For my capstone, I wanted to give back to SLA community with what I believe it gave most to me which is my ability to do math. I am well aware that some of the freshman are not at the level of math they should be at because of an underfunded school district. With this in mind, me and three other seniors decided to come together and start a math lab after school. The math lab was open on Tuesdays from 3-4 and was for freshman in Algebra 1. In the math lab, we helped students prepare for retakes, paired them with other students in order to be peer tutored, and taught them concepts they may have missed when absent from school.

The individual part of my capstone had me surveying people for their opinions of math at SLA. Teachers always want feedback and what better way to keep it concise and short than by providing them with clear data and statistics. This gives students a way of voicing their opinion while remaining completely anonymous to teachers. I want the math teachers here to know how good of a job they are doing and letting them know the concerns I find with my data. This will also serve as another means of proving how successful SLA’s math department is to other schools in the district and potentially even make a model for other schools to follow. I seek to find trends within grades levels, math levels, and race.

Bidwell, Allie. "STEM Workforce No More Diverse Than 14 Years Ago." US News. U.S.News & World Report, 24 Feb. 2015. Web. 04 Feb. 2016. <http://www.usnews.com/news/stem-solutions/articles/2015/02/24/stem-workforce-no-more-diverse-than-14-years-ago>.

This article will serve me to talk about what the impact is on students who do not succeed in math. Typically minorities are the ones who are are underrepresented in the STEM workforce which is exactly what this article highlights. I want to drive home that this is a big issue that impacts how far students will get in life. The article explains how diversity in the workforce has remained unchanged since 14 years prior to when this was written in 2015. It helps me glue together all the points and shows purpose in my study which points out misconceptions about STEM.

Bryant, Cindy. "Growth Mindset and the Common Core Math Standards."Edutopia. N.p., 03 Dec. 2013. Web. 03 Feb. 2016. <http://www.edutopia.org/blog/growth-mindset-common-core-math-cindy-bryant>.

This website is crucial in helping me establish one of the core aspects of what my capstone is trying to help change about some students. Some students have a fixed mindset which limits their growth and while a growth mindset helps students embrace failure and use it as a learning tool. Me and others in charge of the after school math labs will try to enforce a growth mindset into the students and I will record the numerical results of training. A questionnaire involving questions about people’s mindsets before and after SLA and math lab will help me illustrate my point.

College Board. "SAT Reform and College-Bound African Americans." The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education 4 (2013): 1-3. College Board. 2013. Web. 4 Feb. 2016.

The College Board has some useful data on SAT percentiles that I would want to include in my research paper to show my capstone’s purpose and need. SLA is obviously a school whose largest race is African American and they are particularly known for not doing so well on these tests. I plan to take data from here to show correlation between races against each other and the progression of percentiles in certain races over time. This will help illustrate the point that there is need for a place like math lab and some sort of a change in curriculum.

El Deeb, Ahmed. "What to Do with “small” Data?" Medium. N.p., 06 Oct. 2015. Web. 04 Feb. 2016. <https://medium.com/rants-on-machine-learning/what-to-do-with-small-data-d253254d1a89#.wd4kz7k1f>.

One problem I know I might face and something I plan to address is that I might only collect a small set of data. This create numerous problems in terms of not only being hard to analyze and draw conclusions from, but it also affects the success of the capstone. The article is very insightful as to tell me what problems I might encounter with a small data set and what to do in case I receive one. Since this is one the largest, if not the largest hurdle for my capstone I need to make sure I use this source to make sure I am prepared when I encounter this problem.

Freeman, David. "Here's Proof That Beautiful Math Equations Affect The Brain Just Like Great Art." The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 17 Feb. 2014. Web. 04 Feb. 2016. <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/17/beautiful-math-equations-brain-great-art_n_4789667.html>.

This article illustrates the beauty of math and why it is so important. Something that I need to address in my paper is why anyone should care about math and more people if I conveyed the point that math can be viewed as something elegant like art or music I can get the reader to relate more to why it matters even if they do not like math. While one of math’s main purposes is finding its applicability in the real world to describe the relation between systems, it is also a place where some enjoy finding patterns in completely theoretical systems.

Johnson, Andrew P. "Methods of Analyzing Data." A Short Guide to Action Research. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson, 2012. 71-82. Print.

This is a chapter from a book that talks about the methods of analyzing data. Since the core of my capstone is to represent the applicability of math in the real world to describe systems and interactions, this source will show that I did research on how to properly confront the data I collect and also how I can make conjectures from what I have. It also helps me talk about the different kinds of analysis that I will do in order to make conclusion on what I have collected.The key detailed steps is how I intend to organize my paper so that it seems more organize and sharp as to discern different steps from each other.

Rosenshine, Barak. "Recent Research on Teaching Behaviors and Student Achievement." Recent Research on Teaching Behaviors and Student Achievement. N.p., n.d. Web. 04 Feb. 2016. <http://www.formapex.com/les-principes-de-base/1067-recent-research-on-teaching-behaviors-and-student-achievement?616d13afc6835dd26137b409becc9f87=bb4ce84748d5a7ce8f9f97b65257e63b>.

