Blog: Free Write

A Little Bit About My Family

My parents arrived to America 25 years ago from Vietnam to give their children a better life. I have heard heroic stories about my father’s journey to America many times, and I still can’t believe the hardship he went through to give us a better life. Life in America for my parents was very tough especially since they were foreign and therefore did not know any English. Both my parents work 10 hours a day 6 days a week. Why so much? Because there’s five of us kids plus an additional 3 which belonged to my uncle; therefore they were raising 8 kids. Amazing isn’t it. Till this day, I still don’t know how they managed. All five of us are now currently attending college. I am the 2nd oldest of my siblings, and I have to admit, my parents did an amazing job raising us. With one more semester to go I will be applying to pharmacy and nursing school next semester. I will be first in my family to graduate college and I have my parents to thank for. Growing my parents encouraged my to excel in school, to be the best I can be; and today I am as far as I am because of my parents. Many of us take our parents for granted but it is important to remember that they gave us life and they help us shape who we are today. They love us unconditionally even though at times it doesn’t seem like it and when we become parents ourselves one day, we will understand.

Blog: Free write

Tragedy Strikes Us Again


As you all know, there has been another school shooting, but this time it was at Virginia Tech University in Blacksburg Virginia. It just seems to never stop; it’s like a non-ending curse. A curse that has been haunting this nation for as long as…who knows how long. When will it all stop? If anything, it seems to be getting worse. This is now the deadliest school shooting; thirty-two victims had been shot to death by Cho Seung-Hui. When I first heard what had happened, I just couldn’t believe what I was hearing. At first I thought there has been some kind of mistake, but it didn’t take long for me to finally realize what had happened. My heart just dropped, it felt so heavy. I was overwhelmed with sorrow, my heart just poured out to all the families that have lost their love ones, for every student at VT. This horrible event will forever change their life, it will forever change our lives, and it will forever have an impact on our nation. I just hope they have the strength to endure the long healing and painful journey they still have ahead of them. Thing will be tough and rough, but we must hold each other up. My prayers go out to all the victims. My heart goes out to each and every one of them.

Blog: Free write

During work on Friday, two of my very closest friends dropped by my work at separate times and unexpectedly. Since I work at the Walgreen Pharmacy on Colfax and Race, it get incredibly busy there and there’s never really any time to just to a break and talk so for that reason I knew something was up because they never drop by my work. My first friend, Shauna that dropped by my work dropped off a pineapple drink for me and just said “you better get off on time” and left. My other friend, Nancy dropped by an hour after and quickly handed me a card and left. As I read the card, I quickly realized that it was an invitation to my ‘surprise’ birthday party that they were throwing for me. After I got off work, I went home and quickly got dressed. When I arrived at Erin’s house, everyone screamed “surprise!” I acted surprised even though I really wasn’t; I knew what was going on. To tell you the truth, I am a very hard person to surprise. The food that was at the party was amazing. Nancy baked so many sweets I felt like I was going to get sick if I didn’t stop eating. Among the stuff that she baked, she also made this flower basket out of fruit. The night ended continued at the club called The Church where everyone was just wasted. I however, was just buzz since I was still sick I tried not to drink so much. The night ended when we got kicked out of the club because Nancy was too drunk. It wasn’t the best birthday, but the only that really matters are the people that are there to celebrate my birthday and I thank them for that.

Pictures of that night as posted below

Blog: YouTube video clip

Extra Credit assignment

Danielle Dutton and Stephanie Young

The session that I attended was about poem reading done by Danielle Dutton and Stephanie Young. Danielle was the first one to present her pieces which I thought was pretty amazing. What I though was most important and what made her stand out a lot more than Stephanie was her energy and voice. The first poem that she read was one to which she wrote in Chicago. This was a descriptive poem; it described the narrator’s surroundings such as “hills sliding from yellow to green”, “fish eating themselves in gutters” and “living in an abandoned chop house pulling weeds” allowed the audience to visualize her situation. This piece was basically about the narrators live and everything she goes through in life. The other piece she read however, was harder for me to understand it seemed to jump from one idea to another and I found myself lost most of the times. I believe one of the last pieces she read was about a crazy and paranoid woman who has a lot to tell the world. She had episode hallucination.

Stephanie Young was the second to present her piece. Her piece I thought was easier to understand, but wasn’t as lively as Danielle Dutton. Her piece was about a bitter woman who just got out of a relationship. The narrator in the poem speaks nothing else but her lover. She seems to try to make herself at times that she’s over him but really she not, but in reality she is deeply in love with him and is hurt. She wants and craves for the presence of her love. She describes the pain that he put her through as putting her in a bottle without any air for 8 hours. Then she comes into control, she speaks about how she owns him. Near the end of the piece she goes through a trance where she names everything they have ever done together such as eating ice cream together, the phone calls, drinking beer, wine, coffee, water melon juice, eating, dancing, going to Boston, going to Denmark, listening to music, reading together, taking showers together, conversations that they have had together, clothes that they have worn, places they have been such as parking lot, pools, hotel, parties, weddings, bars; she named special occasions that they have attended.

Overall, I really enjoyed the poem reading. Both girls did an amazing job and all of their pieces were very interesting to hear. I wish the session could have been longer, the one hour that they had went by really fast. I just wish I was able to have a better understand about each piece that they read.

Blog: Adbusters

The Ad that I have chosen is an ad directed for people with depression disorder. It has a woman a lively yellow dress glancing up at a bright orange box of Prozac, a prescribed anti-depressant medication used for people who are usually depressed and feels helpless and lonely. There are uses of appeals to emotion. In the ad, I women has her head lifted up and her arms are stretched out she seems to be happy and relieved. Her arms are stretched out towards the box of Prozac as though she is thanking it for uplifting her spirit. In addition there are printed words to that ad “wash your blues away!” which indicates that her sadness had disappeared with the help of Prozac.

