Jessie Zamora's LIT2932 Thoughts

so sad!!

jessiezamora — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 05:51:17 +0000

It is so bittersweet to end this semester. Although I absolutely despise plagiarism even more than I did when I entered this class I am more aware of what it actually is and what the consequences will be. I think it will be extremely hard for me to even think about plagiarizing and especially unintentionally plagiarizing. I enjoyed all of our talks about Twilight and New Moon and how unintelligent Stephenie Meyer is and how horrible her writing of the novels is. I met one of my good friends, Ashley in this class. I loved that I got to read Tuck Everlasting again and I found derivations especially interesting. Some classes that I’ve been through I walk out learning absolutely nothing, but I can say that I’ve learned a lot in this class and I enjoyed it. Prof. Howell you’re a pretty interesting and unique person and I’ve enjoyed your class!

( I know this may seem like I’m sucking up.. but it’s the truth I SWEAR! )

sappy :)

jessiezamora — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 05:45:13 +0000

“Is love a tender thing? It is too rough, too rude, too boisterous, & it pricks like a thorn.”
( Romeo & Juliet by William Shakespeare )

I think that this is a beautiful quote. Everyone thinks that love is an absolutely beautiful and easy thing, when in reality it takes a lot of effort and sacrifice. When I look around and see these young people together and they say that they are “in love” and they say they are so happy it makes me sick.

I know that when I have a boyfriend I will and have acted the same way, but it makes me laugh how naiive people are when they are “in love”. Although finding that one person to take care of and to have take care of you for the rest of your life is very appealing. We as a society have to realize that love is not easy, although enjoyable we shouldn’t be allowed to get a divorce or break up when one little thing pops up. We all need to realize that “… It is too rough, too rude, too boisterous, & it pricks like a thorn.”
( Romeo & Juliet by William Shakespeare )

TEAM EMMETT

jessiezamora — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 03:33:44 +0000

So I know that there’s a huge hype going on about the Team Edward vs. Team Jacob but I am totally Team Emmett.

I know that Mr. Taylor Lautner is extremely good looking but isn’t he like 16? Yuck, Although his smile is definitely mesmerizing and his teeth are perfect!

Mr. Edward Cullen definitely knows how to take care of Bella and somehow, although being a vampire knows how to love her. I just don’t think Mr. Pattinson was the right person picked to play Mr. Cullen. He doesn’t appeal to me. yuck! Also, he just leaves Bella and tells her that he doesn’t want her to go with her. It broke my heart and obviously didn’t do her any good!

So instead of being Team Edward or Team Jacob I am Team Emmett! This kid is gorgeous, he’s way underplayed in the movies though. I enjoy his character in the novels and I love how he accepts Bella and teases her like a big brother. Lets just face it.. KELLAN LUTZ is dreamy!

Derivation

jessiezamora — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 23:34:44 +0000

Now that I have learned all about the Derivation of Twilight I find myself finding little derivations in every single thing that I read, watch, or think of. It’s really interesting to think how much everything actually relies on each other. If you were to actually research what you read or the tv shows you watch you would certainly find that things are unusually quite similar, that might not just be a coincidence.

The definition of derive is:

Derive- to obtain or receive from a place of origin (webster)

it’s funny that we all think that a lot of the ideas that pop into our heads are original, when in reality many of our thoughts and ideas have be thought of before. Sometimes we unconsciously pick of bits and pieces here and there and once we finally piece them all together we think that it’s a new idea, but we are actually living in a world of derivation. Since we’ve been around so long, there are quite as many new ideas as we think there are.

death.

jessiezamora — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 23:27:45 +0000

It seems as though as of lately all I’ve been hearing about is death.. whether it be with Twilight and vampires, in other books that I’ve read for fun. One that has been brought up the most is suicide.

In my Deriving Twilight Project I am working with Romeo and Juliet. Everyone knows that at the end of the play, both Romeo and Juliet commit suicide. In New Moon at the end of the novel Edward goes to the Volturi to give up his life because he believes that Bella is dead.

