COVID – 19 TIMES

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COVID-19

Awareness :

Awareness I think has been key throughout this unknown and scary time. As a student, I’ve been lucky enough to get a lot of information on the Coronavirus from teachers like my biology teacher that has helped me understand the science behind this and how I can keep safe now. The teachers are in the know about these difficult times and how they affect us as students and have been understanding when there are late submissions and have also taken initiative to contact us individually when we have doubts or issues. As a person who’s aware of what’s going on around me, I have taken my own safety measures like sanitizing regularly and social distancing. 

Challenge: 

Since the outbreak of coronavirus,  people are required to stay at home to avoid contact with others. Therefore, most of the service and activities at school are cancelled for these reasons. As for me, my service, Gymnastic Fun, is a service that aims to teach young children more about Gymnastic skills, but the status quo is that we are not allowed to have the chance to teach them face to face, which is really challenging. My service group, therefore, decided to record coaching videos and send these videos to the organisation so that the children could practice these skills at home.

Initiative: 

These pandemic infested times have made it hard to be positive and keep our motivation on track to do anything from classwork to just getting out of bed. The teachers are in the know about these difficult times and how they affect us as students and have been understanding when there are late submissions and have also taken initiative to contact us individually when we have doubts or issues. As I’ve been confined to my home for the past month, I’ve learnt to be more independent and reach out to friends and teachers for support when necessary and have been using this own time on things I haven’t had the time to do before like read a book or try yoga. I’ve been trying to look for positivity to motivate me to do something, anything.

Commitment: 

Commitment is proven to be hard to maintain and keep up with during this period where the coronavirus has affected and restricted our daily lives. As our interaction with the outside world and others are being restricted, the CAS activities we take part in our daily lives have also been disrupted with some activities such as outdoor, or group activities such as sports or services being cancelled. Trying to commit to our CAS activities is challenging without further instructions and the activities itself being cancelled, however, to try and still be engaged we would need to think of alternatives on our own, such as trying to stay active and do exercises for our particular sport or practising playing an instrument at home, to know that there is always something that we can do even in isolation.

Collaboration:

Due to the Coronavirus, collaboration has become a challenge that the whole world has been trying to overcome. Schools across the world are switching to home-based learning and use applications like skype, zoom and google meets to stay in contact with their teachers and classmates. This has been proven to work as everyone is able to attend the class as normal and can contribute to class discussions. However, due to the separation, it is still quite hard to fully collaborate with peers as there is no physical interaction and there might be times when people have a bad wifi connection, not allowing them to contribute as they would like. 

Rhea, Judy, Mio, Nadia

Lines from the Odyssey

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  • Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns.

This is the opening line. I think it perfectly encompasses Odysseus’s character. Odysseus is “the man of twists and turns” because his journey is anything but straightforward. He’s also very capable of thinking his way out of dangerous situations by thinking in twists and turns or outside the box.

  • Much have I suffered, labored long and hard by now in the waves and wars. Add this to the total—bring the trial on!

Odysseus says this line to Calypso when she tells him he’s going to suffer if he leaves her island. He just sees this another trial in a long war to go home.

  • My fame has reached the skies. Sunny Ithaca is my home. Atop her stands our seamark, Mount Neriton’s leafy ridges shimmering in the wind.

Kleos is like fame. The highest goal for the men in this book is kleos or fame. Odysseus is and can simply state the fact that he has achieved kleos and his home and family id much more important to him than fame.

Ithaka by C.P. Cavafy translated by Edmund Keeley

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The poem talks about the journey to Ithaka. It talks about hope for a long journey full of adventure and discovery. It wants you to gain an immense amount of knowledge that makes you “rich” intellectually rather than monetarily. It’s saying that this journey is going to prepare you for the world and your awaiting life at your destination. It advises you not to have any expectations but to take it all in as it happens because its a once in a lifetime experience – live in the moment. The last line mentions “these Ithakas” which I think means these personal pieces of wisdom and advice that the author is writing about in the poem.

The poem –

As you set out for Ithaka
hope your road is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them:
you’ll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
wild Poseidon—you won’t encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.
Hope your road is a long one.
May there be many summer mornings when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you enter harbors you’re seeing for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind—
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to learn and go on learning from their scholars.
Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you’re destined for.
But don’t hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you’re old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you’ve gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.
Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you wouldn’t have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.
And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you’ll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.

