Summer Assignment

How does adversity create strength?

Throughout the book our main character and author of the book Jeannette Walls faces many issues and challenges. The challenges were mainly brought on due to her parents and their adventures. Such as living in the desert to avoid the (fbi) or in reality taxes. Or even getting burnt at a young age and being in the hospital for so long. Yet Jeannette still prevailed.

During the time Jeannette was telling us about how she grew up she told us that her family moved around a lot when she was little. The story said they moved from town to town never really staying in one place, and every once in a while they would apply for a school. Because of this Jeannette adapted to moving all the time and going to different places.

At the beginning of the story she mentioned how she got severely burned. So as anyone would, she went to the hospital, and she said they had to do things like a skin graft and ice all over her. So after her family broke her out of the hospital she instantly went back to the activity that got her burned, making hotdogs. She also developed a love for fire, for example whenever her neighbors would burn something she would go close to it or even try and touch it. Because of her getting burned Jeannette learned and realized that fire wasn’t really that bad.

Later in the story she told us about her experiences in the desert. She said that her parents both understood places like that, especially her mother. Her mom knew how much water the human body needed and said something along the lines of if the animals are drinking out of it you should be fine. She also said that they didn’t eat like that and when they did they ate a whole bunch of food. So her diet had to change and she had to survive things like sandstorms and really hot days.

So even if she faced a bunch of things as a child she adapted and continued on. For example her parents left her for a while because she fell out of the car. During this time she said she cried and awaited their return. Especially at a small age that can be terrifying. But because of all these experiences she now knows how to take care of herself and live in environments like that.

ELA Baseline Writing Responses

For a while now people have been debating on whether the internet is bad for us. There are many different ways this could be true, for example, people are becoming dumber because of the internet, or we are slowly becoming addicted to it. And as you can see from research a lot of that is true. Yet there are also articles that say the internet is helping us and making us smarter. But at the end of the day the internet is changing us whether it's making us dumber due to reasons like, loss of critical thinking, loss of focus, or even memory loss. Or making us smarter due to the fact that we have endless information at our fingertips and can access it at any moment.

Over time our devices have made us more dependent on them. So before when we used to be able to think of a solution to a problem out in the real world. Now we just immediately go to google to search things up. For example in “Ok, Google, Where Did I Put My Thinking Cap?” It says “ Terry Heick, a former English teacher in Kentucky, had a surprising revelation when his eighth- and ninth-grade students quickly turned to google. ‘What they would do is they would start googling the question “How does a novel represent humanity?’” So as shown here those students didn’t even try and think about the question, their first response was going to the internet to solve their problems. The kids weren’t very focused on thinking about the question at hand.

Technology is also making our attention spans shorter, with apps like tik tok and facebook people aren’t used to focusing for that long. For example, when I do search up my problems, I won’t really try and read an article about it, I’ll just keep adjusting the question until there’s an answer that is a paragraph or two long. And along the way of what might be short assignments I’ll do things like take breaks or even try and go on different social media websites to distract me. So I end up making what was onces a short assignment into a three hour thing due to the fact that I got distracted and didn’t finish anything. So when we were asked to do things like answer questions on a subject that we did for homework in school, I won’t remember anything.

And in school, remembering answers and things that we did in class is very important. For example In “ The Memex In Your Pocket” it says “Personal-assistant tools like Siri instantly retrieves information such as phone numbers or directions that we once had to memorize or commit to paper” Siri is a huge example of memory loss because we know that we don’t have to memorize or write down information to keep it stored anymore. We can just ask Siri where you went on Christmas eve or something. So yes Siri is literally going to be there and tell you information which like all technology has its ups and downs.

So even if people present evidence that technology is bad for us it still has a bunch of great features that help us in our everyday lives. For example it can expand our communication borders, so we can now talk to and understand more people now than ever before. That and Siri can help us get places, so if you're lost or need help finding somewhere like your job, Siri and google maps can help you find things like that. Overall technology has aided us during times when we were in need.

