Gantt Chart for Professional skills

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Post 13

Whew. It has been an interesting semester for me. Some of the things in this course are not new to me as a writer, such as voice, use of details, and sentence structure, but other elements of this course were very challenging. I jumped back into a full course load after being away from school for a decade, and there were many adjustments that needed to be made to my personal time management strategies.  There were some things that are new to me in this course, namely the whole analysis of literature paradigm, and I have never considered doing formal analysis of a book before. I usually read because I enjoy reading, not to manufacture a deeper meaning from literature. However learning to attempt to read beyond the words may be something that helps me in the future, perhaps if I get into politics, or switch to a legal major. Learning the conventions of the MLA style have limited application in the technical degree that I am pursuing, but I’m sure that it will turn up in other college courses before I graduate. The organizational and development strategies are something that I have struggled with the entire term, in part due to outside factors, and in part due to not being inspired by the literature selected for the later part of the course. For me, the most challenging part of this course is the attempt to add depth of meaning in a story that was not written with depth in mind. I have a hard time trying to make things more complex and convoluted than they are by design. It is in my nature and training to simplify, and make things identify on a basic nature. To try to expand a story into a thing of deeper meaning goes counter to everything that I do and work towards. There were many things that I learned in this course, and my writing will be better for it, but this class was very frustrating to me.

up in the air

Jacob Sanchez
4/20/2012
Laura Cline
English 102

Up in the Air

Any time that a book is adapted to film, there are many obstacles preventing effective transposition of the plot. The internal conflict and monologue that makes up so much of a book is very difficult to show on a television screen. In addition, the audience for a film is generally a different demographic than the book would be. The time factor is another consideration. No one will watch a sixteen hour plus film. Also, the cost of filming is always a consideration. Too many sets, too many locations, and too much money gets spent.The screenwriter and director have to make the difficult decisions, deciding what elements to change, what to leave out, and what to dispense with altogether. The Walter Kirn book, Up in the Air, and the movie by the same title, make up one such adaptation.

The book, authored by Walter Kirn, was published in 2001,  the year that Wikipedia opened the floodgates of crowd sourced knowledge(en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001). In this pre-9/11 environment, Ryan Bingham, of Integrated Strategic Management, or ISM, is a mid-thirties career transition counselor. His career consists of flying hither, yon, and beyond, counseling those unfortunates whose jobs have recently left the building(Kirn, 5). The job itself recedes into the background, acting as an enabler for his personal goals, and the occasional element of external friction. Much of the story is a monologue, one man telling a story to another inveterate traveler.

Ryan lives in a different world. He calls it, “Airworld,” and it is a place where he is never alone(Kirn, 8). He is about to leave it, though, due to several factors. Bingham has a life goal. He aspires to be the tenth person to reach one million frequent flier miles on the fictional airline, “Great West.” He has a time limit, however. His boss is on vacation, and Ryan has left his resignation letter on his boss’s desk. He has six days and 8 cities to go before his supervisor returns from a fishing trip, finds it, and cancels his company credit card. The reason why Ryan is leaving is simple. He had an accident in his childhood that resulted in periodic memory loss and loss of consciousness. His symptoms have been worsening, and it is time for him to get treatment for it.

The movie, which was released in 2009, is quite a bit different. The story arc has a much greater emphasis on his work, with it beginning with him acting as a headhunter, firing a group of people. He is employed by Career Transitions Corporation, traveling to workplaces around the country, firing people. His goal in the movie is much loftier than in the book, with ten million miles being his goal. He meets a woman who becomes a casual love interest, before being called back to the main office. A new hire from the internet generation, Natalie Keener, is promoting a plan to cut costs by doing all of the firing via an interface similar to Skype. Ryan opposes her plan based on several grounds, starting with a moral objection, and ending with her inexperience in the field. His boss agrees, and sends her with him to get her sea legs, before they begin the transition. Natalie, during the field training, is very much disturbed by the whole process. During their time together, Natalie spends an inordinate amount of time questioning Bingham’s life goals, ambitions and philosophy, eventually resulting in a lasting change in his viewpoint. Eventually, he finds himself unable to deliver the motivational speech that on dropping attachments, and flies to his love interest’s house in Illinois, where he discovers that she is married and has children. once he realizes this, he leaves, and breaks his mileage goal on the way home to start training on the remote firing system. When he returns to his office, he finds out that one of the women whom Natalie had fired had jumped off of a bridge, and killed herself. His boss informed him that Natalie had quit, and that he was going to be back in the air.

