Justin's Eng Blog

 I think the most important thing I've learned in this class is the different ways literature can be interpreted. In the chapter "Word Choice, Word Order, and Tone" Chapter 13, page 355 (for the third edition) The book speaks of the cognitive meanings of things, "Connotations derive their resonance from a person's experience with a word." If I may recall back to around about this time of the year, I believe Dr. Hamon talked about the way we interpret song lyrics, which is basically just poetry. Whilst most modern songs are fairly straight forwards, there are a lot of songs out there that can be interpreted vastly differently. A song that speaks about a breakup can be interpreted vastly different. You may hear it and feel emotional about things you have done, or another person may hear it and feel emotional about things done to them. You may listen to it again and get the complete opposite emotions.  As a person who played an instrument for about half my life...

 My favorite movies (and tv shows) is Star Wars. Its setting is mentioned at the beginning of every movie "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away..." This is important to the writers of the Star Wars universe, especially when George Lucas first created it, as it allowed him to create whatever he wanted it to. From this, it also gave anyone the ability to tap into their imagination, and lose themselves in the Star Wars universe. In your own imagination you can be fairly limitless in your creativity (with respect to the created universe). Being able to leave your crappy  life and completely forgetting about it, then becoming whoever/whatever you want to be in a completely fictional, Sifi universe.

 In "Lighting Bugs" lighting bugs are compared to cameras with the line "take snapshots of my house." I'm not sure if that's what Slyman meant when he wrote that, but it makes sense in my head. This is because as the lighting bugs light up the dark like they are taking pictures. A moment like that acts like a photo in your head as a source of memory. When you see a lighting bug in the future, you will think back to the time you saw them at your house, like reviewing a old photo on your phone.  Floating stars  in the dark making memories.

 I'm using an imagine at the beginning of William Blakes's "London." "I wander through each chartered street" When comparing this image to myself, I can see in front of me paths or roads which can be taken. These paths aren't literal, but more mental direction that can be taken to lead me further in life. But even though each path is different, they share one thing in common, they a riddled with restrictions and laws. These laws my be because of my own limitation, mental, physical or otherwise. But they can also be laws in forced by others. It could be people trying to stop your progress. Or it could be laws in forced by governmental bodies. Either way, no matter what path is taken, the roads will be full of restrictions.

"What will your verse be?" I interpreted this as what will you write to the grand game that is life? What line of history will you contribute to the creation of?  The world is vast, larger than you and I. We can do lots of actions that can harm the present, aid the future, or contribute nothing. But what is written isn't determined by yourself. You can't write your own verse, people in the future do that. You can only write the actions that will help decide your verse. You may deem your actions just, you may view them as bright, and thus your verse in history must be equally glorious, at least you think. You can try to guess your verse, or act as if you know what will be written, but in truth you have no control over it. Before Hitler commited suicide, he delusionally viewed himself as some sort of supreme power. He thought that he would be written down as a martyr because of his "sacrifices." He no doubtable viewed himself as more "pure" than othe...

A theme of my life would learning. When I say this i do not mean just mean education, I mean in life. Seeing something new, making mistakes, interactions between me and other people, there is always something new to learn in even the smallest of things. The way my gender might effect this, is by the way I might experience things differently from genders. I might be treated with biases, positive and negative, I might be told certain things others wouldn't normally be told or not experience things other would. But this would be part of the learning process. Trying to understand that other people have different experiences from you.

Not matter who you are, everyone wears some sort of color every day. I personally wear a lot of blue and red as they are my favorite colors. But as you may know some colors are considered "girly and manly." This really only appears in blue and pink. When you attend a gender reveal party, the color pink is used for females, and the color blue is used for males. Has these colors always symbolized their genders assigned to them? According to a CNN article " Pink was not then (mid-1700's) considered a "girls" color...  The tint was, in fact, often considered more appropriate for little boys because it was seen as a paler shade or red, which had "masculine" military undertones" ( Cerini.) The symbolism for the color pink actually originated from a "masculine" color. Showing how the symbolzem can change over years. Link:  https://www.cnn.com/style/article/history-of-color-pink/index.html

  He enters the room. Everyone stops, all attention is drawn upon him. He breaks the tension with a small wave of the hand, and proceeds to the corner where a person sits  by themsel ves. “This seat taken” he asks.   “ Are you in it ?” asks  the person.           “What?” he responds   with a question  in his eyebrow .        The person does not give a response. The person   only begins to occupy themselves with paper and a  penc il . The person began to write on the paper , focused, as if they were working on an essay. He looks down at the page and notices its emptiness . He squats on the ground, the talking and laughter of the room deafening his ears. He puts h is head on his knees and his arms begin holding himself together. He lets out a silencing sigh, and ask himself “Am I here all alone?”  

 Literature has never been of any particular interest to me. I always found it hard to sit down and give anything my full attention long enough to truly appreciate what is in front of me. Nor does it help that out of all my literature/English teachers in K-12, only one left a real impact on me.  It should then come to no surprise that when picking my major I thought literature would have no value to me when studying for my degree. However, I learned very quickly that that would not be the case. Even though literature will not have the same importance to my future as it would an English major, I still recognize that it has value. Literature to me will be most important in trying to understand other people's perspectives and thought process, or even broadening my own perspective on things. Sometimes, it's easy to get trapped in your own world, but literature could help break out of the box you build around yourself. Even though I probably won't develop a urge to sit down and ...

 Hello, my name is Justin Singleton. I'm from Perry, Ga. My major is biology. What I want out of this class is the knowledge to be able to complete my education and earn my degree.