Post 6: My Sophomore Goals

6. Create goals for you writing next year. How will I reach these goals?

My goals for next year are to improve on my writing skills so I can at least be proud of my work. For example, I want to know all of the literary devices and dramatic/poetic terms. This way I will be able to be able to easily analyze poems. That may not be a great achievement, but I just want to understand the lines from plays like Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth. The way to achieve these goals is to study and memorize the terms. To others, it sounds really hard. But I can make Quizlet cards out of the terms and memorize them. I learned that using Quizlet is an effective way of learning words.

What I also want to do is to understand the significance of the book that I am reading. When I read the Lord of the Flies, I hardly understood the content, nor fully understood how the book was connected to human nature. My next goal is to understand a book well enough to say it loud. It seems like a hard goal, but I know how to reach it. What I will do is annotate more and re-read the lines I annotated. This way, I will be able to answer questions on tests and quizzes, and be able to talk more in group discussions. During my freshman year, I barely talked unless it was about relating topics to another topic. So I also want speaking more in class to be a goal for me. I hope will be able to reach these goals next year.

Post 5: Areas to work on

5. What areas do you still need to work on? Why are these areas important?

The areas that I still need to work on involve analyzing poems and laying out an outline for an essay. These areas are important because without an outline, it's hard to know where the information goes. For example, before I wrote an outline on the Scientific Revolution, I just wrote out the essay. I learned that an outline was required, and I had to redo the entire thing because the information was scrambled. I couldn't even tell what I was writing about anymore.

It's also important because when poems are analyzed, the reader can then understand the approach the poet was going for, or what the poet was trying to say when writing the poem. For example, Macbeth, a play written by William Shakespeare, includes embedded slant and end rhyme. I barely knew how to paraphrase them, much less understand what the actors were saying. I learned how to somewhat understand the lines, but I feel as if I still need to work reading the lines entirely. I will try to ask my future English teacher how to read poems, as well as how to make my own outline without asking for help.

Post 4: My Strengths as a Writer

4. What are your strengths as a writer?  Be sure to provide specific evidence and to use the language we’ve developed in class.

My strengths as a writer involve writing about my past, writing based off of observation, and having my diction have an impact on my entire paper. When I write about my past, I like to write explicitly, never leaving out a single detail. For example, the Personal Narrative was written about when I went on a skiing trip with my family. I wrote in phrases like 'a white blanket' or 'crunching in the show'. I love to write like this because it appeals to me and sometimes anyone who reads my blogs or papers. When I write based off of observation, I see an object and describe what it is, how it came to be, and what was it made for. 

For example, I once wrote about a flower in my background last summer. It was a tiger lily, and I described it as golden brown in the middle with neon orange streaks spreading out like splatter paint. The gardeners planted the lily there a couple of months ago, and it had just bloomed. Another example would be the journal I used to write to express feelings. It was pretty much the equivalent to a diary. I once wrote about a duck I fed bread to in the park. When the duck got too close, he bit my hand, leaving me with red bite marks for the rest of the day. While writing in my diary, I punctuated every sentence with an exclamation point. That labeled me back then as a dramatic person. But in the middle of my freshman year, I learned of a term called diction. Diction is a choice/use of words when writing. It helps a writer make their paper more dramatic. I learned how to properly use diction by using the right situation to write the words down. I hope that I can improve more on other literary devices in the future. 

Post 3: Improvements as a writer

3. What have you learned about yourself as a writer this year?  What improvements have you made in your writing since the beginning of the year?

As a writer, I have learned that I was terrible at writing a passage, much less an essay. This was because I used never care about my work, thinking that no one would care to look at my writing. And since I got so many negative points on my essays, I just gave up on trying. When high school came along, I was handed an essay right off the bat. I didn't know what to do, since I started to care during 8th grade about my grades. I wanted to improve, but I didn't know how. Then a couple of friends of mine suggested going to the Writing Center, saying that they could help me with my assignments. As previously stated in my first blog, I had three visits to the Writing Center. And the more I visited, more I improved. 