This website contains key information to a study similar to my capstone. It talks about how different methods of teaching math affect students. The study goes on to show the results through actual data. It is structured more like a scientific experiment, but nevertheless it still holds as an example for the kind of analysis I should have. It is divided into specific sections which is something I plan to do in my paper as well in order to separate the different conclusions made from different results of data. The study also explains any irregularities in the data which would me tie loose ends in my conclusions.

Peng, Roger. "What Is the Best Way to Analyze Data? | Simply Statistics."Simply Statistics. N.p., 27 June 2015. Web. 03 Feb. 2016. <http://simplystatistics.org/2013/06/27/what-is-the-best-way-to-analyze-data/>.

This website gives me an idea of different ways I can model data. This is important for to show how even though I was part of the math lab I also want to tie this into my passion for math and talk about how I want to pursue applied math. Properly doing this is crucial for me to show that math has applicability in different areas and it can help make things which would otherwise be subjective become objective. It also helps show how much work and effort doing data analysis can be.

Peters, Chritopher, Danny Schreiber, Matthew Guay, and Stephanie Baedell. "How to Design and Analyze a Survey." - The Ultimate Guide to Forms and Surveys. N.p., n.d. Web. 04 Feb. 2016. <https://zapier.com/learn/ultimate-guide-to-forms-and-surveys/design-analyze-survey/>.

This website introduced me to different ways of asking questions in a survey and analyzing data to get desired and accurate result. There are certain steps I have to go through such as writing knowledge I would like to gain as well as my hypothesis about what I expect the data to show. As far as analyzing and presenting my data go there are certain ways I can discern trends through data and change the kind of graph I use to illustrate a point.

Welsh, Patrick. "Column: Why Our Kids Hate Math." Usatoday.com. N.p., 9 July 2012. Web. 04 Feb. 2016. <http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/opinion/forum/story/2012-07-09/math-education-remedial-algebra/56118128/1>.

This source provides a very important insight as to why children are failing and do not like math. This will be important for me to show how we address these problems and how removing them changed the students and their success in math. I want to talk about how the root of this problem occurs before students come to SLA. These statistics while also showing how much we helped improve math lab are also meant to show how much the curriculum failed them. I plan to collect data from students about how they felt about math in their middle school.

“The Taming of the Shrew” is one of the is one of the earliest romantic comedies that has survived. In the play several men such as Lucentio, Hortensio, and Petruchio chase after women. In the 1985 movie “St. Elmo’s Fire”, Kirby is just like these men in this aspect except for the fact that the woman he is after is already in a relationship.

Kirby shares similarities to Lucentio as they both attempt to get the woman but fail. While their actions are similar their situations, the outcomes are different. Kirby is trying to get a woman who is much older than him while she is in a relationship, while Lucentio falls in love with someone of a similar socioeconomic class. Since Kirby is trying to get a woman older than him, so he is considered bolder and less caring of the social norm to marry a woman younger or around someone’s age. The fact that Kirby is just as eager to get close to Dale as Luciento is to Katherine is a sign of how the boundaries of what is considered an abnormal marriage are changing. The difference between “The Taming of the Shrew” and “St. Elmo Fire” is proof that people are becoming more open minded to people of very different ages and socioeconomic statuses being in relationship.

“You will be schoolmaster and undertake the teaching of the maid: That’s your device” (Act i, Scene i,  43)

In this quote Tranio is describing the idea he has for how Lucentio can get close to Bianca. The fact that Lucentio went along with this shows to what extremes he will go to in order to get with a woman. He does this in the spur of the moment as he just saw her pass him by for the first time.

Kirby finds himself in a similar situation with Dale except he is much more infatuated with her.

In this scene of “St. Elmo’s Fire” Kirby is talking about how Dale whom he just saw at a hospital is the love of his life even though they spent years apart without contact. He does not care about the advice from his friend, which is to not to go after her because of her age and the fact that she is already in a relationship. He completely disregards the advice and goes after her anyway. He is willing to change his college major from law to medicine in order to get closer to her, which is similar to what Lucentio was doing when he disguised himself as Bianca’s tutor. While Lucentio had nothing to get in his way such as socioeconomic status. Kirby has the problem of her age and socioeconomic status, which shows just how much men have changed over the centuries in their pursuit of women and have changed what they consider to be an acceptable relationship.

Preposterous ass, that never read so To know the cause of why music was ordained. (Act ii, Scene i, 109)

This is from when Lucentio, while disguised as Cambio was talking to Hortensio about how he should go first. He acts very pompous and believes he is more important than Hortensio when trying to get Bianca. She then does let Lucentio teach her first. His attitude is a sign of how confident he is that she will marry him.

“And deep down for a long time I’ll wonder if somehow this isn’t my loss”

In this scene Dale is telling Kirby how she regrets not being able to be in a relationship with him. She kisses him on the cheek and then he kisses her on the lips and she embraces it. This shows how even while their ages are far apart and she has a higher socioeconomic status than him she would still want to have been in a relationship with him.

What is considered an appropriate marriage today and during the time “The Taming of the Shrew” was written are completely different. Marriage is about more than marrying someone who is in the same age group and socioeconomic class. Now its about finding anyone who you love and who loves you no matter the differences between them.

Works Cited

Shakespeare, William, Barbara A. Mowat, and Paul Werstine. The Taming of the Shrew. New York: Washington Square, 2002. Print.