The film and the book are vastly different, and nearly unrecognizable as being the same story. As Kirn stated in an interview for cinemablend.com, “...the book is to the movie, what a piece of paper is to a paper airplane.”(cinemablend.com, NP) He stated that his creative spark was evident, but that the director had taken it in a fresh direction. Of the many elements that were different from book to film, the one that stands out the most is the time, and the story being tailored to the modern audience. By adapting the film to a modern technology versus human dignity prime conflict, the movie’s director/ screenwriter made it more palatable and saleable to today’s moviegoers.

In the movie, Natalie has the brilliant idea to do all of the firing via videoconferencing. This isn’t that original, as any coder or remote salesperson can attest. Much work is done over the web, with many companies becoming decentralized, and doing more and more work from the home office(www.readwriteweb.com). With this under consideration, it makes sense to a modern audience to push the technology over the face to face.

The major paradigm shift between these two pauses in time was the shift to the internet. In 2001, when the book was written, the, "road warrior," was more common and relevant than in 2009, when the movie was made. The dotcom boom was in bloom, but not yet fully developed. To remain relevant, the writers of the film chose to use the internet as the threat, rather than a company transition. It's less nebulous, and easier to capture, as the internal monologue of the protagonist is difficult to transition to film.

http://blog.addictinggames.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/smash-computer.jpg

Reaction to "Up in the Air"

As I was reading this book, I felt vaguely uneasy, and not because of the massive Easter dinner that I had just consumed. My first thoughts went to the people that I have conversed with on long flights, and how many of them were so disconcertingly Airworld. It makes me happy that I missed that generation. The gamer generation has its own problems, but that's another line of thought. I did enjoy this particular book more than the last one, but it quickly became obvious that he was suffering from TBI complications, and had developed some serious mental health issues. The author did leave me wondering what the point of the protagonist's obsession with the 1000000 mile marker was. Then, there it was, in the very last pages. Airworld gave him a lease on life, and when his time was played out, he gave back more than he was given. Maybe it wasn't an entirely altruistic gift, but it was a magnificent gesture, nonetheless. He made it possible for other children to get treatments that they might not otherwise been able to receive. To himself, airworld had not only given life, but a vast macroview of the human condition, and a love of its many varied parts. He also proved to himself that he could reach an impossible goal, no matter what the odds, or the personal challenges that he faced. It is that confidence that will stand him in good stead as he makes the lifestyle adjustments that will be needed while he goes through his treatment and into the next phase of his life. As the saying goes, "Go big, or go home." 

Picture from: http://i.imgur.com/0YRZk.jpg

Letter to the professor; mid term

Dear Mrs. Kline,

       This course has posed some unique challenges for me personally, and has allowed me to see some perspectives I would not have normally seen. Literary analysis of the type that we are being exposed to is going to have limited use in the long term, due to the nature of my occupational choices. The challenge of transposition of data from one form of media to another pose technical challenges that I would have had to deal with eventually, which is helpful, but it also makes following course instructions challenging. As an example, a full double spaced page on the word processing application is significantly smaller in the blog, which is designed on a single spaced format. I do think that working out the technical interfacing between mediums will turn out to be the most beneficial part of the course for me. Of course, jumping into college coursework with two writing intensive courses has helped me work out some new time management techniques that will stand me in good stead on future projects. 
     The reading that we have done thus far in class haven't really exposed me to any new concepts, but I do read quite heavily, and have not been lived a sheltered life. It was hard for me to get excited by the Winter's Bone projects, as I do not enjoy the writing style employed by Woodrell, but I survived it. Literary analysis of a story that does not grip me is much more challenging than the work on Bartleby and the Swift work, which I enjoyed. One thing that has fascinated me about literary analysis is that there is no focus on truth. Instead, it is an opinion written about stories which, many times, have no deeper significance than being a good story. As the saying goes, it truly is,"much ado about nothing." This is endlessly fascinating to me, being that I generally work in fact and substance. 
     My goals for the second half of the semester are pretty simple. I want to get all of my assignments in on time, which I have had difficulty with due to other commitments. Also, I would like to improve the structure of my analysis, as I tend to write as I speak, moving fluidly from one topic to the next without transition or preamble. 

