It Was the Best of Times, It Was the Worst of Times

An ode to IB (some mental musings on the goods and bads)


I made some of the best friends I will ever have.

I never got to see anyone who isn't in IB. Ever.

There is an IB family, because we are all in this together.

Anyone not in the program assumed we were some creepy cult.

I was challenged to think in ways I never had to before.

If I have to think up another knowledge question I might just die.

I can now write crazy long essays in crazy short amounts of time.

There were tears. Lots and lots of tears.

My knowledge of things in general has greatly increased.

It is often difficult to remember those things due to sleep deprivation.

My GPA looks awesome.

I got to listen to other people complain about not having an awesome GPA.

CAS forced me to get out there and try new things.

Building a snowman counts as CAS right?

I am now much more confident in vocalizing my opinions.

The oral exams nearly killed me.

Time management has become an essential part of life.

I still don't manage time and stress is a non-stop feeling.

TOK forced me to think outside the box.

What is the box? How do we know if we are every truly within the limits of it?

IB teachers are awesome.

Teachers actually hate us and assign all assignment to be due the same day.

It's only two years.

It's two very long years.


The IB program was one of the biggest decisions I've had to make in my short life (aside from choosing where to go to college). Even with all of the negatives to outweigh the positives, if I were given the choice to go back and make the decision again with the knowledge I have now, I would still choose it again. That does not by any means mean that I want to keep going, IB was cool but let's be real, I am so ready for college.

Whitman Writes What?

Walt Whitman, for all his brilliant musing and incredible ability to spin words, has very terrible handwriting. That might just be my own inability to read cursive speaking, but I blame the education system.

Looking at Whitman's notebook, what is there to see? The first thing that I noticed was his repeated use of the phrase "Ship of Libertad." It may not be relevant, but "libertad" means freedom in Spanish. The word also sounds quite a bit like the word liberty. He actually mentions ships more than once. "Ship of the world- Ship of humanity- Ship of the ages. (Ship that circles the world- ship of the hope of the world- ship of promise)." The different ships relate with the idea of connection across the world. Ships are vessels that travel the globe and Whitman might be trying to use this idea as a metaphor for connecting humans across the world as a symbol of hope or of unity. There is no way to know for sure what his intentions were by using "ship".

Later in his notebook, Whitman drew several pictures of men in profile. These could possibly be self portraits but either way they appear to progress. The first is just a face, the next is a face with a body, then the head gains a hat, and finally the figure is wearing what could be a uniform. The progression from a simple head that could be his own might indicate that Whitman has drawn inspiration from his own figure. He might have started with himself and then continued to change things until coming up with a new person. This could indicate that Whitman puts his own beliefs and opinions into his writing. 

So those were some things that I noticed/interpreted. Now what did he really mean?

What I noticed about the use of the word "libertad" being Spanish was correct. It is also apparently a word that he uses commonly throughout many of his poems. The idea that I thought was connected to the ships, the idea of worldliness, is instead important in this word. He wants to portray the idea that freedom is not limited to any one country. The ships mean something slightly different than I had interpreted. They are in fact related to the idea of the succession of the south during the time of the civil war. Whitman shows some of his personal political beliefs by saying that the succession of the south could lead to harm of the government around the world.

The pictures of people that were drawn in the notebook were not actually drawn by Whitman. He apparently never drew pictures or doodled, so he had someone else do them. I was correct in assuming that the first one was a self portrait. The other pictures though are of people that he knew in his life. The pictures get progressively more cartoon like as they go on. I said before that It could be Whitman putting himself in his writing, but it appears to be more of him drawing inspiration for the people around him and adapting their images to fit his needs.

Talented poet or not, I am glad there were other people to interpret his handwriting for me.

Yes We AmeriCAN!

Ah yes, the American Dream- The perfect life that everyone wants to live, but is also so perfect that actually achieving it is a dream of its own.

Who wouldn't want to live the American Dream? It has adapted with the times but still has existed for the past hundred years. It has everything!

• Graduating college with a degree and going straight into a high paying job
• Making tons of money without doing much actual work
• Finding the perfect significant other 
• Having children with said significant other
• Living in a house with a white Pickett fence
• Happily growing old as your grandchildren take care of you until you die peacefully in your sleep

What's not to like?
Unfortunately for most of us, in order to live the American Dream you have to be pretty dang wealthy. Being wealthy means having not just enough money to fulfill your needs, but also your wants, and sometimes the things you didn't even know you wanted.

