The weekly bonus opportunity will be posted here. You can earn up to 10 bonuses. You can use these bonuses in the following way:
- 1% added to the end of the semester
- 24-hour extension on blogs/essays
- Void one absences
Each week I will post something that I think says something interesting (an article, an essay, a media clip) and I will ask you to respond to it using an essay format.
To get the points, you must post your bonus on the class discussion forum "Bonus Blog"
What I expect from your answers:
- 500 words or more--if you have fewer than this, you will receive 0 points
- A thesis (which breaks down to a what and a why)
- What are you arguing against and why
- What is your reaction to this and why
- What parts of the argument are wrong and why
- Supporting points
- 2 quotes (when possible)
We will go over these expectations in class. If you have questions or need to talk about any of the bonus prompts, feel free to email me or meet with me.
Bonus 7: Thanksgiving
A while ago, I went to a history department hosted speech from a famous professor on anti-semitism. She said that we should no longer be polite dinner guests. When someone says something offensive at the dinner table, we should not just politely ignore it. We should speak up and say something.
At Thanksgiving, I'm not allowed to do that. Between my crazy Uncle Terry and my sister's husband, I'm "triggered" often. Mostly they just say stuff that is just stupid but not offensive. I'm just the teacher type that feels like I should correct them. But this year, my Uncle took the cake. He will qualify for Medicaid next year and my mom (a nurse and a hospital biller) told him he should get both parts (the free and costly part) because if he gets seriously sick or hurt, he will need both to keep out of debt. He said if he got in that situation, he would just rob a bank (by threatening to stab a kitten no less) and go to prison where he would get government-paid healthcare. I told him he would get stabbed. He said, "No I won't." I bit my tongue on my petty and childish retort of "Yes you will. You're weird." This is actually good for him. In the past, he has argued that the government has been stealing people and replacing them with Chinese people for years. Don't ask me why because I have no idea. Although, I just remembered he did say something about selling the body parts of fetuses and something about the nazis in the current UN. Luckily I was in the kitchen and my sister handled that conversation.
So what would you do in this situation? When do you speak up and when do you stay silent? The image below is my opinion on the situation:
Alternately, what is your Thanksgiving like? Do you have specific traditions? Do you celebrate it? Do you or your family spend days in the kitchen making homemade noodles (which is something I didn't realize was weird until I went to college) and bread and pie and all sorts of things, or do you order out and spend time together some other way?
Bonus 8: Christmas
Whether you celebrate Christmas or not, everyone has to deal with it in the public sphere. Christmas decorations sneak into stores before Halloween and the lights show up on houses and businesses before Thanksgiving. Christmas music drives employees mad long before the 25th. What is your reaction to this? Should we hold off on all this? What would cause this change? (PS: Most of our Christmas traditions come from either Prince Albert or Charles Dickens)
Bonus 9: Black Friday
It seems like the days of riots over TVs and dolls are mostly a thing of the past and other countries are now doing Black Friday. However, the deals seem to start early and last longer. What is your opinion on Black Friday? Some families do it together. Some people see that it separates families. Are there still good deals? What would have to be on sale (and for how much) for you to brave the crowds? The nearest Walmart to my hometown is 30 miles away, but my dad still sneaks out to buy stuff, but he is a shopaholic.
Bonus 10: Protests
Right now, it seems like every other country is undergoing some kind of revolution or the people are protesting for something. Some, like Greta Thunberg, have been peaceful. Others, like the Hong Kong one, has been brutal and has even spilled into USA company politics.
What do you think it would take for our people to protest en mass this way? To leave school and work for a cause?
Bonus 11: Power of Names
Do names have power? I was named Nicole Elizabeth Casady--but that doesn't feel like me. She is someone who has her shit together. When I was in trouble, my mom would yell Niki Nicole Elizabeth or just Niki Nicole. This feels more like me. Odd and non-standard.
I don't know how people can change their names. Teaching myself to answer to something else would be impossible for me. Have you ever changed your name? Or tried to change it? I feel for people who have nicknames or names they hate.