At the end of the day the internet has its dangers, it can impact our daily lives in ways we couldn’t really process. How we think and how we solve problems we need to get around can just be searched up with, which can be good but because of it people lose the ability to think for themselves and on their own. I do it all the time, a lot of my time on my phone is searching up questions to my problems, such as “What do I do when I'm bored?” Or just questions about school.

Part 3

Text-Analysis Response

After reading a chapter called “Objects of Affection” I realized that the author uses a lot of writing strategies in her work but a recurring one I saw was characterization. For example when she said “My youthful materialism thrived in a country where-unless of the Marxist variety-was unanimously condemned as the ugly outgrowth of western consumer societies.” Here she described her ability to be materialistic as thriving in her country.

At some point in the text she also says “ It might sound more poignant if I said that books and records helped me escape the surrounding grayness and drabness.” The author gave her surrounding the characteristics of them feeling gray and drab.

Writing in Steps

All over the world people are changing to electric vehicles. This is due to the current climate crisis that has plagued us for a while. And over the years multiple companies have been trying to crack the code of an electric vehicle, and now some companies have. Companies like Tesla, Toyota, or Hyundai seem to be promoting their new electric vehicles. And sure electric vehicles have some downfalls, like the process of making lithium batteries which are in most EVs create a bunch of carbon emissions. Yet besides that, EVs are way better than gas mainly because they’re more healthy for the environment, but also due to reasons like how they can accelerate faster than gas cars or their batteries are recyclable.

Due to the recent climate crisis, so many things like carbon capture or hydroelectric power are being used to stop it, yet there are also electric vehicles. Since these vehicles don’t produce carbon dioxide they are safe for the environment and don’t add to the emissions we are already producing. There’s also the fact that gas cars use fossil fuels that eventually will run out, yet EV’s use batteries, and these batteries can't really run out. And because of these benefits these batteries won’t hurt us or our climate in the future. Adding on to these cars being emission safe, they also happen to accelerate quicker than gas cars.

Speaking on the topic of faster acceleration, EV’s can accelerate way faster because their engines are simpler than gas car engines. So an EV vehicle can go from 0 to 60 mph in almost an instant. According to ``How Stuff Works “In a gas-powered car, the engine has to route the power first to the transmission and then to the wheels (the components collectively known as the "drivetrain" or "powertrain"). This process takes longer, wasting crucial zero to 60 potential.” Yet Ev’s don’t do things like drivetrain, which is why they can just go instantly. So if your plan on going somewhere Fast, and Ev would be a suitable choice, and the batteries also have a few benefits.

When it comes to batteries EV’s like Teslas can be very controversial. Yet they are really safe, and once fully used they can be recycled. According to Tesla’s own website “Battery materials are refined and put into a cell, and will still remain in the cell at the end of their life, when they can be recycled to recover its valuable materials for reuse over and over again.” The tesla batteries use their old materials from that broken battery and put it in a new one. So nothing is being wasted. This is great for the environment because it doesn’t leave a bunch of waste somewhere in the woods and is very efficient. Yet the process of making the Lithium ion batteries in so many of these vehicles isn’t very environmentally friendly.

The process of making lithium batteries produces a lot of carbon emissions, so they aren’t the dream vehicle that we should look for. When it comes to lithium-Ion vehicle production, people often forget that in order to get these cars they have to mine or get these resources in different ways. “To extract it, miners drill holes in the salt flats and pump the salty, mineral-rich brine to the surface, leaving it to evaporate in huge artificial lakes or ponds.” And this process can pollute big bodies of water, leading to certain things ending up in our bodies via fish. And that's what a lot of people worry about, but future technologies and different ways of harvesting metals can help the new EV’s become more popular. But even if all this damage happens it’s a car that in itself doesn’t produce carbon emissions. So this dream vehicle that fights global warming has its flaws, meaning that an EV isn’t a completely green vehicle.

