...We have all sinned, no one is innocent. Most literature works portray childhood or adolescence as a time of innocence and sense of wonder, or as times of tribulation and terror. But in "Bless Me, Ultima" by Rudolfo Anya, it's a state of mind. A child's mental state is still in the process of being molded through their influential surroundings, allowing them to visualize the sense of wonder and to act upon their innocence while it still remains. In the beginning of the novel, Antonio was just an innocent boy who didn't have a concern of dangerous elements around him. As the story continues, Antonio is becoming more aware of the good and evil within the world. Antonio loses his innocence in a few trials mentioned in the story. According to Anaya,...
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...a philosophy course. Understanding philosophy is the key in motivating us as individuals to explore life’s most challenging issues. Moreover, learning to understand philosophy will help you to become more open-minded, thoughtful, attuned to life in general, more of a critical thinker, and less accepting of simplistic answers. Philosophy can train your mind to think clear, analytic, and in a powerful way if you allow it. In turn this will enable you to make thoughtful decisions, communicate more effectively, and ultimately grow as a person. The knowledge of philosophy will help you to reach your full potential in life as an individual. As a student, the study of philosophy will take your vision of what you want to be in life and make it reality. Philosophy can more broadly be defined by examining the four major philosophical areas of inquiry which are wonder, wisdom, truth, and the dynamic process. Philosophy begins with wonder. Wonder is a search for unity of knowledge and the desire to answer the great questions of life. “The feeling of wonder is the touchstone of the philosopher, and all philosophy has its origins in wonder.” – Plato The most powerful question in life is “Why?” When we ask why something is done a certain way or why it is not we are penetrating deep beneath the surface of accepting a simple answer by delving into wisdom. Asking “why” often times forces us to expose hidden facts and to examine the rationale for our decisions. “For it is owning to...
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...The NICU life: I wake up not having slept. My mind races throughout the night. I pump my milk faithfully because I know a certain little man needs it more than I will ever know. I call the nurse almost every 4 hours. Is he ok? Did he have episodes of low numbers? Is he still off the breathing machine? Can you please give him a hug for me. All these thoughts race my mind and I cant escape it. I finally shower. My eyes look like I've been punched because the dark circles are so bad from lack of sleep. My hair is barely brushed. Half the time I don't even know what I am doing because I am so focused on seeing my son. Finally I get in my car and drive 30-45 minutes to see him, depending on traffic. I cuss as I try to find parking at the hospital and it frustrates me. Will I make it in time to see him being fed, will I be able to hold him today. Did he miss me, does he know how much I love him. I cant even type this status because tears roll down my face. Finally I get a parking spot. I race to the elevators, second floor please. I take the long walk down the hallway to his nursery. Its quiet and there is always a chill in the air. Breast milk in hand I finally reach the check in. I sign in, rush to scrub my hands, sanitize my hands and get my special ID badge. At this point it seems like hours have gone by since I left my house. My mind still races. Finally I walk back and see him. There he is all snuggled in, at this point I'm exhausted but I can finally breathe, or can I? Wait...
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...Archie Smith, Boy Wonder ~Dedicated to Kielee and Ashley~ Tucked tight in his bed a young boy laid unaware of the adventures and frights he would soon fair. This is a tale to certainly ponder, about the young Archie Smith, Boy Wonder. Page Break Filling his head with stories of fairies, goblins and trolls, twelve year old Archie prepares for bed. When reading fairy tales, read between the lines for there is plenty unsaid. "Archie, hun, why are you not asleep?", asked the young boys' Mum. "It's time to dream of adventure not books.", but the young boy barely even spared her a look. For he was lost in an enchanted land, fighting dragons and winning a fair maiden's hand. "Honey come here and tuck your son in.", the woman called to her...
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...Mind wondering is a common listening problem that can result in other complications. A wondering mind not only diverts attention form the information that is being given, but it also can infer that the information is not important or relavent to the listener. The speaker can get offended or start creating a rough impression of the reader. Although, listeners can create poor impacts of themselves there is a feasible possibility that as the mind wonders the “listener” could be pseudolistening, faking listening, to show “listening.” Fake istening can cause the speaker to belive listening is occuring without it genually occuring. As a result of fake listening the speaker expects the listener to know what is being said and the listener has show...
