Week 13, End of Semester Reflections!

This is my last post for English 1080 at Memorial University of Newfoundland with an awesome professor, Jonathan Parsons (whom I've had lots of trouble spelling his name). Overall, English 1080 has been a pretty awesome course, probably my favourite course out of my first ever semester at MUN. I'm probably a little biased, considering I love learning and analysing poetry and short fiction, and I have ever since I started school. My absolute favourite piece of literature we have discussed over this term is probably "Where Are You Going, Where Have you Been?" by Joyce Carol Oates. I found this piece particularly interesting because first of all, it has a lot of allusion. If you do not have some background information of this story, you probably won't understand it. If you do not have an underlying knowledge of the story of Eve and the tree of knowledge, or the story of Charon (the ferryman of Hades) you probably won't understand several of the allusions throughout this story, and this is why I particularly appreciate the time my professor takes to analyse the poems and short stories with his students. I wouldn't understand the poems or stories half as much without the analysing in class time with my professor and other classmates. The things I liked most about this class are what we focused on, like I said previously, short stories and poems. I liked how we have some freedom within the blog post, and I enjoyed how we weren't forced to read any annoying professor chosen books throughout the course which most of the time, I find distasteful. I do not want to read about things I have no interest in, which is another reason I enjoyed this course. If I did find something I didn't like, we didn't spend the whole semester on it, it was only a small part of the course, which I did appreciate. I do not tend to pay attention to things I am not interested in, and therefore, this course caught and held my attention because of how interesting, stimulating and new everything was.

Week 12, How To Make Cherish (me) Happy

This weeks blog post is a "how to" on making me, the author of this post, happy. Then, hopefully someone will give my boyfriend a link to this post so he can keep it in mind when he does something wrong.

1) Make Tea

You can never go wrong with making me some good old fashioned black tea. Not that foolish green tea or iced tea, I mean black tea with a bit of milk and sugar. The warmth of the mug in my hands, the delicious taste of the tea, who could ask for anything better?

2) Get Me Chocolate

Chocolate makes everything - or almost everything - better. If you expect me to share chocolate when and if you do something wrong, you better buy enough to make at least one person sick, because if I'm mad, I probably don't intend on sharing.

3) Play Video Games With Me

If I'm mad at you, and you want to do something with me like play video games, first of all, let me choose the video game. I don't want to play COD or Halo, or anything silly like that. I probably want to play Super Mario Bros or World of Warcraft. I don't like silly shooters, I want something fun and interesting with no little (and even sometimes big) boys screaming profanities.

Meme, week 11

Week 10, quotes.

"Tragedy should be utilized as a source of strength."- Dalai Lama XIV

For those of you who have read my blog previously, you should know that I have a disease that sometimes I struggle with. Life throws you the worst experiences possible when you're least expecting it, and those experiences can sometimes be tragic and life altering, like my experience with my illness. It's something I have to live with everyday, my own personal little tragedy I deal with constantly, which I know no one else in this world has ever felt or went through exactly what I have been through. Your life experiences, even if they are a tragedy, should be used as your strength like I use mine as a source of strength. On the hard days, I remember that I am unlike anyone else. I am the only one who has experienced what I have lived through, and I am one tough girl to get through it all.

"Either I will find a way or I will make one." - Philip Sidney

Usually, people take being called stubborn an insult, but why? You have an opinion, you have a stand, you have a hold, you have a choice, you have a reason, you have an objective. You have other people trying to convince you that you're wrong or you can't do something? Prove them wrong, I have done it several times, and now, when someone even bothers to try to tell me I can't do something, it makes me want to do it even more, this quote, to me, shows determination, stubbornness and empowerment. You can do whatever you put your mind to. 

"Fortune favours the bold." - Virgil

A person who does not speak does not stand out. A person who is quiet does not get heard. A person who does not act will not be involved. Fortune gets manipulated by the will of the person, and if you are more bold, more willing, more involved, you will most likely have greater fortune because those who do stand out, and most of the time, that leads to good fortune in itself. 