Overall the benefits of EV’s run miles around the benefits of gas cars. From accelerating instantly to being able to recycle these batteries, EV’s are amazing and can help the world with our future climate crisis. Even if the process of making the batteries can be harmful with future battery technologies they’ll probably be able to change stuff like that. So besides the expensive prices there is no reason to not buy an EV. Especially since it can get you where you want to go when you want to go there, pretty quickly.

Narrative

After a while the police officers left, they practically licked the plates clean. “Clack, Clack” she heard as she picked them up and walked to the kitchen. She thought about what the police officers said “Probably right under our very noses.” It brought a smile to her face knowing that the weapon was literally right under their noses. And she laughed maniacally because the people looking for the weapon just ate it. Then Mary turns the faucet off and walks upstairs, still replaying those moments in her head. She could feel the lower third step breaking under her foot. “Patrick said he was going to call the maintenance guy about that.” “Guess I have to now.”

She walked into the bathroom and turned on the light. She went to grab the tooth brush and put some mint toothpaste on it. She loved the feeling of that refreshing mint as it hit her lips, then she slowly looked to the side and saw a cockroach on the wall.

She thought to herself “I probably going to have to call an exterminator tomorrow.” in fear that there might be more of them.

Then the cockroach sped across the wall and out the open window. She looked out the window and saw that a huge storm was coming that night. “I could have sworn there wouldn’t have been any storms this week.” Mary said. “I should probably lock the windows.”

Mary then went to her room and laid in bed. She always loved how comfy her bed was, yet it felt empty. “Wow, I really killed him!” She thought. She was unsure if she regretted it or not. She always loved Patrick, he was her everything.

“But after what he said!” She was filled with rage just thinking about it, she never knew she could feel that way.

“But I loved him so much.” She said with a broken voice, tears filling her eyes. She could taste the salt as she cried alone in bed. Mary finally realised she did regret it. And she couldn’t explain it but without him a part of herself felt lost.

“Bang, Bang!!” She heard a knock from downstairs.

Mary ran down the stairs making sure not to step on that tricky third step. “I’m coming!!” she yelled as she ran to get the door, still wiping the tears off her face.

When she opened it she was surprised to see a detective standing there. He was soaking wet, he didn’t bring an umbrella with him. Even if she knew the majority of the men at the precinct she didn’t know him. She put on her fake smile and asked what he was doing here.

“I know it was you.” He whispered. “What was that you said?” Mary asked. “I know it was you Mary!!” He cried. Her face lit up like a christmas tree. Mary feigned confusion and took him inside. “Sit.” She said as she pointed at the dinner table.

“I’ll be back” she said with a confused face as she walked up stairs. Mary went to get a small knife on her bedside drawer. Patrick always said keep it there just in case someone breaks in. She slowly slipped the small knife deep into her side pocket. And then just tried to speed down the stairs, just merely avoiding the 3rd step.

She sat down across the table from him, “Now explained what you were talking about at my door.” “If he really knows then he might have to disappear.” She thought. She gulped “I did it before, I can do it again.”

“I know it was you that killed Patrick!” He looked at her angrily. “That's ridiculous, Patrick was killed before I even got home.” She said, tears streaming down her face. Yet this time, they were real.

“You killed him with a frozen lamb leg. And then had them eat the evidence.”

Again her face lit up like a Christmas tree as she got up and slowly walked towards him. Reaching to her side pocket.

“I already have the police on their way! And the police precinct is not too far from your house.” He said. Once she gets to him she bends down and goes near his ear.

“If you speak nothing about this you’ll be fine and you can leave. But if you do tell anyone I will find you, and kill you,” She said. “You won’t get away with this,” he said. Then a surprised look appeared on his face as Mary whipped out the knife and stabbed him in the shoulder, just nearly missing his head. “Ahhh!!” He screamed. “I already di-” Then he punched her and she fell to the floor. He got up and started limping towards her with the knife.

“Wahhhh Wooooo!!!!” The sirens screamed. Mary turned her head fast as she could see the police lights out her window. She got up and ran up the stairs as fast as she could. She heard loud banging on the door and police chatter outside. She just nearly missed the 3rd step again. She could hear the detective running after her. When she got to the top of the stairs she looked back as the detective's foot had broken the step.

