Archives: humanities

Viva La English Civil War

This week we learned about the British Civil War, which wasn’t really a war, just a bunch of old men fighting about who should get the throne while the actual citizens groaned. Pretty much the king, Charles I, was really annoying, so this guy named Oliver Cromwell (who was head of parliament) lead his own army trying to overthrow Charles.

When I was trying to find a way to make this post more interesting, I was browsing the internet and I had a playlist running. Viva La Vida by Coldplay came on, and I started singing along to do with the topic because why not? (I’ve been watching a lot of Glee over the past month and I think that might be transferring into my schoolwork.)

So, I actually did re-write the lyrics and record it up to the first chorus. I would have done more but my birds kept chirping and I figured I could just write out the lyrics here anyways. As for the recording, here it is.

you can listen to the recording here

(I seriously apologize for my singing in this, but honestly, I was not going to more than a few takes on this, in hopes that barely anyone ever hears it.)

In case you missed them , here are the lyrics, along with the rest of them.

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The chorus was what really channeled my main question that I was asking for this blog post, “How did the other countries feel about all this Protector jazz. As it turns out, most of the other countries just disregarded it, like they just refused to acknowledge that England has gotten rid of their throne. It was a case of “LOL look at how dumb England is being!” while the real air to the British throne hung out with them in their countries. I learned from this that almost everyone in 1600’s Europe thought not have a monarch was just the stupidest idea.

*I don’t have my sources at the moment because my computer was open to them when it broke a few days agoa nd now I can’t fine them.

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Really, Trains? Yes, Trains!

At the beginning of my grade nine year, we were learning to use an app on our iPads called Explain Everything. I had used this app before in seventh grade, but still was not very familiar with it. At the time, we were learning about the impact trains had on the British during the Industrial Revolution. Because of this, we were given an assignment to use the app to make a video on what we had learned. Below is my end result.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBw_AGruYEE

In the app you can add outside footage, animation, and even bring up a live web page. All I knew about that app at this point was that I could draw and move the drawings around while recording my voice. Because I didn’t fully explore the app, this video isn’t too great. Once I understood the app a little better, it has become a great presentation tool! If you’re interested in the app, check it out!

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The Bread Man’s Cheeky Grin

One of the characters in Romeo and Juliet that I don’t see as idiotic, is oddly enough, Juliet’s Nurse. She may not seem very bright in the play, but I think she is one of the most compassionate and caring characters. The Nurse seems to be used by Shakespeare as a tool of convenience and some comic relief, but I would have liked to see her character have some more substance. When an assignment to write where she was in some spare time allowed me to create that for her, I really wanted to do it.

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(Juliet’s Nurse was tired of running Juliet’s silly little errands. The Nurse found Juliet, despite being a very bright young lady, to be very naive with her personal endeavours. The Nurse knew after meeting Juliet’s love Romeo, that both children had their heads off in the clouds. Their forbidden love would bring nothing but trouble upon both houses. But, when she remembered the feeling she felt with her deceased husband, the Nurse knew Romeo and Juliet needed to be together. She could see their love pouring out of their childlike eyes.

The Nurse knew when Juliet expected her to return with the news, and that it was nearing that time when she departed with young Romeo. She did not want to return to Juliet’s hectic affairs just yet, though, and found herself wandering off towards the market. The Nurse had no intention of buying anything, or even looking at the various product being sold off. The Nurse went to the market to watch the people.

Her favourite person in the market today was an older man, his face creased with experience. He was selling soft bread that smelled like a caring innocence. The bread man smiled gently at the young boys who would run through the market from time to time, instead of screaming at them as his fellow sellers did. The Nurse studied his face carefully, noticing his features, which were similar to her deceased husband. She imagined if her husband were to still be with her today, she would like him to be like this gentle man in the market.

As the Nurse looked at the bread man for the last time, he stared right back at her, and they held a lingering eye contact, broken when the man started to shake with a hearty man. The Nurse smiled silently to herself, thinking how lucky the man’s wife must be. She thought of Romeo and Juliet as she walked home to bring Juliet her news. The Nurse wished that they would have many moments of peace in their future together, as she had just experienced with the bread man.)

To write this, I first came up with ideas. My first plan was to have the Nurse have a romantic affair with the Friar, but I quickly realized that would some with some serious moral and religious questions, and quickly scraped it. I wanted to have the Nurse have some romance, but I didn’t really want to create a character and whole backstory for their love. I then remembered the Nurse was widowed, and I know women back then rarely got remarried. I decided to focus my story on the Nurse’s thoughts and let her have some relaxing alone time, because Juliet and Lady Capulet don’t seem to leave her alone. I hope you enjoyed my interpretation of Juliet’s Nurse.

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I Dreamt A Dream Tonight

In Act I Scene iv of Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare writes his characters having an in depth conversation about dreams. Romeo had found himself dreaming that something will go wrong if he goes to the party, and Mercutio is convinced that dreams mean nothing. Romeo and Juliet was believed to be written in the year 1595, when they still believed the body was made up of four humours. It’s easy to say there wasn’t much useful scientific data back then, but 400 years later, we have more than enough data to settle this age old debate, what do dreams really mean?

