Monthly Archives: February 2015

Homework, Week 1

Response to “The Story of an Hour” / “Jury of Her Peers”

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Kate Chopin’s, “The Story of an Hour” (1894) is about the reaction of a wife who is informed of a train accident that her husband supposedly died from. Mrs. Mallard, the protagonist of the story is informed of the news and like any typical wife would do, she burst into tears. The question is, is she crying in sorrow or crying in joy. It was revealed on the second page that she “loved him sometimes. Often she had not” which implies that she really didn’t love him at all. Mrs. Mallard appears to be in a different world at this point, staring blankly into the blue sky thinking about how things would be without him. Blood was warming her up as she recited “free, free, free!” In other words, she was really relieved the incident happened and knowing that her husband is gone, she is able to break free from the constraints her husband placed on her. However in the end, that vision of freedom was short lived. Upon the arrival of Mr.Mallard who was clueless of the accident, Mrs. Mallard’s joy fired back at her causing her to die from a heart attack which was “the joy that kills”.

Susan Glaspell’s, “A Jury of Her Peers” (1882), in a short summary is about an incident relating to the death of Mr. Wright and how Mrs. Wright can possibly be connected to it. Pretty much, Mrs. Wright wasn’t all that fond of her marriage. There was lots of evidence of a problem in their relationship. The investigators of the case, the Hales and the Peters were the ones who noticed signs of abuse and distress against Mrs. Wright. Based on the evidence found, it was concluded that  Mrs. Wright did in fact killed her husband.

Both stories were made in the same timeline and can be related to how things are handled in this timeline. To be honest, in both stories, I think anyone can understand why each wife would think of their husbands that way. If the relationship goes to the point where one spouse resents the other, I think anyone would feel that way. This is why both stories can be related to how things are handled now. Setting in both stories play an important role because it pretty much brings us, the reader into the story. From “The Story of an Hour”, we are brought into the scenery and we can imagine how things look like. From “A Jury of Her Peers”, we are brought into the crime scene and we can picture how things appeared. In the end, I guess these examples are the other end results of an unhealthy relationship.

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Introductions, Uncategorized

A Small Section Of My Life

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Hey class. I’m not as motivated as the next guy to add too much personal information while knowing this can be publicly viewed, but as far as the things you should know goes. My name is Gavin Young, I was born Brooklyn, N.Y. but raised in Jamaica, W.I. While growing up in Jamaica I acquired my education from Meadowbrook Prep, the equivalent of an elementary school in the United States. I was well disciplined and well behaved while being raised in a family with strong religious beliefs. On my journey throughout the years as a youth I got drawn to many passions which involved Astronomy, Engineering, and ideas of futuristic innovations. This was mainly caused by the exposure to many of my family’s professions and the sharing of thoughts of future goals with the kids in the neighborhood. In the case of my family, I can say it is fairly large with relatives scattered across various countries but as far as close siblings goes, I was raised with my only sister on my mother’s side.

After graduating Meadowbrook, I left Jamaica to expand on my education in the United States where I started Middle School. While there I experience another world that seemed much simpler than the one I knew before. With this perception of my new environment, I excelled academically and later moved on to High School. In the Brooklyn Academy of Science and the Environment High School, also known as BASE, I faced new challenges that pushed me to realize that anything can be done with effort and critical thinking. I later joined a class called Science Research where I was mentored and pushed to write tedious papers which also required a research paper due at the end of my senior year. My research paper was based on religious and superstition while analyzing their correlations. The option to stop was given each year of course, but where is the lesson in giving up? This class later gave me skills I would not have acquired otherwise and I’m grateful I made the choice to stay. With that being said, I view this particular class as my most important decision and high school experience.

Graduating High School gave me a great feeling of accomplishment. Even though I stumbled on many bumps along the way, it was a great experience nonetheless. Even so, I still felt empty inside because I was a part of an environmental school when my passions demanded tech, science and discovery. What made this feeling even more noticeable was my hobbies, which involved countless hours of watching Science programs, Reading Science based book (I recommend reading The Forever War by Joe Haldeman, it shows many possibilities of human innovation that I find fascinating and plausible) and keeping up with tech and scientific breakthroughs while I was stuck checking Ph. levels. My passions which have been manifesting in my mind since I was a young child finally drove me to apply to a college with a strong tech program but convenient enough where I could still be home (Brooklyn). I was later enrolled as a student of The New York City College of Technology, where I currently study Computer Engineering Technology and also where I started my new journey. To be continue…

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Homework, Week 1

My Thoughts on “The Story of an Hour” and “A Jury of Her Peers”

