How many points is that worth?

In class before our disscusion of the history behind The Crucible, we had a disscusion about note takeing in gerneral, a seemingly odd topic. The first idea that pops into my head when I hear "a disscusion about note takeing" is that the teachers want notes in a certain format because they will later be collected and graded. However in actuality the disscussion was about the opposite. That our Notes are our interpretations of what we think is most importatnt, and will help us to understand the material. My automatic mind as a student almost couldnt understand; teachers were talking about something that we as students do, but they wern't talking about points, grades, acceptable or unacceptable headings. They were simply talking about ways to better our understanding. Whoa. I feel like we are so constantly bombarded with the idea of the absolute importance on grades and how they will dictate the course of our lives, that we often forgett to actualy learn what we are being taught as apposed to memorizing it for the test. I feel like there is so much emphasis put on getting the "A" or doing a good score on the test by both teachers and parents that we as students consider the actual learning of the material to be secound behind just "knowing it for the test." Do you think that all the grade hype has damaged actual learning?

I'm a what now?

Identity, one simple word with a huge variety of meanings. What is your identity? How is it defined? By race? Religion? Taste in music? I think Identity is a complex combination of many traits and characteristics, and can never clearly be simplified down to one solid definition. We are often told that your identity is "who you are," however we are also often told (especially teens and young adults) that we are still looking for "who we are." Dose this mean that when we are young and still searching that we have no identity? Or mearly that it is incomplete? I think that part of what makes us individuals is that our identities are constantly changing, along with our thoughts and beliefs. Who defines our identity? Do we choose for ourselves or do other choose for us. When we label people and put them into groups like "Black" "Jewish" "Geeky"... are we defining that person's identity?

During our in class discussion we talked about how in the foreword of Fires in the Mirror Cornel West says that people too often see others as symbols or groups rather than people. I think it's incredible how often we dehumanize other humans. Whether it's a soldier thinking of the another soldier as "The Enemy," or it's the student walking down the hall labeling others as "The Jock" "The Geek" "A Goth." In some cases such as the one with the soldier this dehumanization is done intentionally to make it easier for us to do or think believe something. But I also think that in cases like the one with the student it is done mostly subconsciously. Like our minds need to put people in groups in order to simplify how we view others. Maybe we put people into these groups because it would be too overwhelming for us too see everyone as individual with many different traits and personalities. Maybe our minds just wouldn't be able to handle and process that much information, and so we find ways to organize the people around us into neat little groups. My question is What do we gain (if anything) by grouping people like this? what do we loose?

Say How?

I've been thinking about our discussions in class about how writers use word choice to put in "secret messages" and it got me thinking about all the non-writen secret messages we recive. For example if you are watching an interveiw on the news not only what questions are asked, but how they are asked can change it's meaning. For example in an interveiw if the interviewer asks a question useing a negative or angry tone that sends out a different message to the interviewie than if they ask that question with a positive tone. Can you think of an circumstance where how a question was asked has sent you a hidden message? (ie. Teachers, parents,ext)