In my first grade class, students were required to write in a journal for one hour each day. Of course, being so young, most of us made up adventure stories instead of writing a diary entry. My teacher noticed this and began “publishing” our books for us. Once a student finished a story she particularly liked, […]
Month: May 2016
The Heart Sūtra and the Mahāyāna vs. Theravāda Traditions (In-class essay)
The Heart Sūtra encapsulates two of the main teachings of the Mahayana Buddhist thought and practice: emptiness and wisdom, wisdom being the understanding of emptiness. The final lines of the Heart Sūtra conclude that great knowledge and the cessation of dukkha, especially for all beings, “is true, for there is none lacking in it.” Once […]
Le Michigan
Le Temps: Le Michigan a deux saisons majeures. Il y a l’hiver, qui dura d’octbore à mars, et l’été qui dura de mai à aôut. En hiver, le Michigan est très, très froid. L’année dernière, la température a atteint un record nouveau. Il y avait fait -40 degrés F avec réfroidissement éolien! Cependant, en été, […]
“Starry, Starry Night:” ma Chanson Favorie
Bien que la musique « motown » soit de ma région, je préfère la musique folk. Je crois qu’elle est plus mélodique et plus simple que la musique de ma région. J’aime aussi le rock classique et les compositions de compositeurs comme Benjamin Britten et Jonathan Dove. Puisque mes chansons favorites sont différentes et nombreux, il est […]
Le Racisme sur le Campus
Une issue qui conteste beaucoup de gens aux Etats-Unis c’est du racisme. À Davidson, cette discussion est très importante pour les étudiants, professeurs, administrateurs, et corps enseignant. Le but de l’université est d’être aussi inclusif et divers que possible. Si on avait plus de diversité, les points de vu seront différents. À cause de ca, […]
Testimony: Personal Truth and Its Importance in the Discussion of Race
Some of the most powerfully moving artistic products come from testimonies, which are steeped in emotion. In this paper, I will define “testimony” as an emotional reaction to or recount of an (often negative) experience. As a culture, we Americans rely on such accounts. We consume countless songs about personal relationships or experiences in which […]
Building a Concept
Famed educational theorist and self-proclaimed “scholarship boy” Richard Rodriguez’s essay “The Achievement of Desire” tells the story of the author’s own intellectual upbringing and the difficulty he faced because of its implications[1]. He believed education to be a process of personal-reinvention, a process that left him thoroughly changed as a student and as a Mexican-American. […]
Word Analysis: Vestige
The meaning of the word “vestige” in Clint Smith’s poem “We Are Black Boys in America” enhances the poem’s meaning when read as a double-entendre. Its first and perhaps most well-known definitions are “a trace of something that is disappearing or no longer exists” (Vestige 1), or “the smallest amount (meant to emphasize the absence […]
Word Analysis: Shade
While Caleb watches over his injured mother, he notes that it would not be “difficult to keep from sleeping” because “everything was painted in the shades of killers” (Scott). The word “shades” in particular is wrought with meaning. “Shade” often has to do with color, for example, when someone says “I like this shade of […]
The Kept: The Dynamics of Emotional Tension for the Individual and the Family
“Elspeth Howell was a sinner… Whenever she saw a church or her husband quoted verse or she touched the simple cross around her neck while she fetched her bags, her transgressions lay in the hollow of her chest, hard and heavy as stone. The multitude of her sins—anger, covetousness, thievery—created a tension in her body, […]