The Prevailing Opinion of a Sexual Character Discussed

This essay was not only long, but difficult as well with lengthy sentences and words far beyond my vocabulary. With a dictionary in hand and my dad by my side; however, I dug in and ended up getting a lot out of this slightly offensive, yet eye-opening piece of work.

In general, I agree with Wollstonecraft whole-heartedly. I look up to her, in fact, because in a time where women were discriminated against, she stood up for her rights, got a phenomenal education (just read this essay, she didnt learn all that vocabulary doing the laundry!), and published a great work of art defending all women. One of the biggest points she tries to get across, as she mentions it numerous times, is her belief in the importance of character. With a solid knowledge of your own personal morals and virtues, she believes women can go anywhere in life. In fact, her goal of perfect education is the pursuit of human virtues and knowledge. Genius, to say the least.

As soon as Rousseau popped into the essay, I immediately put my guard up. He has the courage to say that men are the only worthy people of the pursuit of good virtues such as truth and fortitude. Ridiculous! He believes women should just let the men make all the decisions and be obedient to them. Honestly, he makes me sick. And, the fact that Wollstonecraft still admires him for his writings about truth and fortitude also disappoints me. I'm aware of the fact that she disagrees with him on the "men only" aspect of his writings, but give me a break! Admiring a man like him is something I cannot even fathom.

The paragraphs comparing the education of women to that of military men is truly brilliant. Both are taught only the pieces of information they need to know to perform their duty. Not once are they asked why? Why are you doing this? And even if they were, they most likely wouldn't have an answer. It's the whole idea of giving women only satellites of information. As long as they know the things that will make them "sofisticated", that's all they need to know. No need to dig deeper into more powerful issues of that time. Give them lessons on manners and cleaning and they're good to go!

The sad thing about this is that it didn't just happen back then. This problem, yes, has been fixed to a point, but that's only from the perspective of a citizen in a first world country such as myself. Today on the news there was a story about a woman in Malasia who was to be hung for drinking beer in public. According to Muslim law, women aren't allowed to drink in public. Just women though. There still is so much discrimination in countrys like this. Women needing to cover their faces, not being able to get an education. It's just plain sad, and something needs to be done about it. And soon.

Dr. Gregory is another man in this essay that really grinds my gears (Family guy anyone? ;) lol ). He believes that women should only have a fondness for dress. Meaning the only thing they should worry their pretty litte heads about is what they're wearing. No need to challenge themselves to think about the real world, as long as they dress to impress men will want them and take care of all the "thinking" for the both of them. Obviously, Wollstonecraft disagrees with this immensly, saying women care more about just that. I believe Dr. Gregory is the most ignorant person in the world. Women have more than just empty space in their heads!!!

The basic opinion of people in this time was that men want women to be obedioent and uneducated. Essentially, "in the dark". If women are innocent of the world, they won't be knowledgeable enough to realize something's wrong. Wollstonecraft, as demonstrated in this essay, has a very different life and opinion of many women of her time.

Yes, this essay was very difficult to get through (about three weeks actually), but once I broke it down there was a lot of very interesting, valuable information to be found. Overall, I think Wollstonecraft is a brilliant woman and I admire her greatly for her courage to stand up for all women and their rights.

Autobiography of a Face

When I went to pick up my book from our very own McFarland Public Library, I'll admit I was a bit skeptical of what this book would be. When I read the brief description provided by Mr. Kunkle; however, i'd thought it sounded interesting and something I could relate to. In that description it talked about a girl who lost half of her jaw and was struggling to not only find herself but also to fit in throughout her young adulthood. As I soon found out, the book was about so much more than just that.

Just to help out all you non-Mr. Kunkles out there ;) , heres a brief overview of what happened in this phenomenal autobiography:
It opens with a normal young girl with a normal young child's life. She hangs out with her friends, goes to school, and loves horses. Her family, not the most warming group of people, is her one flaw. During school one day, though, she gets hit in the side of the jaw by another child at recess, though she thinks nothing of it at the time. After some time goes by a bump begins to appear ont he side of her face that the doctors continue to push away as nothing to worry about (despite her parents relentless phone calls and visits reguarding it). After about a year their family doctor finally agreed to do some tests on it, and the results were her parents worst nightmare : a tumor. This marks the beginning of a whirlwind of ups and downs with treatments and surgeries for Lucy. At first, Lucy was thrilled to find out she'd be staying at the hospital for a few weeks (that meant missing school and nothing could be better, right?!) Unfortunately this didn't solve the problem, and at one point their only option was to remove over a third of her jaw to get the tumor out. After this surgery, this isn't so much a game for Lucy anymore. She looked different. Very, very different. The remainder of the book follows her throughout her young adulthood as she tries to cope with this deformity while undergoing numerous surgeries to try to reconstruct her jaw. Overall, its a fabulous read with a lot of interesting information about what cancer can really be like.

One of the greatest themes in this autobiography was the power of beauty, both inside and out. Without her beauty to rely on, Lucy begins to think she doesn't deserve to be loved by anybody, because nobody could love somebody as hideous as her. Throughout the book she discovers external beauty isn't the only thing that's important. Though its the first thing people notice, what's inside is what really matters.