The improvements that I have made throughout the year mainly had to do with my essay writing skills. I read many books, but I never knew how to write like that. I didn't even know what exactly a thesis was. So the assignments that Dr. D gave me really helped me branch out and become more confident in writing papers. I learned how to started my papers with the information of what I'm writing about, and end with my thesis statement. I also learned where to place my arguments within my paragraphs, and to back up my arguments with evidence points. I have come a long way from being the writer I used to be. To sum it up, I have really improved as a reader. I hope that I can improve more next year when I am a sophomore. 

Post 2: Who am I as a writer?

2. Write a portrait of you as a writer, now.  This could be a vivid account of you physically writing, or it could be more abstract (“I am a writer who…”).

I knew from the very start of my freshman year that I was a writer that liked to write with imagery. I loved to vividly describe every detail in my blogs, and thoroughly enjoyed using details in my Personal Narrative paper. Another example would be when I wrote about medieval job occupations in World History. I was writing as an herbalist writing in her journal about her day. The herbalist would have to write as if she was in the medieval times, when serfdom existed. It was a fun assignment. I liked the assignment so much that I drew a picture of me as a herbalist. I also love to write about World History because it gives me an excuse to learn about the past. I also get to write about history in my own words. Something about that is thrilling for me, because learning is something I enjoy. For example, I was happy when I got to choose my topic for the Research Paper. The topic that I chose for the paper was the Scientific Revolution.

The Scientific Revolution was something I wanted to write about, because it allowed me to express my feelings on how humanity, mainly the Europeans allowed religion to make up 3/4 of their lives. I understand if the Europeans wanted to worship a god/goddess, but it doesn't mean that they shouldn't blame all of their problems on God because a religion. Another example would be when I wrote the paper on the World Wars. During my research for that paper, I learned about many important events and strategies for conquest, such as the Schlieffen Plan. This plan was created by a man named Alfred von Schlieffen. Schlieffen planned for Germany to conquer France and then conquer the Soviet Union. But the British soldiers stopped the Germans from conquering the land, and this caused multiple alliances to arise, such as the French-Russian alliance. Eventually, World War I started. I love to write everything with detail and historical events. That's sort of why I love past fantasy novels. I hope that one day I can find a job that allows me to make more these historical novels. 

Post 1: Writing Center Refleftions

1. Reflect on your writing center experience(s) in the second semester, whether you visited for the research paper, your revision, or both.  What was the focus of your meeting, and how did you use this meeting to move the piece forward?

During my freshman year, I visited the Writing Center three times, each time being for a paper. The first time I went, I was writing my literary analysis for the Lord of the Flies, a book made by William Golding. My problem with this paper was the thesis and the points, pretty much meaning I messed up in writing the entire paper. The writing fellow who helped me in revising this said that I would have to restate my thesis in order for it to make sense, and make stronger arguments to connect to the thesis. My 2nd meeting was for my research paper. The research paper was a huge assignment given to me by Dr. D and Dr. Kuhn, my English and World History teachers. They said that I could choose any topic that I wanted and say why that event was important to World History. This paper unfortunately had a terrible outline, so I had to write out my paper with more description than arguments. I went to the Writing Center in order to learn how to write my paper properly, not wanting to make the same mistakes from my literary analysis. 

The Writing fellow that helped me said that I should be using transition sentences to connect the paragraphs together. He said that I should also restate my main points and end with a good wrap up sentence in order to make a good conclusion. My final visit to the Writing Center was for a World War Comparison essay. This essay was to write about the causes or consequences of both World Wars and how they were different or the same. I wanted help on a better conclusion because I couldn't find a good transition sentence. The writing fellow that helped me not only helped me find a good conclusion, but also helped me revise a couple of points that were connected to the thesis. I was glad that I went to the Writing Center. If I didn't go, I probably would've failed all three papers. 

