Rubik's Cube

Hey everyone! For my last blog post I wanted to do something creative and reflective that was also unique and meaningful specifically for myself. It took me forever to come up with this idea so I hope that you enjoy!

As many of you all probably know by now, I really like solving all different kinds of Rubik's cubes. I have the normal one of course but I also have a crazy number of variation cubes that are each different like the 4x4 up to the 7x7, dodecahedron, mirror cube, ghost cube (the BEST!), etc. (if you know what all of these are I am so proud :)) But anyways, when I was thinking about what I wanted to do for this blog post, I wanted it to have personal meaning so I decided to summarize my years in high school (and one special middle school moment oh no) in a Rubik's cube.

Each of the sides of the cube is organized by a different year of high school or a really meaningful part of my life during the past four years. I replaced each of the blocks on the cube with a different picture. I pasted each side below with a short explanation but keep scrolling to see pictures of the actual cube that I made!

Side One: Senior Year

This senior year has been amazing. I truly can't believe that it is almost over! It has definitely been the most academically challenging for me because I decided to take all IB/AP classes while also applying to college. It has also been insanely busy because I took leadership positions in three different clubs while also playing club soccer and participating in WAY too many clubs for my own good. But it was honestly so worth it because I got to meet so many different people that I never would have met otherwise. I have become friends with so many great people this year that I know will do great things in their futures.

Side Two: Junior Year

Junior year was great because I hadn't really felt challenged academically at all sophomore year. Joining IB was a great decision for me because I felt like I was able to grow as a student and a learner. It was also a really exciting year because I turned 16 and got to get my license, joined MEB for my first year, became a junior marshal, got inducted into NHS, and went to prom for the first time. I was nervous about committing to so many different things at the beginning of the year but they were all things that I really enjoyed being a part of. It was overall a really fun year where I felt like I made many great friendships.

Side Three: Sophomore Year

This year was definitely a transition year and so it was naturally more difficult than junior or senior year.  It was my first year at Millbrook and there were so many more people in my grade than I had ever been used to. I was really lucky that I had a twin going through the exact same thing and that I happened to have both lunches with the one other person I knew at Millbrook (shoutout to Waverly!). That made it so much easier because I never had to sit alone and I got to meet so many great people in my classes and at lunch because everyone sat in the cafeteria. I remember my first day at lunch at Millbrook I met Graycen and then the second day I met Michael, Cole, and Joslin. I was quite shy so reaching out to new people was really difficult for me. But the year got progressively easier as I joined different clubs, like sophomore class council, and started talking to more people in each of my classes. The year was not all too challenging academically, compared to my freshman year at least, so it made the transition much easier.

Side Four: Freshman Year

It is funny to notice how the camera quality gets progressively worse the farther the pictures go back :). Also, look at the top left picture to see one of the hundreds of selfies that Josh took on my phone (big mistake). But anyways, this year was the most difficult for me out of all of my years in high school. I was at a school with eight people in my grade including myself, and also Nicole (yep, we made up 25% of the class). Things were really difficult for me because the academic workload was insanely challenging for freshman year (about as much as junior year in IB) and I didn't feel like I had any friends to rely on or talk to. I think the most important thing for me that year to get me through was soccer. It was a great year for soccer because I had an amazing and kind team that even won state cup and went to regionals. I became a lot closer with my teammates and dedicated a lot of time to getting better at the game. The bottom right picture is the one special middle school moment and you can see me, Josh, and Nicole at our middle school dance!

Side Five: Soccer

Soccer has been such an important part of my life throughout all of high school. I have played both club and school soccer and never stopped loving the game. It has given me some amazing memories like going to regionals twice with my teammates, being the top scorer on JV, playing obnoxiously loud games in the hotels at tournaments, and scoring a game winning goal (center) against Leesville and then a game tying header again against Leesville in the last minute of the game (bottom left corner, I almost got tackled by the 100 people trying to give me a hug). My teammates have always been a support system for me and the game has given me a space where I don't have to think about anything else, I can just play.