Week 9, Flash Fiction

With light wings and a heavy heart, she told her elderly mother her own step father passed away in the hospital bed moments past. It was as if a burden was lifted, because he was finally gone, but a weight was gained because she herself was left with the task of spreading the news. She felt this feeling before, years ago, when she tried to tell her mother what he used to do. How he used to leave bruises and cuts on her when her own mother went to work, with the heavy scent of alcohol laced on his clothes. “Tell her you fell down the stairs” he used to scream, “Tell her you got in a fight”. As soon as she told her mother the truth though, all those years ago, and even though there was evidence scattered across her own pelted face, there was no relief. Mother didn't believe her. This time though, this time was different. Telling her own mother that he was dead was a blessing in disguise. Her mother had to believe her this time, there was no man any more in the background whispering lies into her mother's ears, creating doubts in mother’s mind. She had the upper hand this time.

Week 8, a letter.

For some reason, I feel the need to educate people on two things: 1) autoimmune diseases and 2) medical drugs. So, here is a letter to whoever will listen, whoever is interested in hearing what I have to say about what I go through everyday, and for whoever wants to hear about a battle I have been facing for over two years now with an "invisible" autoimmune disease.
First of all, I feel helpless. 
My own body is killing me. My own immune system decides to attack and to kill off its own blood cells. Do you know aggravating this is? I have three or more little bottles of blood taken from me every Tuesday at lunch time, just to tell me that my god damn blood counts are low. Every. Single. Time. Low blood counts can be dangerous, for example platelets (platelets clot your blood when you bleed), once they hit below 20, you can sneeze and haemorrhage on your brain. Want know the lowest mine have been? They have been 1. I have been covered in bruises to the point where the hospital called in police thinking that I have been abused by my parents because I looked so beat up. Then, there are my neutrophils which stop infections. Of course, since my are low, I get sick often and severely. At one point in time, I was hospitalized for a week because I had para influenza, influenza A, and pneumonia, and on top of that, I'm always sick with some little illness or another and I always have a cough. Last but not least, my last blood line which goes low, is my haemoglobin. Your haemoglobin is what brings oxygen throughout your body, and especially to your brain. I was hospitalized over a month and put on over 1000 mg of prednisone (a monstrous amount of steroids) because my haemoglobin hit below 30. I almost went into cardiac arrest several times because my heart was pumping trying to get oxygen through my body and nothing was happening because there was none in my body to be found, my brain was literally suffocating slowly.
I feel bitter and enraged.
To treat this stupid disease, I need to be put on steroids, and to be honest, I don't know which one I'd rather have to deal with. My life threatening stupid disease, or the side effects of the steroids. Believe it or not, but these drugs are torture. First of all, I feel paranoid all the time because of them, I feel like someone is watching me, I feel anxious and I feel like I always need to watch my back. I always feel bothered and agitated. I can never have a moments peace, I always feel like I need to be doing something, and if I can't be doing something, I feel like I'm going to explode with frustration, anger or agitation. Then, the weakness. Steroids break down your core muscles at an extreme rate. I feel so tired. My legs feel like weights and it is such a chore to even move. My back hurts and I feel so upset. I don't want to move any more, it is so hard to get up in the mornings knowing I have to make my feet touch the ground. Then this tightness on my chest is overwhelming, and the steroid coated tongue which makes everything taste worse, and then the steroid water retention which makes my face explode like an ugly chipmunk, and then having to look at myself in the dreadful mirror each morning and see what my own body is doing to my face and tearing apart my skin, and I'm just so mentally and physically drained. Oh, and on top of that, steroids make you hungry. Not the "oh I can eat another plate" hungry, its the "I need to eat everything in this entire household" gnawing hunger which gets so bad I start eating the insides of my damn lips. Every single moment, every single second, I feel like I can rip something or someone apart. I feel so agitated all the time, and this isn't me, this isn't the regular Cherish who loves to play video games, who loves to read and play ukulele, who loves to dance foolishly when no one is around, this is the steroid Cherish who is frenzied. This is the Cherish who wants to scream and ask whoever the hell made her what the hell they were thinking, and why the hell she deserves this. I feel like I need answers, but I'm never going to get them. This is who I am, this is the battle I have been going through for over the past two years, and the funny thing is, is that I'd do anything to be who I was before all this crap happened. I was just a regular teenage girl. I was pretty with blonde hair and a slim face, with about 40 less pounds. I didn't have these scars, these bloody ugly stretch marks. I was considered beautiful, I was on the volleyball team, I played basketball, I was in choir, I was happy with myself, It felt like I finally found myself, which is everyone's goal in life, and then this rare autoimmune disease hit me. It tore me apart, destroyed me mentally and physically, and left me in pieces.
I knew who I was before, but this glitch, this disease, this punishment, has changed everything and left me in an unknown land. The only thing I can thank it for is for giving me a new fire, a new spite, a new animosity, a new anger which I have never felt before. A new spark which I hold onto every night, wondering why the hell this happened to me, and how I can use it to help the world around me, and how I can help people like me.

