Mid-point Reflection – by Lyra

Thus far I have been enjoying my work very much. When I first designed this project, all I knew was that I wanted to study some aspect of French fairytales. I was not aware of Madame d’Aulnoy or other salonnières, and I feel very fortunate to have fallen upon their work. Although very few people have written in depth about these women an their work, the scholarship of those who have is quite extensive and there are diverse perspectives and interpretations among this small community of scholars.

Friends education- by Eric

During the past two weeks, I have explored the pedagogy and the values of several Pennsylvania Quaker school. Before moving on to introduce the basic and planning and the strategic plans of the schools, I find it appropriate to discuss about the history of Quaker education in PA.

The Process of Programming design(1) — Chester

At this point, the basic structure of the program is finished. Here are some steps that I have followed in order to decided what kind of structure that I want to use.

New Perspectives by Habeeb

On Tuesday Tristen and I held a club meeting for spoken word. For a good portion of the time we went around the room listening to everyone’s work. As we made our way around it was kind of an eye opener to me listening to people’s perspectives and interpretations on different things; whether it came to their cat, or adversity that they’ve faced.

Syria’s Downfall: Why No One Can Win but Assad Can’t Lose — by Nate

This week, with college deadlines fast approaching (the Thursday after this upcoming Thursday) my Independent research fell completely by the wayside, to be completely, painfully honest.  I did, however, finally come up with a title that I like:  Syria’s Downfall: Why No One Can Win but Assad Can’t Lose.

Shakespeare and German

In my English class we are currently reading Hamlet, one of Shakespeare’s classics. Working with the text, many students in my class have complained that Shakespearean English is hard to understand, that the sentences seem out of order and strangely worded. I, however, haven’t had much difficulty reading it because I noticed very quickly that Shakespearean English is written with German word order.

At first I was surprised by this realization, I knew English had Germanic roots but I hadn’t realized how deep they went. What I learned was that English had in fact started out as an archaic dialect of German, originating in Saxony. The Anglo-Saxons brought this dialect with them when they invaded the British Isles. Over many years the Germanic settlers linguistically displaced the native Celts and after centuries of French and Viking influence, we now have the modern English language.

It was a pleasant surprise to see the connections between the two languages, and a good reminder of how languages evolve.

An Excerpt – by Taylor

At last! After weeks of working with my mentor, I have a few paragraphs from the beginning of my book to share with you all! In context, my character, a government agent, is reflecting back on an assignment she was assigned to a few months ago. She is standing guard in an orchard while the leader of her assignment is negotiating a trade off with an agency informant in the nearby factory:

Starting my dance solo — by Isabel

This Friday night, I was so excited to begin learning my dance solo. Together my teacher and I picked and edited a song: Manhattan by Sara Bareilles. This song is about the meaning of a place changing at different points of a relationship and I am beginning to study the lyrics to be able to relate better to the song. It was a great experience to be one on one with my dance teacher. She had an idea of choreography going in but we experimented with some parts and worked together to find what felt and looked best on me.

Moving forward to second question — Shuangcheng

Just to follow up a little to my conclusions at the end of my solution to the first Moody question, the prediction for plastic wastes landfilled in 100 years. In my opinion, there will certainly be technology breakthroughs in the next 100 years to solve the waste problem. For instance, the SpaceX corporation, founded by Elon Musk, is working on recyclable rockets.

Poetry in Polish – by Tristen

As this week went by we met once again with our Spoken Word club.  We started off by going around the room and whomever brought something to share was able to.  As each person read their poetry it brought my mind to see the differences in everyone’s poetry.