Blog Reflection

When Professor Pittmann gave us the assignment about making a blog, I thought it would be a hard thing to do. At the beginning, I did not know how to work on it, how to put photos and hyperlinks, neither how to change the background, so I felt as if this homework was going to consume most of my time.

During the process of creating the blog I could learn how to work with the many features it has, such as how to change the cover, how to put my information and how to include photos and videos. I think this blog helped me to discover a creative and technological part of me that I did not know about. Also, it served to me as a space to write about many interesting things we talked in class and to share my ideas with my classmates. Read and make comments in my classmate posts let me to develop my analytic thinking skills and to see the experiences from different points of view.

        Besides I like all my posts, my favorite one is My Journey Journal post. In it, I could talk about four areas of my experience doing my Journey Journal: Changes, Rules, Compass and Internal Journey. It describes how was the process of writing a Journal during eight weeks, and, in some way, the development process of the class. Both, the Journal and the Blog were important tools through the class learning process in a way, and, at the same time, that they were a way to make this process a dynamic and creative one.

        I want to say thank you to Professor Pittmann for giving us the assignment of making a Blog and guiding us through this Journey. Thank you, to my classmates for having read and commented every post, and for sharing your perspectives with me.  Thank you all for being part of my Life Quest.

(From https://michelehowe.wordpress.com/tag/saying-goodbye-to-bad-atittudes/)

Dear Cynthia...

Dear Cynthia,

            I use these lines to say ‘thank you’ for this amazing journey and, also, to talk to you a little about it. Your course was one of the most rewarding experiences of my semester. Every Monday and Wednesday at 1:00 pm, I came into your class very stressed because of many things from other classes, but thanks to your class I got out in a peaceful mood. I was taking Cellular Biology and Immunology, so my life was pretty chaotic, but doing the reflections for the journal, the compass and the blog, served as a therapy for me. I have to say that it worked, I survived to this semester and your class was an important part of it. Your class was the only one I did not have objections to go, because I felt I could liberate all my tensions during the discussions we had.

            Like I already said in the A Little About Me post, I want to be a doctor in medicine, so besides all the work of my classes, I had to deal with the applications for medical schools. In less than two months, I had to look for recommendation letters and my grade transcripts, I had to write a personal statement and fill my personal information like five times, which made me feel stressed and extremely anxious. Thanks to God, I already finished it and now I am waiting to being called for the interview. I hope next year, when we meet again, I will be part of the School of Medicine’s entering class.

                      (From http://biogeocarlos.blogspot.com/2008/11/i-love-medicine.html)

            Thank You! In that phrase I resume every single feeling I had in your class during this semester. Thank you for your ideas and your tips, because thanks to them I could improve my English. Thank You for your presentations/oral reports, because thanks to them I lost my fear of speaking in front of people. Thank You for your class, because, thanks to it, I acquired a lot of knowledge. I send to you my best wishes and I hope this Christmas and this New Year bring to you and your family all you want.

                     (From http://xoombi.com/how-to-give-a-meaningful-thank-you/)

Reflection about Daisy Miller

After reading Daisy Miller I decided to expose my opinion about it answering the following questions:

1. Is Daisy Miller a tourist or a traveler? Explain your definition of these terms and select 2 quotes to support your answer. How do these quote support your analysis? 



            I think Daisy Miller is a character hard to identify as tourist or traveler, because she is kind of a pretty changeable person. Despite that, I consider Daisy Miller as a tourist. For me, a traveler is a person who immerses himself/herself in the local culture and tries to explore what the country really is, not only the major cities or the popular ones. On the other hand, a tourist is a person who tends to stay in his/her comfort zone; he/she speaks his/her first language instead of trying to learn the local language and he/she doesn’t care about interacting with local culture and people.

"Are you—a—going over the Simplon?" Winterbourne pursued, a little embarrassed.

"I don't know," she said. "I suppose it's some mountain. Randolph, what mountain are we going over?"