The Odyssey – My Thoughts

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The Odyssey is about the journey of Odysseus to Ithaca from the war at Troy. He spent ten years at war and took another ten years to get back to Itaca because of the animosity from Poseidon, the god of the sea. By the time Odysseus comes home, he finds a number of men invading his home to court Penelope, which leads to more woes and fights for him. His dedication to come home shows his strong love for his family yet he has affairs with Circe and Calypso which show the double standard when Penelope has to stay faithful when she has a number of suitors to choose from. Nausicaa’s immature attraction to Odysseus proves insignificant to him and cannot trump his desperate longing to return home. We can see the trickster and cunning intelligence in Odysseus’s character when Polyphemus curses the Ithacans and only Odysseus survives. Penelope isn’t some dumb, naive character either. She is as smart as her husband when she delays choosing a suitor by a ruse to marry only after weaving a death shroud for Laertes, she weaves and unweaves the shroud and delays the event for three years till a maid snitches.

STEM Club Reflection

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LO4 – Commitment, Showing Perseverance and Resilience

STEM Club is about science, technology, engineering and math. Choosing this club was a challenge in itself for me as I’m particularly weak at math and repeat the sentence “I hate math” like a hymn repeatedly everyday. The technology aspect of this club is what attracted me to it in the first place as I’m a closeted tech junkie. After talking to my friends who were in this club for a year, I went ahead and chose this activity which shocked me and my parents the most.

I think the first way I showed perseverance and resilience in this activity was by showing up regularly and on time every week. I committed to it and wanted to prove my commitment was important to me by showing up with a smile that outshined my deep hatred for math. The moment I joined, I made it a personal goal to not quit this particular activity. I know that I’m a quitter when things get hard and I chose this as an opportunity to get over that bad habit for myself. I think my friends are and were a huge part of my dedication to this as we always dragged each other to our weekly lunch sessions. They motivated me to show up in the beginning but after the first few sessions, I loved it.

I think the commitment payed off. I love the weekly STEM sessions and think it is a good use of my time. I made a lot of new friends and met a lot of closeted tech junkies 😉

I think I overcame my quitter attitude and enjoyed doing it.

Sweet Nothing

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The daughter says “I love you” to her dying father to appease her future guilt. The poem shows her obvious disconnect and lack of emotional relationship with her father yet we also see herself getting ready for him to pass away. I think this kind of father daughter relationship is common in Sweet Nothing and Fun Home. Alison and Bruce don’t have the most emotional loving relationship but she also shows signs of regret regarding the lack of that kind of relationship just like in sweet nothing.

Nighttime Fires by Rebecca Barreca Analysis

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When I was five in Louisville
we drove to see nighttime fires. Piled seven of us,
all pajamas and running noses, into the Olds,
drove fast toward smoke. It was after my father
lost his job, so not getting up in the morning
gave him time: awake past midnight, he read old newspapers
with no news, tried crosswords until he split the pencil
between his teeth, mad. When he heard
the wolf whine of the siren, he woke my mother,
and she pushed and shoved
us all into waking. Once roused we longed for burnt wood
and a smell of flames high into the pines. My old man liked
driving to rich neighborhoods best, swearing in a good mood
as he followed the fire engines that snaked like dragons
and split the silent streets. It was festival, carnival.

If there were a Cadillac or any car
in a curved driveway, my father smiled a smile
from a secret, brittle heart.
His face lit up in the heat given off by destruction
like something was being made, or was being set right.
I bent my head back to see where sparks
ate up the sky. My father who never held us
would take my hand and point to falling cinders that
covered the ground like snow, or, excited, show us
the swollen collapse of a staircase. My mother
watched my father, not the house. She was happy
only when we were ready to go, when it was finally over
and nothing else could burn.
Driving home, she would sleep in the front seat
as we huddled behind. I could see his quiet face in the
rearview mirror, eyes like hallways filled with smoke.

Regina Barreca’s free verse poem Nighttime Fires (1986) is about a father who was fascinated by fires and the destruction they caused. She writes the poem about events that happened in her childhood that she struggled to understand. The poem is written from a five year old’s perspective. The title “Nighttime Fires” can be interpreted as the fiery thoughts that plague one’s mind at nightfall. The full analysis was done on paper in class…

Reflection on Art Awards (TOK)

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  • What would you change in your own award, and why?

