Journal 54: Literature and Death

I agree with the author of the quotation that literature is the best and most effective way to overcame death. In other words, it is a way to live one’s life. Writing is better than acting in many ways. I do not think acting is a formal way to express one’s feeling or record one has been through. In a sense, one is just acting out another person’s life rather than taking it and transforming into one’s own life. On the other hand, writing is a way of recording a person’s own life. It is evidence that a person has truly lived this life and fully recognized the meaning and importance of it by writing it down. It enables us to remain in the future by leaving something, for example experiences, that is your own. Thus, keeping a journal is the best way to live in the present and remain in the future. In my opinion, photographs, drawings, or even songs can just be a temporary memory of an event. Those kind of expressing methods do not specify the whole process of an experience. Instead, it just gives you a incomplete memory that a person may not even remember that stays in the past.

Journal 53: Reasoning and Insight

I agree with this quotation because me myself has the same findings. I can say that I have somewhat suffered from memorizing all the intricate equations of mathematics. What makes the equations so hard to understand is that unlike Sciences, you cannot observe the reasons behind a certain equation in everyday life. The number system itself is not a discovery; it is simply a creation by a creator. It is the creator that determines the meaning of each concept in math, and not what we have observed in life. The computational methods are not observational either; it is directly created by mathematicians. On the other hand, the field of science usually contains findings from experiments and observations. There is no creator behind a concept in the field of science; scientists only name what they have found. For example, when the scientists discovered cells, they name what related ti the whole subject. What makes the field of science easier to memorize and more insightful is that we can memorize more profoundly by investigating and observing for ourselves. Not only does the evidence from observations serve as insight of the world, but also the “rigorous reasoning” as in math. In result, science is a subject of valued insight to find out tiny place; mathematic is a rigorous way of reasoning to put the equations in different ways for eauations.

Journal 52: Life of Service

For me, a life of service is a life of learning. You learn while you provide any kind of service for others. And To do well on your life of service or learning, you will need to hold a certain kind of belief and persistence.

My life of service is being a teacher assistant at Fremont Chinese School. I hold the belief of maturity, discipline, and kindness toward students. You need the maturity to set the define goal of assisting the teacher diligently. You need to teach the students with patience and with clarity. You could not lose your patience while dealing with children. What they need is the patience, kindness, and time to educate them until they understand. I constantly reminded myself to follow these rules because if comply with these rules, I believe the students will also put their best effort to cooperate with you. That way, I can learn more good lessons from this teaching experience.

This service learning really helped the renewal of my mind and community improvement. Every time I helped the teacher instruct a lesson to the students, I felt like I helped the society improve a step further and created a bright future for the country by educating the next generation. I think this helped enforce my sense of confidence and renewed my mind of a new reason or goal for life. 

Journal 51: The Best Laid Plans

The most challenging difficulty I faced I life must has been the time when I thought I was prepared for the High School application test in Taiwan. During ninth grade as the test date neared all students were very nervous and all started to plan out their review schedule accordingly. Because I missed the seventh grade school year in Taiwan, I really do not have a appropriate schedule for reviewing. Even when I tried to concentrate on reviewing, I started to get frustrated because there were so many questions I do not know how the answer due to my lack of learning in seventh grade. I then hypnotized myself that I will know the answer just by “reading” questions without doing them, and I will just know as time goes on or when the test date arrives. I was also somewhat influenced by my peers that the test is going to be easy; this made persuade and soothed me even more that everything is going to be fine. However, when the test came, I soon regretted that I have not put all my heart into reviewing. I felt like I have been awaken from a dream; I was forced to face the truth of needing a good reviewing plan. In the next two months, I gathered myself up and wrote a complete preview plan. I worked accordingly o the plan and made devotion to abstinence of using the computer and watching TV. My plan worked well. On my second and last high school application test, all subjects of the test improved. This taught me to face any dilemmas in life instead of trying to escape by consoling yourself; only by confronting unpleasant truths and weighting both sides of an issue can one clearly understand the choices and make the right decisions.