“Ahhhhh” The detective cried out due to his leg now being deeply cut in by the wooden stairs. He was stuck. “Good,” She thought. She looked back and ran into the bathroom which had a window that led to the backside of the house.

“Bang, Bang, Bang” She heard as the police rammed against the door bursting through. She ran into the bathroom and locked herself in. “ Pound, pound,” She heard. She was confused about what that was, because it wasn’t the bathroom door. Then she realised a few of them had jumped over the fallen detective. She had a terrified look on her face, Mary knew they were on their way.

Mary speedily looked for a way out. Then she saw the window the roach crawled out of earlier. She yanked it open and then looked out into the dark night. It was so dark she couldn’t even see, besides the occasional lightning strikes. Then she looked down. “Are those the rose bushes?” she muttered.

“BANG BANG, OPEN UP, WE KNOW YOU'RE IN THERE!!!” the police officers roared.

Mary contemplated jumping out the window, as her house was two stories high yet each floor was big, so the house was “as tall as a tower,” Patrick would say.

She knew if she waited any longer they would get in. So she jumped into what she hoped were the bushes, instinctually covering her stomach so securely, so the baby wouldn’t get hurt. Then she hid. Her face was a bit cut up due to all the thorns and her legs were red, stained by all the blood from her cuts.

Then the police bursted in looking out the window. The murky night aided her escape, as it was too dark for any of them to see outside.

As they closed the window to avoid any rain from coming in, Mary left the bushes, yet her glasses were broken. As she walked out of the bushes, the rain washed the blood off her legs. Then she ran around the house, bumping into everything because the night was so dark. She tried to find where Patrick had parked the car. If she could find it, she could bust in and get the spare keys in the glove compartment. Soon a bolt of light hit, lighting up the area bright enough so she could see where the car was.

“Oh no, this is bad.” She thought to herself. The car was right next to the police cars.

So she bent down low and slowly sneaked to the car. “What was that?” An officer said as she neared the vehicles. Mary was frozen, while she bent there she could feel the coldness of the sidewalk, and the water running along her feet from the rain.

“I don’t know.” The other one said. Then she kept going, barely making it into the car. As she was just about to bust through the window she was grabbed from behind.

The detective had gotten free and found her.

He carefully pushed her onto the hood of the police car. It was obvious she was pregnant and to avoid harm to the baby he didn’t do too much. “You have caused me enough trouble!” he said in a deep grim voice. She could tell he was furious. “You have the right to remain silent,” As he read her the Miranda warnings, all Mary could think about is how sorry she was “I wish I just let things be, and didn’t kill him.” Then she broke out into tears because she thought “ Wait, what about the baby?” She was so concerned with escaping she forgot about the kid. The detective couldn’t see it, but she was sobbing, but the rain covered it up. All he could hear was her screaming “PLEASE, I HAVE A KID!” As he put her into the police car.

Essay

Jose Tavera

Mr. Combs

ELA

November 30, 2021

Why People Do Bad Things

Many people tend to do things that society or even an average person might deem as bad. People might say that person had no right to do what they did, or what they did was unethical. Yet people normally have reasons that explain their less than heavenly actions. Yet even if they do sometimes their reasoning isn’t enough to justify what they did. People tend to do the wrong thing due to emotional issues, things like morals, and also authority.

People tend to have interesting emotional reactions to different situations. So, if someone gets something stolen from them like in the story of Ruthless, they can have the feeling of vengeance. Vengeance led to Judson poisoning the whiskey. “No one is going to get hurt who hasn’t got it coming to him.”(DeMille) When he says this he basically shows that he thinks the burglar has what Judson did coming to him. And Judson feeling this way is him feeling vengeance. And in the story of Button, Button Norma was considering pressing the button because she was greedy. “If you push the button,” Mr. Steward told him, “somewhere in the world someone you don’t know will die. In return for which you will receive a payment of $50,000... Norma closed her eyes. Fifty thousand dollars, she thought.”(Matheson) This amount of money grasped her attention and led her to pressing the button. And because of inflation a dollar isn’t even worth a dollar anymore so this means money back then would be priced up and due to this $50,000 this would be around $517,956.93 today. And money is a huge factor in a lot of crimes that involve greed, for example a bank heist. Both Greed and Vengeance are emotions that these characters felt that led them to make these bad decisions.

