"The world may bring us down to our knees, but what matters most is how well we walk through the fire"_Josh Samman Our last blog post for this class was made optional. I still wanted to write one but up until Tuesday I didn't know what should I write about. During Tuesday's class Dr. Mangini told us to break into groups, read out Life-Choice Memories out loud to each other and talk about them. He also gave us the option to go do so outside. When we read them and talked about them, everyone's Memoir had something dark in it. Suddenly our group went from reading memoirs into quickly talking about things we struggled with in life! So it kind of helped me decide what my final blog post should be about, few years back I went through the roughest year of my life, it was just a hellstorm. I went through a series of bad events at a young age and I started to question If it will ever stop! shortly after it, I saw a youtube clip of a brutal MMA knockout. Brutal enough to generate curiosity in me to look up the winner. I'm was curious because of the way he screamed celebrating his victory. So I scanned few articles that talked about him, and I picked up that he had a rough life, And he has a memoir! And it went from me watching silly sports videos on youtube, into buying the memoir that gave me motivation and purpose in life after my struggle. It showed me that no matter how bad things go for me, there are people who go through worse and still manage to turn their lives around and succeed. The book called The Housekeeper: Love, Death & Prizefighting by Journalist and Mixed Martial Artist Josh Samman, In this book we get to learn about the journey of a Teenager from Tallahassee, Florida. as he opens up about his struggles growing up with a single mom, into having to live alone at the age of 16, his struggles with addiction, suicidal thoughts, Career threatening injuries and the death of people he cares about including the love of his life, who gave him a purpose to succeed for. a great story for redemption that helped many people to get through their struggles in life, aim to succeed and believe in their ability. Sadly Josh died few months after publishing his book and didn't get to enjoy seeing how many people his book helped as much as he wanted to. I decided to make this blog about this book because it had a huge and a positive impact on me. When I read a book, I enjoy drawing shitty sketches of how I visualize things in that book and surround it with quotes that stood out for me as I read. Here's the one Sketch I still have that relates to that book (Feel free to make fun of my trash hand-drawing skills lol) Alongside of the book cover and his photos!
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It's our last week in class! been a great semester so far. Learned some great stuff from this class... probably I've gained more from it than every single other english class I've had put together. One thing I'm excited to do after an amazing semester is rereading The Watchmen Series by Alan Moore... It's one of the best graphic novels ever. There is too much to learn about life from it, Even though I read it twice, I feel after paying attention to everything Dr. Mangini taught us, I have a lot more to discover from this novel! To me, I've always found Alan Moore's perspective on life fascinating, some of his work such as The Watchmen and The Killing Joke is just on a different level. Every time I reread any of those I discover something new, a deeper meaning to a certain quote, the factors behind the action of certain characters and their perspective on life. a lot of it I can personally relate to. after getting to the end of my Comp I class, I feel like I've gained the ability to break down and analyze text better than ever. So pumped up to see what awaits for me in some of my favorite books :D Here are two of my favorite quotes by Alan... and why I like them. The first quote, By a character Named Rorschach. Its something we see almost everyday, people fail and they blame it on destiny, religion, fate or whatever they believe in so it could be an excuse for their failure, "That's my fate", "God doesn't want me to succeed at this", "I'm destined to...etc." things we hear all the time, and I find it heartbreaking that people actually rather to use those words then work hard and write their own fate and destiny because it's something we control. Personally, I love watching other people succeed, it gives me a reason to get up in the morning and chase my goals too!
The second quote, also by Rorschach, I love it because I personally relate to it, I'm always known as the kid that deals with everything by using sarcasm, I throw silly, stupid jokes all day long. it gets people laughing most of the time and I love it... However, a couple of years back I'm was going through the worst time of my life. yet when I'm was around people I kept the same personality that made a lot of people see me as a happy kid 24/7 without having any idea what I'm going through! This blog post will be focused on writing a reflection about my life choice memoir, how did I feel about writing it, what went through my mind during the process of writing and what changes will I make to make it better. Getting to watch this Reflective Writing definitely changed the way I planned to write this blog post
This blog post will be focused about the short story Hills Like White Elephants by Ernest Hemingway, and my response to the question about her decision, whether I think decided to leave or not and why I think that.
