Project Reflection: A Hero in My Eyes

1. To me, a hero becomes a hero when they have been defined that way by another. This is because a hero is different to each person. For instance, some people consider Soldiers heroes, others do not. It really is defined to each person as that way. And every hero, regardless of by who or what they have done, have been defined by someone as a hero. To me, that is all that matters.
2. Project Description: In the A Hero in My Eyes project we had to create a character sketch of a person that had created a personal impact (meaning we knew them personally) on us. The pieces were accompanied by two black and white photos, one portrait and one full body, that we had taken ourselves of our heroes.
3. Process: I first interviewed my hero, Ms. Lopaz, the Director for High Tech Middle Media Arts. I then typed up that manuscript and wrote the first draft of my character sketch. After a peer review I edited my rough draft and re-wrote it. This was then edited by Charlotte, our teacher, and edited again by myself. I then added in word of the days and made it more picturesque. I also then took the photos of Ms. Lopaz that I needed. After I had my final drafts of everything I put it into the class template along with a blurb about my hero that I had written.
4. Reflection: In this project I didn't really run into any problems while writing my piece. However, I did have to cut it down from 2.5 pages to 2 pages which was really hard to do without missing content or getting rid of some great sensory details and figurative language. In the end I was able to do it though and learned to cut my paper down while keeping the important content. I also encountered a problem when I was trying to put my photos into Adobe InDesign. The photos became very pixelated in the template, but after much trial and error I was able to convert the files into high quality using Adobe Illustrator. This solved the pixelation and taught me to not be afraid of technology. Overall I learned a lot in this project. I learned how to write a character sketch, conduct an interview, and use InDesign as well us cut down my papers efficiently.
5. Habits of Mind: I really think I used the habits of mind ownership in this project a lot. I constantly asked myself the question, "Is this my best work?" and "How can I make it better?". Because of this I was able to produce better writing than I initially thought I could do.
   
6. Artifact: http://lunaeve.blogspot.com/2009/11/redefine-impossible.html
7. Picture: The picture above shows how people really define others as heroes. Some say the only heroes are those in capes. Some say that's ridiculous. But I'm sure if you were to ask the child in this photo they would say superman was a hero, and we really wouldn't be able to persuade him otherwise.

Redefine the Impossible

"A monumental part of me being here was the Costa Rica trip," I smile as Ms. Lopaz, or Lopaz as I call her, states this with alacrity, "All these people told me it was too expensive, that we didn’t have enough time to fundraise money for all the kids, and that I was in over my head, and I just kept thinking 'I can do it.' No one had used the word impossible.”

"Talking about Costa Rica, what made you want to do the trip?" I ask as she clicks around on her sleek silver computer, her brown bangs falling in her eyes, which she brushed away in an attempt to titivate herself. The small cluttered office around us is full of the same warmth and love as any person's home.

"I love traveling and I wanted to do it with students because it hadn’t really been done,” I smiled as one word, determination, came into mind, “I'm competitive so as people were saying I couldn’t do it, I was all 'well yeah, I think I can do it.' It just felt like such a unique opportunity and authentic place for learning. The students could learn about nature, the environment and currency without having to sit in a classroom all day." Not only could I hear the determination in her voice now, I could also see it on her face. It was the same face she bore at the first meeting for the trip. Both of us were extremely competitive and loved the look on peoples’ faces when we completely blew them away, when we accomplished something they defined as “impossible”.

"How did you feel when you realized we were actually going to Costa Rica?" I say, trying not to be loquacious when I asked the question as my mind came up with more.

"I felt that feeling of 'I can’t believe this'. We spent so much time figuring out all the ways to fundraise so we could go that I didn’t take enough time to realize what a great experience we were going to have there,” I nodded in agreement. It's strange how when we were fundraising for Costa Rica I never once said to myself 'what if this doesn't happen?' There was no 'what if'. There was no 'isn't going to happen'. There were only the words “Costa Rica” implanted in my mind. But sitting here with Lopaz I realized how many things I had overlooked. But maybe, that was for the better. Maybe without all the 'what ifs' and 'isn't going to happens' I wouldn't have worked nearly as hard. It was because of her and Ms. Weisberg’s blatant display of faith in us that we got to go. Suddenly Lopaz passes me a sheet of paper, the movement of her arms moving towards me dragging me out of my thoughts and into reality.