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...Seeing the World With a Sense of Wonder . In Moore’s novel, Wild Comfort, she explains how significant contact with the natural world brings comfort to you and makes you have a sense of wonder. Significant contact with the world is anything from smelling, hearing, seeing, or touching the natural world. Throughout the book Moore has a sense of wonder and adventures off into nature. By interacting with nature, she’s able to make connections to her own life. She makes it clear that nature has a healing power and people should get in contact with it. Moore defines sacred as a “worthy of reverence and awe.” She strongly believes the world we live in is a sacred place. One of Moore’s experiments that she did, “The Happy Basket”, she discovered that “significant contact with the natural world” is a vital key ingredient to happiness. Each day Moore would write down what made her happy. A common thing that made her happy was taking part in the natural world. One of Moore’s happy moments was, “I’m lying on my back under ponderosa trees by Davis Lake…I had gone out to look for birds, but this is better, letting them come to me” (Moore 26). We are fortunate to have nature, but many take that for granted and just go on living their busy lives. Humans today should take a moment to pause and get in significant contact with the natural world. To take time to appreciate their surroundings. They need to see the bigger picture or you don’t know what’s going on. People need to take a step...
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...We have forgotten what it means to be truly human. We live in a world of machines, are we are becoming much like this world of machines. We no longer work to live, we live to work and we don’t know how to do anything diffetent. We have forgotten about leisure. Philospher, Pieper, addresses this in his essays “leisure the basis of culture. Our culture needs to regain the ability to look at our world with eyes of wonder in order to once again live truly human lives. In this paper, I will define the world of work and the world of leisure, then I will proceed to explain how these two worlds are connected, and how they are inncommenserable despight this connection. The world of work is the world of supply and demand; the world of work is the world...
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...------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------- Ernest Hemingway. "Cat in the Rain" (1925) Homework: Read the story. While reading, please note down at least three points of wonder. Pinpoint the exact sentence that puzzles you and phrase a question. Task 1: Individually Summary and composition: 1. Divide the text into sections and give each a headline. 2. Now write down 5-10 keywords that will allow you to give an oral summary of the short story. Task 2/pre-reading: In groups The importance of the first paragraph Looking only at the first paragraph of the short story, please answer the questions below: 1. Describe the setting (sum up, don't just repeat what it says in the text) 2. What do we get to know about the difference between American couple and the Italians in the first paragraph of the short story? 3. What does the setting tell about the mood of the short story? And provided that the setting is used as a mirror of the characters' state of mind, what can we infer about the characters' emotional state? Task 3: In groups Points of wonder * Discuss the points of wonder that you have identified while reading the short story. Take turns to present your points of wonder. * Choose one point of wonder and attempt to give an answer that is supported by the text. * Attempt to determine the possible symbolical meaning of the cat. Task 4: In groups Minimalist characteristics and type of narrator ...
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...Understanding My Emotional Intelligence Stephanie J. McAuley Bethel University Orientation to Adult Learning Charles Daniels April 11, 2016 Understanding My Emotional Intelligence A person’s emotional intelligence is described as their ability to observe, access, and manage emotions. I often wonder if my emotional intelligence provides me with a sense of stability and assurance within my social life. Understanding my emotions is necessary in order for me to be successful and increases my chances of survival in the real world, but I do not agree that the EI test accurately describes me. After carefully reviewing my emotional intelligence test results, I am now aiming to become much more in touch with controlling and understanding my feelings. Being able to utilize my emotional intelligence skills allows room for self-improvement and learning how to approach future situations. The ability to express myself freely and better understand my feelings now comes easily to me. I often find myself looking back and thinking of times when I could not clearly express myself and it makes me wonder. Thinking that maybe my mind had not fully matured, or if I simply did not know who I was. These thoughts led me to looking further into the woman I was becoming. After further examining myself I am sure that my emotional intelligence is at the highest it has ever been. I am also sure that there is always room for emotional improvement which is why I now strive to always to be in a...
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...October 2014 Wonder Woman Children always looking for a positive role model to have, and many end up choosing superheroes they see in their favorite comic books or ones they have seen in the media. Since children are so easily affected by things they see in their childhood, having discriminatory elements in these influential characters may be problematic. “The Wonder Woman Precedent: Female (Super) Heroism on Trial” written by Julie D. O’Reilly, was published in the Journal of American Culture in 2005. O’Reilly is a professor of communication and women and gender at Heidelberg University. In “The Wonder Woman Precedent”, she writes about the hardships that female superheroes in the media must face that male superheroes do not go through. Throughout her article she compares Wonder Woman, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and the sisters of Charmed to male superheroes like Superman and Jake 2.0. “Wonder Woman” written by Gloria Steinem, is an excerpt from a book written about Wonder Woman. Steinem is well known activist, feminist, and author. “Wonder Woman” talks about how Wonder Woman helped shape Steinem to become the woman she is today. O’Reilly and Steinem both believe that the creator of Wonder Woman views on feminism are not exactly correct. However, both authors share opposing viewpoints on the trials female superheroes face and if wonder woman is a feminist icon. The creator of Wonder Woman, not surprising to most, was a man. William Moulton Marston, who wrote the Wonder Woman comics...
