Chinese Education

First Grade
     I sat alone on the bench at recess, reading a Harry Potter book. The other boys laughed at me. They stole my book and began to play monkey in the middle, tossing the book just beyond my outstretched fingers. My Chinese name was Dum Gai, Sometimes it was Wai Yu So Tan or Yu Stin Ki Pu. One day I had enough of their taunting and punched a boy named Austin and left bruises on his face. It almost looked like he was wearing face paint for a Chinese opera.

Second Grade
     Marcella Gavelis made me stay in for recess ten day straight.
     "Say you're sorry," she said.
     "For what Miss. Gavelis?"
     "Everything," she said and made me hang from a pull-up bar, monkey style for 15 minutes. I learned that all the blood rushing into my head can make one pretty dizzy.
     Once, she gave the class a math test but set me aside and gave me a test that was for students in Algebra. When I answered all the questions correctly with work included, she made me mark every answer wrong.

Third Grade
     My traditional Chinese music career began and ended with my very first instrument: the Dizi.
     As I walked around the classroom playing my music, Mrs. Olken stopped my playing and confiscated my instrument because my music was too oriental.
     In third grade, though, I stood alone in the corner, faced the wall, and waited for the punishment to end.
     I'm still waiting.

Fourth Grade
     "You should be an engineer when you grow up," Mr. Olken told me.
     "Why should I be a doctor?" I asked Mr. Olken.
     "So you can go back to China and help the country. So you can develop more efficient technology and reduce pollution."
     That was the year that my father smoked ten packs of cigarettes a day and the same year that my mother started three hundred different Chinese calligraphy paintings but never finished any. They stayed in different rooms in our house and cried savagely.
     I ran home after school, heard their Chinese tears, and looked in the mirror. Engineer David, I called myself, invented an education, talked to my reflection. Engineer David to the CEO's office.

Fifth Grade
     I jumped in the pool for my first time and swam across the entire pool. No. I didn't make it across the pool, almost drowned actually, and the life guard had to jump in an save me.
     But it felt great, my body slicing through the water. It was science, surface tension. It was beautiful.
     At the same moment, my cousin Keene Lum swallowed LSD from the bottle. His ears rang, his mouth was dry, and everyone seemed so far away.
     But it felt great, that buzz in his head, all the colorful sights and sounds. It was chemistry, biology. It was beautiful.
    Oh, do you remember those sweet almost innocent choices that Chinese boys were forced to make?

Political Cartoon

In this political cartoon, it is arguing how the wealth distribution in the United States is very skewed and unfair. The title shows that it is supposed to represent America. The groups are divided into the rich, the middle class, and the poor. It also portrays the US government as an elephant wearing a towel that says GOP, which stands for the Grand Old Party, in order to show that it is republican. The political cartoon clearly shows that the rich are getting most of the wealth while the middle class receives just a slice of the pie and the poor just gets crumbs. The wealth distribution is also displayed by the drinks that each group has. The rich received coffee, the middle class receives a glass of milk, and the poor simply receive a glass of water in a Dixie cup. The comment that the elephant makes serves to display how the government took extra means in order to further help the rich by offering things such as tax loopholes and benefits; however, they don't provide anything that could be used by the middle class or the poor to even out the wealth distribution. Furthermore, the cartoonist emphasizes the power that the rich have by placing him on an almost throne-like chair. This illustrates the power that the rich have over the rest of the population. Many stereotypes are also show in this political cartoons. The poor are shown as a black family without a father, the middle class is drawn as a standard white family with two kids, and the rich class as portrayed as a typical white male. 

Restraint

   

Growing up, we are always told that we can't always have what we want. We are taught how to restrain ourselves. It is the reason why we don't eat candy and cupcakes for breakfast, it is the reason why we don't blurt out every mean comment that comes across our mind, and it is the reason why we don't spend days lying in bed binge-watching Netflix (sorta). In his piece, "A Measure of Restraint," Chet Raymo illustrates how "an integrity and balance within nature that demands of earth's dominant species a judicious self-restraint" is needed if humans are to live on, but not destroy, the earth. He provides numerous examples where people lack restraint and come to conclusions even when they don't have all the information. His examples include unnamed "young men" as well as famous scientists such as "Marie and Pierre Curie." He does this to show how everyone in society can be affected if their urges are left unchecked. Raymo also shows how history repeats himself with these examples and uses a poem that contains repetition, "she died a famous woman denying her wounds denying her wounds came from the same source as her power," in order to emphasize this point.  It can still be seen today when society, myself included, just mindlessly falls into the current popular trends even if we don't necessarily know what it is for or why it is done. Hopefully, society begins to understand what Raymo is asking for, and we refrain from habitually giving in to our temptations. Sometimes it is better just to let the mystery remain a mystery. 

Puzzle Paragraph

Earlier this week we read a piece by Virginia Woolf called "The Death of the Moth." In it, she discusses the battle between life and death of simple moth. The moth is portrayed like a Lone Ranger, just him versus death; however, despite the odds, Woolf gives the moth some fire in its fight and characterizes it as "nothing but life".  While others might say the battle is like gambling at the casino, where the winner is based on luck, Woolf claims that death is undoubtedly stronger than life. This claim can also be linked to her depression and eventual suicide "in 1941." However, it is not fair to allow profiling to occur and only put her in the group of depressed people because she was a remarkable writer. In fact, she is "generally regarded as one of the greatest twentieth-century writers."  Another thing we read this year that undermines profiling was the memoir that Jeanette Walls wrote about her life. In it, she writes about how she grew up homeless, yet was able to overcome the challenges that were thrown at her and obtain the life that she desired. Walls's emotional story helps inspire people to look at more than just the negative things associated with certain groups of people.

On the surface, both Walls and Woolf seem have remarkable stories that are somewhat overshadowed by negative things in their lives; how after diving deeper into their stories, it can be seen that these things only add to show how much they achieved.

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