Analytical Essay:

Depression and anxiety are common emotions experienced by people when their world changes in a non favorable way. People develop different habits in order to cope with what they are experiencing. Sleeping is one way to cope with it. It is very common due to the fact that people attempt to have happy dreams of what their life used to be before their world changed. It provides people with a pass time to get over with their change. In the book, The Things They Carried, by Tim O'brien, people cope with the changing world by attempting to dream because then they avoid having to consciously think about their troubles and can make their own fantasy.

In the chapter “Lives of the Dead”, Tim O’brien talks about how he coped with the death of his friend Linda who died of brain cancer. After her death he slept a lot more often. This is when his mom started a conversation with him to see if he was alright. He responded, “‘Nothing. I just need sleep, that's all.’ I didn't dare tell the truth. It was embarrassing, I suppose, but it was also a precious secret, like a magic trick, where if I tried to explain it, or even talk about it, the thrill and mystery would be gone. I didn't want to lose Linda.” (244) This shows that events that cause depression are sometimes dealt with by dreaming and therefore sleeping in order to make a place where the real world changes that caused the depression is no longer there. He really believes it is a successful way of coping with it, even though he doesn’t understand how something so simple can be so joyful. The reason for dreaming as opposed to eating or some other way of coping is because while eating takes you away from what happened, it does not take you back to when that change happened, whereas dreaming does. Also, there are less adverse side effects to sleeping than to excessive eating such as weight gain and risk for heart disease and several others diseases that are life threatening which are common side effects of excessive eating.

In the chapter “On the Rainy River”, O’brien was staying at a lodge owned by Elroy Berdahl in Minnesota near the border between the United States and Canada. O’brien had sleeping problems because of his anxiety of being drafted into the Vietnam War. He was tempted into going to Canada to escape his draft order but was too scared to. “I couldn't sleep; I couldn't lie still. At night I'd toss around in bed, half awake, half dreaming, imagining how I'd sneak down to the beach and quietly push one of the old man's boats out into the river and start paddling my way toward Canada.” (50) Here is an example of a time when a character desperately tried to sleep in order to avoid their real world change. While he was not fully asleep, he even mentions the fact that when he was “half awake, half dreaming” he dreamed about doing what he was too afraid to do in real life which was going into Canada. This show that even when one cannot successfully sleep, if they are in a half dream state, they can at least experience part of what they would if they were fully asleep.

In the chapter “Enemies”, soldiers Dave Jensen and Lee Strunk got into a fight. Jensen being larger in size, was victorious and ended up breaking Strunk’s nose. After that event Strunk was always on edge at night while trying to sleep. “At night he had trouble sleeping—a skittish feeling—always on guard, hearing strange noises in the dark, imagining a grenade rolling into his foxhole or the tickle of a knife against his ear.” (63)  While he was never able to successfully go to sleep, this does show what happens when you are awake and worry about the changing world. In this case while he was awake he stressed out always thinking Jensen was waiting to kill him. His attempt at sleeping in order to dream would have proved as a good way of coping if we was able to. It is certain that him being awake made him not able to think about anything other than the possibility of Jensen killing him.

During an interview with Mars Hill Review (MHR), Tim O’brien was asked why  he thought imagining was crucial to him as a soldier and a person. He responded, “Imagination is important in a couple of ways. One way is as a psychological means of escape. If you can lose yourself in a fantasy, then you're no longer trapped in the horror of, say, Vietnam.” Dreaming is when one’s imagination is at its fullest so it would make sense that most of that imagination came from dreaming. In your dreams its much easy to escape reality because its when things seem most real but actually aren’t.

While there are many different ways to cope with the changing world dreaming is one of the most easy and common that provides escape. It gives people the ability to experience the most realistic feeling of places that isn’t real yet can mimic a person’s desire for things to be how they were before the world changed. While people cannot always controls what happens in their dreams, just the hope of them being able to experience their better past life is something for them to look forward to. Without dreaming, many people wouldn’t have something to look forward to in order for them to be in a happy place.

Works Cited for Analytical Essay:

O'Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried: A Work of Fiction. New York: Broadway, 1998. Print.

Sawyer, Scott. "In the Name of Love: An Interview With Tim O'Brien." Mars Hill Review. LeaderU.com (Links to an external site.). Winter/Spring 1996. Web. October 20 2009.

Narrative Essay:

“Nebil are you okay?” my mom would usually ask.

“Yeah, I’m fine. I’m just tired” was my response.

Under the covers of my bed, I was in a place of comfort. I preferred to sleep facing my window, so I wouldn’t be looking at anyone who came in my room. I either stared at something in the room or out of the window before I slept. Sometimes I slept from twelve noon until 8 at night and often times much more erratic sleeping patterns.

Sleeping was my way of coping with something that happened to me, whether it be that I was a mad at my parents or friends or whether I was depressed about something. This time I slept because I was depressed about my grades in class. I used to always be stressed about my grades and thinking they had a big snowball effect on my future. I used to think that if I got a B in Math for even just one quarter my chances of getting into an Ivy League instantly dropped to nothing. Pressure from academics like that always used to get to me. I used to see a lot of my friends getting much better grades than I was, and they were worried about their own future which made me think I should be even more worried about my own. The stress from worrying about my future and classes often times required for me to sleep.

