to pursue this career?

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2. What do you believe was your most valuable learning experience during this project?

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3. If you were to pursue your choice of career, in what aspect or field do you see yourself doing so?

click to enlarge . . .

My Persuasive Writing -- Participating in Democracy

Many Americans, especially young ones, do not appreciate the privilege of participating in a democracy. People between the ages of 18 and 34 seem to be the ones who do the most complaining about the government, and how the elected officials do not represent their views very well. When we look at the voting habits of this same group of people, we see that only 29% of people 18 – 34 voted in the last presidential election. When I see this figure, I am very disappointed in people my age. What is going to happen when we are the older citizens of our country? Will we take more responsibility then?




The other day I saw a bumper sticker that read: “Dear World, We tried our hardest. –half of America”. At first I was amused at the message, but it did not take long for me to say aloud to myself, “no we didn’t”. The sticker was, of course referring to George W. Bush and at least one of the last two presidential elections. I do believe that at least half the country does not agree with his policies and decisions, and I also believe they felt this way before the election. Where were these people on election day? It is unfortunate that young people and the rest of the left-leaning citizens of our country are lazy. The last time we had a Democratic president, the country saw record voter turnout. What does that tell us?




I, in no way whatsoever, condone the war in Iraq, but one image has stuck with me. After the initial “fall” of Baghdad, the first democratic elections for some time occurred in Iraq. I do not want to make comment on the authenticity of these elections, but at least they had them. People felt like they had some say in their government after years of dictatorship. The photo I remember was of an old woman holding up her index finger to show the blue ink that identified her as someone who has voted. The story next to the photo told of the more than 20 people who were killed because they tried to vote, and that people who had the ink on their fingers were marked for death by several terrorist groups.




Isn’t it sad that people in other places in the world will risk death to participate in an election, and here in the United States, people can’t get off their couches to cast their vote? Nobody is getting shot at in voting lines in the United States. We are relatively safe from someone detonating a bomb at a polling site, yet we stay at home, and the people who know they very well may not make it back home after voting are happy to get out an participate.




Another image that sticks with me is an old black and white film shot in Selma, Alabama in 1965. A civil rights rally was being conducted to raise awareness to encourage the black citizens of Alabama to ignore intimidation from racist and segregationalist groups and register to vote. The march made it only as far as the Edmund Pettis bridge in Selma where they were met with local sheriff’s deputies who proceeded to beat the marchers with billy clubs and spray them with tear gas. The march ended with people lying bloodied and injured on the side of the road. A few weeks later, Martin Luther King Jr. led another march to the Alabama capitol, and the national attention to this event led to the passing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.




Would you take a beating for the right to vote that the United States Constitution gives all adults over the age of eighteen? How about getting attacked by police dogs? Watching people as old as 80 get their heads split with a policeman’s club? These brave people did, but how much does that matter today when so few people go to the polls to do what these people fought so hard for? We do not place our lives in danger when we register or when we vote, but a little more than fifty years ago, people did. Americans should remember the sacrifices people made and the pain they endured just to do what so many people won’t turn off their television, drive across town in their air-conditioned car, or get up a little bit earlier to do.




More Americans voted for their favorite singer on American Idol than those who chose to vote last election day. This shows where many people’s priorities are. Too many of us are more involved in idiotic prime time television than the government of the people, for the people, and by the people. Maybe some feel their votes don’t count. What would these same people say when confronted with the fact that the last two presidential elections were decided by around 1% each? Wow. If 1-2% more of the eligible voters would have participated in one of the greatest privileges our country offers, history could have been changed.




For me it is as simple as this: if you don’t vote, shut up. I hear too many people complaining about George Bush, spouting off statistics about dead soldiers, the deficit, civil rights, and Hurricane Katrina, but where were these people on Election Day? I blame these people more than I blame George Bush and his associates for the way our country has been run for the past seven years. These people share many of my opinions about the administration, but they did absolutely nothing about it. Thanks a lot. At least George W. Bush made some effort to get himself elected.

You can see more fine examples of persusive writing here, here, and here.