"It's about a moment in Costa Rica," she states as the passes into my hands, still warm, a chocolate chip cookie hot out of the oven that I couldn’t wait to have fill me up.

"In over our heads," the title blares out. Silently I read, laughing to myself as I remember the crazy bus driver who drove through the river when the bridge was shut down and the noisy discussion of the latest scuttlebutt being overruled by piercing screams as we wobbled in the white water, our faces as white as a group of ghosts, but the memories became fugacious when my eyes reached the last paragraph:

As I think back to the interview on that bus, and the number of times Amy used the word “overwhelmed.” Looking back, I think that perhaps Amy and I were in over our heads. But then I remember the giant smiles plastered across our students’ faces as they finished their last zip line, and I wonder if we would have had it any other way.

Overwhelmed, I mouth as I finish. The single word made me realize how much she and "Amy" (Ms. Weisberg) had done for us students. Ms. Lopaz once told me that her goal as a Director was to ensure that students love school, and she had really made that true for me. She truly had redefined the impossible and started my initial drive.

The Meaning of Zero

I thought the articles were very interesting when they were talking about the number zero's origin. They both talked about the cultures creations of placeholders such as zero, but detailed that the exact origin of zero has not been pinpointed.

To me zero was not necessarily discovered by any one person. This is because the exact origin of zero cannot be pin pointed, and if a civilization was developed enough to have quantities larger than 99 or even occasionally 10, they would in fact need a number or place holder such as zero. Regardless, a person came up with the concept of zero, but we do not know who or where the original founder came from. For instance, the Chinese would use a symbol similar to the modern day 0 (zero) and the Romans had roman numerals such as X and C which represent the numbers 10 and 100. So, even though the Romans or Chinese were not necessarily using zero how we use it today, as a number, they were using a placeholder of sorts to represent it, and so were many other civilizations and cultures around the world.

Because of things like the Silk Roads, a major point of evolution in history, not only were things such as languages developed and dialects brought to other places as well as religious ideas and mechanisms, so was the idea of Zero.

While we may, as people of the world, have different ways for communication, different languages, and different government ideals, math cannot change per country. Math is the same everywhere, regardless of which symbols we use in place of numbers. Because of this, the world had to eventually come up with a common number for zero, or at least a way to define it. No matter where you go, formulas, operations, and expressions will be the same. Zero is the same way, even if it is represented differently the meaning is the same around the world, and without it things could not be computed which is why all cultures have had to accept it as a number.

Literary Devices

Beneath the Willow Tree

Catching the signal from one of her friends, Angela brushed her skirt, took a deep breath and walked towards where he was sitting. Her feet dragged along the pavement, her mouth practicing the words she was going to say to him over and over again.

“Hey Will, How’re you doing? I was just wondering if you would like to……” the words trailed off midsentence as she watched him close his book, stuff it casually into his bag, and walk away from her. She watched him walk away, standing still on the sidewalk, her mouth agape, before she turned around and walked back to where her best friend was sitting next to the old tree.

“I can’t believe I was that close to asking him,” she murmured, sliding down the old willow tree trunk and collapsing into its shadow.

“Maybe you’ll get another chance tomorrow, it’s not like he’s moving away tonight anyways. No one ever leaves Spokane. Plus you’ve waited for two years already. You can wait a little bit longer,” her best friend, Lily, said, thinking this would help bring her mood up when really all it did was bring back the fear of rejection into Angela’s mind.

“Thanks,” Angela states sarcastically.

“No problem. Hey, I’m gonna hit the music store after school, heard they got the new Kills album in. You wanna go? We can go rent movies afterwards, order pizza, and have a major calorie fest at my place. The rents are out of town so the house is pretty lonely, but they love you and I’m sure they wouldn’t mind you sleeping over.”

