Book Reports / 'The antagonist' - Reading Response on a short story [3]

hi everyone! Basically, this is a "reading response" homework assignment in which i had to read two short stories and then write about my reaction to one or both of them. I know that its hard to judge it without reading the stories first, but i appreciate any help possible. thanks! :D

While reading Her Story, it saddened me that what appeared to me as a story of a love lost was presented in a victim-and-culprit manner. The editor presents the antagonist in the story as the "recreation of Yone Willoughby" which I think is a grossly inaccurate comparison. Yone Willoughby, the main character of The Amber Gods, was an unskilled, self-centered woman with very little insight to offer. She manipulated her way into winning the affections of her cousin's lover, and caused harm purposefully. The unnamed antagonist from Her Story, on the other hand, was a very young girl who fell in love with a minister and used her charm instead of manipulation to win him over; linking her to Yone is nothing short of insulting.

"She was the being of infinite variety- to-day glad, to-morrow sad, freakish and always exciting... sitting at night embossing on web-like muslin designs...which she had learned at her convent...taking out from the little wallet...scraps she had preserved from the servant of some Italian father of the church...As for me, the only thing I knew was my poor music" was how the antagonist was described by the bitter narrator. The antagonist was also a talented artist, could spot out ailments in the town folk, and can find "the secret and vulnerable spot of every friend we had". Undoubtedly, the narrator's self-pity and jealousy cast a very negative light to the practically innocent antagonist. Throughout her downward spiral of insanity, the narrator never confronted the problem head on, and consciously turned the other cheek and permitted her husband to spend more private time with the young girl while she just wasted time on long walks. When her husband fell into a deep depression, the antagonist reached out to him; "she had followed him on solitary strolls, had sought him in his study...and soon he was himself again." Meanwhile, the narrator focused on her other duties instead of helping her husband.

"She had set the wedge that was to sever our union- the little seed in a mere idle cleft that grows and grows and splits the rock asunder" is how the narrator views the affair. It is so cliché to blame the "other woman" for the ending of a marriage; "the little seed" wouldn't grow if there wasn't a crack already present in the union. When the narrator and her husband met, she sang out loud in church and he fell in love with her voice of purity. Their love for music was practically their only common ground, and the antagonist triumphed it; "oh so rich a voice! My own was white and thin, I felt, besides it." Not only was the antagonist worldlier in the matters of the church, but she also more talented musically and artistically. She knew how to compliment and stroke the ego of the narrator's husband, even to the point to single-handedly help him out of a severe depression. To be fair, the narrator was truly in love with her husband, but she merely shadowed him; lost her own identity in his. She even went as far as to state "I have no faith but Spencer's faith; if he had been a heathen, I would have been the same".

The antagonist could make shadow puppets with such intensity that they made Spencer shiver and blush, and her voice could bring a sparkle to his eye. Is it reasonable to blame the antagonist for that? The narrator claims that the antagonist whispered atrocious things to her (such as "when you are gone to a madhouse, don't think they'll (the children) have many such kisses") but by that point she was already hearing voices and experiencing illusions; her record of events is quite questionable. Resisting with little avail, Spencer fell madly in love with a fascinating, brilliant young woman who shared his interests and knew how to relate to him. His subservient wife who couldn't find her voice was soon forgotten, and drifted off into madness. Unlike Yone, who won her man through trickery, the antagonist in this story won through simple compatibility.

Essays / Mini-Research Paper (Autism) [5]

For a disorder that has been so publicized, very little is actually known about autism and the reasons behind its crippling life-long effects. With the number of diagnosed autism patients rising at an unbelievable pace, researchers are rushing to discover a way to bring the patients who seem to be lost "in their own world" (Caronna and Tager-Flusberg, 2007) back to reality. Risk factors, symptoms, effects on language, therapy and medication, and ongoing research will all be discussed in hopes of educating new and pre-existing families and friends of autism patients. In a general sense, autism is a severe developmental disorder that is usually diagnosed before the age of three, and usually involves untreatable mental retardation and communication problems throughout the patient's life. But leading research has concluded that early diagnosis could be the deciding factor in the level of severity of the disorder; therefore all hope lies in the hands of new diagnosis procedures.

In order to ensure early detection, people must be aware of autism's risk factors and symptoms. The numbers of autism cases has been rising primarily due to the discovery that autism can be prevalent even in people who have average IQs and the rates can be as high as 60 per 10,000 (Charman, 2005). The people with the largest chances of being born with the disorder are family members of current autism patients; new studies have found that the reoccurrence rate in families can be as high as 10%. This genetic disorder is also 4 times as likely to strike the male population, even though the reasons behind this are still unknown. The primary tell-tale symptoms of autism that all researchers agree on are impairments in communication and interaction with others and repetitive motor movements and speech. Another key symptom is the lack of joint attention, which is a failure to develop the skill of sharing an experience with a person by following their gaze or to the object their pointing to. This is a very basic skill that is necessary for further mental development and usually develops by the first birthday in normal children. Without early detection, crucial months of development pass without any progress since the child struggles with taking in new information. Other symptoms that follow this is the lack of babbling, no motivation to communicate, strange repetitive noises such as groaning and screeching, not responding when name is called, and the very stereotypical occurrence of echolalia. Echolalia is when the autistic child will spontaneously and repetitively repeat large chunks of commercials or conversations, sometimes as an indirect method of communicating with others (Caronna and Tager-Flusberg, 473). For example, repeating "are you hungry?" from a past conversation, or repeating a pizza ad, could be the child's way of letting others know about his or her needs.