Blog 1: About Me

Writing is, to many others, is scribbling down sentences in a specific way. Others believe it's something that is required to do in order to gain credits in a class. But I believe that writing is an art in which you organize words in a specific way. These words can later be judged for their quality. My name is Megan Nguyen, and I am a writer in training. For the past year, I have been writing in order to become better in terms of writing. And to show you my progress, I have made a portfolio. This portfolio a collection of blogs that I have written, to sum up, my year of learning to properly. For example, I have written research papers, narrative essays, and other blogs made in my other blogger account. This portfolio will describe how I have learned from these pieces of writing, and have learned how to become a better reader. This will also show the revisions that I have made to one of my pieces of work, and what I did wrong. I hope that my portfolio will inspire future writers in training to strive and become professional writers.

Blog 2: Reading Page

Reading has always been something I had enjoyed. In fact, I was considered the bookworm out of my cousins. It's sort of why my parents encourage me to go outside and be social. The problem with my reading was that I couldn't remember all the facts when I finished. This problem kept occurring until last November. When I entered high school, I was taught to annotate, with is underline important facts about a book. Dr. D, my English teacher, set the Lord of the Flies by William Golding in front of me and told me to find everything important for future discussions. Before I thought is was a waste of time for me, but it actually helped. Not only did it help me in reading better, but in studying for tests and quizzes as well. I realized that reading the Lord of the Flies and annotating it can be helpful in other classes.

Other books appeared throughout the year, such as Absolute True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie, Purple Hibiscus by Adichie, and Macbeth by William Shakespeare. Each of these books had a different style of writing that I took an interest to. For example, ATDPTI had drawn comics that explained parts of the main character, Arnold Spirit. These comics are humorous at first, but they started to give off a sentimental feeling as the story progressed. Another example would be Macbeth, where the book is actually as a script and the lines are written in different types of poetry. Lines like "fair is foul and foul is fair" holds a deeper meaning.

I created different projects out of these books, mainly Purple Hibiscus. Purple Hibiscus is a book created by an African woman named Adichie. She writes of a girl named Kambili and her family. Kambili goes through a journey in order to realize that her father's life for her isn't the only life. My main project for this book was to track down a character and analyze him/her. The character I chose was Kambili, and I found that she was an interesting character. For example, Kambili is blinded by the desire to please her father that she considered what the world had to offer. She also fell in love with the priest in Nsukka named Papa Amadi, which I found as a huge twist. All in all, I believed that I have improved as a reader, for I have learned how to better understand the books and have improved in English class altogether.

Blog 4: Revision

Th blog that I chose to revise was the Research Paper. The reason I chose to revise this particular paper was because this was the paper I made the most mistakes on. It was also the paper that I realized I didn't do the citation format right. At first, when revising this paper, I didn't know how to make the correct citation format, but then I realized how to do it with the help of Dr. D. After I applied the citation changes, the essay looked a lot better. I realize when I wrote this paper that I used too much information, and didn't quite make my point to the readers that astronomy, physics, and other scientific discoveries make up how we see the world today.

Megan Nguyen  

Dr. D/Dr. Kuhn  

WH 4/ English 1  

13 February 2017  

Discoveries of the Scientific Revolution  

The history of Europe can be divided into 3 periods: the classical, middle, and the modern period. The middle period, or as we call the Middle Ages, was the low point the European history. The Black Death mainly characterized this period. Europe then took a turn when Columbus sailed to America, and when the Renaissance contributed to Europe with discoveries of scientific and artistic benefit. Shortly after these events, the Scientific Revolution occurred in the 15th to 18th century. This particular event spurred the beginning of the modern period, and the improvement of the European public compared to the middle Ages. The discoveries during the Scientific Revolution improved life significantly from the medieval times. All scientists were important during this event, but astronomers and physicists were the most prominent.   

One of the first events to contribute to the Scientific Revolution was the Black Death. The Black Death's aftermath contributed to the study of medicine during the Scientific Revolution. The rodents in the Asian region spread and caused this disease through the trade ships. The Black Death took most of Europe, and 1/8 of the population, equaling to 64 million people (Benedictow). After a while, the disease faded, leaving the Europeans in shambles. This taught the European public to be more aware of hygiene and weather protection since the lack of both were the cause of the disease worsening.   

