Summer Mist The time pressure and effort put into my quinceañera took more than half a year to plan. How far away it seemed to be from choosing who was going to be in court, the songs I would dance to, my hair for pictures, and choosing my dress. Choosing my dress was hard at first, but it came to be easy once I saw it on. My family from far away started arriving a week earlier to be at my party. The house was packed with people. My aunts, uncles, and cousins from both sides of my family. So many people helped me prepare for the day. Everyone was…

In this week’s English Composition class, we used this class to start wrapping up or 2 assignments. My research essay and autobiography just needed a few changes, but most of it was done. I finally chose a title for my autobiography. I wrote down some bullet points on what I wanted to talk about in my presentation so it can be organized and hopefully reach the 3-minute mark. I had a one-on-one with Rachel to discuss my research essay, and she helped incorporate more historical facts about when zoos originated and where they originated from. I also plan to change my first sentence to have a more impactful introduction based…

I took pictures, and then I sat down at the bench seen in the images. I sat down, and it was very hot and sunny. Sitting down was a breath of fresh air since I had walked for a while in such extreme weather. What I noticed from nature was the warm hit from the sun. Birds were chirping, and I saw something on the ground. The ants were pretty big, not live house ants that come out in the summer. Some ants carried parts of a plant they were all going toward a tree. After 10 mins, the sky got dark and grey. The air was full of fresh…

In this week’s English Composition class, we spent time in class doing our autobiography assignment. I got half the assignment done and plan to finish it in the next few classes. I wrote about the object that represents something meaningful. I wrote about how my dress at my sweet 15 helped make me feel special and carefree. It took me a while to write a fake storyline for the genre alive at the end of the world. I’ve changed the genre a bit, and now it’s more of a natural disaster story. In the story, there is a flood/rain storm that ruins the party. In Ethnographic Methods at Work, we…

In this week’s English Composition classes, we focused on our research assignment. We created an outline for our essays and how to format them. The outline was a little hard because its time consuming finding evidence from sources that would best fit my thesis statement. Creating my thesis statement was pretty easy because I had searched up examples of how to create a good thesis statement. It is expected that there are 4-5 body paragraphs, one of which includes a rebuttal. Professor Rachel further helped me improve my thesis to be as clear as possible. I found many sources that could help support my essay, as well as non-scholarly sources.…

In this week’s English Composition classes, we chose a symbol, wrote about what it meant, and found scholarly sources to support our interpretation. I chose the symbol, the dove, and I found sources to support the idea that a dove represents peace. On Wednesday, we started to write and find sources for our research essay. We also had to find a partner and find a relation between our topics in the essay. The topic I chose to base my research essay on is that zoos are abusive to animals. I have so far finished my introduction paragraph and found some good sources. My next step is to find which parts…

In this week’s English Composition classes, we watched a movie called ” How to Survive the Plague.” It was a movie about the AIDS epidemic that mostly affected the LGBTQ+ community. They began to create a group called ACT UP. The group protested for a cure for aids and to push out more effective drugs that can treat aids. A lot of people in ACT UP had aids or knew someone who had aids. The movie was very moving because we got to see their fight to get better medicine and treatments faster, but we all saw their losses, such as people in the ACT UP group slowly losing the…

In this week’s English Composition classes, we read a short story that was about a haunted house, but through further discussion, we learned that there was a hidden message of hurt, trauma, and distrust/hardship in a relationship. We also noticed that the story exploring the genre of horror expressed the message very different instaecd of being direct about the hardships of her past relationship. Afterwards, we made a timeline of our lives (the most important parts). Based on this, we would choose a moment in our lives that we will write about in any genre.  In Ethnographic Methods at Work, we went around the room answering the question of what…

In this week’s class, we watched an ethnographic video. What made it very popular in this field was a one-take shot of a park in China. The point of view is a waist view. We passed by people dancing, walking, talking, getting ready, on the phone, sitting, standing, or playing. What I noticed from the video was that there were many elderly people and young children in the park. Very few young adults or teenagers. I wonder at what time this video was taken in the day, and a visual map of where the camera passed through. I also noticed that they dressed very loosely; clothing wasn’t skin tight, women…