The main focus of this week was to build on our ideas of tragedy that we had formed last week. To do this watched a Ted Talk on success, read Oedipus Rex, analyzed an essay. Afterward we wrote a blog post on them all.
The Ted Talk was from Alain de Botton, and he touched on topics such as the “snobbery” of society, perception of success, and connection tragedy to success. Even though we were watching the Ted Talk to look for tragedy, I think I learned a little about how I view my own success too. Before this year I pictured success as my parents would: PhD, family, comfortable living, etc.. But now that I am beginning the stage in my life where I decided my future, I’m realizing that I would not be completely happy the way my parents are. So, my idea of success was not my own. I think this tied into what de Botton was saying. If you are not successful, then you’re a tragic failure. But in order to be completely successful, you need to be successful in your own eyes, not others, or else you will be dissatisfied. We also wrote blogs about Oedipus. My blog on it explains how I analyzed the tragedy in the story, and also how it relates back to the other things we have talked about in our tragedy unit so far. I enjoyed reading the story in class instead of on our own, having Mr. S’s input on the tragic situation was helping in developing my own ideas. I also liked the new version of note taking we learned, called Cornell Notes. This was beneficial in keeping my thoughts organized. This week I was able to analyze the topics we discussed well enough to write my tragedy blogs, however my mind was somewhere else. You can probably guess that the results of the presidential election have upset me and have occupied my mind quite a bit. Hopefully this tragedy doesn't continue to dominate my thoughts for much longer.
0 Comments
This week we started a new project on tragedy. We focused on figuring out what a tragedy is by reading about it online and reading a short essay. After defining tragedy in our own words, we made our first blog post. My blog was about how tragedy is different in real life than portrayed in literature. I wrote about how tragedy is a dramatic story revolving around human suffering, and how human suffering is often different in the real world. I also wrote about the different forms tragedies can come in and how they are used to provoke emotional responses in the reader or listener. At the end of our “What is Tragedy?” projects we will be writing a philosophical, opinion essay on tragedy. One activity we did this week was on forming an opinion on the Dakota Access Pipeline. This activity was to prepare us to be able to back up our opinions with facts, instead of just a ‘because” anwser. I had a lot of fun with this activity. Although I didn’t say much, it was interesting to see how other people felt about the situation and how their opinions differed from mine. I feel like there are environmental hazards to take into consideration about the pipeline, but overall this protest is about how the U.S. government continually infringes upon native american rights and does not respect them at all. Overall, I think this was a good activity because it’s on a topic we were all somewhat familiar with and could easily form an opinion on. |
This is my Reflective Learning Blog for my AP Lit class. Archives
March 2017
Categories |