journey through junior year

In Woolf's piece The Death of a Moth , the moth is characterized as a creature with "enormous energy" flying "vigorously." He flew back and forth and back and forth until suddenly, he tried to fly once more "but seemed either so stiff or so awkward that he could only flutter to the bottom of the windowpane." The moth's life was going perfectly well and smoothly until suddenly, it wasn't. Starting from the small tasks in life like taking a test to something monumental like a wedding, these are all things that people plan. So, although death is everyone's inevitable fate, it is one of the few things in life that we cannot prepare for. This leads to quite a paradoxical mindset. There all these motivational quotes I constantly see on social media about "living in the moment", but in our society, today, is that really possible? It seems that sometimes I am just blindly walking through life- doing things because I feel that I am ...

During the summer of 2015, I went to Las Vegas for my cousin Diana's wedding. It was a beautiful ceremony and reception, and although it was the first wedding that I've ever been to, it was everything I had imagined for a typical, traditional wedding. Diana and her family have lived in Vegas all their life- not to brag for them or anything, but the family of five kids live in a ginormous house with everything from a swimming pool to a tennis court. With this as my only background knowledge of Vegas, reading "Marrying Absurd" was quite a surprise for me. It messes with my mind to think that the famous "Las Vegas Lifestyle" targets a very, VERY different audience than the people who actually LIVE in Las Vegas. When driving around Vegas, there were tons of fancy cars and people wearing expensive clothing- so why is it that this city is so well known for weddings that only require "five dollars for the license" and for the bride and groom to be 18 an...

One of the distinct characteristics of David Foster Wallace’s writing style is his common use of catalog. When listing what was present at the Maine Lobster Festival in his article "Consider the Lobster", Wallace says, "Also available are lobster rolls, lobster turnovers, lobster saute, Down East lobster salad, lobster bisque, lobster ravioli, and deep-fried lobster dumplings." Another important feature that shines through his author’s voice is his extreme attention to detail and his creative ways of describing these details. Wallace writes with high diction and a variety of sentence structure and length. Below, I have inserted a small excerpt of me explaining an extreme version of our school lunchroom while adopting some of David Foster Wallace’s writing techniques. Slimy, gooey, watery substances slid around my lunch try as I walked into the cafeteria, trying to find a seat. My eyes scanned the room- jumping from the annoying freshman talking too loudly, to th...

While reading "from Serving in Florida", I kept debating back and forth whether Barbara Ehrenreich's experience working in less than desirable conditions were worsened because of her previous privileged lifestyle or if they weren't as bad as they could have been.  They could've been worsened because she's never been put in a situation like this before. She's very fortunate and has never been treated like she was in that environment or forced to do that type of work. The difference between the two types of lifestyles is incomparable so the drastic change could've made the poor conditions seem worse than they were for the other workers. On the other hand, this experiment could've also been biased the other way around in that the situation for Ehrenreich was better than it was for the other workers. She knew that this was just an experiment for her own purposes and that none of her actions would have long-lasting impacts on her life. For instance, ...