Sweet-dreams-dreaming-of-snow-white-and-the-seven-dwarves

Although these questions about what your dreams really mean have been around for hundreds of years, the first studies didn’t really come along until the late ninetieth century when an experimental study suggested that dreams could in fact be measured. In more studies throughout the twentieth century, we learned more about how dreams work. The studies showed that most dreams stimulated visual senses most, took place from a first person point of view, and we’re not in the dreamer’s conscious control (when the dreamer is in control of a dream, it is called a lucid dream and it is popular for people to ‘try’ to experience having one). 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjKVkwbhziY

Further dream studies have showed that data supporting the fact that your dreams are influenced by your internal and external circumstances. Your dreams can be influenced by your workplace, gender, mood, chronic pain, and even religious beliefs. These results are said to conclude that your waking life and dreaming life are very much connected. For example, if you have a dream where you’re falling uncontrollably, or in an out of control vehicle, it may be because there is something happening in your life that feels very much out of your control.

If you applied these studies to Romeo and Juliet, you could say that well dreams definitely show how our lives are going at the time, there is no evidence that dreams can predict the future. It would be safe to say that Romeo was already feeling uneasy attending this party, and his dream reflecting how he was feeling. Although Shakespeare was probably using Romeo’s dream cleverly as a foreshadowing literally device. If this dreaming argument had happened now, I’m betting Mercutio would have won, with the help of science and Google.

SOURCES:

American Psychological Association

National Center for Biotechnology Information

DreamDictionary.org

Huffington Post

MEDIA:

Sweet Dreams by Franz Schrotzberg

How To Lucid Dream

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The Fault In Our Unrealistic Teenage Love

Every book and movie aimed at teenagers has at least some plot of love. Lately, it seems to be a very popular topic in novels turned movies to have tragically fated star-crossed lovers. This of course comes right into play in the book we’re reading in class, Romeo and Juliet. Teenagers falling in love so deep that they will do anything for each other, I mean Romeo and Juliet even die for each other.

When the question “Are 16 year olds too young to fall in love?” came up in class, I faced a dilemma on how to answer. Yes, I do believe it’s possible for teenagers to fall in love and grow old together, but, all in all, teenagers are just too stupid and immature to make it work out. Romeo and Juliet are a perfect example of this. The two of them wouldn’t have ended up dying if they had just known how to communicate properly. Even if they had both stayed alive, their relationship probably wouldn’t have lasted. I mean, they barely knew each other. Books like The Fault In Our Stars and William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet let us all believe that young love can work out, and that it’s eternal and wonderful….but if the character’s hadn’t have died, who knows how the relationships would have turned out?

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Okay so it probably wouldn’t have turned out like that, but something kind of similar could have happened. Teenagers access their frontal lobes more slowly than adults do, which means their decision making skills are way below par. The frontal lobe doesn’t even fully connect until you’re about 25. This doesn’t mean you should avoid dating anyone until you’re in your late 20’s, just don’t elope in vegas on your 18th birthday.

People fall in love, get married, and have children all the time. This happens everyday to people of all ages all over the world. If you’re in love, you’re in love, no matter your age. I think teenagers are old enough to fall in love, it’s beyond anyone’s control. If two people love each other that’s enough to be in love.

People fall out of love everyday too, so you always have to be cautious of what you’re doing. Teenagers fall out of love and make stupid decisions and get married too young because they haven’t figured out yet what they’re even doing. People of all ages do this, but it’s proven that young marriages are more likely to fail.

I’m not sure where I meant to go with this, but I have my conclusion. I believe anybody is old enough to fall in love, but also fall out of love. Nothing is cement at 16, so I wouldn’t try to run away together. Just go to a movie and hold sweaty hands in the popcorn.

 

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Humanities Reflection

This year in humanities I have been working on multiple projects and assignments that I could showcase here. I have chosen to show my writing in essays, journals, and — to show my work from this past term. Our class has written two essays since December, one on the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and one on John Krakauer’s novel Into Thin Air. Below are my essays from both of these assignments.

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 I personally think my writing is better in my Into Thin Air essay. It is probably because I spent more time and effort on that essay. These essay assignments have given me the tools to build up essays in the future. I have learned how to properly use quotes, and how to write about a topic objectively. I hope to learn how to write these kinds of essays better in the future, and want to work on that in this coming term. I especially want to work on making my sentences elegant, yet still have a themed and constant flow to it.

Procrastination comes into play everywhere I go, and this is no exception. I am hopeful to abolish this habit as we come in to 2015. I want to take my best foot forward this term, and do all my work before the due date. In humanities for the rest of the year, I plan to have all of my work done quality and ahead of time. My work is done best when a first draft is finished early, so I can go back and make edits and corrections. I want for my work to have a shown increase in quality (and maybe even quantity) in 2015.

 

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