Even though I am a believer in true love and I can’t wait to meet my soul mate, is Suicide really worth it? Although Edward doesn’t die because Bella comes and saves him, it disturbs me that such a popular book in American culture shows that suicide is even an option.

Here are the suicide rates for the U.S.

Children ages 10 to 14 — 1.3 per 100,000

Adolescents ages 15 to 19 — 8.2 per 100,000

Young adults ages 20 to 24 — 12.5 per 100,000

Suicide is an extremely important issue, I don’t think that it should be allowed in young adult novels.

My heart is broken… or not?

jessiezamora — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 19:52:38 +0000

So I was reading around on the internet and I stumbled upon the fact that there was going to be another book after the whole Twilight Saga called Midnight Sun. Which is basically the first book, Twilight from Edward’s point of view. Even though it sounds quite alluring I am kind of sick of this whole Twilight fad. Yes, Ms. Meyer I loved your books, but all this stuff? It’s quite annoying. But more of that later. Somehow the unofficial transcript was leaked on the net and now nobody gets a Midnight Sun!Good job guys! So while I am somewhat heartbroken, maybe the fad will go away sooner.

What really irks my nerve, for example..
The other day my best friend and I were in Border’s just looking around at all of the amazing journals and planners that they have. (I’m a nerd and I love those things!) While we were just browsing, the saleslady comes and asks us if we’d seen the new AMAZING TWILIGHT JOURNALS, and goes on and on and on about how amazing these things are and all the cool pages and such… to be quite frank I DON’T CARE. I’m so sick of seeing “Edward’s” face around, Robert Pattinson isn’t that cute, and he’s not a vampire.

So maybe, without this Midnight Sun book, this fad will be over. BTW I will never buy anything Twilight-esque.

info found @ stepheniemeyer.com

Martin Luther King Jr.

jessiezamora — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 18:35:18 +0000

In Susan Blum’s book My Word! on pg. 16 I was amazed to have read that Martin Luther King was a PLAGIARIST! How dare he? The man who I’ve learned all about in school, the man who stood up for everything that he believed in, this strong black man who made a difference in our world. At first I was appalled to have learned this, as you can tell, but then I realized that I plagiarize all the time. On my Tumblr (jessieezee.tumblr.com) I steal images all the time and post them, I guess it’s not that big of a deal when I do that.

Well back to MLK.

The book reads “Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. not only was a minister and a civil rights activist but also had earned a doctorate in theology at Boston University, In 1988, while working on annotating his papers, researchers were disheartened to realize that substantial amounts of his writing revealed pervasive plagiarism. Since King was not alive to answer the charges the question was essentially one of how history should regard his legacy. In general, it seems to have been agreed that he had gone on to lead a life of great importance despite his significant and lifelong tendancy to use other’s words without crediting them.” (Blum, 16.) [I hope that gives credit to Ms. Susan D. Blum!]

It’s just baffles me that MLK would do that, take someone elses words and call them his own. I looked up to this man! What does this say to society? Oh wait, this King guy, he was just a man. He made mistakes just like we do every single day. But he was also a man who strived for justice, who wouldn’t give up for a second what he believed in. So Mr. King, congratulations you are still my hero, and you got lucky! I’m jealous!

Tuck Everlasting/Twilight

jessiezamora — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 18:13:17 +0000

When I read the book list a week or two before class started I was extremely excited! I absolutely loved when I read Tuck Everlasting in middle school, and Twilight was so amazing that I finished reading all of the novels in about 3 weeks. As we began to think about our “Deriving Twilight” project I began to think of all the similarities between these two, for example, the forbidden love between two people, one completely mortal and the other immortal and all of the obstacles that they had to face to be in love. The living forever aspect in both novels definitely entices me, who wouldn’t want to live forever!? The last similarity that I noticed is that both of the movies based on the novels SUCKED!