This quote is from the first part of the book, when Winterbourne is talking with Daisy and Randolph and he asked about the place they were going to visit. Daisy Miller’s answer made me think about her as a tourist, because she didn’t even know the name of the place she was going to and she didn’t care about knowing what the name was. Another quote I found and I think it may support my idea of Daisy Miller as a tourist, is this one:

“I told her I had never been in so many hotels in my life as since I came to Europe. I have never seen so many—it's nothing but hotels.”

This is Daisy Miller’s answer when Miss Featherstone asked her about the hotels in America. In my opinion a hotel doesn’t represent how a local house is or how a culture is, so when someone is staying in a hotel I don’t think is interacting with the local culture of the place. These quotes helped me identify Daisy Miller as a tourist, because she showed herself as a girl who just wanted to have fun during her stays.

2. Locate 3 incidences of Othering between the characters. Explain each.

“He immediately perceived, from her tone, that Miss Daisy Miller's place in the social scale was low. "I am afraid you don't approve of them," he said.

"They are very common," Mrs. Costello declared. "They are the sort of Americans that one does one's duty by not—not accepting."”

            This quote is from the conversation of Winterbourne and Mrs. Costello, when they were talking about Daisy Miller. I think this quote is a good example of othering, because we can see how Mrs. Costello judged Daisy Miller. Mrs. Costello considers Daisy “very common” and because of that she thinks Daisy is from low social scale. This is an example of othering because one person is judging other person based in appearances and her perception.

"Oh, blazes; it's har-r-d!" he exclaimed, pronouncing the adjective in a peculiar manner.

Winterbourne had immediately perceived that he might have the honor of claiming him as a fellow countryman.”

I think this quote is kind of neutral othering, because despite it is a stereotype, it is not a bad one. In this part of the book Winterbourne is talking with Randolph, when he hears him pronouncing a word in a particular way. Winterbourne thought Randolph was an American boy just because the way he pronounced one word. Despite I don’t think it is bad, I think it is anyways a way of othering, because I don’t think to categorize someone according the way he/she pronounces always works.

“Winterbourne looked along the path and saw a beautiful young lady advancing. "American girls are the best girls," he said cheerfully to his young companion.”

            This quote is from Winterbourne and Randolph’s conversation, when Winterbourne looks at Daisy Miller and describes her as a beautiful young lady. I think this part is an example of othering, because Winterbourne generalizes all the American ladies based on Daisy Miller. In my opinion, he generalized how American girls are referring to their physical beauty; therefore I think he made a very extreme conclusion of a very subjective theme.

3. Analyze how the characters' perspective is shaped by the society found in the novels. Use examples from the novel to explain your points.

            In my opinion this novel portrays three principal ways of think: American, European and American/European. The American way of think represent by Daisy Miller, the European by Mrs. Walker and the American/ European by Winterbourne. In the novel Daisy Miller is presented as an open minded beautiful young girl, while Mrs. Walker is the type of person with a more conservative way of think. At the first part of the novel Daisy Miller talked to Winterbourne about the Chateau de Chillon, when she accepted to visit it with Winterbourne. “She didn't rise, blushing, as a young girl at Geneva would have done…”, this is the way in which Daisy Miller is described, when she ask Winterbourne to go to Chateau de Chillon with her. With this comparison, I think is demonstrated the freer way of think of American girls, represented by Daisy Miller. On the other hand, we can see how Mrs. Walker considers Daisy Miller’s behave as an incorrect one. "It is really too dreadful… That girl must not do this sort of thing. She must not walk here with you two men. Fifty people have noticed her." This was the reaction of Mrs. Walker when she saw Daisy Miller walking with Winterbourne and Mr. Giovanelli. I think this reaction demonstrate the conservative way of think of European people, in this case Mrs. Walker, toward a situation that for an American person is kind a normal behave. However, who I think is the most interesting character in this novel is Winterbourne, because during the novel he is in an “in between” position. For me, his way of think is in he middle of both extremes ways of think, Daisy Miller and Mrs. Walker. This “in between” way of think, I think could be a characteristic of his hybridity of cultures (American and European). Through the novel, Winterbourne doesn’t know if Daisy Miller’s behave is consequence of her “innocent” or her “free spirit”. I think this Winterbourne debate about Daisy Miller’s behave, is because the “fight” between his both positions, American and European way of think.