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...Many people wonder if experience is just there from what we learn in life or if we are born with them. There are always two questions to a subject we have been wondering for years. How come one of the twins like football and the other twin hates that sport? Sometimes we are born with a different type of attitude from one of our siblings. We would either get it from one of our parents or from one of our peers we have been hanging out with from the outside world. If you have a nasty attitude towards your parents or other people, everyone will wonder which parent they got it from. It is not only the parents, it is also from who the young child is hanging around with and what they are learning from the peer. Many people wonder why we behave the way we do and why we behave differently compared to our family members. It is what they call nature and nurture. Nature is a trait of what we are with and what is passed down genetically. Nature gives us our eye and hair color, what we like to eat, how our smile looks and shape of our body. Nurture is personal experience. We aren’t born with a blank personality, we learn from either our parents or peers. It is the causes of our behaviors and characteristics. Genes may give us a little boost on how our personality starts, but from the environment from the outside world has the power to make us the exact opposite. Before psychology class, I have also been wondering for a while why I and some of my siblings are different from one another. I...
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...The wife assumes the figure is a woman because that’s what she perceive to see. The pattern is on the yellow wallpaper, but the wife claims only she can see the figures. Jane could be the figure in the wallpaper, “ it sticks horribly and the pattern just enjoys it! All those strangled heads and bulbous eyes and waddling fungus growth just shriek with derision!”(365) When the wife began spending too much time confined to one room. She became mentally attached to the content of the yellow wallpaper, gave it a name such as jane, and since she suffers from nervous depression certain things or situations can be fragile for her. “ There are things in that paper that nobody knows but me, or ever will.”(358) The wife sees things that nobody...
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...There is this vein that throbs in my upper thigh. I am well aware of it. I wish I could cut it like they do when they cut down dead boy’s body after he hanged himself before having orange juice or black coffee and eggs. Randomly I will remember things that caused me great pain: (1) like when my childhood neighbor and their kids decided to tell every parent they knew that my brother molested me. They told me that they had a right to warn other children. What about me? When are my feelings considered? Fading into the background became essential to survival and now I don’t know how to peel myself out of the backdrop. (2) the social worker who became my interrogator; I was not a victim, but a confession. Life becomes so sad when I become just...
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...Understanding human behavior has been the hard experience for since losing my own. It was almost as if I was relearning the human experience from my own private view in which every human has, the mind. Yet, when I view from this place I believe that start to developed and understanding of my place within the universe. In retrospection, I find myself along in this form of this think. Does this leave me insane? Willing effort to be lose to the judgment of my peers? Or am not just simply unique? Theses thought started to gained speed within my head during my development into maturity. I found myself asking big question related to my significance in the world weather than about it. This at the time made me quite concerned about myself, as my hopes for myself were that of a great scientist. The intimate change from thinking on the universe to myself would be a drastic idea for a 13-year-old. But, then again I truly have no...
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...From the first moment I walked into this Positive Psychology class, I knew it would change something about me, for good. As a natural optimist, I was already expecting to have something good come out of this course that would affect my life, broaden my perspective, and somehow change something about my behavior. Little did I know that I would get so much more than just notes, lectures, and homework, I received some important tools for life that can help me in many situations. The five tools I incorporated into my life and do today are benefit finding, the nightly gratitude journal, and importance of flow in life, eudemonia, and the wonder drug. These important five tools that I picked up this semester result in an increase in happiness and so much more. Once of the first things that I remember really stuck out to me was, Professor Susan Thompson’s story of her life as a benefit finder and as a fault-finder. The difference was incredible and from that moment on I dedicated my life to transforming into a benefit-finder for all of life’s situations. I never considered myself as a fault-finder, but it always depended on the situation, now as a benefit-finder my life is open to more opportunities to learn, and move onto the future. For example, recently my little sister and I have been looking for a white Pomeranian breed puppy. Ever she was a little girl she wanted this puppy, and now as a fully employed part-time teen she has made it her job to find one. Together we have been looking...
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