You can be like this dude! After all money equals happiness right?

WRONG!

It's unfortunate that in our society people believe that in order to be happy you have to have expensive things and a perfect life. The truth is that as long as you are happy, does it really matter if you house has two bathrooms instead of three? Sadly, the commonly held belief the people who have less money have worse lives. Americans see the 1% as the high and mighty and the people living in poverty as the dregs of society.

I prefer to hold a different opinion than this one. I see it that in most cases you are in control of your own happiness. There are rich people who were born into their money, but there are also people who put in the hard work everyday to make a living. There are the poor people who waste all of their money on drugs, but there are also people who are just caught in a bad situation. No one has any right to judge a person based on the number in their bank account. Not everyone wants to live the American Dream. If someone chooses to live in a tent by the highway because it makes them happy, then more power to them.

After all, in the words of the East High students: We're all in this together!

Freebie

:D

You get to hear me talk this time

So here is me talking awkwardly:

And here is my planning if you want to look at it:

And now I'm going to grade myself:

Knowledge and understanding of text- 7.5 (can you do that? I did)

I chose this because I think I did a fairly good job analyzing the text and using my understanding of the book as a whole, but I could have talked more about the message that the book is sending as a whole and the importance of this passage within the greater context.

Understanding and use of literary features- 7

While I looked at language, I mostly focused on word choice and could have done a better job of looking into other literary devices that the author used.

Organization- 4

While the structure that I chose is mostly coherent, It may not have been the best one for this passage. I stayed fairly consistent with the framework that I created.

Language- 4

I actually have no idea what makes my language good or not but I think I did a good job?

I had plenty of "ums" though and I repeated myself quite a bit.

Once Upon a Blog Post

Once upon a blog post, I watched a Ted Talks.

This Ted Talk features Joe Sabia, an iPad storyteller, giving an overview of the progress that has been made in the technology of storytelling in the last 200 years. The author states that while the stories being told have remained largely unchanged, the methods of telling them have always been evolving. During the entire talk, Sabia is projecting his iPad screen to the audience and is continually changing apps and the images shown to help support his message. He uses pictures, text, and music to help tell his tale. He is representing a new style of storytelling by talking about storytelling. He begins with the description of a book and how it never changed until Lothar Meggendorfer from Germany created the first pop-up book. After this, methods of storytelling became more numerous and more creative. TV, movies, talk shows, and the internet are all just evolved forms of storytelling. He ends his presentation by taking a picture of the audience and putting them on the screen, indicating that they are a part of the story.

The author's purpose in sharing this ted talks is to represent a new form of storytelling and giving a history of the progress that has been made in the art of storytelling. He is saying that even though what we are saying isn't changing, the way that we are saying it is. The ending implies that storytelling will continue to evolve past where we are now, as is its nature.

Joe Sabia is a storyteller, so his job is to (obviously) tell stories. This may make his argument seem less credible. The term storyteller is often associated with people who make things up or twist facts so that they suit their needs. This may make the author's message become somewhat misunderstood because of the stereotypes associated with his title. People will often assume that storytellers are making things up, not that they are retelling facts.

The author uses quite a bit of evidence to support his claim. He talks about and shows several different examples of the different ways that storytelling has advanced such as radio, TV, movies, internet, music, and more. The talk itself is framed as a story. It starts with the traditional Once upon a time and ends with a cliche and they all lived happily ever after. The presentation being framed as a story makes the author's argument pretty difficult to dispute. Because it is his job, it is possible that the author is bias in thinking that what he does is a true form of storytelling. Some people may believe that this unique method is too different to be truly considered a form of storytelling, and that would weaken the message that the author is trying to send.

The audience members are enthralled with this performance not only because the author continuously makes funny jokes that keep them interested and laughing, but he also makes the presentation easy to connect with. Sabia uses the visual of the iPad screen and many popular apps that can be used on it in order to tell him story. These are images that many people in this modern age see every day. The ideas are presented in a language that the audience understands and they will be more likely to agree because of it. 

