Practice 7-1: You Daredevil you

One of the most daring things that I have done as a teenager was probably going cliff jumping. I went on a camp out on the Colorado river, where everyday we canoed done the river to a new camp site. On the third day we had traveled about half way, and saw some huge cliffs that people were jumping off of. At that time I had only had experience jumping into a pool, I hadn't even jumped form a diving board. We first went to a smaller cliff (the cliff was about 15 feet from the water) jumping from this one wasn't that bad at all. I hesitated a little at first but once I had jumped I realized it wasn't actually that scary. I'm not afraid of heights, but cliff jumping was just something that I've never tried before. After jumping from the small one twice, my friends and I made our way up to the huge cliff. We couldn't tell exactly how high it was, but it seemed about four times higher than the first cliff we jumped off. When I peaked my head over the edge of the cliff I thought there was no way I'd jump. But after my first two friends jumped, I just had to get over my fears and go for it. Once I jumped I realized that it wasn't as scary as I thought it would be. When I got out of the water I could feel that I had gotten a huge adrenaline rush and I was shaking because I was just excited and amazed that I got over my fears. After the three of us jumped we cheered on our other friends that still hadn't jumped. It took us about 5 minutes before he finally chose to jump and he also had a great time.

Practice 2-1: On Stories

I believe that the purpose of the story is to entertain and make the viewer think in different perspectives.
Some of my favorite stories are the movies directed by Christopher Nolan (some of these movies include
Interstellar, Memento, and Inception), and the show Black Mirror. I believe that millions of people enjoy
these stories because they help the viewer see the world from a new perspective or something that does
not yet exist (science fiction). Being able to see from this new perspective makes people more curious and
fascinated by it. I believe this is what makes people really enjoy a story, they are introduced to a whole new
world. Good storytelling will lead to better imaginations by the viewer leading them to really enjoy that story. 

Practice 2-2: My Writing Space

                                               

My writing space is just my desk in my room. I like writing here and at the library most of the time. I like my desk
because I just feel more comfortable when I am at home, so when I have to make a story a lot more personal I will
write it at home on my desk. I also have multiple windows next to my desk so during the day time, I get a lot of
natural light in my room. If I had one thing that I could recommend from my writing space it would be to make sure
that you are very comfortable where you are and that you can write very openly. This makes it a lot easier for me to
think more creatively and come up with better ideas when I write. 

Practice 4-4: Parallel Construction

1) Henry enjoys walking, running, and riding his bike.
2) Sung-ho goes shopping, and then swimming.
3) Louie listens to records and tapes.
4) The salesperson was expecting to be questioned about the sales for the day, and then earn a commission.
5) I have learned a lot of grammar, punctuation, and looking up information.

Practice 4-4: Editing Tense

Boys were playing basketball around a telephone pole with a backboard bolted to it... The scraping and snapping of Keds on loose alley pebbles seemed to catapult their voices high in the moist March air blue above the wires. Rabbit Angstrom, came up the alley in a business suit, he stopped and watched, although he was twenty six and six three. So tall, he seemed like an unlikely rabbit, bit the breadth of white face, the pallor of his blue irises, and a nervous flutter under his brief nose as he stabbed a cigarette into his mouth, partially explaining his nickname, which was given to him when he too was a bot. He stood there thinking, the kids kept coming, they kept crowding you up. 

Practice 4-3: Tense Forms

Future Tense:
Example: "I will walk for five miles."

Practice 4-2: Comma Drama

1) Separate items in a list:
Everyday before school I brush my teeth, shower, and then eat breakfast.

2) When you use two words in a row to describe something (aka two adjectives to describe a noun):
In college you feel much more independent, in some cases homesick.

3) To separate two discrete but connected ideas (complete thoughts aka independent clauses) that are joined by the coordinating conjunctions (as you learned above): for, and, nor, but, or, yes, so (FANBOYS):
All of college classes are the same units, but some require a lot more work than others.

4) To separate out descriptors of something (appositives):
The cafeteria food, the most bland food ever, was the same the whole school year.

5) Use commas to separate introductory words or expletives:
Bet, I could probably do that faster than you.

6) Use commas to separate out dependent clauses:
Because I'm a vegetarian, I cannot eat meat.

