Summer Exprience

I can’t really say I have experienced a lot of things since I’m usually just at home playing online games, talking to people online, writing, or drawing. I do occasionally go to parties, but not that much anymore considering I’ve been very busy with school stuff. I also have just turned eighteen last December. Now eighteen is already considered an adult, and, with that being said, I haven’t really experienced many things ever since “becoming” an adult. However, if I have to pick an experience that is meaningful to me, I will pick my work experience on the summer of 2014.

Being a guy who rarely goes out into the public, working for the first time was a very meaningful experience to me. I got to earn money, bought myself a new phone, and most importantly, get some source of physical labor. However, earning money and buying things I have wanted is not as important as the things I have learned while working. One of them is teamwork.

I was working as a mover (someone who moves things from one place to another) and it was a very exhausting and physically consuming. Thankfully, I wasn’t moving stuff alone. I was in a team. At first, I didn’t really know what to do in the job because I was new. My co-workers kindly showed me the ropes and treated me like one of their own. They taught me how to effectively use space to fit cargo in a way that saves space. I was taught how to hold certain things a way that won’t hurt any part of my body if they are heavy. They also taught me not to work alone if the job is too hard for a single person, such as transferring heavy equipment from one building to another. After a month, I was trusted enough to do some small and simple jobs on my own, and I have practically memorized which building was which. For two months during my summer break, I worked hard until I kind of hurt my back, which made me stop working.

This experience has taught me valuable lessons that I wouldn’t have learned just by attending school. Sure, school may have taught me how to work in a team, but teamwork in a job environment is different than working together on a school project. In a work environment, there has to be trust and I have to learn quickly to be able to adapt to certain situations. I’ve learned how to work in a team more efficiently, and ask for clarifications if I’m not sure what to do. I admit I’m still kind of shy with asking questions, but I’m slowly starting to open up a bit.

 Overall, working in the summer of 2014 was a valuable experience. For the first time, I earned money on my own. I have also learned how to work in a team more effectively than in a classroom environment. The most important thing that this experience has taught me is how to trust again. It’s hard for me to trust someone, especially with personal stuff, because of various things that happened in the past, which I will keep a secret. However, my work experience has helped me trust people even for only a little bit. Slowly, I will be able to trust people that are trustworthy again. The real world is indeed different than a classroom environment.

Art Triggers Mood and Emotions

I have always been interested in art ever since I was young. The thought of having drawn a picture, which then triggers a response from an audience, is fun. Art triggers moods and emotions. While reading David Small's Stitches: A Memoir I immediately got hooked by his art style. Instead of using words, Small published a memoir in a form of a graphic novel. In my analytical essay about Stitches, I mentioned how he used artwork to express a certain mood and emotion in each of the panels, as well as evoke a certain mood or emotion among the readers. Because I already started on how art affects mood and emotions, I am going to expand my claim on art's effect on mood and emotion for my research paper.

Now my topic is a little broad: the effects of art on psychology. The purpose is to show how art can affect audience's emotions and moods based on what they see. In my analytical essay on Stitches, I mentioned how Small's use of shadow, light and facial expression shows mood and affect the mood of the audience. Rather than focusing on specific use of media, I'm going to focus my research on how art in general affect a person.

 While doing my research, I had a bit of trouble finding the right keywords to use as my search terms. After thinking long and hard about my topic, I finally thought of keywords that would fit my research. I mixed and matched the terms art, mood, emotion, psychology, audience, and perception. The words that worked well when paired together were art, mood, emotion, and psychology. The word audience did work, but not as well as the others. After a few hours of researching using Academic Search Complete, I have found articles that may be helpful to my research.

Of course, I had to choose the articles carefully. Fortunately, the ones I picked talked about art and mood one way or another. Most of them support my claim. For example, Hazel Hanson, et al. research about how patients in a hospital respond to art depending on their situation. One patient commented that he or she "perceive[s] the need to get through the obstacle of the disease and treatment" (342). A hospital itself has a certain melancholic mood. However, when the patients were introduced to the research, their current mood interprets the artworks according with their situation, which triggers another emotion or mood of wanting to get through their diseases. In another article, a hospital has an art gallery in where patients can stroll through and observe the artworks and "most respondents reported that interacting with or about the art...improved their mood" (Karnik, Printz, and Finkel 73). With already two supports from different articles, it seems that my research paper is ready.