Side Six: Traveling

Last, but not least, I wanted to reflect on all of the trips that I have gone on throughout high school because I am so grateful for all of the experiences and time spent with family I have gotten as a result. My family lives all over the world so I don't see them very often but these trips give us the time and memories that we have together. Spending time with my cousins that live in Belgium is no small thing and these trips have given me that opportunity. My uncle in Belgium even let me shadow him in the hospital that he works at which was an incredible experience. I have been so fortunate to be able to visit my family that lives in so many different places while also being able to experience other cultures and parts of the world.

So I actually printed these six sides to the cube and constructed it so that I could actually have a keepsake from all throughout high school. Here are a few pictures of the real thing (it looks a lot better in person, the pictures also turned out a little blurry).

Thank you to everyone for making this such a great year and high school experience!

Freebie :))

Thank you!!

The American Dream

To me, the "American Dream" is this idea of hope that allows people to rise from poverty in a land of opportunity. It is the idea of a country that gives people freedom and does not confine people to famine and desolation. To me, is represents a chance for anyone to attain prosperity. When I think of the American Dream, I often think about how it is represented through Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty.

Ellis Island, located in the New York Harbor, was the United States' largest immigration center from 1892 to 1924 ("History & Culture"). Over 12 million immigrants passed through rigorous physical and mental examinations to determine whether they should be let into the country or not. It is often described as an "Island of Hope", or for those denied entry, an "Island of Tears" ("History & Culture"). It symbolized a gateway to opportunity, and with the Statue of Liberty in the sight line, an entrance to a land of freedom. Immigrants spent their lives' earnings to buy a boat ticket to America because of this idea of the American Dream, this great symbol of hope and escape from the economic hardships of the rest of the world. Immigrants would endure terrible living conditions on cramped steam ships, with rampant diseases, for the idea of the American Dream and a better life. To me this shows the influence of the ideology and its core foundation in the idea of hope and the fundamental human right of freedom. My grandfather was actually the son of two Italian immigrants, my great-grandparents, who passed through Ellis Island as very young children. They both came from very poor families and their parents had brought themselves and their families to the United States in search of a better life. My father is also an immigrant who was born in Belgium and moved to the United States after college, allured by the excitement of the United States culture and the esteemed graduate education system.

In the 1920s, this idea of the American Dream being a symbol of hope shifted to also include the constant societal desire for material wealth. This concept is represented in the novel The Great Gatsby by author F. Scott Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald created the character Jay Gatsby, a man deeply ashamed of his poor, farmer background who would do anything to obtain wealth. This drive came from his desire to attract his love interest Daisy, a wealthy and very materialistic-driven woman. Gatsby had fought in World War I, during which Daisy got impatient and left him for a rich man named Tom Buchanan. The book explores the extent to which this materialistic sense of the American Dream caused both corruption and ultimately disappointment, as the desires can never actually be completely fulfilled.

I think that this representation of materialism encapsulates the definition of wealth in that it shows this corrupting force of abundance. Both the old money and new money are in constant comparison with the Valley of Ashes, showing the great disparity between the upper and lower classes. This contrast shows the vanity and selfishness of the wealthy to just ignore the significant problems of the lower class. It also represents the corruption of wealth in that it is constantly used as a mechanism to avoid the consequences of one's actions. Tom and Daisy, in their excessive wealth, can just pick up their belongings and leave their troubles behind, while the poor are bound forever in a cycle of suffering from their own actions and the wealthy's. While The Great Gatsby criticizes this aspect of society, it can be understood that the social values of the time put money above all else in the construction of a social hierarchy. Money was emphasized on a societal level in representation of respect and opportunity.

I think that today, American attitudes towards wealth are definitely dependent upon their own socioeconomic status. There was a really interesting study done in 2012 by Dan Ariely, a professor a Duke University, who looked at how Americans view wealth and its inequality in the United States. He mentioned that the bottom 40% of Americans own only 0.3% of the wealth whereas the top 20% own almost 84% (Ariely). This is such a crazy statistic to me because there is such as disparity between the two that has hardly been addressed in my years of education so far. There is a great amount of ignorance for the wealthy recognizing just how little the poor have as well as the poor realizing just how much the wealthy have. This great divide is quite distinct so that the lower, middle, and upper classes have vastly different views on wealth and poverty, and whether the former is truly attainable for anyone in the current American society. My attitude towards wealth and poverty is still developing as I continue to learn more and more about American society, as well as different societies all over the world. In general though I do think that the gulf between the upper class and the lower class can truly only cause negative consequences if smaller and smaller portions of the upper class continue to monopolize the wealth of the United States.