Great Work!!

The excellent work just keeps on rolling in.

Marvel at these fine examples:

Descriptive Writing by Carson Walls -- Hell

A Study of Sonnets by Jalisa Brown (including one of her own at the end)

Beowulf by Manas Winfield

The Restoration by Natasha Long -- Check out her sonnet too.

Deon Sanders by Spenser Bostic

Senior Project Portfolio Check on April 17

I will be checking senior project portfolios on Tuesday the 17th

Listed below are all the componants of a completed portfolio. The sections you need appear in RED below.

Contents Checklist

1. Binder or notebook
2. Title page
3. Table of contents
4. Deadline checklist
5. Letter of Intent *
6. Parental Consent Form
7. Research Paper
8. Mentor Approval Form
9. Mentor Verification Log (7 Hours Worth)
10. Thank you letter to mentor
11. Additional documentation, pictures, etc.
12. Self Evaluation

* Your letter of intent may or may not be complete at this point. It will eventually be a required componant of your portfolio. You may want to finish this by the 17th. There is a good example of a letter of intent in your snior project handbook.

Career Project II -- Mentorship

Researching a career is one thing, but actually getting your hands dirty with some experience is altogether different. For the next portion of this project it will be necessary for you to find a professional in the field in which you are interested (I can help you find someone if you need). Once you have found someone who agrees to have you work with them, you should have them contact me at the school so I can confirm their interest and explain the project to them.

Once you make your contact, you should plan to meet with this person in their place of work for a total of five hours. I am not suggesting that you do all five hours in one visit. You should make a specific schedule with the person who has agreed to work with you.

You should keep journals of each of your visits. If you need an example of what these might look like, you can find one here. Each journal should represent one hour. If you had a two-hour visit, for example, your journal should be twice as substantial.

The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls p 1-230

This is a memoir of a young girl growing up in a very disfunctional family. It is an amazing story of how a young person had to fend for herself against very challenging odds: a father who is beyond the point of alcoholism, a mother who refuses to work and support her family, moving houses several times to avoid bill collectors, having to eat thrown-away food from her school trash cans . . . only the beginning.

Jeannette Walls tells the story in a way as if she is telling readers not to feel sorry for her. She is proud of what her past helped her become. This is not to say that I believe she would not have changed all the awful details of her childhood.

She does a great job describing her parents and siblings -- so well that they seem to leave the book and become real people you can empathize with or hate their guts. I would recommend this one.

Jeannette Walls is now the gossip writer for www.msnbc.com

Career Project I -- Reserch Paper

You have probably thought of your career goals to pursue after you graduate from Classic City High School, or you may still have no idea. This career project should help you with your goals no matter which case in which you might find yourself.

This project will have four parts:
I. A research paper
II. A mentorship with a professional in the career you have chosen to research
III. A reflective piece of writing
IV. Your complete resume

For the first section of your career project you will need to conduct some research about your career. You should look to on-line and print sources alike. Once you have completed your research, you should compile your findings in a short (4-5 page) research paper. You should also include a bibliography that lists all the sources you used to write your paper.

Your paper should address the following topics:

What schooling or training is required to enter the career you chose? Are certificates or licenses necessary? What kinds of grants, scholarships, or loans are available to those who seek this kind of training?

In what ways can someone specialize in the career you chose? Research one of the specialties you might like in this career field.

What is the opening salary for someone who wants to start the career you’re researching? What are some of the ways that someone can affect the amount of money they are paid?

Research some of the job openings for your career. What qualifications do potential employers look for.

Your paper will be assessed as follows:

A score of 90-100% will be awarded to papers that meet the required length, address all the above topics, have research from at least eight sources, and have so few grammatical and mechanical errors that the writer’s ideas are not clouded.

A score of 80-89% will be awarded to papers that meet the required length, address at least three of the above topics, have research from at least six sources, and have grammatical and mechanical errors that may cloud the writer’s ideas.