The reason I slept was because when I slept, I didn’t think about anything. I was free from the worries that encompassed me while I was awake. In my dreams I did what I normally did while not thinking about what I would have to when I woke. I guess I like that feeling of being care free or unaware. It relieves me of stress and allows me to enjoy myself. After waking up I am usually much more alive than I was before I slept. I still would keep that feeling of being carefree for a while after I woke up. That is until my friends say something about homework, projects, colleges, and SATs.

Aside from my parents, my friends started to worry about me too. At first on school nights I would usually chat with them on skype. When I went to sleep early because I was angry, stressed, or depressed, they often ask me what’s wrong. “Hey Nebil, what’s wrong?” someone usually says in school when they see my head down.

“Nothing, I’m just not feeling great. I just need some sleep.” was my usual response.

“Okay, hope you feel better?” they could tell I was lying, but it’s not like I would put much effort into it anyway.

My sleeping habits started to become unhealthy. I used to sleep in school very often. In my sophomore year, in almost every History class for the first quarter, I slept through just because I couldn’t stand some of the ignorant comments that were said from across the classroom. It was so bad that it got to the point where the teacher took me out of class and asked why I was sleeping so much. My response was the same to him as well.

My sleeping habits only got worse. I started to sleep in on weekends. Whenever my friends asked me if I  wanted to go with them some where, I would come up with some excuse and tell them that yesterday was rough I wasn’t feeling good. I got too used to dreaming as a way of escape. While initially it seemed harmless, I later realized I was desocializing myself from the world. The few times I didn’t make an excuse and went with them somewhere, I would hear them converse about funny events that I missed because I didn’t go with them the previous time. At first I made nothing of it, but later I realized I asked the question, “What are you guys talking about?” a little too often because I didn’t meet with them as often as I previously did.

I tried to stop myself from sleeping by doing something else to cope with my stress. Eating didn’t work at all because I didn’t like to eat while I was angry, stressed or depressed. While I liked exercising, I was never in the mood to do it for the same reasons I didn’t eat. In the end I just went back to sleeping and pushed the thoughts of my friends, parents, and teachers worrying about me to the back of my head.

One of my friends who I talked to often always told me not to worry about school because I was doing just fine in school. They told me that I was getting all A’s so there was really nothing to worry about. While it was nice that they did that, it was hard to take them seriously because they were doing much better than me in school and much more outside of school to have things to put on their resumé.

Analytical Essay:

Depression and anxiety are common emotions experienced by people when their world changes in a non favorable way. People develop different habits in order to cope with what they are experiencing. Sleeping is one way to cope with it. It is very common due to the fact that people attempt to have happy dreams of what their life used to be before their world changed. It provides people with a pass time to get over with their change. In the book, The Things They Carried, by Tim O'brien, people cope with the changing world by attempting to dream because then they avoid having to consciously think about their troubles and can make their own fantasy.

In the chapter “Lives of the Dead”, Tim O’brien talks about how he coped with the death of his friend Linda who died of brain cancer. After her death he slept a lot more often. This is when his mom started a conversation with him to see if he was alright. He responded, “‘Nothing. I just need sleep, that's all.’ I didn't dare tell the truth. It was embarrassing, I suppose, but it was also a precious secret, like a magic trick, where if I tried to explain it, or even talk about it, the thrill and mystery would be gone. I didn't want to lose Linda.” (244) This shows that events that cause depression are sometimes dealt with by dreaming and therefore sleeping in order to make a place where the real world changes that caused the depression is no longer there. He really believes it is a successful way of coping with it, even though he doesn’t understand how something so simple can be so joyful. The reason for dreaming as opposed to eating or some other way of coping is because while eating takes you away from what happened, it does not take you back to when that change happened, whereas dreaming does. Also, there are less adverse side effects to sleeping than to excessive eating such as weight gain and risk for heart disease and several others diseases that are life threatening which are common side effects of excessive eating.

In the chapter “On the Rainy River”, O’brien was staying at a lodge owned by Elroy Berdahl in Minnesota near the border between the United States and Canada. O’brien had sleeping problems because of his anxiety of being drafted into the Vietnam War. He was tempted into going to Canada to escape his draft order but was too scared to. “I couldn't sleep; I couldn't lie still. At night I'd toss around in bed, half awake, half dreaming, imagining how I'd sneak down to the beach and quietly push one of the old man's boats out into the river and start paddling my way toward Canada.” (50) Here is an example of a time when a character desperately tried to sleep in order to avoid their real world change. While he was not fully asleep, he even mentions the fact that when he was “half awake, half dreaming” he dreamed about doing what he was too afraid to do in real life which was going into Canada. This show that even when one cannot successfully sleep, if they are in a half dream state, they can at least experience part of what they would if they were fully asleep.

In the chapter “Enemies”, soldiers Dave Jensen and Lee Strunk got into a fight. Jensen being larger in size, was victorious and ended up breaking Strunk’s nose. After that event Strunk was always on edge at night while trying to sleep. “At night he had trouble sleeping—a skittish feeling—always on guard, hearing strange noises in the dark, imagining a grenade rolling into his foxhole or the tickle of a knife against his ear.” (63)  While he was never able to successfully go to sleep, this does show what happens when you are awake and worry about the changing world. In this case while he was awake he stressed out always thinking Jensen was waiting to kill him. His attempt at sleeping in order to dream would have proved as a good way of coping if we was able to. It is certain that him being awake made him not able to think about anything other than the possibility of Jensen killing him.

