Junior Year
Junior Year
Freshman Year
~Essays
A Gust of Luck
What others think is luck, I think it’s more than that. What can we prove what it is if we don’t know where it comes from. Of course I can’t say that it’s not true, but I can say though that there’s something more than just pure chance. There are moments when you do really good when you’re expected to bad; and the other way around but I think other than luck ,there is a lot more going on like skill and how you are feeling. Nevertheless, people should never let themselves down because they think it’s only luck.
I was walking down the river sidewalk with my family, in Wichita, Kansas, in 2014. I was going to the RIverfest. I was messing around with my brothers, when my brother Cooper found a page with all the activities. We looked through it and saw a Paper Airplane Contest scheduled for 2:00. Later that day we went over to Century two and made our paper airplanes up on the indoor balcony. Then it came time to take our positions to throw our airplanes into the tub and the announcer came over to give the count off. He said,”On three, one, two, three,” and everyone threw their planes, but I waited a second for everyone to throw theirs before I threw mine. Then my brothers and I threw mine and watched them sink down towards the tub. I slowly watched as mine landed into the bucket and my brothers narrowly miss it.
“I made it,” I said exasperated.
“No mine did,” said my brother Rudy.
“Only, because mine hit yours,” said Cooper.
The announcer came back up with the airplane that had landed into the tub saying, “the winner is, Noah Garcia”. My mind couldn’t believe it, I was the one who threw the plane that landed in the tub. I went up to the front and received my prize of 100 dollars from a Kernel who I took a picture with. He told me, “You sure are a lucky boy, you’re the only one who won the entire Riverfest,” I later found out there were three times the contest had happened.
It was July, 2018 when Rudy and I were at my friend Blaise’s house going out to a pond to fish. We went out fishing for a while but none could catch anything. Then out of nowhere we saw a hard tug on my line and I reeled in, I had caught the first big fish. We kept going at it for a little while until, I caught another one. This time the sun was almost set so we packed everything up to get back. When we got back all anyone could talk about, was how lucky I had been to catch two big catfish.
After that they were saying, “ It’s only because of luck,” and other things like it; but I kept telling them it’s not only luck, but there is also some skill and experience tied in with it. They were a little jealous and didn’t care although I tried to tell them that maybe they should try practicing different spots in the pond and to not let themselves down because it’s not just luck and in the end we all get to eat the fish too. Finally, they gave in, although we continued to talk about it.
Blaise said, “ I think I get what your saying now”
“Now,” I said, “ you can seek to improve on your fishing instead of treating it like it’s a rigged game.”
He believed me and continued to go fishing for a while and caught more and more fish every time.
I have tried to tell people over and over again to not give up on themselves because they think it’s all luck. Many don’t really care because they’re too mad to realize their mistake. Hopefully one day they can realize their mistake and seek to improve themselves, for the betterment of them, and those around them.
"War of the Worlds" - H.G. Wells
War of the Worlds was written by H.G.Wells, and published in 1898. It is about a man, whose name we do not know, because he is the narrator. (Wells) a well-known psychologist, journalist, and a intelligent man, is took through an adventure when the Martians arrive. At first, they believe that the Martians are harmless and similar to humans, until they suddenly attacked. The Martians quickly overcome the humans with their very advanced, and destructive weapons and technology, until they quickly meet their downfall. The Martians, not having bacteria on Mars are slowly killed in a week’s time.
One thing I really like about this book, is the amount of action and adventure. Throughout the book, Wells takes us all throughout England, while he runs for his life. Wells does an excellent job of making you feel like you’re playing his character. Also, Wells meets many people, with whom he has many good and bad experiences such as the curate. The quotes,”He began to raise his voice—I prayed him not to. He perceived a hold on me—he threatened he would shout and bring the Martians upon us,” shows one of Wells bad experiences, when the curate had gone insane. I think Wells, did a great job engaging the audience throughout the story with all the action.
Another thing I like about this book, is how descriptive it is. The book, uses many words, to talk about things. My vocabulary list for example, has over twenty out of thirty words being adjectives. Another example of this, is when he says,“We must remember what ruthless and utter destruction our own species has wrought, not only upon animals, such as vanished bison and the dodo, but upon its own inferior races.” Not only does that quote contain four adjectives, but I also found it moving and kind of represents us as being the Martians. I feel like this quote,“This isn't a war," said the artilleryman. "It never was a war, any more than there's war between man and ants,” Wells puts there just to make you understand it even more, but I find interesting, because it shows how powerless they were. Also, some of the words he uses for adjectives are words that you don’t typically hear, and only add onto the descriptivity of the words such as terrestrial, pulverised, and sodden.