But names seem to hold power. Growing up, I read a lot of fantasy novels and, before Harry Potter entered the scene, a lot of the magic had to do with knowing the True Name of an item. If you knew its True Name, you could control it. This is where the power of spells come from. Knowing your True Name was also important and you had to go on a quest to find it. Once you found it, you became more powerful. If someone else knew your True Name, they could control you. Do you believe in this kind of power of words?
Also, I've noticed that sometimes names match a person's interest. I had a middle school science teacher named Mr. Space. I knew a person into eco-friendly stuff named Terra. However, I've never known a person named Angel (or any derivative of it) who was just super sweet. They have all had a naughty streak. When I was young, I thought that because my middle name was Elizabeth, I was related to Queen Elizabeth II and I've grown up loving all things British. (I was not a smart child.)
What do you think?
Bonus 12: Has the year been what you wanted it to be?
It seems like this year has been tough on a lot of people. Are you proud, happy, or pleased with the way you dealt with this year? Are you going to do something different next year? What do you hope for this next year?
Some people say that there is higher anxiety at the end of things. This was the case at the fin de siècle (a fancy way of saying the end of the century) for the Victorians. They were seeing the end of the 18th century and saying hello to the 19th at a time where everything was changing. We saw that again with the Y2K crisis as 2000 came about. Are we entering a mini-crisis as we enter the '20s--a time we associate with prohibition and crime and the Great Depression?
I leave you with this:
Bonus 13: What did you think of Dracula and the Victorians in general?
I just re-listened to the audiobook of 'Salem's Lot by Stephen King and in his prologue (although an afterword in the ebook) talked about how he read it as a kid and then reread it as a high school teacher. He worried that rereading it as an adult would make it smaller. I didn't quite understand it until I reread my favorite vampire book from middle school--Demon in My View. Read a bit of it for free on Amazon's "look inside" option and you will see how small that book looks now that I'm no longer 11. But King said that Dracula got bigger as he reread it. To be honest, it isn't my favorite. I love what it did for the genre, but I can't stand the letter format.
What was your reaction to this classic text? Did you already know about Dracula? How did this change your thoughts on Vampires?
And how did this class change your ideas about Victorian culture? Do you think the media represents it accurately?
Bonus 14: 'Salem's Lot vs Dracula
The linked document has Lucy's/Susan's death and Dracula's/Barlow's death. What do you think inspired the changes? Do you think King stays true to the original? Which do you prefer?
Some background: You might need to know the change in characters.
- Ben Mears--a writer who has come back to his childhood home to face his demons.
- John Harker and Arther Holmewood
- Matt Burke--a beloved, old, high school English teacher who researches Vamp myths
- Mentioned by two of the characters that he reminds them of Van Hellsing
- Jimmy Cody--local doctor and former student of Burke
- Dr. Seward in profession only (and I guess a bit about he wanted to scientifically prove the vampire theory)
- Father Callahan--Catholic priest who believes in the old God and that the wafer is the Host and not just bread. Also an alcoholic.
- Not any, really, except maybe one of Van Hellsing's personalities.
- Mark Petrie--a kid (middle school age) obsessed with monsters and learns the truth and confronts the main vamp early and escapes
- Quincey Morris maybe--in gumption and novelty
- Susan Nortan--falls in love with Ben, parents not happy, old boyfriend not happy
- Combo of Mina and Lucy. She helps with the very early investigation, before confronting the main vamp despite not believing in him and getting eaten.
