I'm Self- Reliant (Emerson Notes)

What I understood out of "On Self- Reliance":

• Do not try to be consistent ----------> blocks your creativity
• Trust yourself and don't concern yourself with what you've said or done in the past
• Emerson talks about letting yourself free, learn, grow, and extend our understanding
• You have the right to be who you are and you shouldn't let anyone decide you future for you.
• Everyone's life should be unique and original.
• "envy is ignorance; imitation is suicide" -------> Everyone has something great to express. We shouldn't try to imitate anyone, and if we do imitate someone else, our originality will be killed.
• Nobody knows your special gifts and you won't know until you express them. 
• Follow your interest and interest will lead you where you need to go

Quotes from the Essay I don't know what they mean (mind as well copy and paste the whole essay)

• Another sort of false prayers are our regrets. Discontent is the want of self-reliance: it is infirmity of will. Regret calamities, if you can thereby help the sufferer; if not, attend your own work, and already the evil begins to be repaired. Our sympathy is just as base.
• Travelling is a fool's paradise. Our first journeys discover to us the indifference of places.
• Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life's cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another, you have only an extemporaneous, half possession.
• Society is a wave. The wave moves onward, but the water of which it is composed does not. The same particle does not rise from the valley to the ridge. Its unity is only phenomenal. The persons who make up a nation to-day, next year die, and their experience with them. 
• Let a man then know his worth, and keep things under his feet. Let him not peep or steal, or skulk up and down with the air of a charity-boy, a bastard, or an interloper, in the world which exists for him. But the man in the street, finding no worth in himself which corresponds to the force which built a tower or sculptured a marble god, feels poor when he looks on these.

Author in Progress

I think I did well on the short response test I took last Thursday. Usually taking tests like that I always feel regret. Even though I didn't really get the BEST grade on the short response test, I didn't really care. All I know is that after taking the short response test, I felt confident and I HOPE I get that same feeling with every test I take. Dr. Preston told me that I needed to "give more meat to the bone", and I 1 agree. Receiving my paper back and comparing with others, I lack information. I got the key points, but I just need to figure out how to put more evidence to back the main ideas up. Also, I noticed that I don't really answer the questions. I need to work on that also. But hey, practice makes perfect :D. Overall, I found that confidence feeling after I took the test more important to me than the grade.

What I put on the Mind Map

"No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that of this; the only right is what is after my constitution,the only wrong what is against it."

I added that section on the mind map because this section relates to the main theme of Emerson's idea "On Self- Reliance". I also added to the mind map on what I think the translation is from that section which was that the law of our nature should be the most important to us. Regardless on what the outside world is saying, you should stick to your morals whatever the popular vote is. I believe that that section is very important to remember. I also added an example to that section on which I related it to Abortion. I put that some people think that abortion is good, and some people think that abortion is bad, but what matters is what you personally believe.

Something interesting about the book I'm reading

Something interesting about this book is that this book is all about a girl who gives thirteen reasons why she committed suicide.

My Book Choice for Literature Analysis #3

The book I chose for literature analysis is "Thirteen Reasons Why". I chose this book because my cousin would not stop babbling about how good this book is and how she stayed up all night reading it. So I decided to see what is up with this book that made my cousin obsessed.

My American Voice

How do you know when to speak up ? When someone is getting bullied, speak up. When you see someone being rude, speak up. When you get a F on a test and you know you didn't deserve it, SPEAK UP! People speak up when they know something is wrong. But the problem is, we're afraid to speak up because we don't want to say anything wrong that will make the situation worse, so we remain silent. When someone is getting bullied right in front of you, take the risk and speak up because how are you going to make a difference if you just stand there and observe. I think it just depends on the situation. On our past experiences, obviously we know when to speak and when to be silent (well some people) being silent isn't necessarily bad. For example, if your friend's hamster passed away, the act of just comforting and hugging them is more effective then saying "Sorry for your loss". So silence can also be a powerful thing. One of the hardest decisions in the world is whether you should speak up or shut your mouth. There was this time when I went to go buy school supplies at Wal-Mart, and came across a mother yelling at her 10 year old son. This mothers yelling was so loud,  that she can be heard 5 ailes away. I didn't know what to do, a part of me wanted to go tell that mother "Excuse me, but you're making a scene and you're embarrassing your son. Can you please keep it down ?" and then a part of me wanted to keep quiet since it's none of my business. When I speak up, usually I don't think before I speak. It just comes out. If I'm trying to talk myself out trouble by my parents, I usually just speak without thinking.

Vocab List #6

1) Meme: an element of a culture or a system of behavior passed on.
     -- The hilarious meme became popular from one place to another.

2) Virus: a piece of code that is capable of copying itself; destroys data.
     -- My dad opened up a scam and accidentally downloaded weird apps which caused a virus.

3) Viral: image or video that is circulated rapidly on the internet.
     -- People all around the world, tries to create a simple viral video to become famous or to be recognized.

4) Blog: a regularly updated website or web page.
      -- In my AP English class, everyone is required to write a blog to stay away from the old fashion way such as reading and writing on books and paper.

5) Wiki: website that allows collaborative editing of its content.
      -- Wikipedia has a lot of information you need.

6) URL: Uniform Resource Locator; synonym to web address.
      -- In order for me to turn in my essay, I had to type the URL.

7) Website: a location connected to the internet that maintains one or more pages on the world wide web.
      -- There are many different websites that can help you get the information you need.

8) www: The World Wide Web: refers to all the interlinked HTML pages that can be accessed over the internet.
      -- Whenever I see "www", I know that that is a website.

9) Internet: Global communication of network.
      -- Kids in this generation cannot live without the internet since it started in their generation.

10) 2.0: more advanced version of an original concept
      -- There was this old viral video, "How to be Ninja", and now the creators of that video, after 10 years, made a parody called "How to be Ninja 2.0"

11) Open source: denoting software; made freely avaibalbe and may be redistributed and modified
     -- The history test is an open source test.