A lot of people really enjoyed Twilight when they saw it in theaters, I guess I did too. I was just really dissappointed in the amount of things left out, and the wrong things being emphasized. The fact that Ms. Bella Swan isn’t as clumsy as she is in the book made me angry. The whole concept of Edward “saving” Bella is because of her inept ability to get hurt every 5 seconds and it was one of the things that drew me in, and the fact that Bella is just an awkward person in the movie dissappointed me.

I don’t even know why I didn’t enjoy Tuck Everlasting. It just wasn’t quite right. The love that was shared between Winnie and Jesse wasn’t as alluring as it was in the novel.

It makes me angry that they would ruin such a great book and an amazing plotline and turn it into such crap in a movie.

Plagiarism

jessiezamora — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 17:41:02 +0000

I’m sorry Prof. Howell but I am quite sick of plagiarism, I swear I’ve read more on this subject than anything in probably my whole entire life. I don’t find it very interesting at all. It just makes me angry that there is no set rules to “plagiarism” it almost seems like a joke, just a way to punish us as students. No, not really because I believe in ethics and I don’t think that people should be allowed to steal other people’s ideas without giving them their due credit. It’s like when I used to blog on xanga, and I went through a phase where I liked to use the little cute pictures that “xangans” call “icons”. On just about every Xanga “Icon” site there was a disclaimer that said “Don’t Jock my stuff!” It used to make me laugh because they were just little pictures, and now that I’ve done some work with html, and learned about plagiarism, I think I finally understand. It’s not cool to plagiarize, I’ve learned to be very empathetic towards the authors of articles and stories that I’ve read because I would hate to have my words and ideas stolen from me. That’s pretty much all that I have left in this crazy world.

While reading articles I found one where Ohio U. was trying to track unauthorized and illegal file sharing. This was including the infamous illegally downloading of music through the use of Kazaa, Limewire, etc. I never really thought that universities would have to monitor things like that. I think it’s kind of a breach of our privacy rights, but on the other hand since we’ve been learning about plagiarism and I’ve had to read all of these boring articles, it kind of makes me really angry that people do this. It’s not fair to the artists. I’ve tried to download illegally before, but I always feel guilty. It’s no secret that I’m a “Christian” but I prefer Christ Follower, because there are some pretty crappy “Christians” out there, but everytime I try to “steal” music the ten commandments pop into my head, “THOU SHALT NOT STEAL” so I always have to delete it and walk away from the computer. I think once we all put ourselves in others shoes, plagiarism will decrease, and sharing will increase. Plagiarism sucks, we all need to stop stealing people’s ideas!

Tilley’s Note Format on “Pierre Menard Author of the Quixote” by Jorge Luis Borges

jessiezamora — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 13:50:04 +0000

Tilley’s Note Format

Expository Prose

Main Idea: The author, Borges is trying to convince the audience that the author, Menard plagiarized Cervantes’ Don Quixote.
The main idea is developed by the author quoting passages from Cervantes’ and Menard’s work. Also, by cataloging sources that were mentioned in Menard’s version. This piece wants to persuade the reader to believe that this author, Menard has plagiarized another’s work. The author uses a lot of loaded language and words that are appalling and representing disappointment. In the beginning he also uses a little religious connotation; “Protestant tendency…” The tone is very much accusing, using words like “impardonable”.
“…truth, whose mother is history, rival of time, depository of deeds, witness of the past, exemplar and adviser to the present, and the future’s counselor.” –Cervantes

“…truth, whose mother is history, rival of time, depository of deeds, witness of the past, exemplar and adviser to the present, and the future’s counselor.” –Menard

They are identical. The context may be different? Today’s context is completely different that it was when written.

4. The piece already has it’s own meditative associations. The author catalogs each of his “findings” one by one. Each citation is a popular literary reading from the past or present. This gives him a lot of credibility proving his point.

5. I was completely confused by the piece. I had no prior knowledge of Cervantes’ “Don Quixote” it may have been helpful. We do not know Cervantes’ version, so it is almost imperative that we would not know Menard’s. Does Menard even exist? Borges sounds like he knows what he is talking about, but is he just making things up to look intelligent?