I would make my award more genre specific and have a panel of judges varying from record label producers, famous artists in that genre to song writers for the same genre as well. I feel it would be fairest if we had the same theme and genre which will make it easier to have set rules and criteria. I would also have no limitations in age or other participant qualifications so that everyone would have access to take part in an event to find the next best artist. I also think that most panels are male directed and would have an equal male and female voice present for judging. I would make it a live show and have audience voting as well as judges.

  • What did you realise about others’ awards? Questions you might raise?

I think other’s awards were too generalised or unfair in some rules about certain topics and themes. I would raise the question about there being more forms of art and literature and it should be free to access by anyone. I think it should be free of charge to participate or send in your pieces of work because many artists and authors might not be financially able or have guardians who don’t want their ward to participate which would restrict some passionate people.

Shall I Compare Thee To A Summer’s Day? – Shakespeare (My Thoughts on the Sonnet)

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This sonnet by William Shakespeare compares a person to a beautiful summer day. In the sonnet the person is not described in the most flattering of ways while Shakespeare praises himself for immortalising her on paper expecting the person to eventually pass away. Shakespeare is very straightforward with his language and intent here. The poet starts by praising the person but not pretentiously and the compare’s him/her to a lovely summer day but from the third quatrain the poet say’s he is summer and he set’s himself as the standard for beauty and perfection. After the Volta (but, line 9) the poem takes a turn and the poet comes off as conceited and goes on an ego trip. The author says that nature will take its course and the person will eventually reach death’s door and become someone in the past but says this person will be immortalised through this sonnet and live on forever. This sonnet is not a declaration of love and praise for this person but its praise for the sonnet itself for being immortal and great enough to carry someone else and itself into the future on paper.

THE SONNET – 

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?               A
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:             B
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,     A
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date;         B
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,           C
And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;                D
And every fair from fair sometime declines,             C
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d;  D
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,                     E
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;              F
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,   E
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:               F
   So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,      G
   So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.         G

Culturama Reflection

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LO5-Demonstrate the skills and recognise the benefits of working collaboratively.

final performance

This was my first time participating in Culturama and it was an amazing opportunity and experience. Culturama was something I always wanted to take part in but never got around to putting any effort to audition for it but this year I took an initiative and went with it. I chose New Zealand as the country I wanted to audition for and I got in! I practised multiple times for my audition as I am particularly weak at dancing and singing. I chose New Zealand because of the cultural richness. I am also not very coordinated and very bad at dance so the idea of chanting the song and a slower paced dance appealed to me.

Our first practise was pretty stressful as we tried to all synchronise our movements but it proved to be impossible at the time. The next three practises we got to know each other better but also learnt to depend on each other for help. The Maori dance we were performing was a dance that told a story with hand, finger and leg movements as well as singing the song with it. The dance movements and directions were different for everyone as we all had to do different movements with our partners and it proved to be difficult to remember all of it in the first few practise sessions. I think working as a team and helping each other is what helped us overcome all obstacles and difficulties and reach our goal – to perform to the best of our abilities and enjoy it. Gaby and Holly were our dance leaders and they truly worked the hardest to encourage and motivate us while leading us with fierce determination. They brought all of us together with a common goal when we couldn’t agree on something or had problems with each other. All together I feel like our group was very harmonious and didn’t have any drama or major disagreements. We had small issues like agreeing on costumes, tattoos, showing up for practise at certain times and going the extra mile to learn the lyrics for the songs. As a group we made our own costumes and helped each other with make-up. Gaby and Holly organised separate practises for anyone who couldn’t show up to learn the songs and dance steps which always helped us stay on top of things. Having clear communication and a group chat made it easy for us to work together. We all had opportunities to voice our opinions on everything and feel like we were a part of a group, a family.

I feel like a more committed and open minded person after having this particular experience of working together and also more open to volunteering myself for more group activities. I learnt a lot about the Maori culture and sign language. The song we focused on was a happy welcome song in their culture which is not the traditional Hakka. This dance was very controversial this year as the whole group was females and not males like last year which cause backlash but it also motivated us to prove ourselves more. The adrenaline rush on stage and right after was amazing as well as all the really touching feedback. I personally did mess up some steps during the final performance but my group was there to tell me to keep going which was the most fundamental thing during this entire experience- all of us encouraging each other to just have fun and get over small mistakes. This Culturama made me PROUD!