During an interview with Mars Hill Review (MHR), Tim O’brien was asked why  he thought imagining was crucial to him as a soldier and a person. He responded, “Imagination is important in a couple of ways. One way is as a psychological means of escape. If you can lose yourself in a fantasy, then you're no longer trapped in the horror of, say, Vietnam.” Dreaming is when one’s imagination is at its fullest so it would make sense that most of that imagination came from dreaming. In your dreams its much easy to escape reality because its when things seem most real but actually aren’t.

While there are many different ways to cope with the changing world dreaming is one of the most easy and common that provides escape. It gives people the ability to experience the most realistic feeling of places that isn’t real yet can mimic a person’s desire for things to be how they were before the world changed. While people cannot always controls what happens in their dreams, just the hope of them being able to experience their better past life is something for them to look forward to. Without dreaming, many people wouldn’t have something to look forward to in order for them to be in a happy place.

Works Cited for Analytical Essay:

O'Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried: A Work of Fiction. New York: Broadway, 1998. Print.

Sawyer, Scott. "In the Name of Love: An Interview With Tim O'Brien." Mars Hill Review. LeaderU.com (Links to an external site.). Winter/Spring 1996. Web. October 20 2009.

Narrative Essay:

“Nebil are you okay?” my mom would usually ask.

“Yeah, I’m fine. I’m just tired” was my response.

Under the covers of my bed, I was in a place of comfort. I preferred to sleep facing my window, so I wouldn’t be looking at anyone who came in my room. I either stared at something in the room or out of the window before I slept. Sometimes I slept from twelve noon until 8 at night and often times much more erratic sleeping patterns.

Sleeping was my way of coping with something that happened to me, whether it be that I was a mad at my parents or friends or whether I was depressed about something. This time I slept because I was depressed about my grades in class. I used to always be stressed about my grades and thinking they had a big snowball effect on my future. I used to think that if I got a B in Math for even just one quarter my chances of getting into an Ivy League instantly dropped to nothing. Pressure from academics like that always used to get to me. I used to see a lot of my friends getting much better grades than I was, and they were worried about their own future which made me think I should be even more worried about my own. The stress from worrying about my future and classes often times required for me to sleep.

The reason I slept was because when I slept, I didn’t think about anything. I was free from the worries that encompassed me while I was awake. In my dreams I did what I normally did while not thinking about what I would have to when I woke. I guess I like that feeling of being care free or unaware. It relieves me of stress and allows me to enjoy myself. After waking up I am usually much more alive than I was before I slept. I still would keep that feeling of being carefree for a while after I woke up. That is until my friends say something about homework, projects, colleges, and SATs.

Aside from my parents, my friends started to worry about me too. At first on school nights I would usually chat with them on skype. When I went to sleep early because I was angry, stressed, or depressed, they often ask me what’s wrong. “Hey Nebil, what’s wrong?” someone usually says in school when they see my head down.

“Nothing, I’m just not feeling great. I just need some sleep.” was my usual response.

“Okay, hope you feel better?” they could tell I was lying, but it’s not like I would put much effort into it anyway.

My sleeping habits started to become unhealthy. I used to sleep in school very often. In my sophomore year, in almost every History class for the first quarter, I slept through just because I couldn’t stand some of the ignorant comments that were said from across the classroom. It was so bad that it got to the point where the teacher took me out of class and asked why I was sleeping so much. My response was the same to him as well.

My sleeping habits only got worse. I started to sleep in on weekends. Whenever my friends asked me if I  wanted to go with them some where, I would come up with some excuse and tell them that yesterday was rough I wasn’t feeling good. I got too used to dreaming as a way of escape. While initially it seemed harmless, I later realized I was desocializing myself from the world. The few times I didn’t make an excuse and went with them somewhere, I would hear them converse about funny events that I missed because I didn’t go with them the previous time. At first I made nothing of it, but later I realized I asked the question, “What are you guys talking about?” a little too often because I didn’t meet with them as often as I previously did.

I tried to stop myself from sleeping by doing something else to cope with my stress. Eating didn’t work at all because I didn’t like to eat while I was angry, stressed or depressed. While I liked exercising, I was never in the mood to do it for the same reasons I didn’t eat. In the end I just went back to sleeping and pushed the thoughts of my friends, parents, and teachers worrying about me to the back of my head.

One of my friends who I talked to often always told me not to worry about school because I was doing just fine in school. They told me that I was getting all A’s so there was really nothing to worry about. While it was nice that they did that, it was hard to take them seriously because they were doing much better than me in school and much more outside of school to have things to put on their resumé.

Since then, that friend has kept on telling me that I’m at an okay place. Ever since then, I started believing what they said more and more as believed their sincerity. To this day I still do sleep when I’m depressed but I noticed that I sleep less. It’s not because I found a different way to cope with stress, depression, and anger, but now I don’t experience those emotions as often because my friends helped take those emotions off of me. I found out that my friends have become a more important tool for me to deal with an uncomfortably changing world.

Some people conceive creativity to be something that is achieved by being solo or in a group and that competitiveness detests gaining inspiration from rivals. Many people have a mentality that in order to be successful they have to have inspiration that does not come from someone else. There have been many examples to the contrary of that in different fields from literature to science. In the music industry an example would be The Beach Boys and The Beatles. Rather than despising each others' songs and success, The Beach Boys and The Beatles openly used each other for inspiration and creativity.

