Blog #2: Glasses

My sister has been wearing glasses since she was eight years old. She's now fifteen and glasses are what I associate her with. If she were to take her glasses off, she could not see a thing. She's probably as blind as a bat. I would steal them every now and then just to see how I would look with them on and she'd complain that I would appear blurry even though I was standing two feet away from her. However, since she is in high school now, she has adapted to contacts and now I always hear her talking about how annoying they are to put in and take out, but she does think they are better than having glasses on all the time. When she wants to switch things up a bit, she will wear her glasses out, otherwise, she'll solely where them inside the house; away from the public.

Blog #1: Don't you just LOVE it when...

You are quite close with someone and you are engaging in a lovely conversation with them when someone you know interrupts your conversation with this person. Not only when they interrupt but when they begin imposing their ideas on the subject they were not involved with originally and do not know the type of friendship that me and the person I am speaking to have. This recently occurred within the past few days when I was talking with a teacher I am quite close with. So the teacher and I are talking about music and art, topics we are very both very interested in and know much about. Then my friend walks in the room and decides to intrude on our conversation after she said what she needed to. Then the teacher asks me a favor and my friend imposes "Oh and I can help as well with this." Events like this one are what I really hate because I find it very rude considering my friend did not even know the extent of what the teacher and I were discussing, and second, I have a closer relationship than my friend does with the teacher, therefore it was rude of her to intrude and impose she do something along with me.

Blog #12 Anticipatory Discussion Questions for Death of a Salesman

In the future, I plan on pursuing a career in medicine, hopefully an immunologist. I love medicine and am extremely interested in it. I see myself in helping people and working with people in order to assure they're health is ideal. My sister, however, was a competitive figure skater anticipating on going to the olympics with her partner. Then she herniated a disc in her back and could not continuing skating at a competitive level. She planned her whole college experience and future on skating but when that plan failed, she had to pick a new path that she may be interested in. She chose film production. She went through her four years and recently graduated with a minor in psychology and film major, however she is unhappy and lost interest in the subject. Now, she'd like to go to grad school for sports psychology and become certified to become a personal trainer. She is much happier with this choice and this is really her passion.

#10 New Year's Resolution?

I normally do not make resolutions because I never have any specific ideas of what I want to fix or improve. However, I gave a bit more thought to the matter this year and have decided to create one, even though it is just a general idea of improving myself as a whole. I'd like to stop procrastinating, buckle down, and do all my work efficiently and well. I've decided that I spend too much time doing what I like to do or rather be doing, than focusing on priorities. It is a bad habit of mine that I'd like to break. However, I will have some trouble breaking it for the reason that what I like to do, is actually educational and will help me in the future. When I have free time, I don't usually just sit around like a bum (only occasionally), I like to further myself in what I'm interested in so I will either read some books I have on medicine to engross myself in the subject and help me at work, play piano, or play a sport/exercise. I do enjoy watching movies very much so, but I try to limit that as much as possible. So, I suppose my resolution, specifically, would be to stop procrastinating, get all my homework done before last minute, increase my study time, and put more time into practicing piano. School and piano and work are my priorities, therefore I need to buckle down and work on them as much as possible. College is creeping up and I'd like to go where I want! However, I don't want to stress myself out therefore I'll take this resolution in chunks in order to not stress myself too much.
I'd also like to become more well rounded and explore interests outside of what I know. I would like to engross myself in culture, history and the world (other countries) rather than just music and medicine.

#9 Response to plagiarism article

In the article we read about plagiarism, it becomes clear that the issue of plagiarism, is not exactly set in stone. What is acceptable, is not clear as well as Turnitin.com's readings of plagiarism. The girl did not intentionally pull word for word out of her sources and into her paper. The main issue was that her work was not sited correctly but she plagiarized a 9 page paper over 53%. That's over four pages of quoting directly from the source. They were not her words, they were the sources. Plus she did not cite the sites in both the work cited as well as the citations throughout the paragraph. She only cited the sources in the work cited. Even if she did summarize from a source though, she must still cite that it was someone else's idea.

Blog #8: Thanksgiving Weekend

During the Thanksgiving weekend, I had a nice Thanksgiving dinner at my Aunt's house in western Jersey. We had a wonderful time, with all the food in the world. My favorite was the pumpkin pie however, that my sister baked. Then friday, my mother always feels that she needs to repeat a holiday if it is not hosted at our house, so she cooked a whole new Thanksgiving feast which was delicious, friday night. It was just my mother, father, sister's and their boyfriends, so it was a nice little get together. Saturday was just a fun day and Sunday my baby cousins visited, which was very fun.

Blog #7- News Log: How Cirque du Soleil re-invented the Big-Top Show

Summary- Cirque du Soleil was created in 1984 with a group of street performers in Montreal. Now, Cirque du Soleil is a billion dollar entertainment business with over 5,000 employees from all around the world. These shows have reinvented the circus to a more cultural and acrobatic level. Cirque du Soleil has invented 20 shows all with original ideas. The show ideas are open to all expertise and the production team is willing to work with anything thrown at them. If someone wants to try something new, they will explore that area and see what other various ideas it may lead to. As a result, brilliant products are made. Since the show is composed of various wild acrobats and stunts, many people question the safety of the performers. However, in an interview with Fabrice Lemire, artistic director for Quidam, he assures the interviewer that all the performers are "highly trained. they're highly quialified for what they do, so what we do is that during the training session....there are experts on all levels to supervise the process, and everything is really, really taken under the microscope." All the shows are done live and the music is created to fit each specific act. Professional musicians are able to improvise and change music in a moment, in order to accommodate any glitches or issues that may occur throughout the duration of the performance.

My Opinion? I believe Cirque du Soleil is an incredible, exciting show being as I've seen one of their recent shows, Zarkana. The amount of talent put into each show is unbelievable. Between the acrobatic talent, dancing, singing, music, art and culture portrayed within the shows, the directors do a wonderfully detailed job at incorporating all the aspects of a circus, into a more modern, riveting show. Unlike a typical circus, Cirque du Soleil adds a storyline to their shows, as well as original music and no animals! While watching the shows, you really obtain a sense of French, Russian, Italian, and Asian culture from the costumes/makeup, to the actual acts themselves. In the midst of the heavy acrobatic performances, comedic acts are placed strategically 

throughout the entirety of the show. One interesting, defining aspect of the show is the lack of speaking. There is singing, but lack of speaking. Instead, sounds are created to relay the message across to the audience. By using this technique, the actors/directors have the ability to reach the audience at a new level; a creative artist level, which, to me, puts Cirque du Soleil in a whole new category of entertainment. It is honestly the most enthralling show I have ever seen. After watching the performance, you are left in aw as you wonder about the talent these people posses as well as the cultural experience the show has just put you through. Cirque du Soleil has certainly raised the bar for the title of "circus" and has brought a sensational form of entertainment. 

http://www.npr.org/2011/11/17/142466017/cirque-du-soleil-reinvents-the-big-top-show