Winter's bone

Jacob Sanchez
Professor Laura Cline
English 102
March 22, 2012

Winter’s Bone: of Meth and Life

The book Winter’s Bone, by Daniel Woodrell, has many recurring themes, from the difficulty of rural life, to the transience of childhood. However, one recurring theme is the rampant use and production of methamphetamines in the small towns of the rural Ozarks. In this book, many, if not the majority, of the characters are using, cooking, distributing, or any combination of the triumvirate of the methamphetamine life cycle. As can be seen in the text, it is a cultural cycle that is very difficult to break out of, and is highly destructive both to families and to individuals.
Ree, the protagonist of the text, is repeatedly offered, and occasionally partakes of, various forms of illicit intoxicants, from so called “magic mushrooms” (Woodrell, 55) to prescription pills (Woodrell, 145), but never touches crank. It’s never stated outright, but you get the impression that she knows that it will lead her to places she doesn’t want to go. There is significant other picturization in the text of the damage that meth does to the individual, and the paranoia that is inherent in the long term use of the drug. According to Methland, by Nick Reding, the “ultimate effects are psychopathology such as intolerable depression, profound sleep and memory loss, debilitating anxiety, severe hallucinations, and acute, schizophrenic bouts of paranoia.

Summary and response to a critical article

     Nick Reding's book, Methland,  is a microcosmic representation of the meth problem in America today. He covers the problem Oelwin, a small Iowa community, has had over the last few decades with methamphetamine use and production. However, he directly relates his story to the root causes of meth abuse, both socially and economically. He also covers the personal story of Roland Jarvis, 37 year old ex convict, father of 4, crank cook and addict.
     Reding makes more than one valid point about the proliferation of meth as the "all-American" drug. The ability to work long hours without fatigue, and to do seemingly superhuman feats with ease make this drug extremely attractive to those who are required to do such things. In my own experience as an active duty Marine, I saw men who were using meth outstrip my own athletic prowess and ability with seeming ease. I never saw the downside of meth use where I worked. Instead, I saw men who could run with a pack for hours without any signs of physical stress or distress. While I struggled to complete tasks in a fugue state, the meth users were still fresh and functioning at high levels of competence.

http://vitia.org/wordpress/2009/07/27/meth-lab-fusion/

     What was not apparent in military life were the downsides of meth. After all, what is the risk of jail to people who risk dying in training or combat every day? We were expected to function at the upper edge of human potential at all times. However, seeing older meth users, and even people that I went to high school with, has brought home the consequences of methamphetamine use. People that I know from high school look like they are geriatric, due to their use of meth. Rotten teeth, balding, rapid aging beyond hat should be possible, I've seen all of it. I've seen meth turn a beautiful girl, a friend of mine, into an apparently ancient, toothless hag, who is terminally paranoid, and runs from her former friends. I agree with Doctor Hallberg, that meth is a "sociocultural cancer"(Reding, 11).

Works Cited

Reding, Nick. Methland: The Death and Life of an American Small Town. USA: Bloomsbury Publishing USA. 2010. Print.

winter's bone

Bartleby Analysis

Jacob Sanchez
Laura Cline
English 102
Feb 24, 2012

Bartleby, a Man of Leisure

Bartleby, the Scrivener, a Story of Wall Street, by Herman Melville, is a tragic story. Our main character, by the name of Bartleby, is a sad, melancholy personage, without purpose or motivation. In this dark narrative of the slow death of an otherwise anonymous man, we can see the author’s warning to our modern society. This story is symbolic of the growth of the, at the time, new leisure class. Bartleby’s contemptuous attitude towards work, contrasted to the narrator’s own classic Protestant ethic of work and charity. The author uses these characters to demonstrate the deterioration of society.