Though I have two supports, I need three more to meet the minimum requirements. Continuing my research, I have found more support. According to Erika Doss, "Works of art are...'repositories of feelings and emotions.'" This means that art and emotions are tied together. Another article talks specifically about art and mood. Theatrical art can produce a certain mood with the use of various techniques. This mood then later evokes a certain emotional response from the audience, such as fear and terror. Because of this, it would seem like "the filmmaker often appears to have direct access to our nervous system" (Carroll 524). Another one of my articles talks specifically about using art to improve mood. The research article talks about having a group of people view a film, separate them into three groups, and have them draw based on their current mood, positive emotion, or distracting themselves from their current mood. With this experiment, "the primary immediate mood effect of art making appears to be on mood valence" (Dalebroux, Goldstein, and Winner 293) or specific emotions. This article also ties in mood and art together.

With the articles I have found, I should be able to get started with my research paper about the effects of art on mood and emotion. My articles seem a bit different from each other at first glance, but as I started to look more closely, they all share one thing: art and mood or emotion. To make my research paper, I plan to keep my analysis on Small's use of artwork to evoke a certain emotion and mood to the audience, and then I will expand on that by using my secondary sources as a support to my claim.

Works Cited 

Carroll, Noël. "Art and Mood: Preliminary Notes and Conjectures." Monist 86.4 (2003): 521-555. Academic Search Complete. Web. 5 Apr. 2015.

Dalebroux, Anne, Thalia R. Goldstein, and Ellen Winner. "Short-Term Mood Repair Through Art-Making: Positive Emotion Is More Effective Than Venting."Motivation & Emotion 32.4 (2008): 288-295. Academic Search Complete. Web. 5 Apr. 2015.

Doss, Erika. "Affect." American Art 23.1 (2009): 9-11. Academic Search Complete. Web. 5 Apr. 2015.

Hanson, Hazel, et al. "Preferences For Photographic Art Among Hospitalized Patients With Cancer." Oncology Nursing Forum 40.(2013): E337-E345. Academic Search Complete. Web. 5 Apr. 2015.

Karnik, Meghana, Bellamy Printz, and Jennifer Finkel. "A Hospital's Contemporary Art Collection: Effects On Patient Mood, Stress, Comfort, And Expectations." Health Environments Research & Design Journal (HERD) (Vendome Group LLC) 7.3 (2014): 60-77.Academic Search Complete. Web. 5 Apr. 2015.

Small, David. Stitches: A Memoir. New York; Norton 2009. Print

Lost in Thoughts

All poems have similarities and differences. Whatever poem is read, there's always something a reader can compare one poem to another poem. These comparisons may be thematic, structural, or subject matter. There are more possible comparisons that can be made. Reading the poems for my English 1302 class made me realize similar themes between two or more poems. The poems "Waiting for My Clothes" by Leanne O'Sullivan, and "The Russian Greatcoat" by Theodore Deppe are both similar in a sense that both poems involve clothes or clothing, and narrators lost in thoughts. However, they are different in a sense that O'Sullivan's poem is surreal compared to Deppe's poem, which is realistic.

The poem "Waiting for My Clothes" is in the point of view of a girl in a waiting room, possibly in a mental institute. She is anxious because her journal is now in the hands of strangers. Her whole life is written in private paper, and there is a great risk of it being unraveled by strangers. The narrator even thinks that the doctors might ask, "Who is this girl that is speaking?" (O' Sullivan 26). However, her daydream is interrupted as soon as her clothes are returned to her thus wringing her back to the real world. The narrator's thoughts are surrealistic. She describes how she thinks the doctors think of her, holding her "the way you would hold a baby" (16), and examining her life through her journal. The narrator also feels like, as her journal is opened and read, she feels herself "fall open or apart" (24), which ties in to her thoughts of someone opening her up and taking her soul from her. All of this surreal thoughts might just be in her mind, but it might be happening inside closed doors as "behind the door, nothing is said" (31). This might mean that the doctors are quietly reading her journal, and once they finish reading it, they decide to return her clothes, which brings the narrator back into reality.

