Journal #23

Being self sufficient is very important. Being self sufficient means that you take control of your own life and do your best to get things done by yourself. In order to succeed in anything, you have to be self-sufficient. You have to rely on yourself. One major component of it is trust. You have to trust yourself to get things done and to get them done right. It becomes very important in the real world. In school, being self sufficient can be the difference between an A and an F. If you don't take control and do your best to get your home work done all by yourself, and you copy someone elses, you: a) don't learn anything, and b) could very possibly receive and F. I do my best to be self-suffient. I do all my homework by myself, I study by myself, and i strive to do the best that i can in everything  participate in. So pretty much, just do your own work. It's so much better for you and you actually learn that way. Why take someone elses work? Who knows. They could be kinda on the blonde side and could be SERIOUSLY wrong. Do you WANT to jeopardize  your entire grade because you decided to cheat? No! Take control of your life and do things yourself. Life is so much better when you know that you can do things yourself and learn. It also feels good knowing that you can actually function and know that in the future, you might survive in the real world. I mean, come on. Is it really that hard to do the same work that everyone else is doing? No. Listen to the teacher, take notes. Don't talk to other people and don't distract yourself and you might actually not have to cheat and have someone else do your work. Also, self-esteem. Take esteem in your work. Don't just push it off like it's no big thing because it is. School work is important to the max.

Journal #24

How to prepare for finals? Oh, that's easy. Study until your eyes fall out. Literally. The ONLY way to completely prepare for finals is to study everything hardcore. It also depends on exactly what grade you are expecting. If you already have an A in the class, chances are you could do little to no work and still manage a good grade in the class at the end. So, if you don't want to get a perfect, study less and chill more, because you can still get a fair grade. Now, if you don't do well in the class, finals can become our redemption. If you do good on the final, you could very possibly pull a better grade in the class in the end. So the best thing to do, overall, to bring a bad grade up, is work and study and practice and go into complete solitary until you are compleatley and utterly POSITIVE that you know the study guide backwards and forwards, and you could recite it like monks recite the bible. Yes, my friends, it's that easy. No friends, no movies, no nothing until you know your stuff. The few days you become a recluse to study your brain off will prove beneficial in the end. All your friends at school will be sweating it and staying up late every night because they decided not to study hardcore. But you will be breathing easy, knowing that you are totally going to ace the test because it's burnt into the hard drive of your brain like your I-pods library is on your  lap-top. Another little thing you should do in your solitary studying is DON'T forget to take breaks. That means you have to eat and walk around once in a while so your limbs don't go numb and you collapse on the floor like a dead seal. Make sure your blood is still flowing, and check it regularly. Also, a good thing to do during break is maybe go around and chat with your family a bit. Or go outside and throw a basketball around. Or take your I-pod doc into your sisters room (while she's studying) and have a dance party. When she kicks you out of her room, that's probably a good notification that you should go back to your room and subject yourself to death by studying. So, to conclude: study. Just study really hard for a few days and in between tests. If you study and take dance party breaks every couple of hours, you'll be fine. And remember: everything you are studying is stuff your ALREADY know, so think of it as a sort of review.

Reaction to Katebs analysis

 Kateb's analysis of Emerson's vision of self reliance was great because it further explained the essay and gave a different perspective to it. Kateb also had his own idea of about self reliance. "Self-reliance as a method of thinking with its own intrinsic value means more than any substantive commitment to a particular value, principle or idea, or to any practice or institution that embodies or derives from them" (Kateb). I  really liked what he said. He pretty much described self-reliance as being an idea you can't really put words too. It means something different to every single person, and this thought he developed further backs up his thoughts on Emerson's essay. He stated this  point by describing Emerson's essay. "His variety of declarations tempts us to say that he contradicts himself, but even if we resist the temptation, we are still not sure where he finally stands. We can admit the force of his impeachment of consistency in "Self-Reliance" (p. 265), but may still wish that his assertions did not so frequently collide and perhaps qualify one another to the point of damaging all of them, leaving us suspended and uncertain" (Kateb). Kateb made a correct inference about Emerson's essay and about self-reliance. Emerson himself bounces from point to point but doesn't chose a straight-up side. He explores a variety of perspectives, and Kateb clearly noticed this, and based his idea of self-reliance being unique on this. "In fact, many of the assertions are not assertions at all. He does not stand behind most of his utterances, even though he expends his full virtue in them" (Kateb). This was also true, and again backs up Kateb's point. Emerson describes his assertions, but doesn't choose one or the other to support. I also thought it was great how Kateb used other authors descriptions of Emerson's self-reliance essay in his analysis. He used one quote by Walt Whitman to prove that he wasn't the only one who came up with his idea. "An almost exasperated Walt Whitman can therefore say of Emerson: 'He does not see or take one side, one presentation only or mainly, (as all the poets, or most of the fine writers anyhow,)—he sees all sides. His final influence is to make his students cease to worship anything—almost cease to believe in anything, outside of themselves'" (Kateb).  