The disease not only spread through Europe, but to America after a man named Christopher Columbus attempted to sail to India in the 1490s in order to find goods that were valuable to Europe. Around this time, Europe had started to lighten up and had taken interest in the Asian region. When Columbus reached land, he realized later on that this wasn't India, but rather a new land to discover. The geographers with him graphed the traveling distance from Spain to this new land and made a groundbreaking discovery. The Earth was not flat, but round like a sphere ("Chapter"). This was the launch of many other discoveries to come.   

Many of these findings that followed occurred in a time period in Italy called the Renaissance. This event was a time when artists expressed their ideas with Europe, and soon the world (Henry). Many important advances were made during this event, such as the origination of algebra and geometry. This came along with the invention of the eyeglass and the compass. Even the number system was rooted to the Renaissance ("Math"). This period lasted until an astronomical discovery started the Scientific Revolution in the 1500s.   

Astronomy is the main branch of science. It helps in tracking planetary movements and charting the stars. (Henry) Astronomy was actually what started the Scientific Revolution. Around the year of 1508, a man named Nicolaus Copernicus made the first discovery of the Scientific Revolution. Copernicus was seen "as the last of the great medieval astronomers" (Henry). He stated that the sun, instead of the Earth, was the center of the universe.  The sun being the center of the universe contributed to the modern-day solar system. This discovery argued against Ptolemy's geocentric system and started a chain of discoveries to occur ("Scientific").A German man who studied astronomy named Tycho Brahe made his own discovery related to this around the 1540s. See, he was intrigued by the geocentric and heliocentric systems of Ptolemy and Copernicus. So Brahe's research resulted in that his system would that be the planets would revolve around both the Sun and the Earth. Take the moon for example. The small rock would revolve around the Earth, which orbits the Sun. ("Scientific")  

The next astronomer that shared his discovery was named Galileo Galilei. He was and still is, famous to the scientific world for his research. One of his famous discoveries happened in 1610 when Galileo used the telescope to chart the stars. He discovered Jupiter, a planet from far in the solar system. He also noticed the 4 moons revolving around the gigantic planet. This proved that Copernicus was right in his findings. That wasn't all, though. Galileo also found that the moon bore "craters and jagged mountains." ("Scientific"). This went against Aristotle's teachings, that the moon had a smooth surface resembling marble. Galileo wrote his own finding into a pamphlet called the “Starry Messenger”. He sent this pamphlet to the Catholic Church when he later received a request from the church to remove his information on the heliocentric system. Galileo was to remove this information or face harsh punishments.

This was normal in Europe because of a specific law. Back in the day, any piece of writing or speech that opposed the teachings of religion would either asked to have that piece removed or be punished by heresy. Heresy is when a man or woman has opposed a religion with his or her own opinion. Galileo removed the pamphlet, but the European public had already read the piece of work (Isaac). They were starting to wonder if religion and philosophy were all that reliable. A man named Johanne Kepler, who released his discovery in 1609, cleared their suspicions.   

The astronomer was named Johanne Kepler. He was born in the year of 1571 and died in the year of 1630. This astronomer made two important discoveries concerning our solar system. First, Kepler created three laws to describe how our system was in constant motion. These laws were called The Three Laws of Planetary Motion. Second, Kepler discovered that when the planets revolve around the sun, they spin on their axis, causing the planets to tilt when spinning. The laws and discovery not only acknowledged Copernicus's heliocentric system but also further rejected the fact that "planetary orbits are perfect spheres" (Badertscher). See, Aristotle stated in the 13th century that when planets orbited the Earth, they spun perfectly like tops, never tilted. (“Scientific”) Soon after the axis, Isaac Newton, a famous scientist, made one of the best discoveries in the history of Physics.