This is a picture of Le Chateu de Chillon (From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

Chea-lping: Good or Bad?

         To talk about helping has always been a dilemma, because there is a thin line between helping and cheating, and sometimes this line is inconspicuous. In the book “DOWN ON THE ISLAND,” Jim Cooper talks about how he faced this conflict during his stay in Puerto Rico as an English professor at El Colegio. Cooper mentions that what help and/or cheating means for a person is influenced in a great part by his/her cultural background and because of that, it is almost impossible to define which is correct or incorrect. While he was teaching he noticed Puerto Rican students constantly cheated in their tests no matter the grade level, because they thought that they were helping each other and not cheating. The reason was that this behavior is, not only allowed by the professors, but also, encouraged by them when they ask some students to teach the others academic skills. So the question is: Should a professor punish a student who is doing something that was taught to him/her? Professor Jim Cooper tries to answer this question throughout the chapter titled “Helping” but apparently, cannot answer it completely, because each situation, country and culture is different and so must be analyzed differently.

        When Cooper talks about his teaching experiences in Puerto Rico, he contrasts American and Puerto Rican’s way of thinking about how people see education, which he considers one of the factors for why Puerto Rican students cheat. He thinks Americans have a more competitive behavior in the educational context than Puerto Ricans do, and explains that Puerto Rican students are more cooperative which cause them to cheat more. An interesting anecdote of Cooper that could represent this behavior is when he asked a student why he let other students look in his paper and the student answered that it was because “I’m just trying to help him. He is my friend (80).” This provides evidence that the student did not really know what cheating really means. Rather, he knows cheating is not correct, but for him his was not cheating, but helping. Actually, Cooper makes a distinction saying: “A Puerto Rican student will let his neighbor look at his test paper because he wants to help him get a good grade. An American student will hide his paper from his neighbor because he is only interested in getting a good grade himself… (81)” The point in all this is that it is hard for some people to know the difference between cheating and helping because they have never really been taught what it is. I am a Puerto Rican student; I know the difference between cheating, helping and competing, and I think the best way to avoid people cheating is by teaching them to being cooperative whit each other, but also competitive. I think a student can be both, i.e., he can help another student but should be aware aware that in the future they probably are going to compete for the same job. With this information I am pretty sure they will know the difference between helping and cheating. 

        Jim Cooper in the chapter “Helping” talks about, what I think is one of the biggest problems Puerto Rican educational system has: When helping becomes cheating? Although, Cooper makes a strong critique about Puerto Rican educational system, what I really think is that the real point about this is the helping and cheating definition, and about what is correct or incorrect. And he makes question that if our cultural background influences the boundary between helping and cheating can we define what the terms really means? Is it helping correct or incorrect? Who decides what is correct or incorrect? My answer is the same as Jim Cooper’s when a teacher asked him about why cheating is wrong if a student learns more doing it than listening him:

“I have no good answer”.

One of the Best Journeys

        During my life I have traveled some beautiful places. These are:

- Atlanta, Georgia

- Orlando, Florida

- Newark, New Jersey

- New Rochelle, New York

        Among the places I have visited, traveling to Atlanta is one of the most amazing and interesting experiences I have ever had. How it was the first time I used an airplane and I traveled to other country, I was very excited about it. I had the opportunity to travel there with a volleyball team in order to compete in an international tournament (USA Volleyball Boys' Junior National Championships), where I had the chance of sharing with many players from different countries. It was a very funny experience, because we were like fifteen friends having vacations in other country during almost two weeks. It also allowed me to know another culture, with a different tradition, language, food and people. At the same time I could notice that, despite the many differences between my culture and the USA culture, we share many things in common, such as values, education and beliefs. I learned to respect people who had a different ideas and opinions, and find out that people who, despite they saw very different to me, we actually shared more things in common than I thought. I think this trip made me grow as a human being, because I had to be more independent, learn to live with people that were not my family and learn to treat and interact with people that was not from Puerto Rico. The best of all is that I did one of the things that I like the most, to play volleyball, while I expanded my knowledge about another culture.