One thing I don’t like about this book though, is the fact that sometimes you need to read over things once or twice, to understand the text. Especially in the beginning of the book it can be boring and make it hard to concentrate. I think one reason for this though, is the fact that H.G.Wells, grew up in England, more than one hundred years prior, so it’s not his fault that he lived, did, and spoke things completely different to how we speak today. Also, because he grew up in England, he speaks a lot about things in England, that I feel like if you didn’t grow up there you don’t understand. Especially when it comes to cities and places, it can be especially confusing to know where, he is. To go against this, the book tells you explanations sometimes on pages with letter keys for some words and things, which I found extremely helpful..
Another thing I like about the book, is the way that it makes you feel like your back in the day with him. I don’t feel like H.G.Wells purposely did this, but it still adds this feeling to the book like you teleported back in time. One example of this is when he says,”Perhaps I am a man of exceptional moods,” somebody nowadays probably wouldn’t say something in that way. Also, “They exploded any stores of powder they came upon, cut every telegraph, and wrecked the railways here and there. They were hamstringing mankind,” this quote also, just shows how far back in the day Wells sets his story, although I find it very interesting. Railroads, gunpowder, and Telegraph’s now days are extremely out of date nowadays, even the last telegraph in the U.S., being basically eradicated even before the end of the 20th century.
Overall, this book was a great book, and I would recommend it to anyone. In my opinion this book should be a grade level between eight and ten . It has many great lessons and kind of shows that we are just like the Martians to Earth.It is a great book for anyone who like adventure, war, and science books and is a great piece of British literature. I think that Wells did an excellent job with this book, and I recommend you to read it sometime soon.
Did Feminism Meet Its Goals?
First Wave Feminism was really a right to vote. Feminism had it’s very first documented beginnings with a woman in the 15th century. Simone Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir wrote that the first woman to “take up her pen in defense of her sex” was Christine de Pizan. Christine was a french author who wrote the books, “The Book of the City of Ladies” and “The Treasure of the City of Ladies”. Christine defended women in these books and earned the term as the first feminist by Simone Beauvoir. But the real movements of Feminism began in the early 20th century.
The beginning of the feminist movement in the United States began along with the abolitionist movements Sojourner Truth, Elizabeth Blackwell, Jane Addams, and Dorothy Day. They called for equality between men and women but primarily focused on the right to vote. They first supported the abolitionist movements to gain favor with them and because that’s what people were more focused on. After the Civil War, they tried to speak out but were then shut down by other repercussions from the Civil War. It wasn’t until the late 19th and early 20th centuries that these women's voices were finally heard.
The women were finally heard by Woodrow Wilson, when he passed on August 18, 1920. Wilson during his first term spoke about women gaining equality but never really did anything about it. At the end of his first term women, suffragists outside the White house picketed him for not really doing anything. So, Woodrow Wilson changed his heart a little bit and turned toward helping these poor women. Woodrow Wilson went to congress and spoke to pass to allow women the right to vote. This began the spark of equality for women in the United States, and anyone including myself should agree with this.
Second Wave Feminism began in the early 60s. Second-wave feminism, unlike the first wave, was more about personal things and inequalities rather than legal rights like voting that were focused on in first-wave feminism. Second-wave feminism came about from the post-WWII baby boom era in which women had so many children and so they would stay at home and take care of their children and home while the men stayed out in the world and worked at jobs. This divide in which the women stayed at home made a kind of divide since the women were at home all day they didn’t really get out and look at politics. This divide kind of made the men the voice for the house and some women didn’t always agree with what their husband would think and this made many women feel powerless and outraged bringing a totally acceptable Second-Wave feminism.
Second Wave feminism’s roots began when Simone de Beauvoir wrote her treatise “The Second Sex”, in which she described that women were being placed as second to men. She realized that her french patriarchy society was becoming a male centralized society. Women were being placed as “other” to men. But the American begging of Second-Wave didn’t begin until 1963 when President John F. Kennedy’s Commission On the Status of Women reported on Gender Issues. Also when, Betty Friedan book” The Feminine Mystique,” came out which was inspired by “The Second Sex.” These highlighted many issues women dealt with including sexuality, family, the workplace, reproductive rights, official legal inequalities, domestic violence, marital rape, engendered rape-crisis centers and women's shelters, and brought about changes in custody laws and divorce law. Many of these I agree needed work but others were more for convenience.
Kennedy’s Commission and Betty Friedman’s books spoke to women who were not treated fairly and brought many Women together to fight for their rights to things that they didn’t really have. Things like Marital Rape really needed to be addressed, women have a right to sex and it is of control for a man to force her into anything, although it is kind of rude for a wife to constantly refuse her husband for no reason. Like that issue, many of these issues were a lot more complicated than just legal rights and required a lot of opinions. Because of that some of these I agree with some I think are only in certain cases and some are just morally wrong.