7) Use commas when someone is speaking and you put their words in quotes:
The student asked, "Can I go to the bathroom?" in the middle of the teacher's lecture.

Practice 4-1: Picasso

When I saw Picasso's painting "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" the first thing that really popped out to me was all the different faces of the women. They are all very unique and not realistic, they look like a face that someone with less experience would paint. This confused me because Picasso is very talented and I feel like he could've painted in general a lot better than what he did. I believe that good art is something that takes talent and I don't see much talent in this painting. It doesn't use correct perspective and although to some it may look more appealing, I don't see it as being "good" art. After looking at his other painting "science and charity" (which looks a lot more realistic using real angles and perspective) I was really blown away at how good this painting was. In my opinion it is better than "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" because it shows a lot more talent and skill. The amount of detail and emotion that is going on in the scene is very clear. While in his painting, "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" the viewer has to make his own opinion on what he/she sees, it's not clear. I believe good art should show clear meaning and not meant to be unclear what the art piece is about. In some cases it's okay to break the rules in art, and I'm not saying that either one of Picasso's pieces are not art, they both are a form of art one is conventional realism and one is more abstract and not following all the rules of painting. I believe that in writing should always be conventional when you're writing a research paper or following a specific outline because without these outlines there would be no similarity between them, it would be a lot harder to grade or compare them with one another if they don't even use the same writing style.

Practice 1-3: Citations

MLA Citations:

Smythe, James. “The Outsider by Stephen King Review – an Impossible Alibi.” The Guardian,      Guardian News and Media, 18 May 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/may/18/the-outsider-by-sephen-king.

King, Stephen. The Outsider. Thorndike Press Large Print, a Part of Gale, a Cengage Company, 2019.

I decided to cite the book The Outsider by Stephen King. I'm still reading this book, but at the time I really enjoy it. It's the first Stephen King book I've read and so far he lives up to his name. Coming from someone that doesn't usually enjoy reading, this book is very interesting and keeps me on edge. It's a about a little league baseball coach that is "arrested for the brutal rape and murder" (King) of a young boy that was once on his little league team. The article that I cited is a review about this book and it explains how there is an "impossible alibi" (James).

Practice 1-1: Blogging

Welcome to my blog! My name's Angad, you could call me Jay. I hope that you enjoy my blogs!

Practice 1-2: My Personal Favorite Story

I have a lot of interesting stories that I have told most of friends. Most of these stories have all the same friends in them, but they are all very different stories.

Here are some of my stories:

1) Getting my scuba diving license
2) My first cross country practice
3) Going cliff jumping

My favorite story that I would choose to break down into the hero's journey would be story number one, getting my scuba diving license. I chose this story because it is the one that I remember the best, and I believe it resembles the steps of the hero's journey.

Ordinary World: I was enjoying my summer vacation with my friends and planning to go to a summer camp.

Call to Adventure: I had the opportunity to get my scuba diving license.

Refusal: I was hesitant about signing up once I found out that it would be a lot of hard work and very challenging

Meeting with the Mentor: I didn't really have an official "Mentor" but my two good friends, John and Colin, convinced me to sign up. They were going to get scuba certified as well, so I felt it would be easier to go through it with my two good friends.

Crossing the Threshold: The best example in this story of crossing the threshold is going on the actual summer camp.

Test, allies, enemies: I didn't really have any enemies, but main test throughout the training was just completing the training and/or tasks that were assigned to us. Some of these "tests" were on how well we remembered all of the safety terms and procedures. The more difficult "tests" were the ones in the water where we had to do a number of different drills that we needed to do well in, in order, to proceed with out training. Some of these included being able to hold your breathe for a specific time while exhaling under water; we also had to be able to share air with another scuba diver if we ever ran out of air. My "allies" (John and Colin) and I would motivate one another during these drills because some of them were very challenging on our first attempt.

Reward: Our reward after making it through the drills and training was to go on two open water dives in the ocean. These two dives were amazing, we got to see all kinds of different fish and it was just a totally different experience when compared to the pool that we were practicing in.

Return with Elixir: I guess in this scenario my "Elixir" was my scuba diving license which I had earned by the end of the training.