In summary, the idea of the American Dream is really one of hope and of developing a future for yourself and family. I think that it is embodied by Ellis Island and the idea of immigrating to a new land to start this promising life in a completely different country. There is something very bold about risking everything and spending all of your money on this idea of the American Dream. The influx of materialistic ideology tainted the American Dream to become a never ending desire for wealth, a societal and cultural aspect that is criticized in The Great Gatsby.



Work Cited

Ariely, Dan. "How Americans View Wealth and Inequality." BBC News, 20 Aug. 2012, https://www.bbc.com/news/business-19284017.

"History & Culture." National Parks Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, https://www.nps.gov/elis/learn/historyculture/index.htm.

IOC Practice

Here is my practice IOC

(P.S. my name is Melissa since I forgot to start with that...)
(P.S.S. I realized AFTER I recorded it that in my head, I defined creationism as the creation of artwork, etc. so it could be very confusing if you didn't know that)


IOC Rubric:

Knowledge and Understanding of Extract or Work- 8
I think I did a good job of explaining the novel and then context of the passage as well. My references to the text were all relevant to my points.

Understanding of the use and effects of literary features- 5
I think that my understanding of the effect of literary features was generally valid and had supporting evidence. I got sidetracked on a couple of my points and forgot where I was going with the point which seriously detracted from how effectively able to convey my argument.

Organization- 4
I felt that my examples and "paragraphs" had a good overall structure. I got a bit lost a few times and had to trace back to the structure but overall I felt that it was fairly organized.

Language- 3
I said "um" and "like" a lot, but when I started to focus on not using filler words I forgot what I was talking about. This eventually led me to give that hope up at least for now. I also talked in a stream of consciousness sort of way which was sometimes difficult to follow.


Planning:

Bug, Insect, or Vermin?

Translation 1: Gregory Samsa woke from uneasy dreams one morning to find himself changed into a giant bug.

This translation of the sentence is very simplistic. This was an interesting stylistic choice because it shows how the translator emphasized getting the meaning of the sentence across rather than retaining the original author's voice. This simplistic nature of the sentence applies to both the syntax and the diction. One stylistic device that I noticed was the oxymoron that is created with the description of a "giant bug." The sentence structure is also very simple which shows the translator's role in changing the text. One important difference between this sentence and the original is the use of the name Gregory rather than Gregor. This shows how the text has been completely changed and almost undermines the translator's credibility.

Translation 2: When Gregor Samsa awoke from troubled dreams one morning he found he had been transformed in his bed into an enormous bug.

The first difference that I noticed between this one and translation 1 was the use of the word "troubled" rather than uneasy. This word adds in the implication that there was something wrong or something to worry about because this word comes with a very negative connotation. Therefore, it puts a bit of fear into the equation. The name is also retained in its original form as Gregor rather than converting it to Gregory. The syntax and structure of the sentence are like the first translation in that they are fairly simple but the addition of the word "when" at the beginning of the sentence makes it seem to flow much better. The word "enormous" seems very drastic and draws attention to the end result of turning into a bug rather than the process.

Translation 3: As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.

This translation seems to be one that took the original and translated it word for word. This is because each word seems to be translated individually rather than based on the context. It also gives the entire sentence a feeling of being a little bit off because the exact German sentence structure is retained despite the fact that German and English sentence structures are generally quite different. This also leads there to be a lack of punctuation that might have eased the awkward structure. One word that stood out to me was the use of "insect." The connotation of this word is a tad more harmful than that of a bug which is seen as more of an annoyance than a threat.

Translation 4: One morning, upon awakening from agitated dreams, Gregor Samsa found himself, in his bed, transformed into a monstrous vermin.

This translation is most different than the other three in its use of syntax and sentence structure. There is an excessive use of punctuation that makes the sentence a little difficult to follow. Furthermore, the clauses are in a completely different order than the original sentence in German. Although changing the sentence structure often allows for a smoother sentence in English, it can also changed the meaning of the sentence. The description of an "enormous vermin" has a very threatening connotation that makes the audience perceive a much more negative aspect of Gregor. This sentence also uses a lot of imagery and descriptive adjectives such as characterizing the bug as "monstrous vermin" and describing the dreams as "agitated."