One of the biggest examples of this reciprocal relationship would be The Beach Boys’ album “Pet Sounds” which was composed soon after The Beatles’ album “Rubber Soul”. The albums both have very slow,peaceful, and innovative music and at their time, were considered to be the greatest albums of all time.  “The album “Pet Sounds (1966) was the Beach Boys‟ response to the Beatles, ‟Rubber Soul”. With the help of the Wrecking Crew and the rest of the Beach Boys members, Brian Wilson produced this album to top the seamless fluidity of songs he heard on Rubber Soul.” (Hui) This shows how The Beach Boys directly took inspiration from The Beatles and incorporated it into their own work. If it weren’t for The Beatles the Beach Boys would not be as successful because they wouldn't have “Rubber Soul” to inspire the production of “Pet Sounds” and bring in the creativity they needed.  When The Beach Boys listened to “Rubber Soul” and were amazed at the fact that the album was innovative in the sense that it did not only have a few hit songs with a couple of b-sides to put it all together. They used The Beatles’ example to make “Pet Sounds”. “Pet Sounds” was voted to be the second best album of all time by Rolling Stone and it topped “Rubber Soul” which was voted as the fifth.

The Beatles were looking for inspiration for their next album which they found in “Pet Sounds”. They used this inspiration to produce their next album, “Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”. “To me the greatest influence on “Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” was The Beach Boys’  record “Pet Sounds”, and I think Brian Wilson was a great genius.” (Paul McCartney) This shows how willing The Beatles were to take inspiration and how creativity and inspiration can come from competition. Without having used The Beach Boys’ for inspiration Sergeant Pepper's would not have been. It was voted as the number one album of all time by Rolling Stone, right over “Pet Sounds”. The Beatles’ ability to not only be able to accept the fact that “Pet Sounds” topped “Rubber Soul”, but also be able to use inspiration from it to make Sergeant Pepper was crucial to their success.

Aside from taking inspiration from albums,The Beatles and The Beach Boys also gave direct feedback towards each other. The lead vocalist of The Beach Boys, Mike Love, was on a trip to India with Paul McCartney. “I was sitting at the breakfast table and McCartney came down with his acoustic guitar and he was playing Back In The USSR, and I told him that what you ought to do is talk about the girls all around Russia, the Ukraine and Georgia.” (Love) McCartney did end up incorporating the advice of Love into the song. The Beatles were very willing to take advice from The Beach Boys on their songs. If McCartney had chosen not to take Love’s advice, then “Back in the USSR” would not nearly be the same. The healthy relationship between the two bands enabled them to be able to take advice from each other in order to become successful.

Blind Spots in Reading

I love to read. I feel like I am obligated to say that as to not make people think I hate reading. Books are a passion of mine that I can’t prevent. It’s almost like an alcohol addiction. I can read a long book, and after finishing I get a book hangover. I read slowly because 1. I can’t read fast and 2. I tend to have better reading comprehension when I read slowly. I am always on Goodreads searching for books that in the same category as the books I read, so I usually don’t go too far out of my comfort zone.

The way I search for books leaves me with a large bias that I am too routine to get out of. I look back to see that it stems from forced school reading. Most books I have had to read in school have forced me towards historical fiction, political allegory, and sci fi. Genres I tend to stay away from include fantasy and biographies because of stereotypes, an unfamiliar writing style for me, and the bad experiences I have had with them.

Wondering to see if I am the only with this kind of bias I asked my friend, Jiwon Choi, questions relating to what kind of literature she had strong opinions about, whether positive or negative. The first question I asked her was, “What kind of books do you like?” which led me to a vague answer. She said, “I like fantasy, sci fi, and just fiction in general,” which  wasn’t getting me anywhere.So to polarize the question I asked her, “What kind of books do you hate with a passion?” in order to get a stronger response. In a very low yet strong voice she said, “I hate plays. I f****** hate plays. I hate Shakespeare with his old english and stuff. I hate poetry and graphic novels as well. I don’t like non-fiction. I can read them if I have to, but I won’t go out to Barnes and Noble to buy them.” That response was a lot more passionate than what I had anticipated for.

From these responses, I was able to discern how she would have developed these biases. When I asked what kind of books she liked she was relatively vague by not telling me much more than the fact that she liked fiction along with fantasy and sci-fi. This confirms a large bias that most teenagers have, which is liking genres that target the teenage audience. The reading level is relatively low which makes it easier to understand. Sci-fi and fantasy almost never come up in school reading, which draws teens towards it, due to the fact that school reading tends to be boring because you have to read a certain amount of pages every night. A lot of the books students have to read in school are for adults which can make some references difficult to understand and because most of the books are old, it hinders our thought of what the setting would have looked like since we have never encountered anything like it. This is one of the biases that is typical amongst teenagers that I don’t believe is as developed in myself as it is in Jiwon and other teenagers. I like books which are targeted towards adults such as 1984 by George Orwell and Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. While I do read some young adult novels such as The Fault in Our Stars by John Green, I don’t believe I have a preference towards these novels like most young adults do.