“Okay. I could really use a good slice of pizza right now.”

“Good. Pizza is like a gift from God that we can’t refuse. I’m Jesus, I would know.”

“Uh huh,” Angela nods, looking up at the tree. She had always loved the old willow tree in front of the mall. It’s drooping branches and old rippled trunk was like an old mans saggy skin. It showed wisdom in life. She pressed her forehead to the tree, trying to get some of the old trees wisdom to pass into her. It was a psychologist to her in her times of need. Slowly she slid up the trunk, waiting for Lily to realize she was ready to leave. However, Lily being Lily, it took several notifications. A slap on the shoulder, a whistle from her mouth, and a few calls of “Lily” later her friend had risen from the brown earth and was ready to leave. They began to walk away, and before turning at the corner, Angela looked back upon the tree which was dancing to the beat of the wind.

Trenched

The world passed by silently, the trees swaying softly in the light, humid breeze. Everything was green, brown, and gray with dots of color from the trash that littered the picturesque mountainside, completely different from the white sands and turquoise waters of Bali where we had just ventured from. No sky shone through the clouds here, even though it was 96 degrees out. No matter what the temperature, Java was always gray and muggy, and full of either annoyingly warm mists or shockingly cold downpours. Yet no matter what the weather, Java was always unmistakably beautiful.

I watched everything pass as the train moved sluggishly up the hill, glad that I had rid myself of my slugabed ways and gotten up early for this excursion.

“What about the cake?” Natalie, who had a reputation for logorrhea to maintain, yelled across the train, her voice an annoying white noise to me as I looked below, my forehead pressed up against the cool window pane, my coconut smelling breath condensed onto it as I breathed, the rain blurred my view slightly as it dripped sluggishly down the window. The same rain that helps the beautiful red flowers to ameliorate from the harsh brown earth. I could see the slums made of tin and cardboard with people around them trying their hardest to keep their houses up while the rain slowly broke down the walls of their homes. Next door the kids played in the mud, throwing handfuls of it at each other, enjoying the feeling of it in their hands and laughing as the mud caromed off each other. Suddenly the rural village passed out of my mind as I felt the world stop, my eyes replaying the most disturbing thing I had seen in my short life over and over again.
There, in the middle of the hill, was a girl lying alone in a trench of sewage, dead. Her hair was in knots around her body, stuck to the excrement which was starting to become watery in the rain. Her arms and legs were twisted out around her in unnatural positions that my inflexible body would never be able to be in. Her face was cut up, but the blood had long since dried into a rusty smear. What was only a split second of passing felt like an hour as my mind replayed the scene over and over again like a CD stuck on repeat. The image of her face, her arms, and her hair were forever imprinted into the walls of my mind, a constant reminder of how different my life was from the people's here, and not wanting to think about it, I attempted to discard it from my memory.

The petulant feelings I had felt in the past suddenly seemed miniscule in comparison to the horrors I had just witnessed. The fact that a girl, who looked my age, maybe younger, was lying dead in a trench was the most extreme wake-up call I had ever gotten. My life's hardships were like a grain of sand compared to the wave of issues the people here dealt with every single day.

When I first saw the girl, I had tried to shake the picture of her out of my mind, ignoring the lesson she had to teach me. But now, as the scene began to die out and we moved farther up into the mountain, I hugged the memory of her closer. Within those few seconds, passing like hours, I had experienced the most terrifying and clarifying thing in my life.

Monto Gordal Beach, Portugal

It begins with the sound of water, trickling softly, tumbling down into the pool. Suddenly it is swallowed up by something bigger, pulling it back as it returns to it's hole. It is climbing up in that way where you pull up a lot, then fall back a little, pull up, fall back, slowly making pace. Slowly reaching it's destination. As it gets to the top it begins to slow down. Somehow, in its slow state, it gains momentum. With a surge of energy pulls itself far up, almost to it's goal. New sounds emanate from the being as it comes up farther and farther.
"Plink, plunk, plop" it yells out in frustration as it falls back away, still not quite reaching it's goal, "Plink, plop, plop, plunk!" It gets louder and louder. You can hear the anger in its voice as it struggles to make it to its goal. Harder and harder it works, and still it can not make it. The low grumble turns into a growl as its anger shows. Louder and louder it screams. The rage of mother nature burns as it still almost touches the point. Will it ever make it to its destination?
One more surge of energy. One more breath. One more plea and it is there. It is over.
To hear the sound click here.