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In “The Story of an Hour,” when Mrs. Mallard hears the tragic news of her husband getting “killed” in the railroad disaster, she is devastated (p.2). She realizes that she is a widow and her husband is no longer with her. She also sees that she has “no one to live for during the coming years and that she would live for herself’ (p.10). Mrs. Mallard was living for her husband. Every moment of her life was a reflection of Mr. Mallard because she put her hope, trust, faith, and life in Mr. Mallard. And when I state “reflection,” I mean Mrs. Mallard represented her husband. When a man marries a woman, their soul, mind, and body are glued together, representing them as one person. So, when she heard that husband passed away, it was as if her life crumbled apart. She no longer had no reason to live when the person that was her everything or her life was dead. “There would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature,” meaning that there would be no motivation for Mrs. Mallard to cook, eat, or etc. when all those things were being done for her husband (p.10). So, I believe this led her to having heart problems. Also, she could have mourned for her husband and make the decision to continue living her life. However, Mrs. Mallard had her identity as a wife to Mr. Mallard. When his death came, she lost her identity, making her lose her will to live, which ultimately led her to dying of “heart disease” (p.20).

In “A Jury of Her Peers,” Mrs. Wright (Minnie Foster) the once “lively choirgirl that sang in the choir and wore pretty clothes,” was no longer lively (Page 268, p.1). Mrs. Wright marriage to her husband made her bound or chained to not doing the things she loved to do, which was singing. Although, Mr. Wright was seen as a “good man in town” (Page 274 p.6), “he was a hard man” (Page 274 p.8). “Just to spend the time of day with him was like a raw wind that got to the bone” (Page 274 p.8). Also, their home “never seemed a very cheerful place” (Page 265 p.7). Therefore, Mrs. Wright was living under constant anxiety. Her “nervousness” was exhibited by the strange way of her sewing her quilt (Page 272) and her untidy kitchen (Page 266). Also, Mrs. Wright probably was living in fear of what her husband was going to do or say to her, so she lived in silence, except for her pet bird that sang to her (Page 277 p.8). However, Mr. Wright silenced the bird by killing it. After the bird’s death, I think Mrs. Wright had enough of being silent and wanted to be free. So, Mrs. Wright killed her husband in order to gain freedom from the 20 years of being oppressed by her husband.

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Week 1

Story of an Hour/Jury of her Peers

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In Jury of Her Peers, the conversations of Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters provide us with a picture of Mrs. Wright in her younger years. We see a beautiful young women with a wonderful voice.  That women is in stark contrast to the women Mr. Hale walked in on that morning, a women living with worn out clothing, in a lonesome house, with no children, and once again, no pets. After all those years, when she finally had something that gave her joy, only to see her husband take that away from her as well, it is very easy to validate her actions. In a way, her husband took her life before she took his.

The Story of An Hour begins with a frail woman receiving terrible news.  As the story progresses we see what this news meant to her, a chance to be free, a chance to live. After living for someone she didn’t love for so long, and to be given another chance at freedom, I would say her thoughts toward her “late” husband are completely acceptable.

Both stories are set in the same time period, a time when women were seen as housekeepers, and are there to serve their husbands, and raise children. I think the attorney saying  “But would the women know a clue if they did come upon it?” is a great example of the general attitude toward women at the time. Although in today’s day and age the attitude toward women has changed, both stories are still very relevant. There are many people trapped in loveless and abusive relationships, and it would be easy enough to adapt the story to present day.

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Homework Instructions, Week 1

Blogging on “The Story of an Hour” and “A Jury of Her Peers”

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Now that you have had the opportunity to read Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” and Susan Glaspell’s “A Jury of Her Peers” and to discuss them with classmates via our course blog, your homework is to think further about them in your own blog post. This post should follow our course’s blogging guidelines, and should draw on one or two quotations as the main focus of your post to convey an argument about some aspect of the texts. The post can touch on points that you or others made in the discussion, provided you cite them AND that you take any of those ideas further. Your goal is to provide analysis of the specific passage or passages you have chosen to focus on, and to show how it exemplifies a larger argument about the text or texts.

This is going to be the format for our homework blog posts for the next few weeks, so you will begin developing these skills here.

Some things you might want to think about:

  • How do you judge the protagonists for their thoughts about/actions against their husbands? Do you judge them differently?
  • How do other characters and the narrators influence our understanding of the protagonists?
  • To what extent does setting play a role in the women’s stories?
  • To what extent are these stories dated, or are they as relevant as if they were written today? What difference does that make for you reading them now, in 2015?

