An Earlier Addition

This week, I primarily spent time working on some character development for the story’s main antagonist. I actually had to go back to the first 20 pages of the story to do this, as that’s when the character is introduced. Here’s the challenge. The antagonist isn’t pure evil or just a horrible person, at least to begin with. He’s a person who has some differences with my protagonist, spars with him within their group, and is eventually completely set against him by the machinations of the plot. Why? Because my antagonist is a bit of a coward and a liar, and that stands at complete odds with my protagonist (who isn’t perfect by any means either). Here’s how I attempted to establish his character:

Racial Authoethnography (Part 3 of 3) – India

Racial Autoethnography (Part 3 of 3)

This is the third and final part of my racial autoethnography for T. Mauricio’s class. It is not the whole part of the last 5 pages, because some of it was too personal to share online, but it most of it! Hope you enjoy! 

Right away when I came to Westtown’s campus, I noticed a difference in the way race was discussed. Not only was it addressed in all settings–my Peace and Justice class, in assemblies, in clubs, in Meeting for Worship–but it seemed like many people actually wanted to talk about it. There were also black students who were more vocal about their experiences at the school and outside of it in terms of race. Many of the stories and experiences that I heard were very similar to my own: not knowing what to do when a white classmate says the n-word, how to deal with or respond to ignorant comments about black hair, journeys of navigating a predominantly-white institution in general, etc. I was moved hearing them share stories so similar to my own, and by second semester, I joined SUMAA (Students United for Multicultural Action and Awareness) with a Latina friend. I desired a space where I, too, could speak freely about how I felt about my race and learn new things about myself and the experiences as I shared.

Web Hosting 101

A friend of mine and a regular reader of this blog recently requested that I write a tutorial on setting up a web server. To honor his request, I will devote this week’s blog post to the subject of web hosting. I will not, however, cover the programming aspect of web development as I assume that the readers of this tutorial already know how to write a website in HTML, CSS, PHP, Java, etc. I will also not be writing about the all-in-one website builders such as Squarespace and Wix for the same reason.

Sneak Peak: Pennsylvania Healthy Youth Act 2017 – KC

Below is a sneak peak of the very first rough draft of the Pennsylvania Healthy Youth Act.

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Amending the Public School Code of March, 10th 1949 (P.L. 30, No.14), entitled an act “relating to the public school system, including certain provisions applicable as well to private and parochial schools; amending, revising, consolidating and changing the laws relating thereto.”

How I Met Your Mother – Defying “The One” | Cynthia

As you can see, this week’s blog is going to be more of a tangent. I procrastinated a little too much last week so I have to do two blogs this week and I just don’t have the time or energy to write two film reviews back to back. (Learn from my mistakes people) I’m currently binge-watching How I Met Your Mother for probably the tenth time around and I thought it would be interesting to share some of my thoughts on the show. I’ve been writing about some pretty sad and heavy films so it’s nice to have a change of direction and talk about the theme of love in one of my all-time favorite comedy.

Reflecting- Ricky

The semester is almost over, and I’m inching closer and closer to graduation. My independent study this semester was so much more better structured than it was last semester, and I think it has been much easier because I put more time into planning out the details of how the course was going to go. However, I am still a little bit behind the schedule, because I did not expect the courses to be double the workload they were the last semester. This is only to say that I am behind on the blog posts, because it is insanely difficult to squeeze over two hours of online lectures into one page of a blog post. The learning is very much on track.

The Lake Project: Calling an Audible – Dex

From the beginning, the plan for my project has been to create a catalog of species that I photograph from around the lake. The idea was simple: take a photo, figure out what species it is, give it a page in the book. However, if things go well, I might be making a bit of a change to the finished product. I might have to call an audible, a term used in football to describe a play a quarterback decides on after everyone is ready to go.

Racial Auto Ethnography – Henry

 

We wrote this paper to explore how race has impacted our lives and experience at Westtown.  I found it to be a great experience.

Racial Auto-ethnography – My Master Key

        Privilege abounds before me like few other people. Cis, male, white, affluent, two-parent  household, to mention a sampling of such unearned gifts.  Life, to this point at least, has been about as much a cakewalk as possible.  Through little to no fault of my own, my life will continue along this fluffy, advantaged life.  To be honest I would be quite happy if it did.  To break down the sum of experiences that led to me, here, right now is difficult.  Separating race, from wealth, and the patriarchal advantages from which I benefit cannot be completely done.  I am going to at least attempt to untangle my web. If the great privilege of being rich is not worrying about money, than the great privilege of being white is not worrying about race.

I finished something…

I finally finished the senior retreat video.

Deception for Good – Tom

I was discussing my procedure with my mentor last week when an interesting detail came up. The importance of making sure that the participants in the study do not think it is about race. This is important for an obvious reason, if people think that I am going to be observing how they interact with race, they will be paying more attention to how race is affecting them. But this is a study about the implicit effects of race, and so calling attention to it would completely ruin all of my data. Sadly, I must say, that means all of you aren’t going to be able to be participants.