Physics is the study of matter and how it works to fit in our universe. Two scientists, who were physicists, stood out during this period because of what they had to offer to the European public. One of the physicists' names was Isaac Newton, who was born in 1642 and died in 1727. As a child, Newton was a farmer. And during his childhood, he neglected his work. Despite his early occupation, Newton was always more interested in the outside world and how it worked. Then around his middle years, Newton made a law called the Law of Gravitation. This law described how individuals were so heavy while feathers were so light. Specifically, the Law of Gravitation told of how weight exists on Earth, and how it works with objects. ("Scientific") Newton also contributed to the Atomic Theory. He stated that atoms were hardened particles that made up solidified objects. The theory was similar to Dalton's theory. But unlike Dalton, Newton incorporated God into his theory, saying that God was an above all atomic organism that he didn't need atoms to make up his being. ("Newton")  

The main man who made the atomic theory, though, was John Dalton, though he was the least likely man to do so. He was born in the year of 1766 in Northwest England. He was self-taught during his childhood, and later on a high school teacher in Manchester, England. Then Dalton started to think about how the atmosphere worked. With further research, he discovered that the air we breathe is a chemical compound. When he thought of this idea, he knew that water vapor could not be combined chemically with the gasses in the air (John). That's when Dalton discovered these small, shelled spheres. He decided to name these spheres atoms. Scientists continued to explore atoms and their behavior to various experiments.    

Of course, astronomy and physics weren't the only science fields to explore. There were other scientists that contributed to the Scientific Revolution. And although some of the scientists were considered minor, their discoveries were just as great as Galileo and Copernicus. One these scientists happened to inspire the first vaccine in the world. His name was Harvey Williams. Williams was born in 1578 and died on 1657. He discovered blood circulation; specifically, that blood is pumped throughout the human body since the heart is doing so. A century after his discovery reached the public, heads turned to the Africans and Turkish "purposefully exposing individuals to mild strains of smallpox to achieve inoculation", or vaccination ("Medicine").  Intrigued by the foreign methods, the Europeans tried the methods and made the world's first vaccine. This vaccine was made to fight off smallpox, and smallpox soon became known as the first man killed disease. A better finding, however, went deeper into blood, for three men invented the compound microscope shortly after smallpox was eradicated.   

One of the men's names was Zacharias Jensen, born in 1588, to die in 1631. He was one of the men to make the men made the compound microscope. The two other men were Hans Jansen and Hans Lippershey. The invention made by these men helped with the phase contrast of the microscope, meaning that you can see the difference between a blurry and clear image of the object within the lens. All three of these men were optometrists, meaning they studied eyes for any weird reactions or anything out of the ordinary (“Invention”). But unlike these men, another scientist, an expert in optics, made a machine to measure a compound.   

The next great discovery came from an Italian mathematician named Evangelista Torricelli. He was born in the year of 1608 and died in the year of 1647. On the year of 1643, Torricelli invented the machine that measured air pressure. This machine was called the barometer. Another man named Vayhinger tried to copy Torricelli's work but failed. Vayhinger's barometer was filled with water instead of mercury, so instead of working the barometer malfunctioned (Frey).  

One of the last scientists to contribute to the Scientific Revolution was a German geographer named Alexander von Humboldt. This geographer was born on 1769, and died on 1859, around the end of the Scientific Revolution. Around the late 1700s, Humboldt came back from his travels to make a new type of map. He used natural philosophy and the science to map out the locations of vegetation, climate, and population around the world (Nougayrede).  

The Scientific Revolution was the main highlight of Europe because the discoveries of the astronomical, physical, and other scientists gave way for Europe's modern period. The events during that time expressed ideas of the artistic and the economic. One event even led Europe to discover America. Lastly, when the scientists gave their information out, the European public observed and believed in that information. This event in Europe helped improve information not only in Europe but in other areas too. The Scientific Revolution was truly a period of knowledge.   

  

  

Work Cited  

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Frey, Dennis A. "Wealth, Consumerism, And Culture Among The Artisans Of Göppingen: Dynamism And Tradition In An Eighteenth-Century Hometown." Central European History (Cambridge University Press / UK) 46.4 (2013): 741-778. History Reference Center. Web. 29 Jan. 2017.   

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"The Invention of the Microscope." Science and Its Times, edited by Neil Schlager and Josh Lauer, vol. 3, Gale, 2001. World History in Context, link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/CV2643450269/WHIC?u=lap17ehs&xid=d5043c01. Accessed 30 Jan. 2017.   

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 legacy.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/newton-optics.asp. (Primary Source)   

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