Spell Well

The movie Spellbound
Neil
Winning the national spelling bee would be very important to Neil, I think he doesn't do it because he likes it but because he wants to make his family proud and bring them glory. It seems that his parents are living the american dream through their son and that's the reason they pressure him so much. They want him to take advantage of all the opportunities he has in america.

Spelling words that I didn't know:
1.permeability
2.cephalalgia
3.mattock
4.odyssey
5.corollary

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Discrimination When Enrolling

Link to the article

While I was reading this article about race and its role in college applications, I found it to be very interesting. I had never thought about race being a quality or a trait that would affect your future. Here in this article the deans of two of the most important law colleges in the USA, Martha L. Minow and Robert C. Post from Harvard and Yale Law Schools, were presenting their arguments to why should race be one of the questions in applications.

They strongly belief that race affects how you end up growing and the way you handle problems and challenges, as we see here in the article, “Writers of recommendations frequently mention race in explaining how an applicant has overcome challenges.” I agree with them on this. Race is your morals and beliefs that are practiced for many years and have been carried on by your family. Everyone is raised different but that doesn’t mean that people have certain limitations depending on your race. This is the part in which I don’t agree.

To me their arguments seem like they are judging people on something that they could not have control of. You are born into your race and you will never be able to change it. Although the deans say that obviously this is not the only thing that they will check in their applications, they will make a requisite to write an essay to explain the impact of race in their life. “In their personal statements, many applicants discuss how race has influenced their lives.”

They say that diversity is a good thing to have in campus, “Race is sometimes an important and relevant factor in group discussions both inside and outside of the classroom.” This diversity includes different points of view and opinions but also people who have a character that will not get along with others, and this will happen no matter where people are from. If what colleges want is an education that prepares students for the future, they shouldn’t mind the applicants’ race. What counts is what’s in the mind of the applicant, not where they are from. This gives space for discrimination and not having an equal or fair chance of getting accepted.

Escaping From Reality

While reading these tablets in Gilgamesh I had always a question in my mind. Is Gilgamesh leaving the city of Uruk because he is scared to face his own death, or is he leaving because he is sad due to the death of Enkidu and can´t deal with it in a good way? What made me think of this question was this part of the book: ¨ Enkidu has died. Must I die too? Must Gilgamesh be like that?¨ On page 48 on Tablet IX.  

Also I made I connection with my life. Here it seems that Gilgamesh is feeling exhausted and has no one, when he really needs a companion since Enkidu is gone. Now Gilgamesh feels weak and I can see that he has changed. He isn't the feared Demigod as he used to be, now he is deteriorating from the inside and out. I can really notice that a person, even if he is in your life for a short time, can really change you. For example, I have a cousin that is really tough and isn't scared of anything, even though she doesn't live here every time I see her, I realize that I shouldn't live life being scared of new things; like Gilgamesh he shouldn't change the way he is for something that has passed.

Spaces In The Mind

Gilgamesh Tablets IV and V

While reading this part of the book Gilgamesh, I made a connection with my own life. Gilgamesh has a couple of dreams which wake him up in the middle of the night feeling agitated. He gets curious and wants to interpret what each of the dreams mean. Enkidu listens and interprets Gilgamesh’s dreams; he always concludes that the dreams are fortunate and that they will lead to a good path. It seems like they both take dreams very seriously and really believe that their future is all planned out, and that a dream is just a way to take a glimpse at it.

Most of the nights I dream about events that happened or will happen to me, but opposite of Gilgamesh I really don’t want to know what they mean. I prefer living life day by day instead of knowing things that you shouldn’t know, maybe because I am scared to know if something bad is coming my way. For me dreams really don’t mean anything, they are just a way for the worries and memories in your mind to manifest in a certain way. 

Choose your favorite picture. Post it into your blog. Then write about three inferences you are able to make based upon the picture and your prior knowledge.

Three things that I infer about this picture:

1. This boy and girl might me a couple.
2. They look young, around 15-20 years old.
3. They were not aware that this picture was taken.