Original: Als Gregor Samsa eine Morgens aus unruhigen Trämen erwachte, fand er sich in seinem Bett zu einem ungeheuren Ungeziefer verwandelt.

How does the word choice, syntax, punctuation, and imagery shift in each affect meaning? Is one more effective than another? Why? What does this exercise bring up about the difficulty of reading translated texts? How do different translation effect the tone of the sentence?

Word choice, syntax, punctuation, and imagery all affect the meaning of a text even though they seem like they are only small changes. They do this by highlighting and emphasizing certain aspects of the text that the translator deems significant. This is important because it shows how translated texts really do have the inherent bias of the author. An example of this is the difference in the words "giant," "enormous," and "monstrous." The last one has a very clear emphasis on the negative qualities of this transformation, while the first one is merely describing a quality. This shows how the translator of the fourth translation highlighted this point in order to comment on the true nature of humanity, and thus changed the meaning of the novel. This leads me to believe that imagery really has the greatest impact on shifting the meaning of a translated text. The descriptive quality not only changes the audiences perception of characterization and themes, but also changes the mood of the audience as a result.

Translators change the text subtly in this way because they either intentionally want to emphasize something or it is just inherent as a way to describe what they see happening in the book. Word choice is often crucial to imagery so these can often go hand in hand. More descriptive words or words with specific connotations can easily change the meaning of a text. Punctuation and syntax also have a large impact on the meaning of the text but I think that it is a much subtler impact that might not be recognized right away, and as such might not affect the reader as much as imagery and word choice do.

This exercise highlights the inconsistencies between a text and its translation. It shows how the translation can never perfectly capture the little nuances and connotations of a text and because of that, we should be aware of how the text could've been intentionally or unintentionally changed by the translator. The plot is conveyed but the meaning drawn from each translation differs so it can be very difficult to get a grasp of the intentions of the author when reading a translated text. The tone of translated texts is also impacted because little differences between the original and its translation are often what create emotion in the plot or employ an untranslatable connotation of a word. This means that by changing the language, emotion and unintended connotation is lost or added. An example of this is the translation of the title "L'Etranger" which was originally translated as The Outsider. This has a very unique connotation that creates a very negative or ominous tone, yet this might not be the actual connotation of the word in French. This misrepresentation of connotations and emotions shows how the tone of the author is changed through translation.

"Never Let Me Go" Covers

First of all, I have to say that I would have much preferred one of these covers instead of the one that I had with the girl's face! In my mind, these covers are much more unique and particular to this novel. That being said, my favorite cover would definitely be the fourth one here because it represents the novel in such a unique way. First of all though, I will look at all of these covers and their purpose.

This first cover shows a girl, most likely Kathy, sitting near a patch of flowers and completely surrounded by plants. She is the only person on the cover, and is sitting with her head down not looking either particularly happy or sad. There are plenty of shrubs behind her, but since she is in the foreground, she is the main focus of the cover. The intended purpose of this cover is to depict the motif of alienation and how Kathy, and other characters as well, are constantly being separated or differentiated from the group in some way throughout the entire book. 

 

When I first saw this cover, I began to think about the boat scene in Never Let Me Go. This was when Ruth, Tommy, and Kathy went to go see a washed up boat. Ruth and Tommy were both donors at the time, as Ruth had just gone through her first donation while Tommy has just had his second. Kathy was Ruth's carer and she drove her the long distance to Tommy's recovery center and then to a place where they could get out of the car and walk to see the boat. This scene was really important to the novel because it revealed Ruth's weakness and the heavy toll of the donation process, as well as encouraged Ruth to finally reveal that she had been holding Kathy and Tommy apart. She encouraged them to be together now and try to get a deferral. The boat in the novel symbolizes uncertainty, as there was no predicting where the boat came from or where it would eventually go. When Tommy compares this to Hailsham, this is really significant because it shows how they all could never go back to the place that defined them and made them who they became. This shows how the cover's intended purpose is to reveal this significant conclusion.