Morals are very important when it comes to making tough decisions. When someone is thinking of lying for someone else their decision is normally based on their morals. In the story of Lather and Nothing Else the barber was considering killing captain Torres yet decided not to because of moral reasoning. “D— him for coming; I am a revolutionary but I am not a murderer. And to think how easy it would be to kill him. And he deserves it. “The man who avenged our people. A name to remember (fill in my name). He was the town barber. No one knew that he supported our cause…”(Tellez) Then he said “You came for a shave. And I will do my duty honorably… I don’t want to be stained with blood.”(Tellez) The barber’s morals came into question here, the decision was either be a good barber and give this man a good haircut or kill him because of all his crimes. So because of his profession and the fact that the man came in expecting him to fulfill his job, the barber did not kill him. So his morals really affected his decision.

An authority figure can make a lot of people do things they might not otherwise. And being an authority figure can make a lot of people do things they wouldn’t do if they didn’t have that much power. For example in the Milgram experiment the man thought that the person commanding him was a doctor, so he kept electrocuting what he thought was a person in the other room. And in the Stanford Prison experiment the men who became the police officers did awful things because they now possessed the powers to do so. Because of power and authority these people made bad decisions.

Emotional issues might not be a justifiable reason behind doing something bad.Even if a lot of people agree with you and how you are feeling depending on the situation. As a human being in today's society and in general you are expected to keep your emotions under wraps until you can find a way to release it in a healthy way. In Judsons case, since he wasn’t able to do this, if the poison was tracked back to him only a small number of people would agree or stand up for his reasoning. Yet at the end of the day he would still be arrested due to his emotions during event not being a reasonable enough reason for committing murder.

As a whole people have different views for what is bad and different reasons on why they do bad things, for example, if someone feels like the authority is legitimate enough they’ll do anything or if their morals and emotions come into the picture. Doing bad things also doesn’t necessarily make you a bad person, as seen in the Milgram experiment. Here the dude did something that he and anyone else in his position would deem as wrong, yet he himself wasn’t inherently a bad person. Society as a whole has been known to see things that were done in the name of the greater good as decent even if there were no good choices. So a lot of these reasonings won’t really be seen as justifiable because they were done in the name of self interest.

Works Cited

DeMille William, William DeMille "RUTHLESS." (1945): P;30&69. Commonlit. 30/Nov/21

Zimbardo G. Philip, Philip G. Zimbardo “Stanford Prison Experiment” (1971) Commonlit 30/Nov/2021

Milgram Stanley, Stanley Milgram “Milgram Experiment” (1961) Commonlit 30/Nov/2021

Tellez Hernando, Hernando Téllez “LATHER AND NOTHING ELSE” (2007) P;30&33 Commonlit 30/Nov/2021

Jose Tavera

Mr. Combs

ELA

06 February, 2022

How We Should Focus On Our Planet Instead of Trying To Go To Space

Humanity has always been intrigued by the thought of space, and have wanted to explore space for a while. This is seen in events such as going to the moon in 1969, with the Apollo mission. It’s also seen in events like the creation of the ISS in 1988. Even now, people like Elon Musk are creating rockets to get humans to Mars. Yet even if so, our main focus still shouldn’t be going to space, for countless reasons, one being space can cause issues to the human body, another would be the fact that we haven’t explored our planet to the fullest, and then there’s the fact that even if we do leave, we won’t really be able to find a naturally made suitable home that isn’t lightyears away.