In the poem "The Russian Greatcoat", a man is probably having a vacation with his family, and while enjoying his time watching his children play in the water and keeping his sleeping wife company, he begins to be lost in thoughts. He begins remembering a time in his life when he was probably still unmarried. He remembers a former lover, who demanded him to throw away his "five dollar 'Russian greatcoat'" (Deppe 7). His former lover didn't give any explanations, and he didn't ask for any explanations and simply did what he was told and threw away his coat off of a bridge. While the narrator's thoughts in "Waiting for My Clothes" are surreal, the thoughts of the narrator in "The Russian Greatcoat" are realistic. Also, unlike the clothes in O'Sullivan's poem, the greatcoat in Deppe's poem serves as an invitation into thinking rather than bringing back the narrator into reality, because of how his thoughts involves this piece of clothing. The author didn't use language that may seem surreal to describe his thoughts, but he puts in detail in describing the memory. He describes how his "man-sized coat fell / in slow motion" (10-11). He also remembers he shared a cigarette with his former lover in that memory. He even remembers their entrance to the city, possibly they were walking together, and sharing a "thin black coat" (16) around their shoulders. Although the narrator claims he can forget about the memory for weeks, the memory is clearly a significant thing in his life for how he describes the memory in such detail, even the way in which his Russian greatcoat fell down off a bridge.

With all things considered, both poems may have their share of differences in the way they are written, but both involve narrators with some type of thought while staying in a place. The narrator's thoughts in "Waiting for My Clothes," are more surreal than realistic, probably because of the effect of her anxiety about her journal being taken away from her, and which the doctors might have read. In "The Russian Greatcoat," however, the narrator recalls a memory so his thoughts are more realistic because his thoughts actually happened in the past, whereas compared to the narrator in O'Sullivan's poem, the narrator's thought might all just be in her head. Both poems also have something to do with clothing. All in all, these poems show how a person can be lost in thoughts, be it surreal and fantastical, or realistic. They also show how something like a piece of clothing can bring someone back to reality or invite someone into recalling a memory.

They Are What They Are

Poems always offer a sense of mystery. Poets intentionally leave details and deliberately use certain words, which have multiply denotations, but have certain connotations. The mysteriousness of poems have a certain allure, which captivates the readers' emotions or confuse their minds. Speaking of confusion, reading one of the assigned poems in my English 1302 class smacked my mind and sent it in a whirlpool of confusion.

"The Russian Greatcoat" by Theodore Deppe in 180 More: Extraordinary Poems for Every Day is about a man who recalls a past event where he throws his Russian greatcoat off of a bridge because someone, probably an ex-girlfriend said so. The part why he had to throw his great coat confused me. Why would the narrator throw his coat off of a bridge just because someone said so? Shouldn't he ask why he had to throw his coat? Normally, in that situation anyone would be confused. However, if the person is someone important in the narrator's life, maybe an ex-girlfriend or similar who he loved at one point, the narrator will be blinded by love so he did not need any explanations.

Also, considering how the narrator said he doesn't answer his wife's question about his Russian greatcoat, the person who ordered him to throw his coat away might be someone from an old relationship when he was younger. He even said that "just thinking of you were an act of betrayal" (14). His evading of the question and his remembering of the event makes me even more confused. Although this is just mere speculation, the narrator might have had an affair with someone. Maybe he decided to break off the affair and the woman he had an affair with was mad and ordered him to throw away his coat as a symbol of defiance and revenge. To keep her quiet, the narrator complied without asking for any explanations and threw away his coat. However, this happened years ago, and he probably wasn't married yet.

I guess the reason why I am confused by this poem is probably because the author uses a directed voice, and that threw me off. This directed voice is not bad, and it actually gives that mysterious vibe, which I mentioned in the beginning of this blog post. The author probably wrote this poem using a directed voice because it is a memory and memories become clouded as years pass by. Memories get influenced by other memories. Even the most vivid memories a person has might be slightly off. The author probably doesn't remember the person's name, but he remembers the event that had happened at that point in time. Maybe the author also wants to protect the identity of the person in his memory by not mentioning any names. There are many possibilities as to why the author wrote this poem the way he did, but it is what it is.

Poems might be confusing, but they are what they are. Authors deliberately write their works in certain ways to provoke a reaction from the readers. The reactions might not be always positive, but if there's a reaction, especially a negative one, then the author has accomplished his job. Poems are also mysterious, and it's because of the intentional omission of certain parts, and the usage of certain words. Albeit they may provoke negative responses from the audience, these things are what make a poem beautiful. They are what they are.

