Author: Brendan

Brendan Gonzalez Optional Hw Prompt/ Virtual Coffeehouse

Brendan Gonzalez 

Virtual Coffeehouse 

Optional Prompt- Sports being missed 

With this whole pandemic going on at this time many people have something in common, we’re all missing sports around this time the NBA playoffs are going on, baseball is being played mostly all sports are being played but in this moment nothing is being played sadly. I enjoy sitting down on the couch and watching the NBA playoffs going on with all my friends eating wings but that cant happen this time around or going to Yankee stadium with my cousins and watch them kill teams and I’m more upset because Yankees have an amazing team this year and they’re not playing. I also enjoy playing basketball at the park, running full court games for a couple of hours making my boy feel great getting all that sweat out and waking up a little sore the next day. Hopefully during the summer things can go back to normal so I could enjoy my time the way I usually do playing and watching sports.

Brendan Gonzalez Virtual Coffeehouse April 27th

Brendan Gonzalez 

Virtual Coffeehouse 

April 27th 

One problem that I have been dealing with is deciding what major to pick I started the year with as a business major but I took a marketing class and I did not enjoy it at all so right after that class I switched to a liberal arts major. I don’t really have a idea as to what I would like to do at all and I want to know but this decision is a big one kinda shaping up my future for me. I don’t want to pick a major then my senior year I wake up one day and decide I don’t enjoy it anymore so I need to think long and hard what I want for my future because I don’t want a bachelors degree in liberal arts. 

Virtual Coffeehouse Brendan Gonzalez March 27th

Brendan Gonzalez 

Virtual coffeehouse 

March, 27th 

“Doing school”

“Doing life”

Some of the challenges I’m facing right now in “doing school” are just remembering to do my homework’s and doing them on time, sometimes ill just forget to do it. Its very easy to forget now in days because everything is online and its super easy to just forget with your other classes going on and also not being able to see your professors in person makes it harder because if you have a question you gotta email them and that just takes more time than asking them during class hours and getting a direct answer face to face. Some challenges I’m facing in “Doing life” is the simple things like not being able to just go out and hang out with friends and family whenever I want, I’m outside very often since the nice weather came back we cant even have BBQ’s which my family have very often. Another thing is I forget my mask very often which is super annoying ill leave my house and notice I don’t have a mask and I gotta run right back upstairs to put a mask on. Today’s world is very hard for many people but hopefully it’ll get better with time.   

Brendan Gonzalez

Essay 2-3 Page Draft

Jaswinders jobs main focus is to inspect and assess peoples stories and documents on a professional level making sure both sides are legit without any bumps in the road. Jaswinder is great at what she does as a professional her work ethic is amazing. The most important thing to notice throughout Tony Parsons short story,  Jaswinder didn’t let anything get by her any passenger that had something relatively odd she notice and pulled to the side like the women with forged documents or the man who was smuggling drugs through the airport. The main part of the story that really shows Jaswinders eye and feel for something wrong with somebody when it comes to work is. Page( 46) when the man in black came up to her at the table and her inner alarm went off quickly telling her something was wrong with the passport , she put him to the side when she went to confirm with another worker she was correct but another problem came up again with the same man in the black T-shirt he ended up being a drug smuggler as well

Jaswinder goes against the typical stereotype of a female or the feminist ethic , “traditional ethics views as trivial”. Jazz is great at what she does and doesn’t let anything get in her way or head for being in a male dominate job according to “Politico.com” enforcement jobs; today, women represent just 15 percent”, throughout the story Jaswinder shows why she belongs at the job even though its a male dominated line of work but Jaswinder shows exactly why she should be there, on page 54 she was put to the test and put in a situation,” He was a foot taller and twice her weight, don’t make me take you down. He laughed at that but when he tried to push past her she slipped one leg behind him and shoved his chest hard with the palms of her hand. He fell backwards and went down fast and heavy”, Jazz was underestimated because she’s a women going up against a man who thought he could over power her because he was bigger than she was but she didn’t let that intimidate her Jazz displayed bravery. 