I found this talk very interesting. The art of storytelling and the stories that are being told has always been a topic that fascinates me. The author said in his presentation that the stories that we tell don't change and that relates directly to the idea of the hero's journey (see my extended essay for more details). The idea of being able to communicating these stories in different ways has also always been interesting. For my personal project I even did a project relating to picture books (hmm, I'm seeing a pattern here...). This seemed like a topic that was very relevant to the things that I am interested in and definitely caught my attention when I started to watch it.

As the blog post came to an end, I reflected on what I learned and, along with the other IB students, lived happily ever after (well after we graduate that is).

The End

Double Indemnity? Double the Drama

Double Indemnity has been called “a film without a single trace of pity or love.” Do you agree with this statement? Think about the motivations that lie behind the actions of Walter Neff and Phyllis Dietrichson when you consider your response.

It is understandable where a person would get this idea, that this movie doesn't have a single trace of pity or love, but I disagree with that statement wholeheartedly. Love is seen in many different situations and between many different characters. Pity as well is an important emotion. These are sometimes the driving force for decisions made by different characters.

Let's take Walter Neff for example. More specifically, his relationship with Phyllis Dietrichson. The entire movie is based on a murder and insurance fraud that Walter was adamantly against until Phyllis convinced him to help her. Walter is immediately attracted to Phyllis when he first meets her, but it takes seeing her again for him to decided he cares enough about her that he want to help her out of an awful situation. You could argue that this is just a physical attraction. Phyllis used her beauty and feminine wiles to get what she wants (female privilege??). But isn't attraction what love is based off of? When you like something about a person, whether it be their looks, actions, or other traits, isn't that what makes a person initially fall in love? By the end it is clear that Walter doesn't love her (Spoiler: he kills her). I do believe that at the beginning of the movie Walter is in love, or is on his way to being in love, with Phyllis and that is why he went along with her plan.

Phyllis admits at the end of the movie that she never cared for Walter. She says she never loved him "until a minute ago, when I couldn't fire that second shot." She never says outright that she loves him but it is implied pretty heavily. She has to know that nothing good will happen to her unless Walter is dead, but she still can't bring herself to make the final shot. Phyllis' initial intentions were to manipulate Walter into helping her gain what she wanted, freedom fro her marriage and the money that she could get out of it. These stayed her intentions up until her final meeting with Walter where something changed. I don't know what did it, but in that moment Walter mattered more to her than the money and she couldn't shoot. This is just another plot point that is influenced by love. Whether or not that love was a good or bad thing is up to interpretation, but you can't say it's not there.

“Do not pity the dead Harry. Pity the living, and, above all, those who live without love.”          -Albus Dumbledore 

Dumbledore said it, and this quote could probably apply to several of the characters in this movie. Someone who has love, but is still pitied, is Lola, Phyllis' step-daughter. After Mr. Dietrichson was killed, Lola goes to Walter Neff because she wants to share her ideas that her step-mother was behind it. Neff Initially spends time with her to keep her from going to the police, but then he continues to see her because he feels bad about what she went through. Neff gets to know Lola because he pities her and he feels some guilt for what has happened. Neff's pity for Lola is very important for building his character and building the plot, so how could pity not exist?

The final example of love that I want to look at is a little bit different. It could be argued that it is one of the strongest types of love out there: Bro-love. I can't say I fully understand how it works, but I can recognize it, and Walter Neff and his partner Barton Keyes have it. It is not apparent at the beginning, but as we learn more about the characters it becomes more apparent. Close to the end of the movie, Neff listens to a recording that Keyes made and in it he stands up for Neff, claiming that they have been good friends for eleven years, and that's what bros do. The last lines of the movie walter is talking about the man who commited the murder (himself) and says that Keyes must have been surprised that the man had been right across the desk the whole time. Keyes responds with "He was closer than that" and Walter says "Love you too." Keyes stays with Walter to wait for the ambulance because even though Walter committed those crimes, Keyes is still his friend in a true bro fashion. This is not a romantic type of love but it is just as important, and very apparent in this story.

Many of the characters show love and pity to each other throughout this story, but those are not the main, overarching themes of the movie. The person who said the original quote may have been talking in reference to the message that the movie is sending or the mood that it creates, not individual character relationships. Although it is not one of our classic tales of romance, Double Indemnity certainly shows hints of love.