Remember to categorize your post with Week 1, and to use any tags you think are relevant (except Homework Assignment, which I’m using for these weekly instruction posts)–or add your own tags. If you neglect to categorize your post, I will not find it and will not be able to count it.

These posts will guide our discussion on Wednesday. Please post them by the end of Tuesday night so we have the chance to read them and come to class prepared.

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Introductions

Now it’s my turn to introduce myself

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Hopefully you’ve gotten to know me a little bit just from our first class and from the syllabus and other materials on this site–our writing style says a lot about us–but allow me to introduce myself more fully. I’m a native New Yorker, and have lived in three of the five boroughs. I’m an assistant professor in the English Department at City Tech, with a Ph.D. in English and a certificate in Women’s Studies from the CUNY Graduate Center in midtown Manhattan. My undergraduate degree from Brown University is in both English and Biology. As a college student, this combination often confused people, and they would ask “What are you going to do, write science textbooks?” No, that was never an interest of mine. I do use a lot of science terminology and metaphors in my writing, both in my creative writing and in my scholarly work.

Here at City Tech, I’m involved in a number of interesting projects. I won’t list them all, but I’m currently one of the OpenLab co-directors, and am conducting research on interactive technology use in education. My scholarly work also focuses on narrative theory, gender and sexuality studies, and literature of the 20th century. Some of the stories we will read this semester are texts that I study in my own work.  I’m active on the Undergraduate Research Committee, so let’s talk if you’re interested in conducting research. I tweet for the Literary Arts Festival, @CityTechLitFest, not only about our even each spring, but also other interesting things related to writing, reading, Brooklyn, and college. Follow me there!

Outside of work–if we can ever really separate the things we do into work and non-work categories–I’m an avid knitter and crocheter. I’ve been known to quilt. I love to cook. I want to learn how to use a letterpress. As you can see, I like to make things! It’s so satisfying to see a project through from start to finish, and to have a tangible object to show for it. I like to bring my love of making things into the classroom, creating projects that don’t just ask students to do what they’re used to doing but to make things, too.

I love to look at old maps and photographs of New York, and often incorporate them into my courses. Although I’m an amateur and don’t have fancy equipment, I love to take photographs when I travel, whether it’s to Iceland (a great trip I took this summer), to Chicago (where I’ll be visiting this spring for the annual conference of the International Society for the Study of Narrative, and hopefully to eat a Chicago-style hot dog for some good Chicago tourism but not Chicago-style pizza), or even just for a ride on the Staten Island Ferry (which I’ve done countless times) or a walk on the Brooklyn Bridge (which I often do on my way to or from work).

Workers and walkers on the Brooklyn Bridge, November 2014
Workers and walkers on the Brooklyn Bridge, November 2014

Now that you’ve gotten to know me a bit better, I look forward to getting to know all of you!

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Introductions

Gamer at Home, Future Engineer Outside.

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Hey guys my name is Alexander or you can call me Alex for short. I’m coming here from that disappointing Super Bowl 49 outcome. Yes I wanted the Seahawks to win and no, I’m not a bandwagoner. I just don’t like the Pats #NewYorkPride. Anyways I’m just an 18 year old college student in the second semester of my first year studying hard to become a Computer Hardware Engineer.

As the title of this post says, yes I’m a gamer. I was raised around gaming. Whether it was my uncle or my former neighbors, there was access to video games almost anywhere I went. Good thing is, I was addicted but not addicted enough to let games get in the way of my education. So I guess you can say I’m one of those dudes who can play all they want yet get good grades. To this day I still like to play (at least when I’m free). My favorite games to play currently are Smite, Dota 2, and some First Person Shooters like Call of Duty and Battlefield.

Aside from gaming, yes I have a life. Lots of it is poured into school but other parts are put into family and friends. I’m the first child out of 3 and the only male sibling sadly but it’s cool. My hobbies other than playing games consist of hanging out or “chilling” with friends, playing and watching sports like Baseball, Basketball and Football, and my personal favorite, Driving (if you do consider that a hobby).

Bringing back the title of this post, I mentioned Future Engineer Outside. What do I mean by that? As I said before, my goal in life is to become a Computer Hardware Engineer. I’m currently enrolled in the Computer Engineering Technology major and right now, everything is pretty interesting. Last semester, I took a Logic and Problem Solving class, in other words, programming. To be honest, programming is pretty fun too but my interests are more towards the Hardware side and hands on with tools type of work.

The sum things up, that’s pretty much the basics about me. I hope you who read this learn something about me. Looking forward to working with you all this semester. As I used to say in my Youtuber days, “Have a good day, good night, whenever, wherever you are, PEACE!”