This book opened my eyes to the harsh realities of our world. Good health isn't a right, it's a privilege. Most people don't stop to think about how lucky they are on a day to day basis. Being able to walk, talk, see, feel, and just about everything else are all great gifts that shouldn't be taken for granted. After reading this book, I'm sure to be thankful every day.

Overall, I'd recommend anybody and everybody to read this book; it's phenomenal!

Is Google Making Us Stupid?

I loved this essay! It made me think so much about how technology today is doing more to our lives than just making the "that was easy" button a click away at all times. Carr spoke of many topics dealing with how the internet has changed the way we think about things. I believe that it has made it much easier for us to do things the old fashioned way. Everything now must be the quick and easy version. As this essay went on and on about what negative effects this is going to have on mankind, I couldn't help but wonder if some good could actually come of it. Although we miss out on being able to focus for long periods of time, doing things quickly (like skimming the page or speed reading) can be good for us. We, as a whole, become much more efficient people. If we have the ability to take a large essay and skim it to get the main ideas, we can do so much more with our time! Don't get me wrong, though, I'm not saying its not a shame our ability to focus has been replaced with fidgety minds that lack concentration almost completely. It's a give and take I believe.

The study done at George Mason University really got me interested in this essay. It showed that the brain has the ability to reprogram itself on cue by changing the way it functions. That study alone shows why the web has truly changed us. Also, it's much easier to go from having the ability to concentrate to not having it. If this situation were flip-flopped, I'm sure it wouldn't have as great of an impact as it has now.

Another interesting part of this essay was when he spoke of time. This made me think that our ability to feel what time it is is almost like our 6th sense. We follow time now more than we do our own body's internal clock. It's very true that we eat more by what time it is than whether or not we are actually hungry. And the same goes for sleeping, etc...

Once Taylor was brought up, I was immediately reminded of AP US History. We learned about how he broke down all of workers tasks into different moves so that they could get their work done as efficiently as possible. This is in direct comparison to this entire essay. The internet does the exact same thing as Taylor did. It is broken down so much all searches and websites are extremely efficient. It makes it very easy for people to feel ADD while they're online as well. With so many different things popping out at us, we can just click and click and click to all different kinds of things. When our minds are constantly being switched to new topics, how's anybody supposed to focus?

The founders of Google have a very interesting view of what they would like the internet to be like. They said they are trying to build an artificial intelligence and make it on a large scale. This seems odd to me, because not everybody, in my opinion, should know all the same information. We were made to have different talents and knowledge, but with the internet growing as it is, pretty soon everybody will have access to all the same information, and our individuality will soon be gone. Back in the day, people worked to acquire knowledge about a wide variety of things. When the internet tries to pool everyone's information together, we loose the self satisfaction of learning things on our own, and knowing things other people may never be able to know or understand. Yes, it's good that we all can grow intellectually, but to what extent are we willing to go to to get this knowledge? It seems sacrificing good old hard work is the price we pay.

Skunk Dreams

I found this essay to be very well written for the most part. It was slightly difficult to follow what was going on, and when she was talking about a dream or real life. Looking past that; however, Erdrich seems to have a way with words. The way she describes the scenes of the dream were phenomenal. For example, at the beginning of the essay she describes what it was like to be on the football field sleeping with a skunk. "I smelled the newness beneath the rank tone of my bag-mate--the stiff fragrance of damp earth and the thick pungency of newly manured fields of a mile or two away--along with my sleeping bag's smell, slightly mildewed, forever smoky." It makes one feel as though they were there as well... that's a writing gift I admire greatly.

The theory brought up from Lund about what dreams really are made me think a great deal. He proposed that dreams are not just a theoretical situation created by the mind at rest. One's dreams are the activities of an disembodied person who we take to be ourselves when we dream. If this is true, then I start to ask myself who is this other person? And how is it that while I dream I think it really is myself and that the scene in which I am a part of is real? I find it a fascinating theory at the least.

I also noticed there was a lot of subtle humor in this essay. For instance, when Erdrich states that some of her best dreams come to her in cheap motels. Hilarious! And that she dreams best when she's cold... that's the complete opposite of myself. I can't even sleep when I'm freezing! Then when she began describing the Northeast and how crowded and unpeaceful it can get, not ever being able to see the clean straight, line of the horizon, I completely understood. There's something serene about being in an uninhabited area, feeling like it's just you and nature. The sound of trees blowing in the wind is so calming to listen to like she describes. An great descriptive part of this sense was when she said, "on days of high wind they move so freely it must give them a cellular pleasure close to terror".

The fenced off area Erdrich spoke of confused me, though. What I got out of it was that it was an area for animals to live "freely", and a great area for men to go an hunt the enclosed animals. That seems very unfair to me. I'm not a huge animal rights activist or anything, but having them in an area like that where they have no chance of escaping seemed unfair. I'm glad that in her dream she finally found a way to get inside the fence and be with the animals. Besides the initial fear of being mistaken for a deer and being shot, playing with animals there would be just like hopping over the fence at the local zoo. :) At least that's how I pictured it!

Overall this was a relatively quick read with some great descriptors of some pretty interesting dreams. Not bad! :)