Works Cited

Deppe, Theodore. "The Russian Greatcoat." 180 More: Extraordinary Poems for Every Day. Ed. Billy Collins. New York: Random, 2005. 74. Print.

Written Thoughts

I like poetry. However, I like writing poetry than reading a piece. The flow of emotions in every single word, sentence, and stanza in a poem is like water, which can sometimes be a gentle stream or a cascading river. I have written multiple poems ever since I was young, and they usually were a poem of romantic nature.

Reading 180 More: Extraordinary Poems for Every Day, I found some very interesting poems. I am not used to reading poems since I don't read many of them, so I have many questions or inferences as to what I have understood in what I have read. Among the ones my English 1302 class was assigned to read, I have found one poem that sparked most of my attention was Leanne O'Sullivan's "Waiting for My Clothes."

The poem is about a girl in a waiting room of a hospital, probably a mental institute, whose belongings have been taken away from her, including her clothes and journal. She is waiting for them to be brought back to her.

I have become as curious as a cat about her situation. Why is the narrator in a hospital? Did something happen to her? It seems to me that the setting of the poem is a mental institute rather than a regular hospital, so if she is institutionalized, she might have had an emotional breakdown. Considering she said that as if taking her cure were part of a cure, she may have indeed had a breakdown and the doctors were examining the contents of her belongings. Or maybe it's just routine.

One of the most important details of this poem is her implied anxiousness about her journal being taken away. It's quite interesting for the narrator to say that her journal is her "word made flesh" (O'Sullivan 13). At first, I was confused on what she meant, and asked myself why she had said that. I realize what is usually written in a journal, and have understood what she meant by what the narrator said. Then comes another question. Why is there an emphasis on the journal? I am not entirely sure of the answer to this question. The most probably answer is that the narrator feels vulnerable as if she is a baby, who is being observed by doctors and nurses (16). Maybe she is anxious that the doctors may read her journal, which is understandable considering a person's journal is very private, and houses a person's most inner thoughts. It also quite interests me on how stanzas five through eight seems like a girl lost in fantasy. Maybe she is daydreaming about her journal being read and how she feels about this thought. Maybe she really is fantasizing about it for she said "Like my dreams, my clothes come out of their boxes" (32). I understand the clothes returning to her as an interruption to her fantasy and an invitation to the real world.

This poem is very curious indeed, and the deliberate omission of the reason of her stay in the hospital implies many things. Readers can maybe infer that the narrator may have suffered a breakdown, or just sick. Maybe the narrator is having a breakdown, and in order to cope up with this, she fantasizes about her journal being read, but she is interrupted and invited back to the real world by her clothes, which she was waiting for.

Works Cited

O'Sullivan, Leanne. "Waiting for My Clothes." 180 More: Extraordinary Poems for Every Day. Ed. Billy Collins. New York: Random, 2005. 17. Print.

Emotions through Illustrations

Most memoirs are in the form of a novel. Every page is plastered with words, which describe emotions, thoughts, and actions. However, Stitches: A Memoir, by David Small, is a memoir in the form of a graphic novel. Instead of words, Small uses illustrations to stitch up words into pictures and tell a story about his unhappy childhood with unloving parents and abuse.

Pictures are worth a thousand words. Small's drawings are indeed worth a thousand words. His use of shadows, facial expressions, and presence of the eyes of the characters wonderfully show emotions, which might be harder to convey with words.

Shadows usually indicate gloom, sadness, anger, and suspense. The first time I read Stitches: A Memoir, I did not notice the shadows. However, the class discussions in my English 1302 class about the book opened my eyes and mind when we discussed about shadows. After reading the memoir a second time, I noticed that Small uses many shadows throughout the whole book. Looking at these shadows closely, I notice that the illustrations evoke certain moods or emotions, depending on what is on the panel.

One particular panel that spark my attention is the one in page 92 of the book. Using what I learned in Film Literature class about shadows, I analyze the mood of the panel. In this page, a window off-screen produces a shadow, which looks like prison bars. Considering what is happening in this part of the chapter, the reader can infer that the child David feels like he is a prisoner in his grandmother's house, and the shadow of the window sets this mood. In the same panel, a ceiling light illuminates the child David's grandmother, who is dragging him upstairs into a room. Even with the light illuminating the grandmother, there is a dark shadow, which fully engulfs David and his grandmother's face. It evokes suspense and fear even though their faces can't be seen.