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Introductions

The Way How I See it!

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Venturing through today’s world trying to find my niche, took me a while but sure enough at age  23 I decided, I need to get serious with completing my degree. Working a job, just to make ends meet without any satisfaction can easily feel like, captivity.  But more about me. For one I am eager; I find being the first person to try out something new, sets the pace for anyone else or better yet, others can learn from my mistakes. Next, I believe in physical hard work, hands on; straight skills; talent through learning and experience.  Other the other hand,  I am really stubborn when it comes to reading lengthy irrelevant or without importance text. I find it very hard to fully engage in certain material which at times start dull or with substance.

On a better note, spring 2015 will hopefully be my last semester at New York City College of Technology.  I am currently enrolled in Hospitality and Management with a focus in Culinary.  As a student here at NYCCT, I am trilled to know that my department HMGT ensure that the courses for the program equipped me to face the real world.

To add, as a Culinary student I get hands on training with real live ordering, prepping,  cooking, cleaning, serving, stewardship, reports, feedback,  demonstration, and most of all open table for questions and answer and area of strengths and weaknesses.  As a future back of house staff, I’m truly bless to attain this great experience and I will ensure that I utilize it to the max.

In addition to my culinary experience,  I also had the time to practice and learn safe sanitation for hotels, bar, restaurants,  lounges and nightclubs.  It is tremendous the energy I feel when I walk into a restaurant or a hotel. In my mind I tell myself this is my industry; “what is that worker doing, is he or she following establishment policy by smoking so close to guest rooms”,or “its 9:05 that person is 5 minutes late”. These are the small hints that clearly depicts oneself as a boss; in control and ready for productivity.

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Introductions, Uncategorized

Interesting Title

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Hello, my name is Eli Shtauber. I was born and raised in Brooklyn NY.  What else would you like to know?

I come from a large close family and always had my siblings to talk to and to play with. Five years ago my parents and younger siblings moved out of the state, and I now have an apartment with a couple of roommates. It’s tough not being close to my family (and doing my own laundry/cooking/cleaning :/ ), but I try to go visit whenever I can.

I finished high school in 2007 and decided not to go to college. There are plenty of things I am good at and figured not to spend the time in school. I worked as an  electrician for a couple of years, and learned a lot. It was a decent job but I wasn’t enjoying it. I had a couple of other jobs, and in each I gained many useful skills, but I never found something I really enjoyed. In the summer of 2011 (I had just quit working as a bus mechanic) I heard a friend talking about the mechanical engineering program at City Tech. He had taken a tour of the school and told me all about it. I looked into the field  some more, and was enrolled for the fall semester shortly afterwards.

I love to read (!) and especially like Stephen King and Lee Child. I’m currently reading Christine by SK. I enjoy listening to music and usually have something playing in the background.  Another hobby of mine is working on old cars. I bought, fixed, drove, and then sold a couple of cars. I am currently rebuilding an antique electric car, and I hope to use the machines in the engineering department like the 3d printer and cnc machine to make a couple of parts I’m having trouble finding.

Anyway, hope we have a great semester, and hope we get to read some great stories.

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Homework, Introductions

Introducing myself

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Hello everyone. First, since english is not my first language, you might have trouble with understanding my post and if you do, feel free to ask any questions on the comments. But before that, I will try my best to write it understandable.

I will start with the general information of myself. I was born in Republic of Korea, which is the south side, not the north. It has been about seven years since I came to New York with my family. I went to Bayside High School in Queens and I remember I was so depressed in highschool, because I could not say a word in English and at the same time I had to take SAT right away. Luckily, I was able to finish my highschool with an “okay” grade, special thanks to my Korean-American friends!

I used to love language and history, but not sciences and math when I studied in Korea, but now, I like the later ones better and I think it is because I have hard time with reading and writing in English. So, ever since I came to America, I started to like learning science and math better. But this time I hope I can find interest in reading and writing more.

What I really wanted to be in the future was pharmacist, but because I know my family cannot afford it, I had to give up. But since I have been working at a dental office for three years, I started to have interests in dental area, so I am studying for dental hygeine now.

One thing very important in my life is traveling. It does not have to be special place like foreign countries or some planets in the space. Even if I have one day off, I would rather drive my car or wander somewhere than staying home doing nothing. I am very active and I love to do something new. For the past years, I tried to visit many places in America, even by myself, and I am going to travel more places whenever I have time. It makes me feel free and I love meeting new people and learning new things from traveling. My goal is to visit all the states in America before I graduate college and travel abroad.

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