The Locker Problem

In the locker problem we had to find out which lockers, out of a thousand, were opened and closed after a thousand students changed the state of the lockers. The first person would open all the lockers, the second change the state of every second one, the third change the state of every third one, and so on and so on. After making a chart of about 50 lockers and going through the pattern, marking it each time it was open or closed as well as how many times its state was changed, my group found that every perfect square locker number was open while the rest of the lockers were closed. We also found that the lockers had a pattern, one open, two shut, one open, four shut, etc.

Looking at the data we found that every closed locker had an even amount of factors, meaning its state was changed an even amount of times. The lockers that were open in the end were the only ones with an odd amount of factors, and its state was changed an odd amount of times. This meant that only perfect squares had an odd number of factors, or an odd number of times their state was changed in the case of the problem. For example four has the factors two, four, and one, because 1x4=4, and 2x2=4, and you only count two once when you list the factors. This relates to the lockers because each locker number will be opened or closed by each of its factors once. Student one, two, and four are the students that will open or close locker number four because they are the factors in this problem. Four has three factors, so it was opened, then closed, then opened. In the case of another number, like 21, there will always be an even amount of factors, one, seven, three, and twenty-one, making it have four factors., i.e. being opened, closed, opened, and then closed by the twenty-first person, and never hit again. Only lockers hit an odd amount of times were open because, as seen in the diagram above (click on it to enlarge), when a locker was hit an even amount of times, it ended up being closed.

In the end of the problem we found out that there are only 31 perfect squares within a thousand giving you 31 lockers open, and 969 closed. In terms of finding a general rule in order to solve this problem further, it would be extremely difficult, even with the pattern found above (1 open, 2 shut, 1 open, 4 shut). The general rule is hard to find because as you extend the problem, the number of closed lockers increases, along with the number of perfect squares. So, if we had to solve this equation for two thousand lockers I would stick to using either the pattern, or just find the perfect square locker numbers within the total amount.

Uno's thoughts

Sliding through the window, my timberlands sliding across the window I had to be careful not to wake my moms and my step-dad. That night had been so crazy, feeling the power of the train in my body. I really think I helped D tonight. I hope he doesn't get nervous again when we start our little money maker back up again. It's all about the power of the train. No body gonna mess with the power of that train inside you. That power's what drives you.

Man, I hope D figures his stuff out. I think he will. Maybe I should suck it up and buy myself a new glove for our next hustle. Then maybe the dude won't blow my hand off. Shoot man, I know I deserved it but that fast ball hurt!

I wonder what would have happened had Sofe not shown me him practicing down at the field? I probably would have still hated the dude. And why do I care so much what Sofe thinks? It's like, she used to be one of the guys, and now, she's kinda a honey. And she looked smokin' that day. For some reason, I just can't get her outta my mind...................................................

Order of Operations

1.) 10(-5-6)/8
2.) (3+3)/2-5(-10)
3.) 4+4-16(-2)=28

Favorite Ficitonal Heroes

Harry Potter, Harry Potter, Harry Potter, Oooh

Harry Potter, from the Harry Potter series written by J.K. Rowling, is my favorite fictional hero. With the weight of the world on his shoulders, he continuously fights for the freedom of everyone in the Magical World. From the moment Voldemort killed his parents, Harry was left with the mark of being the chosen one, leaving him to either kill Voldemort, or die himself.

Most people would go into hiding, afraid of death. But Harry, only a teenager, takes the challenge head on and with the help of his friends and teachers is able to start learning how to defeat his opponent.