A score of 70-79% will be awarded to papers that do not meet the required length, address at least three of the above topics, have research from at least five sources, or have so many grammatical and mechanical errors that it is hard to understand the writer’s ideas.

A score of 0-69% will be awarded to papers that are incomplete or do not meet any of the above requirements.

Here are some good examples to view before you begin:
Journalism -- by Carmen Judy
Becoming a Lawyer -- by Ryann Runyan

A Place on Earth by Wendell Berry p 329 - 504

In short, I am glad I finished this book even though I did not care for it very much once I started. The end was very eventful: Franklin Roosevelt dies, the war ends, Nathan Coulter comes back home, and Mat Feltner begins to come to terms with the death of his son.

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Wendell Bery wrote several more books about the inhabitants of Port William, and I plan to read more of his work in the future. I will probably wait a few months to a year before doing so.

The Renaissance -- Sonnets

The sonnet was the most accepted form of written art during the Renaissance. People loved them then, but today they can leave us scratching our heads. I was often confused by sonnets and their flowery language, but once I learned how to read them, they became much easier to understand.
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IF YOU PAY CLOSE ATTENTION TO THIS POST, SONNETS WILL BE EASY FOR YOU TOO.

This will come in handy since you will be writing one of your own.

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First, it would be important to define a sonnet as a fourteen-line poem composed in iambic pentameter. Iambic pentameter is the beat of the poem, and it essentially means that each line is made up of five pairs (penta) of syllables -- the first one unstressed, and the second one stressed. Here is an example of a line of iambic pentameter from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet:

But soft! What light through yonder window breaks?

But soft! - What light - through yon - der win - dow breaks?

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Now imagine you are a poet writing a sonnet, and if you were a poet in the Renaissance, sonnets and plays (also written in a certain meter) were the only accepted forms of literature. Imagine how dificult it would be to choose words with exactly the right stress as well as number of syllables. You see, these poems weren't written the way they were just to give you a hard time.

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Next, we need to talk about rhyme scheme. This is pretty simple. Check out my example below; it is one that may also help you with geometry:

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Pythagoras had a good ruse (A)

With a rule just for triangles to use (A)

"Add the squares of each side," (B)

He said with some pride," (B)

That's the square of the hypotenuse!" (A)

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The rhyme scheme of this poem is AABBA. All you have to do is look at the last word on each line. I start with ruse, and since it is the first line, I assign it an A. Then I look at use, and see that it rhymes with ruse, and so it is an A as well. Then I look at side, and see that it does not rhyme with ruse or use, so it is a B. Pride rhymes with side, so it is a B as well. At the end, when I see hypotenuse rhymes with ruse, it is an A. That makes the rhyme scheme ABBA.

It is important to understand rhyme scheme when reading a sonnet. If you pay close attention to the rhyme scheme, it can help you divide the poem into sections which will make it much easier for you to comprehend.

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Let's look at an example of a sonnet from the two most popular sonateers, William Shakespeare and Edmund Spencer. These poets use two different rhyme schemes in their sonnets. Shakespeare uses a ABAB CDCD EFEF GG rhyme scheme, and Spencer uses ABAB BCBC CDCD EE. I will draw lines to show how the rhyme scheme divides the poem into four sections.

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Sonnet 18

William Shakespeare

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Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? (A)

Thou art more lovely and more temperate. (B)

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, (A)

And summer's lease hath all to short a date. (B)

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Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, (C)

And often is his gold complextion dimmed, (D)

And every fair from fair sometimes declines, (C)

By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed. (D)

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But thy eternal summer shall not fade, (E)

Nor lose possesion of that fair thou owest, (F)

Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade (E)

When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st. (F)

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So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, (G)

So long lives this, and gives life to thee. (G)

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Sonnet 30

Edmund Spencer

My love is like to ice, and I to fire; (A)

How comes it then that this her cold so great (B)

Is not dissolved through my so hot desire, (A)

But harder grows the more I her entreat? (B)

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Or how comes it that my exceeding heat (B)

Is not delayed by her heart frozen cold, (C)

But that I burn much more in boiling sweat, (B)

And feel my flames augmented manifold? (C)

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What more miraculous thing may be told (C)

That fire which all thing melts, should harden ice, (D)

And ice which is congealed with senseless cold, (C)

Should kindle fire by wonderful device? (D)

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Such is the power of love in gentle mind, (E)

That it can alter all the course of kind. (E)

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Post responses to the following questions on your blog:

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1. Examine the difference between the rhyme scheme Spencer uses and the one Shakespeare uses. Explain the difference. Which one do you prefer? (If you are unable to give a good answer to this question, it is time to come talk to me.)