This cover is definitely the most blatant and obvious of them all. It shows a very rough sketch of the human body, but really only focuses on the major organs. This is clearly significant as the clones' purpose is to donate their organs and so the cover foreshadows this. Only black and grey colors are used which makes the mood quite sad. With the woods added into the background, the mood also has a bit of fear involved because they entire cover is really depressing. I think that this cover is one that Ishiguro would not agree represents his novel because during an interview, he claims that Never Let Me Go was his most cheerful novel yet, and this cover seems to contradict this on first glance.

This cover shows a girl, out of focus, spinning around. To me, this reminds me of the scene where Kathy H. dances to the song "Never Let Me Go" by Judy Bridgewater. She always liked to be alone when listening to the song because she didn't want the others to know just how much she cared about the song. She made up a story to go along with the song about a woman having a child after she was told she couldn't. This was clearly a very emotional scene in the book. Kathy also did not mind isolation, as later seen by her taking the role as a carer for over ten years, during which she was driving alone for a significant portion of the time. While she was dancing one time, she spun around to find Madame crying in her door frame. This scene is really important because it humanized Kathy, and the rest of the clones, to Madame, even though she did not yet know what it was Kathy was trying to imagine in her head. This brings up questions about humanity and what it means to be human, the underlying purpose of the cover. Later in the book, Madame still regards these characters as creatures even despite this emotional and moving experience that personifies Kathy.

One similarity between the first and third covers was that they both incorporate the woods, which in the book represents the idea of isolation and boundaries. The theme of being confined or restricted is  clearly portrayed. The third cover seems to be the most negative of all of the covers, using only gray and black as colors which gives it an eerie atmosphere, especially compounded with the image of the woods in the background. The second and fourth covers are similar in that they are both based directly on scenes within the book, whereas the first and third represent common motifs or themes. Covers one and four seem to be much more personal, with an entire human being in the picture, not just organs or an object like the boat. These covers also use lots of warm colors, such as orange, sky blue, and green that create a much more uplifting tone than the darker colors such as black, dark yellow, and brown used in covers two and three.

For a more in-depth analysis, I chose to focus on covers two and three because one is about a specific passage while the other is much more metaphorical, helping me think of a wide variety of meaning that the covers show.

When I first saw the second cover, I immediately thought about a time this past summer when I was visiting family in New Hampshire. We were swimming in part of a lake and just beyond us there were these little sailboats racing in circles for hours. These sailboats were tiny and reminded me of Never Let Me Go because the children that were racing them were about eight years old, an age that is talked about in the novel at Hailsham. The actual boat scene in the novel happens when the children of Hailsham are much older and are no longer actually children, but it is a really significant point in the novel because it was a great turning point that pushed Kathy and Tommy to try to get a deferral. If I hadn't read the novel at all, I would have thought the book was about some sort of journey or adventure. This correlates to the actual text as the reader is taken along the journey of these characters lives, reading how they grow up and become adults. This links to the structure of the book being a bildungsroman as the reader watches the characters grow up and overcome challenges.

On this cover, I think that we are seeing it from the point of view of Kathy, Ruth, or Tommy. This is because when they visited the boat, everything else around them was peaceful and this is how the atmosphere of the cover is portrayed. There are no other boats in the background, and no other people are shown. The colors are also dark which makes the mood a bit sad. Because of this, the reoccurring motif of loneliness is created throughout the novel. This gives insight into the creation of the book and the time that it was written because we can already tell from the cover that the novel is going to deal with the concepts of isolation and dehumanization. Looking at the cultural construction of this book, it clearly coincides with the medical advancement of the time and the worries it brought about. This is telling about the author because it seems to makes Ishiguro seem deeply invested in exploring the meaning of humanity, and the same is true for anyone who chooses to read this book.

The third cover shows a sketch of human organs outlined in barbed wire. The first thing that came to my mind when I saw this was a jail because of the barbed wire fences that are used to contain inmates. I also thought back to the scene in the book where the students are told that they could never smoke. This was more important for them to understand than anyone else because their organs needed to stay healthy in order for them to be donated. On first glance, the grayish background reminded me of the pictures of destroyed organs as a result of smoking.

