Journal 33: Writing and Thinking

     It can be true that writing can help me think more clearly. It is better to put words down on paper or on a computer in order to think more deeply. I write my own journals everyday. They are not as long as essays, but I write what is the most important thing happens on that day. The notebook for writing my journals is very small, so I can’t write too much for each day, probably one or two sentences per day. Although these journals seem nothing, they do mean a lot to me. Every time I write, I not only write down what happen to me, but also review the old ones. Writing journal is a good way to reflect myself. That is why I keep writing no matter how busy I am. Sometimes, I might miss one journal, but I will find another day to fill it. If I don’t write journals, I won’t find out something that is important to me. However, as I start thinking and refreshing myself, I will think more and deep. You might think that you know what happen today, but you might not answer if someone asks you. Therefore, writing helps us to come up with our own thoughts and emotions.

Journal 31: Presence of Mind

     According to Henry James’s statement, I believe that “perfect presence of mind” means differently to everyone. It is the ability to think and act calmly and efficiently, especially in an emergency. To me, writing college application essays is how I experienced “perfect presence of mind.” There were some rules that I had to follow when I wrote essays, such as words limit, direction, and idea. This type of essay was totally different from those I did for homework. First, I needed to brainstorm. It was a very hard process because there were only few things could really fit your topic. It is possible for me to brainstorm a topic for almost one month. I must on the right track before I started to write my essay. During the college application, I was suffered by those essays. I had to hind in a silent place and concentrated on writing my essay. Achieving this presence of mind might be particularly important for writing a compare and contrast essay because you need to think about the subjects which you want to compare deeply. Moreover, when you think in this way also avoid showing a bias when comparing and contrasting. To a writer, it is better not to stand on any side of the subjects.

 

Journal 30: What is "News" to you?

     As we can see that there are some types of different news sources, such as print, digital, and broadcast, different stories appeal to different audiences and are emphasized in different media. To print sources, writers have additional time gather more information and add more details about the particular news. Moreover, you can read news at any time because it won’t disappear as video television and broadcast do. Readers can review any news they want by reading print sources. On the other hand, the way how digital and broadcast sources show news is totally different from print sources. To digital and broadcast, audiences can’t see the news which they want at any time. They must follow the showing time. For example, digital and broadcast usually show the news which is just happened, so the news might be very fresh. If there is a confrontation just happened in a forest, people might see this big news on television or hear from broadcast immediately. Besides talking the differences between these three types of news sources, the news that relate to school attract me the most. Probably because I am a student, I might care about anything that happens to the people who have the same age or around the same age as me.

 

Journal 29: Shaping the Message

     There are numerous media that surround us and fill our lives with information and entertainment. Each medium represents reality a bit differently. We are not looking at the real thing, but rather a produced and “packaged” version of reality. For example, there must be viewers see what happen to a car accident. The viewers can be the people who get involved the accident or the people who just see the event as observers. Each person has his/her own opinion, so everyone might have different interpret of the whole accident. “The truth is disappeared while the event is happened.” Therefore, it is hard to find the correct answer to who is right or wrong for this car accident. To me, I think that the news we get from media source might not be hundred percent exactly the same as the reality because the truth has already twisted. Sometimes, media exaggerates the truth in order to show how serious the news is. However, sometimes it is twisted by someone’s opinion. Therefore, I won’t really trust or believe when I hear or see news that makes me feel shocked or amazed because I know that it might not be the same as the original one.

 

Journal 28: Which News Source Do You Prefer?

     We can get news and information from many different ways, such as television, radio, newspaper, or Internet. Each of them has its own advantage and disadvantage. To me, I like the Internet the most because I can do my own research on the Internet. For newspaper, I can choose to read the parts which I want and can decide to read fast or slowly. Sometimes if I don’t have time to read it, I can get the general idea of news by reading the head news. For television, the biggest advantage of it is that it can show me short videos of particular news that make the news sound more vividly. The sounds or background music makes the news more interesting. For radio, there is no image to see, but it provides me an opportunity to arouse my imagination and creativity. Without seeing imagines, I can only create them by myself. Moreover, I can really focus on listening because there is no image can distract me. Finally, the Internet is my favorite media source because I can get any information that I want. I also can get different information which connects to the news. It is more convenient to use Internet.

 

Journal 27: PerfectTrifles

     According to Michelangelo Buonarroti said, “Trifles make perfection, and perfection is no trifle,” I totally agree with this statement. To me, it means that lots of trifles can form perfection, but there are no trifles of perfection. It is impossible to form perfection without any details. At this point, trifles are like details. For example, you have to practice basketball at least eight hours a day in order to become a successful basketball player. On the other hand, if you don’t do any practice, it is impossible for you to succeed. I do have something in my life in which I strive for perfection. The most significant one in my life till now is college application. Actually, I am a freshman in college, but now I am a senior in high school. Last year, I didn’t get good grades on standardize test, such as TOEFL and SAT tests. If I used my last year’s scores to apply college, I won’t have chance to get into the school I want. Therefore, I decided to stay at PAS for one more year. In my second senior year, I could say that I worked extremely hard and finally improve almost 300 points on the SAT reasoning test. To me, the practices and works which I did everyday during the college application process represented trifles. The result of the exam represented perfection.