Journal 37: Why Be a Prodigy?

      Why be a prodigy? If this question was asked in front of a teacher, than the answer would be “because I want to learn more than others do.” However this answer was said only because this is what the teaches want to hear. By teachers, I actually mean, all those adults that would come to a kid and ask weird questions like this. If the same answer was asked between same age friends  the true answer would come out “because my mom or dad wants me to be”. Why does the mom or dad wants their kid to be a prodigy than? Just so they could show off to their friends? So they could have more face that actually worth nothing? I am not sure.

      In my life, I do had experiences about what I am going to do. thankfully that has nothing to do with my parents. The decision was made because the influences of my peers however I decided not to do it because I don’t like that idea, I don’t feel like I should do it and most importantly I want control over my own life and decision. My friends could give me suggestions about my final decision but they should not be the reason that I made the decision especially when I don’t feel like I should do it.

Journal 36: F451

     The movie was of course a lot less advance than what we have now. The only thing that would make the people watching the movie now feel like it is in the future is probably the train, it was really cool that he comes up with the idea of train upside down. Everything else was a lot less advance than what we have now, they are still using those old kinds of phones, the houses looks like something we had 10 to 20 years ago. Then the characters in the movie walk way too much, people today don’t usually walk that much. Also, people in reality now have their own computer, itouch or ipod but it wasn’t shown in the movie. However he did get one thing true, that is that people stare at the TV a lot now a days. The technology does a lot of things for us but at the same time was taking away our ability to do those things. The problem was especially shown in the memory we have, people now don’t memorize things that much now because the computers can do it all for you. It might be also true that people that come after us don’t read books anymore but that is not because we burn them all and wasn’t allow to read it, it is probably because people all use ebook or internet instead of reading books.

Journal 35: Being Pushed

    Being pushed, I believe most of people have experienced it before. As a child, all I want to do is play, why care so much about school work when you can run outside? This is when parents come into place and push us back inside. They would beat us up and we will subbed but turn to our homework. Now, all that above is stereotype, or maybe it actually happens to most of the people but not me.

        For me, I am a really self motivated kid, I am not sure of why, but I am always the one in my family that gets really upset over grades. In fact, whenever the report cards come out, the my mom and dad are usually saying things such as “the teacher is probably in a bad mood when he grades your final,”, “its okey, that means you have room for improvement,” or “its pretty good” to me instead of yelling and gets depress about it. However my parents did pushed me before, not on grades, but on my dance classes. There are those time periods when I just don’t want to go to my dance classes! I have to get there by myself and was having a really bad relationships with the classmates, than take the bus back. My parents pushed me for keep on going there and being on time all the time. 

Journal 34: Negative

     In my opinion, there are no actual bad influences except for bad habits such as drinking or smoking. It is because that everything is double sided, the bad thing could the good thing at the same time. People who braked your heart gave you a chance for learning how to heal it and people grow up each time they were hurt. I can think of a lot of people who have positive influences on me, that is everyone around me, every person who I value. People that I don’t really value don’t have positive influence on me because our life don’t intercept and how can the influence be good if there is no influence at all? However I think if people have negative influences on me, it will be a lot greater than the positive influences because the negative things are usually greater than the positive ones. Just like it is really easy to get fat but really hard to pull the weight down, no matter how hard you tried. Positive influences are like building blocks that leads to the path of a good person but the negative influences are like typhoon that blows over and take down the long-worked building if it wasn’t strong enough. 

Journal 32: Universal Experience

   There are a lot of different universal experiences that appears in “Where have you gone, charming billy,” such as: death, hunger, bad environment conditions, fear, and etc. The one I am going to talk about today is the fact that people faces strong fear when they are in a war. When people faces all those bullets that fly besides you and knowing that you may die any second, normal people feels the fear inside of them. The main character in the story was obviously really scare because it is his first day in the army. He doesn’t really know what to do yet and one of the bravest man just died of heat detect. The troubles he is facing also contributes to his fear, the army is not facing another army but a lot of enemies that dress like normal farmers. There are also a lot of traps in the ground, design to hurt but not kill the American soldiers. It is one of the few wars that American faces difficult situations like this. He tries to deal with his fear by not facing the truth and kept on laughing about things that happened around him. He laughed about the death of the bravest man for quite a while and was thinking about how he should concentrate during training while the gun fires are shooting beside him. 

Journal 32: Far From Home

     When I am in an environment with no one I know of, I usually feels nervous and more or less shier than I usually am. People usually be friend with the one that first helped them in the environment. Before the others help them, some people just stay in their corner, some people find the officers for help and others went up to people to friend with others. Yes I had been in a situation when I am thrown in a new environment with no one I know and have to find my way to get along. I was when I went to America and go to their local school. I have no relative or friends in U.S. and therefore know no one in the school. It was super freighting to an 11 years old to be in a strange environment with no way of commutating with others but with the language she know nothing of. I was hard to get along with others at first, than I was put into the ESL class which NO ONE’s English skill was better than mie. I found a Chinese girl and we become friends, mainly because we can communicate. However there is an other Chinese girl that is friend of the Chinese girl in my class that I really don’t like. I have no way of avoiding that mean girl because Chinese was sort of their little own group and I have no one else to be with other than them. So it was uncomfortable and uneasy to make friends in the new place and sometimes you have not much choice on which friend you will be with until you become one of those old, returning students.  

Journal 31: Author’s Background

        Yes, I think I do find the article a lot more believable if the author has experience the topic. I feel that way because, he experience it! It must be true if someone has experience the thing before. The authors or producers of the films use imaginations to functionalize true story for the readers because it usually makes the film or story a lot more interesting and accepted by the reader/viewers. Real life stories sometimes are just normal, honestly, no one would want to read or watch anything that are too normal. If I am reading a book about how somebody’s day was and there was nothing special about it, or not special to me, why do I bother to read it? I am experiencing the same thing everyday, you celebrate your birthday while I do the same thing and what is the point of reading that book then? Those stories from book or movie should be different from real life but yet connect to the readers. I totally think that most people would rather be entertain than informed, this is the reason why there is less than 100 views for history channel on YouTube but more than 1,000,000 views for Wong Fu Production or Kevjumba.

     I love it when authors take actual information and write an interesting book about it. First, I will not fall asleep reading those books and I usually read the fictional book faster than textbooks (No kidding and not mattering about the difference in length.) Second, I don’t forget those information after reading a interesting book on it.  Third, I just love reading book with conflict and plot so much more than textbooks.