On this cover, the human body is outlined with barbed wire, which symbolized both how the clones should let nothing in, always putting their health above everything else so as not to harm their organs, and how trapped they truly were, never being able to get out. If I hadn't already read the novel, I would think that this was a very depressing novel about some plague or health crisis because of the importance of the organs being the focal point of the cover. The portrayal of these organs is very impersonal, giving no insight to who this person could be. I think that this is meant to reflect the dehumanization of these clones in the society as well as just how impersonal the donation process is. The organs seem to be viewed by someone that wasn't isolated like the clones and was a part of the rest of society. This is because the organs are portrayed very negatively, as shown by the dark colors used. The rest of society thought that these clones were just creatures and that they were not actually human, which coincides with how the organs are presented on this cover.

Finally, this cover seems to give only ambiguous ideas about the cultural construction of this book because the cover could really be anything about a terrible health crisis. The one part that does make it very unique is the barbed wire, but I could still imagine a book about polio, where many children were confined to iron lungs, having this cover. But once we learn about the real cultural construction of this work, it makes perfect sense. Since this cover gives off a very negative vibe, the author seems to be portrayed as a pessimist. It is no surprise with this cover that the novel is dystopian, so readers might be familiar with books such as 1984 or The Handmaid's Tale.

A Story About Knots and Surgeons

First of all, this was a fantastic TED talk and I highly recommend it! It was interesting and insightful at the same time and was overall very captivating.

This talk is mainly about the contrast between the predictability we try to implement in our lives and the unforeseeable futures we all have. The speaker Ed Gavagan asserts that we try to live our lives in predictable ways but we actually have very little control over the chance that dictates our lives. One little decision can change someone's life in an instant. It goes along very well with the theme of storytelling because it shows the intersection of two different stories and what they reveal about human nature. This main idea is very interesting to explore in connection to storytelling because the different facets and elements of storytelling can reflect or shift moments to reveal their significance. Although the TED talk is not about storytelling itself, it focuses on two different stories themselves. The talk is centered around these two stories, revealing how meaning can be drawn from their intersection and why storytelling in general is important to reveal the significance of interactions, whether they be planned or stumbled upon by chance. This connects to Never Let Me Go in that there is meaning or significance always lying below the surface, it is just a matter of what each story reveals. With Kathy H. as the narrator, we have to ask why she chooses what she does to reveal and how this is significant.

In the TED talk, the first story that Gavagan told was about a time when he was on the subway in New York City and witnessed two medical school students practicing tying knots. Each of them took turns creating the knots with their left and right hands. Then, a professor, who happened to be teaching the lecture they were going to, started to help them. The professor really emphasized the significance of being able to tie the knots quickly and being able to do so while not even being able to see your hands. This would be the difference between life and death during surgery. This reminded Gavagan of a time that he was walking a street in New York City at night and was attacked by three gang members that were tasked with killing a stranger as a part of their initiation. Gavagan had chosen to walk on one side of the street and not the other, and it had completely changed the course of his life. He was stabbed many times and lost so much blood that by the time he had gotten to the hospital, he had a 2% chance of living. He had managed to fight off one of the guys and run to the other end of the road, before collapsing, which is how he had been able to get someone's attention to call 911. These two stories bring up another one of Gavagan's arguments which is that no one thinks that they will be the one that is affected by such minor decisions such as choosing which side of the street to walk on. He disproves this through sharing his second story, showing the power and influence of storytelling. The final point that he really conveys through this talk is how luck and chaos both work in combination to form the unpredictable future.

Multiple components factor into how Gavagan constructs his arguments, the most obvious of which is pathos. The entire talk is an emotional roller coaster, full of highs and lows that are quite moving. The clearest of this is his discussion of being attacked and the impact that it had on him. From the  pain to the recovery process, including emotional strain, PTSD, and learning to continue living, it was an extremely sentimental and personal experience that he was sharing, and the audience could sense that. The room was silent before erupting into applause at the end, touched by his emotional story. By the end, Gavagan himself was fighting back tears and barely getting out his last words, showing how much of an impact this had on him. This was clearly an effective technique because of its ability to engage with the audience. It had such a great impact because the idea under the surface is frightening: that this entire event was caused by one small seemingly insignificant choice. This thinking connects with the idea that we can't truly control our own lives, and anything can come of an insignificant choice if chance aligns. This shows the falsity behind a notion that most people hold true, which is that they won't be the one whose life is changed based on a small decision. Any single choice has the power to shape your life, a scary implication for most. Should we worry about what we put on our toast for breakfast, in fear that it might change the course of our life? What about what time to get your haircut? It is all about luck and chaos, and how they coincide. This connects to storytelling because everything that happens to us, when told, is conveyed in a story. Stories shape how we view events like these, and the pathos integrated in Gavagan's story lets us to start asking these questions.