PARKING IN LEGAL PLACES: is it worth it? (Newspaper spoof)

A few days ago, I decided to go visit my boyfriend who resides at Memorial University's Burton's Pond apartments. Like most of the time, trying to find a parking spot anywhere at MUN is an enormous hassle, and this day for some reason was even worse. The only legal way for me to park is if I parked at the parking garage by the Health Sciences Hospital and walked all the way to Burton's Pond residence at night just to visit my boyfriend for an hour or two. To me, this was outrageous. I justified illegally parking by the side of the one way road for parking for people who live at Burton's Pond apartments. It wouldn't inconvenience anyone, all traffic could get through, just people who were backing up would have to be a little more careful than usual, but otherwise, I thought it was completely reasonable. After my visit to my boyfriends apartment, I of course, found a lovely little yellow ticket slid under my wind shield wiper which told me I parked illegally. Getting a ticket isn't the worst thing in the world, but it certainly dampened my mood considerably. So this was all fine, I know I parked against the law, and I know that I shouldn't do it again, I know that I have no one else to blame but myself for being particularly lazy that day, etcetera, but the thing that really bothers me is what happened today when I went to pay for this specific $20 ticket. So, here I am driving downtown trying to find a parking spot on Water Street to pay for this darned ticket. I find a parking spot, but of course, the truck who was parked behind this specific spot pulled ahead way too far and incapacitated my ability to park well and overly close to the curb, so I simply tried my best. A man even saw me trying to parallel park and even HELPED me get as close to the curb as possible. So, as I got out of the car, I thought I did a decent job of parking for what I had to deal with, so I went into the building and paid for my ticket. I was about 20 minutes until I came back to my car and realised, within that amount of time, I received another lovely darned ticket for my "bad" parking job (which I somewhat still blame on the truck behind me). I was furious. I was inside, paying for my ticket I received and then came out to another ticket double the price! To me, this brings up the question, is it even worth trying to legally park when you get a more expensive ticket compared to not parking in a parking spot at all and only getting a $20 ticket?

Outlook (Spatial Poetry)

