Category Archives: Week 1

Hello, my name is Rena

My name is Rena and I graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Psychology at City College of New York Fall 2014. I finally graduated but want to work in the medical field. With a psychology background I believed that I would have a foundation for any type of career. I have decided to come back to school to take pre-requisites and apply to the nursing program at SUNY Downstate.

In my free time, I volunteer at New York Methodist Hospital as a navigator for Asian patients. In this position, I help bridge the gap of communication between Asian patients and medical staffs in the hospital. As a certified translator, I help to translate various procedures in several departments. This position has allowed me to come in close contact with patients, to talk to them and to assist them with their needs. It has been an amazing experience that has only increased my desire to work in the medical field and to help patients in need. This experience has truly opened up my eyes to the daily functions of the hospital. This can range from the annoyed nurses that hates their jobs to those who take their time out to visit patients even on their off days.

I am also working as a Saturday school math teacher. This allows me to practice patience and attentiveness towards my students of ages 5-7. I have worked with kids for more than five years now. It can get frustrating at times but it is extremely rewarding when you see a child striving and doing well in exams after struggle so hard all semester.

I am ALSO a customer representative at Kiehl’s, a skincare company.

Juggling school, two jobs, and volunteer work has been a lot of fun but time consuming. I like to keep myself super busy but I do have some downtime once in awhile.

In my free time I enjoy sitting at home, eat, and watch Friends, the TV show. I was very young when it first aired but when I came of age and re-watched all the episodes I have been obsessed. I must’ve re-watched it a million times. That’s why thumbs up for Darth Vader!! 😀

 

 

The story of An hour/ A Jury Of her peers

The story Jury of Her Peers by Susan Glaspel depict a very sad storyline of crime; a dead husband widow to Mrs. Wright.  Overall the jury was a brunch of local influencial residents (in relation to the community) to evaluate a crime scene. Mrs. Wright left a path of confusion;  for example a dead bird in a box ready to be buried with a broken neck. It seems as if the couple was having a very hard time. But she was guilty alright.

The story Of An Hour by Kate Chopin was a great case of belief.  You must have faith in order to survive in this dreadful world. In brief a man was pronounce dead (Mr. Mallard). Mrs. Mallard was to be informed but she have bad heart issues. So she was told in prices between her sister Josephine and her husband best friend Richard. Mrs. Mallard grew stress and withdrawn her self. However Mr. Mallard was not dead instead she died from a bad heart disease.

Both stories show great deal of morals. It is essential to cherish what you have. But importantly the story leave evidence of love betrayal by both spouse due to there reaction for example how was Mr Wright strangled, or better yet did Mrs. Mallard wanted Mr. Mallard home again.

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

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.

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

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.

Story of an Hour/Jury of her Peers

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.

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

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.

Story of an Hour/ A Jury of Peers

In the story “The Story of an Hour”, Mrs. Mallard seems shocked and devastated to hear the news of her husband’s death. When she takes a moment alone to process the news, that she is no longer part of a union that may have defined her until present moment, a feeling opposite of despair begins to take hold within her. Excitement and wonder of the fact that she will be able to live, and be for just herself without the duties and limitations of marriage overwhelm her, and propel within her a feeling of elation.”There would be no one to live for during those coming years; she would live for herself”. Through the narrators tone, that is the impression that Mrs. Mallards reaction, and thoughts seem to convey. There is no doubt that she mourns the loss of her husband  and describes in a pleasant light. “When she saw the kind, tender hands folded in death; the face that had never looked saved with love upon her”. But she cannot contain the exhilaration and optimism of living for herself, and the feeling alone makes her physical aliment of a weak heart, all but feel invigorated. At the news that her husband has not died, and in fact, still lives, she is but all devastated. It is this devastation and realization that the life she envisioned for herself is gone in an instant and ends up weakening her heart, and sending her to her untimely death. “When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease–of the joy that kills”. It is not the joy that killed her, but in fact, the sadness.

In  “A Jury of Her Peers”, Mrs. Wright has killed her husband. It seems that the marriage was turbulent and unhappy. Mrs. Hale alludes to the fact the Mrs. Wright was once young, vibrant and beautiful. Mr. Wright quelced her of spirit and happiness. She no longer sang, and even her clothes were described as “shabby”. It appears the Mr. Wright killed Mrs. Wrights bird, therefore robbing her of her one singular joy, and in a fit of despair and rage, she broke his neck as he had her bird’s. In comparison to “The Story of An Hour”, both women, marriages and relationships are different, yet both feel relief at the death of their husbands.

A Little of Me

I’ve never blogged before, so i think this is how it goes. I am truly out of my element here i can write about anyone, but when it comes to myself that’s the hard part. My name is Tariana (Ta-ri-ana).  I re-admitted to city tech this semester after taking a few years off due to having a child (fyi who happens to be under me playing with his cars as i type, ” I’m not distracted at all”). I’ve changed my major a few times already i’m currently in Liberal Arts and Sciences. Here’s a little of me in a few words.

I started in city tech at the age of 19 as a nursing major, I wanted to follow my grandmothers steps and help others. At 20 i lived on my own found a job at a doctors office, it was an experience that i’ll never forget because shortly after i changed my major. I then went and transferred  to accounting major. I thought I finally found my calling since i’m one of those annoying people that think in numbers. Numbers not word problems and charts so that was a bust. (fast forward) That brings me to today starting my degree to become a math teacher. I found my career path, that’s it no more changes. I hope!!!

Besides trying to be a successful student i’m just a mom. Extra curricular activities does that include play dates, jungle gyms and nightly readings, I hope so. I’m interested in anything that makes my loved ones smile. My significant other is a football fanatic. Back when we started i couldn’t have cared less. It was men in tights going after something i couldn’t even see. But his excitement when a man went past the white line for every 10 yards. I knew there had to be more it so i engaged in research my handy dandy Google. Thanks to fast definitions and pictures I know whats going on and when to smile and get excited. That’s my type of fun hearing my 2 year old say daddy touchdown. Here’s to a good positive semester and my first blog about myself.

 

T.