I got the response a teenager would say when asked, “What kind of books do you hate with a passion?” Jiwon’s response was a great example as she showed great passion by the fierceness in her voice and by cursing. Plays seem to be a common hatred among teens along. This is likely enforced by the large amounts of Shakespeare teens must read in school, whether it be Macbeth, The Taming of the Shrew, or Romeo and Juliet which is the case with Jiwon. She points out how much she hates his old english (which is commonly mistaken as Old English) and implies that the difficulty in understanding the author’s language is what caused her to hate Shakespeare, which in turn has caused her to hate plays in general. I share a similar bias on the plays of Shakespeare as the language makes it hard to understand and turns my attention away from remembering previous events by struggling to understand what is currently happening. Jiwon does show some individualistic taste which is definitely not true by the majority when she says she doesn’t like graphic novels. After she stating her opinion on graphic novels I asked, “Why do you hate graphic novels?” Jiwon said, “I don't like books with pictures. I want to be able to imagine the full book with no drawings. It makes my head hurt to read words while looking at pictures.” This shows her bias that having drawings can ruin imagining the scene when in fact it can enhance one’s imagination. This is the one bias most teenagers don’t have because they would prefer a book with drawings because it would be easier to read and cause less confusion, yet I can see that Jiwon doesn’t want the easy way out and she wants to imagine as much as she can without losing an understanding of the book. Drawings can simply just show you a possibility of what you could imagine. The only graphic novel I have read was Maus by Art Spiegelman. I felt as though it didn’t hinder my imagination, rather it made me imagine more of what the situation in a concentration camp in Nazi Germany would have actually looked like. In short, I believe graphic novels just broaden the imagination as opposed to ruining the experience for it.

After learning the genres she passionately disliked, I asked her,”What book do you hate and why do you hate them?” She said, “I hate The Catcher in the Rye , The Taming of the Shrew , both Invisible Man, all Shakespeare, and The Crucible.” I myself have not read any of these books but as I previously mentioned I have read a Shakespearean play. The fact that she said she hated The Catcher in the Rye piqued my interest because I want to read that book in the near future. I decided to question her about The Catcher in the Rye and not focus on the other books she mentioned. I asked her, “Why do you hate The Catcher in the Rye?” She responded, “The Catcher in the Rye had a lot of curse words. The main character had a negative attitude. I like protagonists as the main character rather than an antagonist.” From what her response was it’s easy to discern is kind of reader that prefers a happy attitude in the main character and for the main character to be protagonist. She dislikes book that have slander and negative atmosphere because Jiwon is a cheery person and her attitude is easily changed by the events in a book she is reading. Schools have enforced that slander in books is bad by forcing students not to use it and and not allowing students to read books with slander. I am the opposite though as I don’t care whether there is slander or not or whether the main character is the antagonist or the protagonist. The character’s attitude is not as important to me as the plot itself is. Although I don’t believe slander makes for a great book, I try to treat it as an unrecognized part of language. Slander is a useful indicator in a book to show when a character is angry, careless, or casual which may be hard to discern without slander.

Yo-Yo Yossarian

(A soldier walks into his tent with anger clearly written all over his face.)

I have had it up to here with this squadron. First they make fun of my name then, Colonel Cathcart won’t let me go home. What’s wrong with him (Pauses shortly) ALL OF THEM!!! I did all of my missions! First there were 55 missions and after that 60 then 70. To believe that everyone else is actually able to stand flying all of those missions is insane! Nately and Orr don’t care. In fact Nately likes it. Orr doesn’t care how many times he gets shot down as long as he gets to fly again. I have to live here in this hellhole until Cathcart finally decides to stop raising missions. These people actually want to stay here in Pianosa when they can easily spend some time with me in Rome and get a few whores to ficky-fick with. I can’t wait till I get to go to that whore house in Rome and ficky-fick all of those whores. Oh I hope Luciana is there with her buxom hips she flaunts around. When I ogle that ass at night I never get bored. That should have made Orr want to accompany me. Even after I offered Orr, he shoots down the offer and calls me by that GODFORSAKEN nickname. ALL OF THEM call me by that name! How can they even?! Do they know their names are just as crazy as mine. I mean there’s Havermeyer, Orr, Dobbs, Chief White Halfoat, Daneeka, Appleby, Clevenger, Aardvark. I mean his name is an animal for crying out loud!! (He sits down and brushes his hand through his hair) I mean it’s not even my  first name. My first name is plain and simple. It’s John. So what if my last name is Yossarian... I’m the best bombardier on Pianosa. I’m gonna kill Cathcart one day for forcing me to stay on this damned island in the middle of World War II! I swear if someone calls me Yo-Yo one more time they better hope they aren’t in the plane with me on any of my missions! You know what they say. I am going to live forever or die in the attempt... And I don’t care who I take down with me as long as no one EVER calls me Yo-Yo instead of Yossarian again! Not even just that but Milo won’t stop trying to sell people chocolate covered cotton! He stole all of our parachutes just to get some silk to trade with for the cotton from Alexandria. He didn’t even tell us and I found out while crashing  into the Mediterranean! I mean what does he want me to do use a handkerchief! When he discovered that cotton wasn’t wanted on the black market he tries to give it to us coated in chocolate and call it a delicacy. On top of that Hungry Joe won’t shut up in the middle of the night with his godforsaken nightmares! (Emphasizes “he”) He’s got his own problems with Halfoat. Next time he screams in the middle of the night he’s gonna get his throat slit. Why is everyone so crazy!! Am I the only sane one here cause I know for sure that I am NOT crazy?! (Pauses and questions himself) Am I?