Review of Female Halloween Costumes

I'm an eighteen year old girl, and I absolutely adore Halloween. I love dressing up, wearing wacky make up, passing out treats to little exuberant children and seeing their faces light up. I love everything about Halloween, except for the female costumes. Every year, I go looking for a decent Halloween costume that I can wear and not feel utterly uncomfortable and almost nude in. You want to be a bumblebee? Here's a skimpy mini dress with a few black and yellow stripes which won't fully cover your derrière. Want to be a nurse? No scrubs for you, you need to be in a white skirt which doesn't come close to your knees and that has cleavage down to your belly button. You want to be a princess? No fancy ball room dress for you my friend, here's an almost see through short dress which barely resembles one of the Disney princess's. You want to be a police officer? No blue uniform if you're female; here's a tight jumpsuit made out of spandex which clings to your skin like glue! And all of it for only $50 or more!
How absurd.
As a child, I remember looking at costumes, and even questioning what some of the adult women costumes were. Is this really what we as a society expect women to dress up as for Halloween? Even comparing male to female costumes you can tell something is definitely wrong. The costumes made for males actually have pants, and I'm willing to bet that off the top of your head you cannot think of a female costume which incorporates something longer than knee length. Some people may not see the fad of sexy Halloween costumes as being a problem, but as a younger female who tends to work with children and has a lot of child experience in the work field for my age, I can completely see this as being problematic. Young females are always trying to be "grown up". As a child of even around 13, I would prefer to buy female adult costumes because I thought I'd be considered more "mature" and "grown", but a child of that age, in something so skimpy and sexual, is repulsive. Children should be encouraged to dress in clothes that first of all are appropriate for their age, and secondly, actually can be recognized as a costume. If we need to guess what an apparently obvious costume is because of the lack of clothes, then we are certainly doing something wrong. Take these costumes as an example:

Without looking at the mask, could you even begin to guess who these characters are? These well known puppets, Bert and Ernie, from the children's show Sesame Street have been gruesomely sexualized to the point where they should be considered lingerie rather than a Halloween costume. The most appalling thing about these costumes are that they're specifically from a children's show. I believe that when our society gets to the point of sexualizing children show characters for adult women costumes, there is a serious problem. 

Two Pictures that I find interesting...

Ever since we were little, my sister and I were pretty close. We fought a lot, like most siblings do, and sometimes we yelled at each other "I HATE YOU" which only lasted a few minutes. This photo shows the typical young trouble making child I was, and my innocent older victim sister who I always played pranks on. This photo shows me stuffing my sister's mouth with raisins while she was sleeping. You can't actually see it, but she was drooling with all the raisins in her mouth, and I was giggling furiously trying not wake her. My parents somehow always knew whenever I was up to mischief, so when they heard my giggling, they knew something was awry. They took the picture, and then woke Lakeisha (my older sister) up. She then got mad at me of course, and then chased me around my Grandparent's house. To this day I love this picture, it reminds me of my childhood, and how close my sister and I are.

This picture was taken in Las Vegas, Nevada. It was a trip of a life time, and I will always remember it. In this moment, I was getting ready to go indoor skydiving. I was put into something along the lines of a flying squirrel suit, and since I looked so silly, my parents decided to take a picture. I was the only one in my family who went indoor skydiving because when my family members saw the enormous fan which projected the air up in the tunnel, they decided against it. When I walked into the air tunnel, I realized that the only thing that was separating the fan and I was some wire with plastic covering. It somewhat scared me, but I decided to give indoor skydiving a try anyway. It was the best decision of my life, and I would love to try it again. 

Radioactive

Imagine Dragons - Radioactive

I'm waking up to ash and dust
I wipe my brow and I sweat my rust
I'm breathing in the chemicals

I'm breaking in, shaping up, then checking out on the prison bus
This is it, the apocalypse.

I'm waking up, I feel it in my bones
Enough to make my systems blow
Welcome to the new age, to the new age
Welcome to the new age, to the new age
I'm radioactive, radioactive
I'm radioactive, radioactive

I raise my flags, and don my clothes
It's a revolution, I suppose
We'll paint it red to fit right in

I'm breaking in, shaping up, then checking out on the prison bus
This is it, the apocalypse

I'm waking up, I feel it in my bones
Enough to make my systems blow
Welcome to the new age, to the new age
Welcome to the new age, to the new age
I'm radioactive, radioactive
I'm radioactive, radioactive

All systems go, the sun hasn't died
Deep in my bones, straight from inside

I'm waking up, I feel it in my bones
Enough to make my systems blow
Welcome to the new age, to the new age
Welcome to the new age, to the new age
I'm radioactive, radioactive
I'm radioactive, radioactive

Lyrics from: http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/imaginedragons/radioactive.html
Personally, this is one of my all time favourite songs. It makes me feel vibrant and resilient when I'm somber. It gives me vitality and fortitude when I need it most. To me, the persona of this song is writing about the conflict of finding oneself after depression, and when they do, they feel like they finally have awakened themselves up inside, and have new found strength and power that they didn't know they had previously. When the persona says "I'm waking up, to ash and dust" it means they are waking up from a battle. To me, this battle is internal conflict between the persona and him/herself. When he/she wakes, he/she finds him/herself having a different demeanour about the conflict. He/she finds him/herself rejuvenated and with a different point of view, he/she feels more powerful now after taking a fall, and feels like he/she now can win the battle because of his/her new found self.