Journal 50: My World

I am from the Asian country Taiwan. Maybe because it is a small country, we Taiwanese people knew to get what we want; we have to rely on ourselves. We have a kind of indomitable attitude to achieve whatever goal. Living in this community has made me resilient to many life challenges that appear. My family is consisted of my parents and two brothers. My mother is a tender woman who knows when to console me in her arms and when to leave me alone to deal with my own problems independently. She gives me enough care and concerns without letting me lose the ability to resolve my own problems. My father is a daring entrepreneur who is willing to take a step further to achieve. Influenced by his audacity, I was not afraid to grasp any opportunity when it comes. I remember I used to complain to him how tired I am and about school policies I felt was unfair to us students. He then told me if we can’t alter the situations we are in, we have to learn to adapt to it. He wanted me to be like water; Water can fit into whatever kinds of containers without changing its original essence or nature. My brothers, who learns to love life and enjoy playing sports, taught me to have enthusiasm for life and to ease myself when appropriate. These factors in general have really made me recognize how a well-rounded individual should be like. 

Journal 49: What I Am Proud Of

Living in an Asian country, community, and family has taught me the most essential personality of all-diligence. Starting from the first day of first grade, mother has always exhorted me to maintain high diligence at all times. She taught me by only maintaining diligence and being industrious can I succeed in every field. I then learn to be diligent in all cases, despite all outer distractions that may deviate me from my track of reaching my goal. The determined teaching of my mother has rooted in me a resolution of how I know my goals of each stage of life specifically.  During times when I felt frustrated, I seek for my strong determination of reaching my goal. This motivation always gives me a clear vision of how I want my future to be so then I can pursue it whole-heartedly. However, my strong determination of reaching my preferred future has taken away some of my free time and relation. I tend to feel that I do not have time to relax. This is the more rigid side of my personality. Despite the rigidness of my personality, I also tend to be more optimistic when facing dilemmas. When I have a clear direction f what I want to pursue in my mind, I maintain hopefulness and pursue it with all my might and heart.  

Journal 48: Busy busy busy

One of the activities I do is swimming. In the beginning of junior year, I suddenly found out I am drowned in a pile of schoolwork and to-do things. I lack the motivation to concentrate on reading and somehow has a muffled feeling; I felt like I was suppressed under or these works. I tried to relax and renovate myself by sometimes reading novels or going on the computer. However, I realized that as soon as I went back to work, the feeling of suppression arose again. Then one morning, my father woke me up and told me he realized that I was feeling down recently. He wanted for me to try swimming. The minute I stepped into the water, the cold water embraced me and seemed to have reduced my anxiety immediately. I dived deep into the water and let the water blocked out all the noises and worries; it is only in this moment that I truly felt peaceful. Swimming is the one sport that I am vividly aware of the distance I have advanced. This made me realize the meaning of motivation. Motivation naturally appears when you realized what a long way you have gone through and all the things you have achieved. You then appreciate yourself more often and gain the strength to continue on your journey. Swimming is a catharsis and a learning experience for me. 

Journal 47: More Art

I think the picture that has affected me the most is a picture of a middle-aged man carrying his elderly mother in a millstone around his neck sitting in a hospital. He seems like he was either feeding his mother some medicine or talking to her softly and comforting her. This picture really shocked me because I was expected to see the man carrying a baby or a child in that bundle and that the man was just doing his duty as a father bringing his child to see the doctor. When I saw that it was an old lady in the bundle around the man’s neck, I came to think about how people nowadays usually do not take caring for their parents as a duty. They only thought so much for their children but to neglect their parents’ welfare. Some pushed the responsibilities of taking their parents to other siblings. In the end, the elderly has to go to nursing home.  And this man in the picture, did not forget about his mother, does not think it is troublesome to carry his mother, and is willing to take time to take his mother to the hospital. This also makes I reflect on how I treated my mother currently. I interpreted my mother’s regardful greetings to bossy condemnation and her encouragement as annoying reminders. Now every time I think of the picture, I learn to be more grateful of my parents and more appreciative of what they’ve done for me. I know I will not neglect them when they aged.

Journal 46: Art and Life

When I was still a small kid, my Grandfather used to take my brother and I to parks just to enjoy the scenery of mountains and lakes. It is not until one day when my Grandfather brought up the idea that we could replicate the scenery by painting that I realized I have passion for art.   I can say that art is a panacea because it creates a way for one to express his or her feelings. In other words, it acts like a catharsis and helps ameliorate people’s stress. I think I will be a painter who paints out the sceneries that are easy to be overlooked and help people realize the fact that even a small corner of nature contains scenes that inspire and touches people. I will take art not only as a career but as an interest that helps me and others to express our feelings, alleviates our stress when things go wrong, and appreciate the beauty of nature and life. By joining art school, I wish to interact and collaborate with more creative and intelligent artistic students. That way I can learn more about diverse aspects of art through the vision of different people and help me bring out novel ideas of expressing arts. By joining an art school, I can also practice and mature my skills on subjects that I may have never thought of before.