Ethics chapter 12, section 3 problems with feminist ethics “Problems With This Theory” (qcc.Cuny.edu) Section 3. Problem five states “The theory ultimately disempowers women.  While women act based on caring non-females can act based on rights and duties or utility or some other basic principle and avoid dealing with women because theirs is not an ethic of rights or duties and thus they need not be afforded such.” Jaswinder doesn’t base anything on caring but stays to the code of honor to the job protecting the people and the UK to the best she possibly can, even though Jazz showed the Megan sympathy and care towards the end on page 60 giving her advice about a man, “Listen, Jazz said listen to me Megan it keeps it does if it’s real it doesn’t just fade away overnight.” Jazz showed feelings some would say because she’s a female others will say she was just being nice but regardless Jazz stood by what was right and her duties as an officer and Megan got sent back from where she came from. This could be a cause of why only 15 percent of enforcement officers are female because they think that females go by feelings and care and not duty. 

First Page Brendan Gonzalez

Brendan Gonzalez 

Professor Scanlan 

In the short story “Say Hello, Wave Goodbye” by Tony Parsons jaswinder the main character who is a UK immigration officer who depends on her intuition and eyes, Jazz’s main objective is protecting the UK and the people who live there if she lets the wrong person through that could cost. Although Jazz makes her decisions on questions and answers it also could be based off looks gender and race along with other traits.

Rosemary P Carbine article “Religious studies classrooms as counterpublic spaces: a feminist theological and theatrical perspective”, the first paragraph speaks on the terms of race, gender ….. (etc) and class in civil society “U.S. public life fails to realize its egalitarian(believing in the principle that all people are equal) vision of communicative practices in civil society; instead, it operates in exclusionary ways with roots in race, gender, class, ethnic, religious, and other social constructs”, I will go over the connection of Jaswinder as a immigration officer and Rosemary’s article, first ill show Jaswinder in her story and how she dealt with people through the course of the story in different situation and second go over the article I picked and relate the two. 

Brendan Gonzalez Research Prospectus

Brendan Gonzalez 

Professor Scanlan 

Research Prospectus 

The story I decided on is “Say Hello, Wave Goodbye” by Tony Parsons one of the main reasons I picked this story is because its at an airport and I find airports to be fun and going different places. 

The summary of this story is about a immigration officer in the Uk named Jaswinder Smith who interacts with people entering the UK and making sure they’re there for the right reasons, something she might do is ask questions about your visit and see how you respond just to make sure everything sounds right and if it does she’ll let you be on your way but if it doesn’t add up you won’t, she’ll put you on the side in a room and you’ll need to wait until further notice. 

Main characters- Jaswinder/Jazz and the people she interacts with 

Jazz is good at making decisions on the spot maybe even under pressure when it comes to letting people in the UK. The people she runs into are all different types of people. 

Some ethics Jazz follows are responsibility, choice, principles,honor. Jazz follows those ethics because of her job and they depend on her to follow those for the safety of the UK and the people.

Virtual Coffeehouse Brendan Gonzalez

Brendan Gonzalez 

Virtual coffeehouse 

Professor Scanlan 

                                               Learning/Creative Outlet 

Something I have gotten into as a learning outlet since this all started is I invested in stocks on an app called robin-hood. I found this to be cool because its good to know about stocks and read on them this also could bring you another source of income at times, even though you aren’t guaranteed a profit its a chance worth taking so far the stocks I invested money in are all bringing me profit not a ton but I only put a small amount of money into the stocks I mainly put my money in oil, oil stocks are extremely low right now since all this has started. Eventually I would like to really get into investing and make money from investing but that is going to take a lot of time until I understand it 100%. Also another creative outlet is working out it helps my mood since I can’t really go outside and hangout or play basketball and it also makes my body feel good . I wish the gyms were open my workouts would be way better then my workouts but for now it will do the gym. 