Consider first the narrator’s introduction. on the very first page of our story, he makes the claim that his,” first grand point to be prudence; the second, method.”(Melville, 3) His success as an attorney is due primarily to his prediliction towards the avoidance of conflict, and the sublime aspiration towards material comfort makes his affairs profitable and relatively uncomplicated. There is no need to rush such things, and, as a result, he can compensate rather readily for the shortcomings of his employees.

When he employs Bartleby, his profitability initially increases. However, Bartleby shows no interest outside of his writing. This is symbolic of the shallow interests displayed by the shiftless in society. These people care not to advance themselves or society, instead preferring to specialize in an inane task which provides no growth or advance. They seek only the minimal comforts required to sustain themselves,and depend entirelty upon others to provide the impetus of life.
The battle crhy of Bartleby, and those like him, “I would prefer not to.” (Melville, 21) is the simplest expression of apathy. His utter disdain for life, however developed, has made him utterly useless to any productivity besides that which he chooses to engage himself.  The lack of any combative spirit makes it difficult for his employer to dismiss him, due to his highly developed sense of Christian morality, and thus Bartleby gains a foothold to be able to take advantage of his situation.
Once an invidual of this thype begines to realize that it is possible for him to deny any productivithy without reprisal, he immediately begins to extract greater progift with less work ffrom the victim. Bartleby, at this point, begins to ,”Prefer not to” do anything that he does not deign to dox. Of course, this leads to him being an evr greater burden uypon his employer, emblematic of the greast society that refuses to expel those who are not productive in the grand, or minute, scheme of life. He begins to leech upon theemployer, driving him to grreater depths of discontent, ever trying to pull the rest of the office down to his levle of apathetic disrepute.
Rather than retiring from scoiety, Bartleby passively opposes any and all attempts at convincing him to do anything, even to the point of refusing to work at all (Melville, 26). At this junction, our main character ceases to become anything more than a fixture of the office, much like a lamp, or a desk(Melville, 136). Bartleby has given up any small profit that he previously offered society, becoming nothing except a drag upon our microcosm. His very exisytence lessens the progit and pleasure in life of the people who surround him. The black depths of depression that he has allowed himself to descend into have made him a drain uopon the other people, causign much distubance and discontent in thew previously peacegul office.
This turbulence leads his previous employer to be much displeased with him, however, Bartleby refuses to be removed from the prmises except by violence, which our protagonist, being a good Christian man, is loath to utilize. Thus, Bartleby uses the very charity of hte good narrator to his own benefit, forcing the man into the position of benefactor to a person who is no better than a couch.

The passivity of Bartleby’s resistance (Melville, 53), plays upon the heart strings of our narrator initially, who thinks that he must attempt to help this pitiable character. However, like certain of today’s societal leeches, Bartleby rebuffs any attempt to help him improve his flaws, from the offer to have him  “take a good quart of ale every day...” (Melville, 117) tpo the refusal to engage in casual conversation(Melville, 96-108). He refuses to be a beneficial addition, instead preferring to mope around the office, staring at a brick wall as if in a trance(Melville, 92).

There are those at the time of the Melville, and today, who exist in society, without pirpose or drive. They attach themselves to us, sucking the very life outof thethose around them in the manner of bartyleby. Their lack of initiative and drive sends them to death eventually, but until they do cease to exist, they have determined that they prefer drag the remainder of society as low as they can. The distress that thewy cause can be measured in  dollars and cents, or in gthe emotional trauma that they prefer upon those who care for them. By their very passivity, those who live lives ofconscience feel compelled to care for thems, although they have the physical capactiy to care ffor themselves. It is distressing to the casual observer to see the weight of carrying such people on the minds and sould of those who live by the light of conscience.

The man who prefers not to do anything that he does not feel like doing has no place in a mobile and growing society. Lockjed away in a prison they have createc within their own minds, these people have no consideration for others or any thought beyond whaty is the gain for theire own peculiar emotional needs. While it is a pitiable thing to see, there cannot be allowance made for such people in society, because, much like our story, they do irrepairable damage, financially and emotionally, to the people they attzch themselves to. Their listless contempt for industry and disdain for life in general make them drag entire societies to their death.