Ethos is also important to consider in this TED talk because it impacts how we perceive the story. Ed Gavagan is the owner of the company PraxisNYC which is a design firm. It mainly works to design homes that not only incorporate beauty but also sustainability. But the main reasons that he has so much credibility in his story is his notability as a storyteller and the fact that he is speaking from personal experience. First, he is an accomplished storyteller that shared his story with thousands of people before speaking at the TED talk. It is interesting because he did not originally begin as any sort of storyteller; he just got the courage one day to talk in a storytelling competition, which he won. From there, his abilities were recognized and flourished. Second, since he is speaking from personal experience, he is immediately much more credible. Some small choice instantly impacted him and changed the course of his life, showing how this actually happened to someone. He is not making inferences or guessing about the power of choice, he experienced it in the most brutal way. This is interesting to relate to storytelling because we have to wonder if the most meaningful stories are ones that come from personal experience. Can fiction stories or inferences be just as powerful? When they involve luck and chaos, are they as credible? A lot can be drawn from Gavagan's talk on this front and it goes to show how meaningful storytelling really is.

The logos in this TED talk mainly concerns with the balance of quality and quantity of evidence. When describing the stories, Gavagan really goes into detail on certain parts and doesn't describe everything possible about the situations. This is also a clear to Never Let Me Go, where we can clearly see the significance of Kathy H. being the narrator of the story and having a huge impact on our perception of other characters and what happens in the novel. From what Gavagan focuses on, we draw significance. All of his recollections of the stories or evidence are concise with a clear emphasis on quality. The description of the knots, the doctors marveling over his progress, the recovery process. Each individual story within a story is carefully laid out to reveal the significance behind a seemingly insignificant choice. The structure of the TED talk plays into this idea because it is purely centered around the two stories. They are the talk, yet they reveal so much more. These are the focus of the talk, the message. This shows how meaning not only comes from the content but also the storytelling. One possible weakness of the logic of the talk is that the foundation is personal experience. Although this is generally a great thing, especially for pathos and ethos, memory is an interesting concept. Each person's memory is different and therefore the conclusions drawn from it are different. Therefore, we are only getting one side of a story and it would be interesting to see how this choice affected the lives of others involved: the doctor, the person who called 911, the gang members.

I originally picked this TED talk because its title was interesting to me and I wanted to see where the discussion of knots and surgeons would learn, nonetheless how it would connect to storytelling. It relates to me because it makes me think of every single minor decision I make and how it will affect me, not only in the short term but in the long term too. Will I come across an incident where some small choice that I make changes the course of my life? It is almost daunting to think about because there is no pattern to it, no predictability, like the routines we are so used to. This related to Never Let Me Go in multiple ways but I found one of the most outstanding of which to be that they both explore the possibility of changing your fate. Is your destiny, how your life is going to play out, already decided? Do we have the power to change anything about what happens in our future or are the decisions we are going to make already set? This connects with what we learned about in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde too with the dichotomy between the rational and supernatural. It is interesting to trace this back to storytelling to examine how individuals spin the concept of destiny or the role of decision making. Overall, this TED talk clearly got me thinking about a lot of questions, most of which I can't even begin to answer. But I found this TED talk really enjoyable and the questions that I keep asking myself because of it are really interesting to ponder in relation to my own life.

Work Cited:

"Ed Gavagan." TEDMED, TEDMED, LLC., www.tedmed.com/speakers/show?id=6620

Gavagan, Ed. “Transcript of ‘A Story about Knots and Surgeons.’” TED, TED, 2012, www.ted.com/talks/ed_gavagan_a_story_about_knots_and_surgeons/transcript#t-74614.

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