The stanza organization is tercet, couplet, sexain, tercet, couplet, sexain, then couplet and lastly sexain. The first line of the lyrics has eight syllables, then nine, then eight once again. The first couplet has the syllable count sixteen then eight. The second tercet has the amount of syllables in each line as the first tercet does, and all the sexains have the syllable count, ten, eight, ten, ten, eleven, eleven. In the tercets, the first and second lines rhyme and the third line does not. The sexains are all refrained. They are all the same, and get repeated frequently throughout these lyrics. All the couplets are also refrained excluding the last one. This poem also has enjambled poetic syntax. It has punctuation anywhere in a line, except for at the end of a line, therefore, it is not end stop.

In this poem, the persona is an enlightened person who finally figured out who he/she is, and now, has it within themselves to finally win an internal conflict of depression and anxiety in themselves. The addressee is the persona him/herself, because they do not have an intended audience, and have obviously made this poem for themselves as encouragement or as a way to keep themselves winning the battle over their own depression and anxiety. There is a lot of symbolism in this poem which backs this up. "I'm waking up to ash and dust/I wipe my brow and I sweat my rust" shows that the persona just took a fall, and let him/herself fall back into depression, but then they finally wake up, and start "sweating their rust" which means they are figuratively shaking off their fall and trying over again. "I'm breaking in, shaping up, then checking out on the prison bus/This is it, the apocalypse" shows that the persona is "breaking in" and figuring out their new selves, and then they're "checking out on the prison bus" which is leaving behind the jail that is depression and anxiety.  This can also be considered a metaphor, as the prison being depression, and the bus an escape to freedom and self empowerment. "This is it, the apocalypse" symbolizes that the persona is ending their battle with depression, and finally winning against it, and soon enough, depression will not exist in the persona at all, hence the reference to an apocalypse.

Overall, this song is an empowering anthem for people who are fighting against depression and anxiety, or any battle or conflict for that matter. It shows that a battle might be hard and difficult to win, but if you keep trying, you will find yourself through the conflict, then succeed in winning and then eventually finding out who you are, and how strong you can be.

So, yesterday was my first day at university...

It's pretty funny how we take our childhood for granted. When I was little, I spent my days wishing I was older, wishing that someone would take me seriously instead of being a little girl with her two front teeth missing. I spent my days trying to show people I was not the average child. I tried to be mature and serious, constantly telling my peers to "grow up" when they were having fun or making childish jokes, little did I know, I'd regret doing that now. 

Because of my juvenile, bogus mature attitude, I missed out on a lot. I was never overly popular, because I was always trying to portray a certain sophistication to impress my parents and teachers opposed to being a child, and trying to play and fit in. My school days consisted of reading books and ignoring my math, art, and gym teachers. My books intrigued me, while the rest of the students were running, playing, socializing, and ultimately being children. 

Nowadays, everything is so different. As I got older, I began to figure out who I was, and I didn't feel the need to portray a phony character any more. When I meet people now, I just act as myself, the plain old Cherish who loves video games, reading and who is most certainly a child at heart. 

Everyday is a new learning experience, and everyday I learn more about myself and others around me. Going to university is my new, big step in life. I'm finding out who I am going to be and who I can be, and hopefully along the way, I'll make new friends who share common interest. 

Life is what you make of it, and when I was little, I tried being someone who I was not because I wanted to impress my elders. This big journey of university will help me find people who will like me, without me feeling the need to impress them.