Mother Tongue

Why did Tan's teachers encourage her to choose a career in math or science instead of writing? What caused them to miscalculate Tan's ability and potential in English? What point is Tan making with this story? How does this point fit in with the larger argument of "Mother Tongue"?

Tan's teachers encouraged her to choose a career in math or science instead of writing because she was foreign and her English was described as "broken." In the tests Tan was confused by the way they grouped things. The correct answer was simply judgement compared to math which was set to one answer. The Chinese are known to have majors in engineering, mainly because of this scenario. Tan may speak differently, but she understands language. She even stated how she thinks about it every day. She isn't an author; she is a story teller. What she sees is the images words create; her stories are broad, deep, and full of beauty. They're almost like pictures. This fits with the title "Mother Tongue" because to Tan the fact that her mother speaks different or "broken" doesn't matter to her, because she understands the language either way it's being spoken.

Digital Story Topic

The topic in which I'm chosing to tell my digital story is my first car. I'll show and talk about my experiences of the many adventures that my friends and I have lived through together, but not going too far in depth keeping it clean for our class movie session.

Relate how digital storytelling can ‘revolutionize’ the narrative experience. Relate to specifics from the reading.

Some writes are said to be "froze up like a deer in the headlights when it came time for them to construct an emotionally-compelling personal tale," says Lambert. He also states, "Only people who develop effective filtering, indexing, and reackaging tools in their minds can manage to successfully and consistently articulate meaning that reconstructs a coherent story." But most skilled professionals have difficulty using examples outside of their respective fields, from their personal life or non-professional experience, but those who do are often described as storytellers.

According to Lambert, when using the digital storytelling, images, videos, sounds, and other representations of events from our life can help us to reconstruct more complete memories and therefore expand the story. These are acheived through these three easy steps: owning your insights, owning your emotions, finding the moment, seeing your story, hearing your story, assembling your story, and sharing your story. Once you complete this process, your story is complete and 'revolutionized' with digital storytelling.

Student Metaphors of Themselves as Writers talks about the different metaphors students use, telling about thier writing skills. This includes Metaphors of Process and Speed, Metaphors of Fear and Courage, Metaphors of Control, and Metaphors of Silence. This article claims the struggle of students as writers and how they have to overcome their fears, weaknesses, and stuggles as writers. This relates to the overall thesis of the article which was to have students write metaphors about their images of themselves as writers. Most of these writers as we can tell had a bit of a struggle.

A Stand Against Wikipedia

I agree with Middlebury College policy: Wikipedia should be just a starting point to research for college students. There is a lot of information out there and it's hard to trust most of it. Wikipedia is the first source that shows up in google, use it. Don't base your whole research paper about what you found in Wiki because it could be faulty. It's okay to find little things like just today I used it to find the magnetic field strength of Earth, I had information to back it up. I just needed that one more source to let me know I was correct.

With my major, and many in depth majors. It's hard to find a source for the answer you are looking for and even then, I would trust Wiki over some other sources that don't look very credible. The information on certain topics aren't very general. This leads to hey, looks like Wiki is the only site that has what I need. What else is there to do? You can't find it in your book, you google it and find it on Wiki.

In high school, we were never under any circumstances allowed to use Wiki for a work cited source. If it was on there, automatic fail. For this reason, I don't really use Wikipedia too much because it's just drilled in my head not to. However the information is not very hard to change on Wiki. I remember a group of my guy friends in high school who changed the bibliography of history figures that we had discussed that day. They got a good laugh as to how long it lasted on there, it was gone the next day. For this reason it would be a good idea to use Wiki because so many people read it and review it. In my opinion it shouldn't matter if you cite Wikipedia. It's reliable and convenient.

Into the Wild_9

The book definitely tells a better story like all books do, however the movie was easier to follow. The movie focused on Supertramp and Supertramp only. The other men who traveled down the same road as McCandless, didn't have a significance of the story. It just leads you to believe that Chris isn't as crazy as he seems to be described in the chapters. The movie shows Chris more as a normal kid: drinking in the bar, running off with the girl, swimming in the ocean. Some of the things he says just aren't quite right.

High points on the book would be the explanation. There are many details left out of the movie. I feel like the bond between the McCandless sibling are greater expressed in the movie. Also double life that was expressed of Chris's father makes more sense. In the movie I believe it was just said that his mother was cheated on. The book had a greater idea as to why Chris went on his adventure: get rid of and away from materialistic objects. I wish Chris could have lived for this day and age where everything has grown to be materialistic.

I think we all need to get away from materialism sometimes. Go camping for a weekend where there is no service. The only people you have are the ones surrounding you. It's kind of a good feeling to break free from technology. That's all vacation is really, a get away.

I think the movie played better in the aspect of emotions. For me, it was disturbing to see McCandless in pain starving, going crazy talking to himself because he was so lonely and scared. In my mind, if McCandless was so smart why didn't he come up with a plan to make some floatation device to get across the river? One part I wasn't sure what the significance of the bear was. Chris was so weak he couldn't even stand up and then some grizzly just comes out of nowhere right next to Supertramp. Why didn't he attempt to kill it for food? But the book did better express the pain and suffering that McCandless was going through in the last days of his life.

Into the Wild_8

Chris, aka Alex SuperTramp isn't really lost in the world. He knows what he has to do, find himself. Along the way, Alex makes a few mistakes. He wanted to get away from all that did him wrong, his family, but he was also forgetting they are also what did him right. He never told them he was safe or he was having a good time, he didn't even let them know he was alive.

Chris expressed love for others. He was out there living his dream, completely happy. He touched others with his words and was by no means selfish. He was a hard worker and did anything that he put his mind to. Chris was different. It was just too bad that he lost his life on his adventure. Imagine what he could have done for this world.

Chris had no fear, thinking nothing bad was going to happen to him, he took risks, lived on the edge. His only fear was water, which in the end was what killed him really. He could cross the river but if he wouldn't have feared water so much maybe he could have thought to look for a better place to cross.

Chris was definitely foolish in a lot of ways. He could have learned to hunt properly and preserve the meat. If he did these things maybe he wouldn't have starved to death, maybe he could have thought to collect herbs that weren't poisonous before he went on his hungry rant, collecting the first thing he found, maybe he should have realized he was hurting himself whenever he had to make another hole in his belt. That should have been the wake up call like hey you're not eating enough man. You need to start getting food some other way.

Chris McCandless's family realized their son was happy in the last months of his life. The journals and pictures he left behind were living proof. Just imagine, having a son with all the talent in the world and suddenly giving it all up on a silly voyage to find himself. I would be pretty devastated. His family honored the area in which Supertramp died. It wasn't easy for any of them.