Jig did leave him at the end, not yet physically, but her decision was made. throughout the text we see the man telling her things such as "I know you wouldn't mind it" which seemed like the man was speaking for himself and for her instead of asking for her thoughts about it yet she was reacting in a very classy and smart way every time he would say something similar. throughout the story the man keeps saying things that makes such a dangerous operation at the time sounds like a very simple thing to get through "if you don't want to you don't have to. I wouldn't have you do it if you didn't want to. But I know it's perfectly simple" and "I think it's the best thing to do. But I don't want you to do it if you really don't want to". reading lines like these it shows that he's only trying to make her feel like she have a choice meanwhile he clearly wants her to do one thing without showing that he cares about her healthy and safety more than anything. It's kind of felt like when you apologize to someone by saying "I'm sorry, BUT..." It's not until the end of the story when it kind of becomes a lot easier to see that Jig made up her mind about leaving him. towards the end whenever the man wants to say something or arguing to convince her with his point we see Jig just interrupting him by saying that she doesn't want to talk about it, or when she says that she agrees with him before he makes a point which felt like the nice way to say "yeah...whatever you're right I don't care about this argument anymore". So again, the ending makes it kind of clear that her decision was made, but regardless of the ending, no girl with any sense in her head would stay in a relationship where she is disrespected to a level where her opinion doesn't really matter in important argument regarding a choice that could hurt her mentally and physically for the rest of her life.
Few years ago, during lunch break in school one of my good friends walked to me and said "Once you go back to class he will ask you about this kid" referring to one of our mutual friends who didn't attend the same school, for this story I'll call him Jake, and for the school bully I'll call him Max. what she said to me didn't make any sense, It confused me because she seemed rattled, so I asked "Who will ask me", she sat down, took a deep breath and started to explain the situation to me "The other day Jake walked me home from school, However Max spotted us that day and you know how things work here" by saying that she meant that most people who see a girl they know walking with a strange boy, they would gossip about the story and make a huge deal of it calling that girl all types of disgusting things, It's the way most people think in a mid eastern culture. She keeps going "He said few words to me today about spotting me with Jake, I don't want him spreading words around the school so I told him that Jake is my cousin, when he said I'm lying I told him to ask you because you know Jake as well", I said "Sure, I'll say that" I told Max what she wanted me to say, and everything went as perfect as she wanted, nobody talked about it. about a week after that, I remember that I asked her to do something for me, I don't remember what it was exactly, but I do remember it was a very silly thing, might have been giving me some homework answers or helping me cheat on a test, and she said no, because if things went south it gets her in trouble too. But as I mentioned earlier the only person I used to think about is me, so the argument started to go back and forth between me asking for help and her refusing, I don't know what popped in my head and I say in a silly way "Hey, I'd tell Max that Jake isn't your cousin" I didn't mean to say it, and I'm wasn't serious at that moment. But I'm was a very stubborn person at the time, so as soon as I told her that she responded with a smile on "Go ahead, I don't care" She said that because she knew It was me being silly, "You know I'll do it" I said but I heard the same response "Go ahead, I told you I don't really care" and that was when I understood it as if she was provoking me which she clearly wasn't, and I turned it into a serious thing, it hit a point when she realized i'm wasn't joking anymore, I walked away looking for the kid, I ran into him and I told him, as soon as she knew I did, she talked about it to one of the counselors that was close to the female students, and that counselor called me in to ask me why I did that, and tell me that it was wrong...etc. as soon as I walked to her office, I remember seeing my friend sitting there crying, because she knew what's coming. that moment alongside the next few days of hearing kids talking about her in negative ways made me realize how much of an idiot I used to be. It's a situation that I didn't attempt to fix and contain, instead I chose to walk away and that's something I'll always regret but It's also an experience that helped shaping me in a way where I'd never let down someone who trusts me, or break a promise I make no matter at what cost, as well as teaching me a lot about how forgiving some people could be since we are currently friends again, far from being close friends, but the type of friend that you'd have a talk with once in a while.
In Wang's grandmother's situation she lived years beyond those three months, but if she didn't her family would have taken from her the one final chance to do something she loves but never got to do. or they could have prevented her from saying something she always wanted to say to someone that meant a lot to her. I do understand her family's perspective and good intentions, but just like Lulu mentioned towards the beginning, that decision prevented her from having one honest farewell talk with her grandmother who meant a lot to her. That's why I strongly dislike the family decision and consider lying to someone about such a serious thing a line that shouldn't be crossed, everyone in a similar situation to Wang's Grandmother deserves to make one final wish before they die! for some cultures that last wish is sacred. It shouldn't be taken away from someone and replaced with a lie.
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Majd LabbadMy name is Majd, Welcome to my blog page, this blog section will be a mix between my class assignments and a peak into my personal life :) Archives
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