The ad also uses brand logo as ethos. The uses Bounce logo of what seems like sunshine. In addition, they used the same coloration for the box as Bounce. On both the Prozac and Bounce box, Bright orange color is used as the main background color, in addition to the orange background, yellow hallow or rays stands out from it. The audience can also tell that the Prozac ad is using Bounce logo because they used phrases: “Fresher! Cleaner!” these are the same phrases that fabric softener companies use. This can also be seen as parody since its can be thought to be mocking Prozac in a sense that a prescription drug used to cure or improve one’s quality of life is being compared to something of no significant such as fabric softeners. In addition the ad used the phrase: “wash your blues away”, here the word ‘wash’ is used as part of the parody effect since it is also something you would hear from laundry detergent such as Bounce ads.

Blog: Unofficial Calvin Klein Ads Archive

In this ad from the “Unofficial Calvin Klein Ads Archive”, sex appeal was obviously used. In the photo a curvy naked woman, Carre Otis stands with her arms stretched over her head as though she is surrendering herself to a man. The man is wearing Calvin Klein jeans. He also stands with no shirt on, his right arm is wrapped around her body and his left arm rests against her buttocks. Their lips are only a centimeter apart and his groin area is pushed up against hers; their body position in addition with their body contact gives the photo a sexual appeal. I believe it is both effective and ineffective depending who is the audience or buyer. In this case, the male model is advertising male jeans. Men who are looking for jeans that will make them look ‘attractive’ and therefore attract women might fall for this ad. However, men who are just strictly looking a good pair of jean will be as affected by the sex appeal. Instead he will just look at the jean itself and judge it quality from that and not the ad as a whole. I believe the ad is appropriate because it geared towards adults and is intended for only adults. As we age and mature, we naturally become sexual being as a process of human evolution and that is why this ad uses sexual appeal as the theme or focal point and this is also true for his commercials. This ad does exaggerate the use of pathos. This ad arouses sensual emotions especially for men because of the attractive women that is completely naked and who seems to want the man she is with to take control in addition the man shows signs of dominance. Sensual emotions may also arouse when see how close their lips are as though they are on the verge of kissing.



Below: Commercial from Calkin Klein

Blog: analysis of photo

The author, Polixeni Papapetrou uses outdoor as her theme for this particular photo that she took. The photo is taken place outdoors in the woods in autumn. This setting gave the picture its green background that comes from the leaves of branches, twigs, and bushes. In addition, the brown ground that comes from all the wooden chips and pieces that the girls sits and lays on. Right in the center of the photo is an enormous tree trunk which the girls have positioned themselves in front of therefore this allowed the audience to easily pinpoint the focal point. The author used two girls of near the same age to signify friendship. Both of which are out in the woods together and far from any signs of human existence, they are young and innocent; this signify vulnerability of young female and the danger that are out in the world. The author has chosen to have the girls wear neutral colors of white, tan, and brown. The neutral colors gave the girls a earth-tone look as though they are apart of their environment. The photo seemed a little dim with little sun-light giving the audience reasons to believe that the sun is about to set.

I believe the persuasive statement that this image conveys is that you must always cherish your friendship. That friends must always stick together and watch-out for each other such as in the case of the image. We rely on each other for survival. With each other we have higher chances of over-coming situations such as getting lost in the woods.

Blog: Reflection on the photograph

This is an image of two close friends who decided to venture out into the woods and unexpectedly got lost. During their adventure they seemed to have also lost their shoes. After their attempt to find their way back they rapidly became exhausted and decided to take a break. The older of the two girls takes the responsibility to stay awake and she is also the one who decides to keep on a watch-out while her friend takes a nap. The sun is about to set and the girl that is awake seems to be worried. She is pondering about what to do and how to get out of this situation safe and sound. The other sleeps restlessly as she depends on the older to save them as she always does. The focal point of this image is the two girls and their friendship or the bond that they share.



This image reminds me of my friendship with one of my very close friend, Shauna. We have been friends since we were kids and because I’m two years older I always felt the responsibility to watch over her. Even now that we’re much older and are adults, I always watching over her; except situations are much different. When we were young my responsibilities were that of what is seen in the image, I too would be the one keeping a watch-out while she takes a nap. Now, however, I keep a watch-out when she decides to do things such as drinking.

Blog: Observation

In this image from the Foley Gallery that I have chosen, two girls are on the ground in front of an enormous tree trunk in a forest near sunset. One girl wears a tan shirt whose arm length extends down to her wrists. Over her shirt, a white mid-calf length dress is worn over it. Her hair is dark brown and curly, it is let lose; her eyes are open as she looks forward into space. From the expression on her face, she seems lost and confused. She has no shoes on; even then, the bottom of her feet remains clean. Her legs are position so that the second girl can rest her head comfortably on her leg as she lies on the ground full of wood chips and braches giving the ground its brown appearance. The second girl wears a white shirt whose arm length also extends down to her wrist. Over her shirt, a dark brown dress whose length also extends to mid-calf is worn over it. Her body is in a linear position. One of her arm is rested on the ground while the other is rested on the left side of her hip. Her hair is medium brown and straight and slightly wavy, it is also let loose as it flows freely past her shoulders. Her eyes are closed and she appears to be sleeping restlessly. She also has no shoes on. Both girls are approximately 15 years old. The background is green as a result of all the leaves from branches, twigs, and bushes.