A Literary Mirror

Language has weaved its way as one of the aspects we look at when defining a person’s character whether that character be real or fictional. Fictional characters have been molded into people that we have generalized today. We have made their qualities extreme in order for them to catch our eye. While these character’s may have language which is exaggerated such as in books like Catch-22. It is made clear that these characters are the reflective of how we generalize people today. Sometimes its people in higher position imposing others to speak toward them in a different way such as in 1984. These generalizations we make towards language in real life affect what we put into books like Catch-22 and 1984 and how we use those books to reveal the actions some people take with language.

An example of how language is judged in fictional literature is in the book Catch-22. The book is set in Pianosa, Italy in the year 1943. The character being mentioned in the quote is a man named John Yossarian who is a man of Assyrian descent fighting on the American’s side. In this scene the colonel is mad at Scheisskopf for something he didn’t do and the colonel is trying to get answers while Yossarian’s name pops up in the conversation. The colonel asked the lieutenant, “Yossarian? Is that his name? Yossarian? What the hell kind of a name is Yossarian?’ Lieutenant Scheisskopf had the facts at his fingertips. "It's Yossarian's name, sir," he explained.” (-Heller pg. 78) This scene shows how easily people are categorized as foreign just because of their name and how the language of which their name is derived from does not sound familiar to us. While generalizing people we subconsciously tend to treat those who are foreign as enemies though it does come through our voice and is easily seen here as the colonel repeats the name several times, as if he is trying to make sure that this strange name is the name of a soldier who is fighting on their side. Also the lieutenant responds in such a safe way as to avoid being punished for saying something to make the colonel upset. His response is short and concise and lacks any descriptive details as he does not want to provoke the colonel any more than he seems to be. What the author is trying to portray with this scene is that we tend to see foreign names and foreign languages as a way to generalize people as a bad or good person. In reality a person has no authority or possible way to change the name they were born with. He does this while also showing us the people in lower ranks in society tend to respond much more formally and without adding details that are not asked for by their peers.

Another example of how literature is reflective of our view on language is seen in the book 1984. In the book a variation of English called Newspeak is founded. The reason for the implementation of Newspeak in the fictional society is to shorten the amount of words in our vocabulary by omitting synonyms and antonyms while replacing them with prefixes. In this scene, Winston Smith, the main character, said, “Every concept that can ever be needed will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten.” (-Orwell pg. 23) This quote is highly reflective on how the government tries to limit what bad things we can say about them. In the book the worst thing one can say about the government in Newspeak is, “Government ungood.” In which case you would have to explain why you believe such but you don’t have the vocabulary to do so. This is an extreme example reflective of how our society manipulates people to follow their language which in this case is consciously done by the government. The quote shows that there is an overuse of several words and everyone sounds generic in relation to each other in the book. While this does reflect what was currently happening in the book when the book was written it was not reflecting of language in reality. It was reflective of how the government limits people in every way of slandering the government, such as in literature. In this case, language is used because, it is the way to get at the core of the problem.

Another example is from a scene with a woman in Catch-22. The scene takes place in Rome when Yossarian is off duty at a nightclub and he sees a girl named Luciana sitting at a table alone by herself after some drunken soldiers left her alone there. Speaking to Yossarian she says, “All right, I'll dance with you,' she said, before Yossarian could even speak. 'But I won't let you sleep with me.' 'Who asked you?' Yossarian asked her. 'You don't want to sleep with me?' she exclaimed with surprise. 'I don't want to dance with you.' (-Heller pg. 153) This quote shows how we reflect the way opposite genders interact in real life with language in fiction. The language she chooses when speaking to him is to make herself seem not as inferior as she is trying to make herself seem better than what the situation would make one think considering she is alone at the table. Also she thinks she can predict what he is thinking and shows that when she says she won’t sleep with him because, she feels as though men are predictable. Yossarian’s response is that of a typical man trying to keep dominance of the situation and is not trying to be strung along by Luciana. She obviously predicted wrong of what Yossarian was thinking since he says he doesn’t want to dance with her and she is shocked at his response. He does not outright say he does not want to sleep with her because, he sees an opportunity at sex and since he is in the army, he has not had any sex for a long time. The conversation is of course an exaggeration of what a usual conversation between a man and woman at a night club would look like in the 40’s but, what Heller is portraying is how genders tend to believe they can take advantage of each other and know what the other gender is thinking. They use language as a way to test if that is true or not by either being blatant like Luciana or somewhat subtle like Yossarian.

Language will always be a key aspect in reality and in fiction when defining a someone’s character. Generalized characters in fiction will always be a reflection of how we interpret individual languages and styles of language. It can be seen in books like Catch-22 where people make assumptions on other by language or show those assumptions with language such as we do in reality. It could be like in books such as 1984, where language is imposed on people and all people sound the same which is reflective of how government wants to prevent speech against them. In any case authors feel the need to put reality into fiction so that we can realize the generalizations we make and how wrong they may be.

Works Cited

Heller, Joseph, Christopher Buckley, and Jonathan R. Eller. Catch-22. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011. Print.

Orwell, George, and Erich Fromm. 1984: A Novel. New York, NY: Signet Classic, 1984. Print.