Reading the books, you really get into his character as the Author describes how he feels at almost every moment. You would never think about how people, warriors, or people in the army, feel as they have almost no choice but to fight in battle. This series really got me thinking about it all, and I'm sure other people too. And not only that, but the feelings he feels are so real. He's an actual person, just like you and I. He feels all the usual teenage things, the stress of school, first love, and has to deal with real life issues. But he also has the stress of being the only one able to rid everyone in the magical and non-magical world of the war thrust upon them. The relation of emotions to him is what makes it very interesting to me, not to mention the similarities between their war, and World War II.

Mysics

What does it mean to do math? What does math look like? Where do you find math? Who uses it?

Math is everywhere, and that's what I love about it. Because since everything uses it, it can always be solved. So no matter how long it takes you to figure out a problem, there is always a right answer and a way to solve. Now I'm not saying I want to do that, but the fact that I could if I wanted to Is exciting. When you solve math problems in class, it helps to look at them as real world problems v.s. pointless busy work. And the fact that everything you learn can, and most likely will, be used makes it that much more entertaining to complete. Math doesn't have a specific look, like almost like air. Although, unlike air, it can be unseen, or written on a sheet of paper. The best part is math is used by everyone. Our brains automatically compute things when we do every day tasks such as shopping, skateboarding, and even surfing. While in a store you calculate the price of items you want to buy into your budget, or how many of something you need. When playing sports your brain has to calculate the exact time to make a play. Math is so important to our everyday lives, and most people never take the time to realize it.

What is physics? Are we doing physics? Where can you find it? Who uses it?

Physics is a type of science that calculates many different things such as velocity, speed, momentum, and mass. Like math, it is used to solve many real world problems. In our class we use it for things such as labs. In Class so far we have used physics to solve problems like "What affects the speed of a pendulum?"

30 Things You Didn't Know About Me

1. 1. I love music. I don't play anything, but I love going to shows and seeking out new artists.



2. 2. I am starting my own organization called Ribbons of Humanity. Currently I'm working on going to Uganda next summer to paint a mural with the community at a skate park.



3. I have been to more countries than states.



4. I hate cheese.



5. I love chocolate, especially Toblerone.



6. Last year I helped to raise $95,000 within a couple months so that 36 of my classmates and I could go to China for Intersession.



7. I am an only child



8. I have one dog and two cats



9. Call me a nerd, but I am addicted to the Harry Potter Series. I even saw the sixth movie at midnight with my friends Katie and Natalie.



10. My dad is a musician and is in a couple bands, Lady Dottie and the Diamonds and the Deere Johns.



11. I was in Costa Rica for my 13th Birthday



12. I love reading. Some of my favorite books are Where the Wild Things Are, Pride and Prejudice, The Outsiders, Tuesdays with Morrie, 10 People You Meet in Heaven, and many more.



13. I love The Office. It's one of my favorite T.V. shows along with Chuck, Saturday Night Live, CSI:New York, Numbers, Project Runway, So You Think You Can Dance, and Make it or Break it.



14. Even though I love all these shows, I don't have a T.V. I can only watch shows online.



15. Some of my favorite movies are Pretty in Pink, The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Sixteen Candles, Garden State, Juno, Big Fish, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Breakfast at Tiffany's, Sabrina, and The Rocker.



16. I love the beach



17. I cant stand smooth jazz



18. I enjoy listening to Hilary Duff because to me it represents my childhood.



19. My Duvet Day movie is Notting Hill and Clueless



20. My favorite place in the world is Bali



21. I love crawling into small spaces



22. I have a collection of band shirts



23. I cant stand posers



24. I love fruit, especially strawberries



25. I love shoes. My favorite brand is Iregular Choice and Converse



26. I either want to work for the United Nations, or produce music.



27. I want to double major in Business and Political Science with a minor in Art



28. My top college choices are Columbia, NYU, University of California at Berkely, and Brown



29. I enjoy having a lot to do becuase stress makes me work harder



30. My favorite thing in the world is travelling