Kateb uses this quote to get another message across: Emerson didn't support just one point, or choose one certain method because he wanted readers to rely on themselves to choose the one they thought was true. He used his own essay titled "Self Reliance" to make readers exercise self-reliance for themselves. "Emerson's work shows the effort of achieving a method that refuses any 'selecting principle' which derives from something as narrow as one's 'own' personality, and which has so limited an aim as to gather one's like wherever one goes" (Kateb)" Here Kateb says that Emerson did this purposefully. He wanted readers to not be narrow minded, but to consider a variety of conflicting ideas. Kateb's essay was actually very helpful because he used a variety of different quotes from other authors. By doing this he's saying "I'm not the only source and person who thinks this," and he provides alternative views about Emerson's essay. This was extremely  smart and helpful. It makes his essay all the more convincing. 

Emerson, Ralph Waldo. "Self-Reliance and the Life of the Mind." In Emerson's Transcendental Etudes. Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. 2003. Quoted as "Self-Reliance and the Life of the Mind" in Bloom, Harold, ed. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Updated Edition, Bloom's Modern Critical Views. New York: Chelsea House Publishing, 2006. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. 

Journal #22

I have a love hate relationship with snow. I love how it makes everything look. It falls gently overnight and cloaks everything in a flowing white sheen. It's almost magical. No matter the object, snow can make it look artistic and beautiful, without even trying.
The best feeling is waking up to it! Especially when you hear that it's a snow day, and you can do whatever you want for the rest of the day. I remember many days watching it fall slowly from the leaden sky onto the ground, praying and wishing that the next day i would be able to play in it, and it wouldn't be melted before i got home.
I remember making many snowmen. They never looked like something off of a hallmark card, and no matter how hard me and my dad tried, they were never really white. Always browish and full of leaves and rocks and other junk that the snowball picked up as we rolled it. My dad would always make the bottom half, because it was always really big and extremely  heavy, then i would help make the middle and the head. After my dad put all the pieces together, shoved snow in any areas that needed support, and i approved it, we started on the face and arms and other accessories  Our snowmen always had stick arms, rocks for the nose, the eyes,  and mouth, and never had a scarf. Occasionally, we'd sneak inside, snatch a pot, and use it for a hat. Then, if we thought the snowmen looked too lonely, we would make him a wife or a son.

I also have another great memory of the snow. When the snow drifted up against the house, me and my family would dig into it and make a snow fort, complete with tunnels. Some of the best memories i have of snow is laughing with my sisters, digging out a fort, and crawling through pretending we were inside a cave!

Journal #21

I thought the quote by Emerson was really deep. The theme he's trying to convey is that good things come from hard work, and that you must go out and do for yourself. Accept what you have and work with it. Don't envy or imitate someone else, or what they have. Take what you have and make it into something good and amazing. It's true. If you want to be successful in life, you can't depend on someone else to do something for you. You can't try to imitate them, and don't envy them. Envy is ignorance because instead of being jealous of someone, be grateful to what you already have. Envying someone else is ignoring the good things you already have with you. Imitation is suicide because by imitating someone else, you are killing your own personality, your own character, and yourself in general. You are you, and imitation is when you try to do away with your personality traits. Be yourself and work hard for success. That is what Emerson is trying to say. Search for yourself rather than envy and imitate somebody else. Doesn't getting something done yourself feel better than having someone do it for you? Individuality is a beautiful thing.  This quote is very influential. Its a good philosophy to live by. If more people followed it, i believe more would be happy in life. In this day and age, everyone is trying to imitate one another because we feel like that makes us fit in. But we forget that uniqueness is just as important. I really like when he talks about tilling your own land. Everyone is given a 'piece of land' and the only way to get any thing good out of it is to struggle and till it until you get something good out of it. That's how it really is. We each have a choice. Till our own soil--our own life--and get something good out of it, or go out and try tilling someone else's or have someone do it for us and reap no benefit. Emerson is also trying to say you need to work for what you want. Work hard and struggle through hard times to make it your own.