In fact, autism has a severely debilitating effect on language expression and comprehension. Even patients with high functioning autism (HFA) who have gone through extensive training, still never manage to overcome some factors of communication; primarily pragmatics and prosody. For instance, when compared to normal children in an experiment, autistic children made twice the amount of mistakes regarding which segment of the word to stress (Cohen and Remillard, 2006). Even though the pattern of word acquisition is very similar to normal children, the grammar and order of words remains atypical. Current research states that this is most likely caused by the lack of joint attention; making syntax difficult since the two have a positive correlation to each other. While autistic patients can learn many words, they specifically struggle with terms that can have multiple meanings or relate to emotions.

With such serious communication problems, merging with the rest of society is difficult for autistic people. Leading medications are still experimental, but have the possibility to increase quality of life. Obsessive compulsive behaviors can be reduced with clomipramine and hyperactivity can be controlled with neuroleptics (Charman, 84). But currently, the main treatment used is based on different therapy methods. Music therapy is gaining popularity and stimulates social interaction within autistic children by allowing them to listen and play instruments together without having the pressure to form speech (Autism PDD). Motion therapy is another form that is the platform of many other techniques. It involves allowing an autistic patient to participate in motion-orientated activities, such as boat rides, playing with exercise balls, playground swings, etc. Motion therapy calms the patient and makes them more cooperative while increasing their sensory intake abilities (Matthews, 2009).

Experimental research is going beyond just treatment and therapy for the disorder, but is trying to find methods of eradicating the disorder during its initial stages of development. Amaral, a researcher, paved the way with his discovery that autism can be detected in blood samples. Though his work is very controversial, if proven accurate, it could make diagnosis of autism possible even during the infant stages of brain development. This experiment is being continued with a more broad variety of tests and even larger amount of test participants, and has come to be known as the Autism Phenome Project.

While many options for medication and therapy exist, it is essential to keep the importance of time frame in mind. According to Cohen and Remillard, onset of speech and joint attention abilities before the age of five usually lead to an improved prognosis. The progression of research in the area of autism testing will hopefully lead to diagnosis of the disorder as early as infancy; which might cause exponential recovery of abilities since today's diagnosis rarely happen before the age of three. During the first year of life, the brain is going through a critical period of developing and pruning neurons, therefore if treatment can be applied during this period, autism patients will finally have hope of significantly improving their condition, and maybe one day being cured from it completely.

Undergraduate / "changing experiance" UF admission essay [4]

Hey, I just wrote the first draft of my University of Florida admission essay. The topic is:

Describe a meaningful event, experience or accomplishment in your life and how it will affect your college experience or your contribution to the UF campus community. You may want to reflect on your family, your school or community activities, or your involvement in areas outside of school.

The essay I wrote happens to be a rather personal moment that I haven't shared with many people, therefore I was hoping for some feedback on it. Are there any grammatical errors? Is it clear and precise? Does the conclusion end on a weak note? If, so any suggestions with how to improve it? Any and all suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

Like most children, I have always idolized my mother. Even though she can never find her car keys in the morning, and was always an hour or two late when it came to picking me up, she was always the quintessential example of a prosperous person in my eyes. According to the Business Advisory Council, she is the Businesswoman of the Year, but to me she is simply the woman who got up early to help me glue my project poster together and the woman who made sure that my pig tails were even for the first day of school. The consistent optimist and boundless energy that made up her personality has always inspired me, and I have always come to her with all my problems.

Until I was 14, it never dawned on me to ask my mom about her own troubles. She was my "super-mom", my best friend; I always assumed that if she needed someone to talk to, she would come to me. But she never did. The moment that truly changed my outlook on life was the day that she had a panic attack in front of me. Being a mere freshman, I had no real life experience with mental breakdowns, so I started to cry along with her. She kept repeating "I can't breathe" and had to pull over on the side of the road. I was trembling almost as much as she was, and once we both managed to calm down, I bombarded her with questions. Over time, I found out that she's been struggling with panic attacks and periods of severe depression her entire life. Getting professional help always seemed like too much of an investment for her, so to this day she suppresses her issues.

After uncovering my mother's anxiety issues, I started doing fanatic research, and was appalled at how common it really was, and how few people actually get any treatment for it. It made me realize that my mom was just one of the millions of people suffering from unresolved emotional distress. Main excuses for avoiding treatment were the huge expanses and how health insurance usually doesn't cover it. Therefore, ever since that traumatic moment, I have decided that my lifelong goal is to earn my Clinical Psychology degree, and then open up my own Research Clinic that will further the borders of knowledge of disorders while at the same time offering free treatment to those in need. The fact that University of Florida has one the nation's most renowned psychology departments is what drew me in, and UF is now my number one choice. Even though I have a demanding job, I also have a stimulating psychology internship and have kept up my grades in a challenging biomedical magnet program. My determination and clear cut plan for the future is what makes me an excellent contribution to the campus community.