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2. The rhyme scheme divides sonnets into four sections. The first section is a question asked from one point of view, the second is the same question asked from another point of view. The third section is called the turn. The turn is a shift in focus or the thoughts of the first two points of view. The last section is the conclusion. Use this method to explain the message in each of the four sections of the two poems above.

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3. Choose one more of Shakespeare's sonnets as well as another one of Spencer's sonnets. You can find these all over the Internet. Post each poem on your blog then: a. Label the rhyme scheme like my examples; b. explain the message in each of the four sections like you did in question #2.

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4. Come get an amatuer sonateer form from me, and then complete both sides.

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5. When you have finished, post your completed sonnet on your blog.

SELF-EVALUATE YOUR WORK!

Writing Two (Lit 11)

Your next writing assignment will require you to do some research on a topic of your choice. Completing this assignment responsibly will help you with your senior project research paper when that time comes for you.

This research report will be pretty brief (the usual two pages of double-spaced 12pt Times New Roman), and you will need at least two reliable sources from which you get your information. If you are having a difficult time choosing reliable sources, check out the post titled Taking Research Notes, which will also instruct you on how to get necessary bibliographic information from your sources. When it is time to start writing, you should also review the post titled Citing Your Sources, which will show you how to give credit to the people from whom you collected your research. Students who choose to learn these skills with this piece of writing will have a much easier time when it is time to write your big research paper.

So? What do you research?

I would choose something in which you are interested, but know little about. Researching something about which you are already knowledgeable can be difficult.

Some ideas:

The history of public school in Athens, Ga

The requirements for starting a career in which you are interested

The history of a school you would like to attend

The development of your favorite sport or game

The origins of a law or policy with which you agree or disagree

The posibilities are endless, but you should discuss your topic with me before you start. I do not want you researching a topic that will make this assignment any more difficult than it needs to be.

Here are some examples that may help you out:

Amber Gaines -- Lizzie Borden
Todd Roberts -- How to Run for President
Tony Bolton -- Wilt Chamberlain
Victoria Slaboda -- Geisha (a great example of citations)

A Place on Earth by Wendell Berry p 215 - 328

I am enjoying this book more and more. I have read over 100 pages in the last few days.

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Berry has been concentrating more on Mat Feltner and another character named Old Jack. I like Old Jack more than most of the other characters in the book since he is so crude. He is too old to farm, so he lives in the town's hotel. The woman who runs the hotel is very proper, and Old Jack really gets on her last nerve. In one of the last sections I read, Old Jack missed his life as a farmer, so he plowed up the entire back yard of the hotel. There were nothing but weeds back there, but it still made her "strangling mad" as Berry put it.

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The character, Gideon, who's daughter drowned in the flood has disappeared. As far as anyone knows, he has wandered out into the wilderness, and they do not know when he will return. Mat is also dealing with the loss of his son, who is still listed as "missing" in World War II. The news of president Franklin Roosevelt's death also reaches the citizens of Port William in the last few pages I read. While all this loss is going on, spring is breaking across the region, and everyone is scurrying to get their farms plowed and their tobacco planted. This is especially hard for Mat since his son is gone. Many people in the town are pulling together to help Ida, Gideon's wife, get their farm in working order.

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With the onset of spring, Berry is showing how throughout all the loss the characters are going through, the earth is soothing them by renewing herself each spring. This is not lost on the characters, either. They being farmers are very keen to the earth and her messages.

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I expect the last 175 pages or so of this book to go even faster than the last.