Final Draft Exp Brendan Gonzalez

Brendan Gonzalez

 Poetry Explication

 Professor Scanlan

                                                     The Road Not Taken 

In the poem “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost the speaker goes right into decision making, choosing a road. As you read this poem Frost gives you the feeling of deciding between two ways to go in life which could be very hard thing to do for anybody. Going down the wrong road could literally cost you a life time and that’s something you can’t get back no matter what and you’ll only get to look back down that road and reminisce on why you took that certain road and don’t regret it or be upset with it because you can’t go back on that decision that’s life. Frost does a great job at giving you a feeling of the roads that were walked on by others but most importantly he really paints a picture in your head of the roads and what it would look like, “ two roads diverged in a yellow wood” I feel everybody sees that picture right away and it pops up in your head vividly on what it may look like. 

The two lines I decided to explicate from “The Road Not Taken” are in the last stanza the first two lines, “I shall be telling this with a sigh” and “Somewhere ages and ages hence”. The reason I decided on these two lines are one, I feel line one is a feeling of regret “I shall be telling this with a sigh” when you see the word sigh or someone sign two ideas comes to mind. One, a sigh of sadness and that’s what came to my mind first before anything else when I’m sad or have something on my mind I’ll let a sigh out in this case his sigh sounds like regret he’s going to tell you this with a sigh of regret. The second way you can take this sigh could be a sigh of relief a chance to look back on the decision made and be happy it went the way it did down the road. You can take it either way you want both ideas are good ideas to go with. Line two “Somewhere ages and ages hence” when he say this line I see someone down the line looking back at everything years from when that big decision was mad to take either road going left or right and really stick to it and walk down that path and reflect on how it went for you. 

Within our lives we will need to make a choice that you’ll probably only get to make once and it’s up to you to look down that each road left and right to see which one will do you best down in life. Once that choice is made and you walked that path for a while we will all look back and see how it went for us many will have that sigh of relief and be proud of that choice, while many are going to have that sigh of sadness and regret it all years down the line and all you’ll be able to do is look back and regret.

Journal 6 Brendan Gonzalez

Brendan Gonzalez 

Professor Scanlan 

Journal 6 

April 26, 2020 

“Say Hello, Wave Goodbye” by Tony Parsons is a short story about an immigration officer in the UK named Jaswinder  Smith but she goes by the name Jazz in the story. Jazz interacts with people traveling to the UK and reasons for their travels making sure it’s legit and with the right intentions and if the intentions aren’t right she holds them and they get asked to move to the side.  Out the five short stories I decided to pick this story because it caught my attention a little more than the others and the one main reason why is because I enjoy airports and traveling around. The main character is Jazz this story is mainly wrapped around her and her gut feelings on people that come up to her and  making the right decisions on permitting them into the UK and it’s also about how she interacts with everyone in certain situations Jazz shows sympathy for example with the girl Megan, Jazz sent her back but Jazz wasn’t rude she guy the girl hope because she was down “ just trust me on this one if he loves you, and if it’s meant to be, then he’ll wait okay?”. Jazz showed feelings towards her and I feel it’s a big part of her job dealing with people in certain situations and what vibe to give off with different people. Jazz had another situation when she had to use some type of force with a man bigger than her and actually took him down so knowing the type of attitude to give is a huge part of Jazz and her daily duty’s on the job of being a immigration officer for the UK.  

Brendan’s Virtual Coffeehouse/ Two paragraphs

While being quarantined you have a lot of time on your hands to do things within your house but for the last two weeks I haven’t really done anything different before everything shut down I was going to the gym and now since it’s closed I brought the gym to my house. I have a pull up bar that I use,  I also have a medicine ball that I could use to workout my legs. I enjoy working out because it could put you in a better mode and with being home all day with nothing to do that could put a dent in your mood staying home every single day. 

     Something else that I’ve been doing is listening to new music that has been releasing one main album that I really been listening to is Tory Lanez’s album The New Toronto 3. I enjoy listening to Tory he’s very divers with his songs he could always switch it up he goes from reggae, rap, trap, and even has a spanish song. I feel his music could put you in all types of moods which I like because the music is giving you a feeling which to me means you’re enjoying it. Hopefully within the next two more weeks I have a new activity to take my mind off the next month of quarantine.Â