Goals often do not work for me as well as I’d wish they would. I also have that same problem of ‘tomorrow’ or ‘next week’ when needing to act on the goals that I create. The same as many people those consist of eating healthier, going to the gym, getting in bed earlier and so on. I regularly keep my school goals as I do stay very organized with a planner and have a daily to-do list to be sure I get all my homework done. Making goals for myself are harder to accomplish sadly. The goals I have already made but not doing great at keeping up on are truly simple (which is why it frustrates me so much that I am not accomplishing them as I wish). The first goal I have is to start working out at least 3 times a week, when initially my goal was to go everyday. I soon realized with all the priorities in my life, it was not realistic. So now I want to go just a few times to work myself up to that. I do believe breaking a goal down into smaller parts or into steps, it will increase the success rate. Another goal is to be on a strong schedule with having time to myself to read, do a fask mask, watch netflix or write in a journal every night. I know that I need some more me-time because I have been spreading myself a bit thin through jobs and school and friends. At first I wanted to start meal planning and watching my calories/carbs intake and such but for now my goal is to just start being more conscious about what I eat and choose a healthier option. Especially when making so many goals at once, it is hard to live exactly to each of them. Instead of changing all aspects of your life at once, it is more beneficial to start off slow and reach smaller goals while working work to the larger ones. I know I will feel that much more accomplished when I get to those long-term goals and be able to expand on those. I also want to start waking up early every day, which now I am only waking up early on the days that I NEED to. But I want to start waking up early because I WANT to and get my day started. Which I believe that goal will come along after following through with getting in bed early and having that nighttime routine in place. Sometimes that happens, you cannot accomplish one goal until another one is fulfilled, which could be my biggest problem right there. It takes dedication and motivation within myself to do those things. I will hold myself to these goals and then continue to reach for higher ones. At the end of the semester I am sure that I will have adapted a daily routine that makes me feel accomplished and better about how my days are spent. But the biggest reason is to help me feel healthier and happy within my own body, which isn’t why we make most of our personal goals anyway?
ReplyDeleteThe garish optimism of the self-help industry and the vapid advice of slushy web articles often seem frustratingly out of touch with reality. People who resonate with this kind of advice are often already at crucial junctures in their lives which . Others profoundly value professional or personal success and pursue self-improvement not as a hobby, but as a way of life. But let's face it- not everybody shares this heartfelt drive to do better. In fact, that kind of single-minded devotion isn't necessarily healthy because it comes at a cost and our enthusiasm can leave us blind to those caveats until the house of cards that compensates for our insecurities finally collapses under its own weight. For the vast majority of people that consume these media, even small changes in behavior and cognition prove unsustainable in the long run. This failure makes them feel deficient until they find a new self-help book to promise lasting change. Hey, maybe it will work this time!
ReplyDeleteWhere do these good intentions go so wrong? Inspiration that leaps from the pages of a book is difficult to keep alive and, ultimately, hampers the process of learning to motivate ourselves by offering unearned direction. There is no clever string of words that can bring about lasting change in another person. Meaning and motivation is something that we find within ourselves by self-examining and taking inventory of our values and desires. When we ask the big questions like, "Who am I?" and "What do I want?" we become conscious of our more intimate inner workings and begin to reconcile our disparate instincts with our more sober intentions. When we trust glib or impersonal advice to guide us instead of relying on our own instincts, we undermine the confidence and self-worth that otherwise empowers us to make meaningful changes in our lives.
To facilitate this process it is best to refrain from discussing your goals and intentions with others. Doing so is unhelpful firstly because the validation you seek needs to come from yourself. You need to learn to reward yourself for positive behavior, not rely on the approval of others. Secondly, talking about a goal before it comes to fruition can give you premature satisfaction and undermine the motivation that you might otherwise harness in its pursuit. Thirdly, while it may seem like a good idea to have the judgment of others as a potential consequence for failure, this ultimately serves to discourage you when you struggle and invigorates your insecurities when you need to believe in yourself.
It is also important to be kind to yourself, if occasionally firm. Realize that if we examine the contrast between ourselves and an ideal, then we define ourselves in opposition to it and strengthen a mindset that rewards self-inflicted victimhood and blame. The more we try to become someone or something we do not perceive as ourselves, the more we reinforce our perception of ourselves as inherently deficient. So return to your five year-old self and make believe that you are the person you want to be. Don't just walk around in the shoes of the coolest teacher or the best parent or the prettiest princess in all the land, own it. Let the boundary between play and real life melt away. You are that person.
I've heard it said that art is a lie that tells the truth. Find the truth in this lie. Find yourself in the person you want to be.