Works Cited

Melville, Herman. 1853. Bartleby, the Scrivener: a Story of Wall Street. July 2009 by Bartleby.com.http://<wwwbartleby.c.om/br/129.html>

Bartleby assignment

"I think, sir, he's a little luny, " replied Ginger Nut, with a grin. (Melville par. 47)

On this single line, the entirety of the story resolutely stands, unwavering in purpose. Bartleby was a strange man, and there exists a high probability of his being insane, or otherwise mentally incapacitated. This entire document relates the details of a short segment of the life of Bartleby, a scrivener (writer who performed the functions of a photocopier), and his strange and somewhat pernicious habits. 

The first indicator we are given that Bartleby is aught but a normal man is in the first introduction we are given to him. In paragraph 15, our biographer introduces Bartleby, "...-pallidly neat, pitiably respectable, incurably forlorn!" With this simple statement we see that this business association will be anything but normal for our stolid writer, the attorney.

 His description of our subject's silent, pale and mechanical copying of documents in paragraph 18 leads us closer to the conclusion we are desired to draw. Then, when called upon to examine a copy, a common enough happening in a scrivener's office at the time, his reply shocks the author. "I would prefer not to." says the scrivener to his employer(Melville par. 21). It is at this point that a certain amount of friction is introduced into our previously sedentary story arc. 

A Modest Proposal by Jonathon Swift

I’m going to start by stating that satire is one of my  favorite literary devices. Jonathon Swift’s piece, A Modest Proposal, is a darkly sarcastic look at a set of problems that has existed since time began, and has never been solved with any appreciable degree of success. His problem, and thus, our response, is the issue of how to prevent and overcome poverty. The setting of his raillery is Ireland in the early 1700s, where the entire isle chafed under the yoke of English rule and tax.

In the midst of this great, beautiful blather about infant cannibalism, Mr. Swift puts the meat of his message: economy, temperance, prudence, fairness, and patriotism. His statements in paragraph 23 offer solids suggestions for any nation to control the poverty level, but I am digressing from the broad analysis.

The majority of the text concerns itself with a revolutionary tactic in dealing with the undesirable effects of a high rate of poverty. He makes the argument in paragraph 5 that it is impossible for destitute parents to care for their children, illegitimate or otherwise, and that they can provide no social good on their own. He intends to shock the politicians and policy makers of the day into action with the suggestion that these poor infants be sold as a gustatory delicacy to the rich. His voluminous argument is extremely logical, though morally and ethically bankrupt. The program he describes, were it feasible to enact and enforce, and if it were permitted by the standards of any christian society, would have taken a long, cruel step towards the eradication of the suffering of the young Irish poor.

Image from www.buzfed.com

Swift appeals strongly to the emotional mind with his opening argument, drawing the disinterested reader in with bombastic statements of the suffering of these children, then he begins to segue into the logical, quoting an unknown merchant (paragraph 7) and then his mysterious American friend, “that a young healthy child well nursed, is, at a year old, a most delicious nourishing and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled...” (paragraph 8). With this preposterous statement(to the civilized and straight laced English), the enormous weight of sarcasm comes to bear upon the reader.

Blog Post #1

Nabokov believes, and I generally concur, that good readers have imagination, memory, a dictionary, and some artistic sense. I do believe, however, that his description is entirely too limited. He takes the view of a story that another author or a critic would have, viewing the tapestry of story, but remaining detached from the minutiae of character identification. This abstract view detracts from the lush emotional development of individual characters, and may cause the reader to lose the thread of character development entirely. Personally, I do not think that this is the intent of the original authors, who build the environment around the story, not vice versa. Without a firm grasp of the "shuttle" of the story, it is impossible to follow the skein of the background with any certainty. Just as a tapestry is woven on the warp, the characters hold the story together, with the weft of background filling out, and holding together the entire work. I am not what I would characterize as a good reader, as I often have difficulty holding the delicate threads of human emotion, and my memory leaves much to be desired.
The picture is from the Wikimedia Commons, and found on Nabokov's wikipedia page

English 102 introductory video

test post

The truth hurts. Badly.