The human body wasn’t really made for space, or anything that's not earth related. The human body and other organisms evolved to live on Earth. “Evolution is the process in which living species change and develop over time. These changes occur at the genetic level, which means they happen inside the DNA of living cells. Over time, this may result in a new version of that species (Gale).” And humans have obviously had to adapt to survive in this world, especially since we hadn’t always had luxurious houses or supermarkets to aid in daily life. Then there's also the fact that staying in space for too long can have effects on our body. Things like the lack of gravity on our bones and joints can hurt us. (Seeker) This shows that the human body can’t withstand the conditions of space without constant training. And even then the constant training still doesn’t allow you to stay in space forever, without changes to your body. The human body evolved to withstand our home planet’s conditions, and space isn’t like Earth in the slightest.

There is still a bunch of our actual planet and its history that we have not unexplored as of yet. “According to the National Ocean Service, it’s a shockingly small percentage. Just 5 percent of Earth’s oceans have been explored and charted – especially the ocean below the surface. The rest remains mostly undiscovered and unseen by humans.” (WorldWide Boat) This means that instead of actually looking around our planet and trying to explore it and use it to its fullest potential, humans have been looking in space. Humans are also still trying to figure out where we came from and how life formed on Earth. “Studies that track how life forms have evolved suggest that the earliest life on Earth emerged about 4 billion years ago. That timeline means life almost certainly originated in the ocean, Lenton says.(Connor N. Anne)” The usage of the word “suggests” means that scientists aren’t necessarily sure yet. Searching for more evidence can lead us to definite solutions, especially since the question of where life came from has been being asked for centuries.

And the biggest reason being that any suitable planets happen to be light years away. “Dubbed Proxima b, the exoplanet is not only the closest exoplanet to Earth – its host star is located over 4.24 light-years away – it was also considered the most promising place to look for signs of extraterrestrial life. (Hebden, Kerry)” So even the closest planet we would want is over 4 light years away. And lightyears happen to be completely different from regular years, this is why in sci-fi shows and movies they’re always talking about hyperdrives or something along those lines. “Even if we hopped aboard the space shuttle discovery, which can travel 5 miles a second, it would take us about 37,200 years to go one light-year.(Creighton, Jolene)” This means that it would take us about 148,800 years to even get to Proxima B. So it probably wouldn't be the best idea to try and travel to an Earth-like planet just yet.

So because of all of these cons, there are really no pros to going to space, yet people still want to. Some reasons for this may be finding extraterrestrial life, escaping the future conditions of earth, or even materialistic values. Aliens have been theorized to exist for centuries. A great example of this would be people believing that the pyramids weren't built by humans because of the effort it would take to build them. So people theorized that extraterrestrials built them for humans or just in general. Aliens have also been in pop culture for a while. There was even a movie that came out in the 1980’s about an alien called E.T. Then there’s the fact that a lot of people would like to live longer lives and global warming can affect that goal. Mostly because if global warming isn’t fixed or addressed effectively by 2050, then life on earth won’t probably survive its effects. So finding a new planet that we haven’t ruined yet would be more than ideal. And going to space could have material values. Meteor and asteroids do have materials like gold and copper in them. So if humans could obtain them, people could probably get richer.

Yet either way all of these reasons do have their counters and their consequences. These counters and consequences also help the argument of why we shouldn’t go to space, yet three big reasons would be the ones discussed in this essay. So, space effects on the human body, lack of Earthly knowledge, and the lack of technical knowledge to get us to where we would want to go in space. For reasons like this, space preparation should be of the utmost importance, and consideration of our planet should also be of the utmost importance. At this point there are really not many good reasons why humanities gaze should be on the endless abyss that is space.

Works Cited

Gale, Evolution, 2021

Hunsberger, Maren, What Happens to the Human Body in Space?, Seeker, 2021

How Much of The Ocean and Space Have We Explored?, WorldWide Boat,

Connor N. Anne, Where on Earth Did Life Originate?, (Science, The Wire), 2020

Hebden, Kerry, New mission to search for habitable planets close to Earth announced, Room, 2021

Creighton, Jolene, How Long Would it Take to Walk a Light-Year?, Futurism, 2015