Even with shadows looming in most of the illustrations, facial expressions can still be seen in most of them. Small's use of facial expressions shows the characters' emotions successfully without the aid of words.

In page 174, the readers can see the expressions of David and his mom in the panels. The first panel shows a complex of emotions. David's mom, Betty, seems annoyed and mad. In the second panel, David mirrors his mom's expression, and Small does an excellent job drawing and portraying the parallel emotions the two characters are experiencing. In page 175, we still see David's face. It seems he's unconvinced that his mom will actually get what he wants (mentioned in page 173). In the fourth panel, his eyebrows are raised and he seems to be looking down on his mom, because he doesn't believe Betty will actually get what he wants. Then, in the next two panels, we see Betty. She still seems angry because of the arch of her eyebrows, but her eyes can't be seen.

It is often said that the eyes are the windows to the soul. Many emotions can be seen through the eyes. A person can sometimes tell what another person is feeling through the eyes. However, in Small's memoir, Betty's eyes are usually "missing." Her eyes are mostly covered by the glasses she is wearing. This covers up whatever emotions she has pent up inside, which is fitting because there is a lack of communication in this family. The reader can infer that her emotions are repressed, and that her glasses are blocking the windows to her soul.

Shadows, facial expressions, and presence of the eyes can show a variety of emotions if used in certain ways. Small uses them wonderfully, and draws readers to his nightmare of a childhood with repressed emotions, and lack of communication.

Works Cited

Small, David. Stitches: A Memoir. New York; Norton 2009. Print

Sketches and Drafts

Ever since I was a child, I have been full of creativity. Ideas just sprung up in my mind and I usually daydreamed of fantasies, such us thinking that I was a dinosaur or some kind of superhero. Encyclopedias and TV shows fueled most of my imagination. However, daydreaming fantasies wasn't enough for me to channel my creativity. So, I turned to drawing and writing.

I can't recall the first thing I drew, but I remember some of the first drawings I had. My old drawings were usually dinosaurs in some kind of environment. Unfortunately, I do not have pictures of those drawings because the drawings were either lost or thrown away, but what matters is that I remember them. Hopefully, I will continue to remember them as I grow older.

"Vampire Trisha", one of my early attempts at writing.

Besides drawing, I also write stories. I was fond of supernatural creatures (I still am), so most of my stories included vampires, werewolves, magic, and some type of hero. I remember a story I wrote in fifth grade. It was very popular among my classmates because I shared it with them. The title was "Vampire Trisha". I was a fan of vampires, and I admit "Vampire Trisha" was a little bit influenced by Twilight in terms of romance... and creatures.

My drawing of Ryan Hunt, a character in the online game Lunia.

I continued to draw and write as I went from one grade level to the next, and I have to say drawing and writing really help me calm down. Whenever I feel something that I don't feel like sharing, I usually draw or write to let all the emotions out. Most of the time, I just draw or write when I feel like it. Also, when I see something that I like or inspires me, like characters in a video game or online game, I try to draw them. I tend to dress up my characters in online games with "fashion" items, take screenshots, and then draw them.

A screenshot of my character in Aion Online, which I attempted to draw afterwards.

Doing these activities helped shape my life. Because I started drawing and writing at an early age, these skills help me in art classes and writing activities. I remember that my artworks in my art class during seventh and eighth grade were in art exhibits. I was proud of myself, and so were my family and my art teacher.

These hobbies continue to shape my life. They have also influenced my career choice. I plan to be a Game Designer, because I love to be able to show my drawings and stories, not only in paper, but also in a game. Storytelling is better to be experienced firsthand, in my opinion. I also dream of becoming an author of a novel, particularly in the fantasy, supernatural, and romance genre. I am actually trying to write a romantic supernatural novel. It is standing at 5,000 words at the moment, and hopefully I will have the will to continue writing.

The novel I'm currently working on.

Admittedly, because I slacked off from drawing and writing lately, I have eroded some of my skills, and now I have to refine them again. However, this doesn't stop me from drawing or writing. I still love doing a quick sketch, or writing a poem or short story, so a little skill erosion doesn't affect my will.