The points I agree with are the inequalities in sexuality, family, workplace, legal rights, domestic violence, custody rights, woman’s shelters, engendered rape-crisis centers and divorce laws. These issues beforehand were sometimes very bad for women and could leave them in a terrible space. Women in the workplace could regularly be assaulted and treated wrongly such as not making as much money for doing the same thing and this was a major issue. Also, women could be abused by their husbands and couldn’t tell anyone about it but nowadays, it is called domestic abuse and we know that it affects not only women but men too, although it is discriminated against men now. When men and women divorced sometimes men would take almost everything and leave the women with nothing and because the women stayed at home all day they didn’t have anywhere to go leaving them in a tight place with nowhere to go.
Some of those rights they pushed for that had no good answer I think is Marital Rape. Marital Rape is what they considered when a husband would force her wife to have sex. I think it is for one wrong to force someone to have sex, but if they are your wife that in a normal scenario in which you're not in financial restraints or anything that would limit having kids or your wife shouldn’t refuse you to sex. Sex is not wrong and only brings out human life and good and should be consensual, but some twisted minds only think of it as pleasure. Maybe your wife is tired after a long day and just wants some sleep or she just doesn’t want to have sex that night, I think this is a scenario where the husband should heed her call, but in some situations, the wife should also heed her husband’s call too because nowadays, we also know that it is possible for a woman to force herself on a man although not nearly as common and is discriminated against. I think that these women need to tell their husbands no if they don’t want it and when their husband constantly refuses then I think they need to seek help. I think that the idea of Marital Rape is a little too far, I mean you vowed to give your life to each other, and if you have a problem you probably didn’t want to marry them anyway so you got yourself there, and you should probably tell them the truth. I know plenty of really happy couples that have almost ten kids and some that have none, I think it is just a more personal problem and if need there are plenty of couple therapy counselors out there to go to.
The right I think is wrong that they passed is for sure, is abortion. After Roe vs. Wade, the act to kill a baby a small human being became possible. I know for sure that your parents could have aborted you but they loved you and kept you. It is murder to think of a baby as nothing or as just an organ in your body or a clump of cells, is it wrong to commit murder. You came from the same place that that baby is at, they are just as much human as you are and it is wrong to kill them for your convenience. Nowadays, we have so many places you can go for to not to commit an abortion even if it is rape. Whether your raped or not that is still a baby no matter what happened beforehand. When you say that it is okay to kill a baby that was from a rape, how do you think it makes every “ rape” baby alive right now think of themselves. They probably think that they are now worth nothing and should have died anyway, and that is beyond messed up.
Third-wave feminism began in the 1990s and was kind of useless. It mostly spoke of the second-wave all over again but with adding new things like trans, and other sexuality. It was mostly women speaking out against men and empowering themselves. Although it wasn’t necessarily bad it had some falsehoods in it. John Skalko reports one of them in his article “Why There Are Only Two Sexes,” he identifies why it is only possible for humans to have two sexes in a very good explanation, pointing out one of the falsehoods in third-wave feminism.
Fourth-wave feminism was a bunch of women who fought for the fact to be more empowered than or better than men and for Equal Pay. The fact that they fight for equal pay is kind of a joke and I think is their whole argument into getting people to follow them. When a group at Harvard studied the wage gap, they found out a lot more than other places were willing to tell you. They found that in a place where there is no possible way of discrimination, that man still made more than women. They found that men were a lot more likely to work over-time, work late shifts, and drive more desirable routes, than women. These factors are what contributed to the men’s higher income but not higher wage. These men just put more effort and time into things than women in a non-discriminatory workplace but in another workplace these men’s higher work could place them higher and faster than their counterparts, accelerating the man’s growth compared to the women’s.
Work Cited
Skalko, John. “Why There Are Only Two Sexes.” Public Discourse, Public Discourse, 30 Sept. 2018, www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2017/06/19389/.
Phelan, John. “Harvard Study: ‘Gender Wage Gap’ Explained Entirely by Work Choices of Men and Women: John Phelan.” FEE Freeman Article, Foundation for Economic Education, 10 Dec. 2018, fee.org/articles/harvard-study-gender-pay-gap-explained-entirely-by-work-choices-of-men-and-women/?gclid=Cj0KCQjwyLDpBRCxARIsAEENsrK1hfXCEJ5W7eLpu5qDkWt_kLMNHZHbpbqpzFFSsc2eLNfTY2EB5gcaApgLEALw_wcB.
U.S.A. History
The U.S. after the civil war, was in a mess to get itself up. In the years that followed the civil war, we became the world’s by far the most productive economy, surpassing our next competitor Britain by two. The U.S. however, had fought Britain earlier in the nineteenth century and because of that had no military power because we were surrounded by weak nations or one’s that were across a huge ocean. The end of the nineteenth century was when the U.S. just started to expand outward West, realizing they’re need to settle as to not be taken over by European counterparts. After the Expansion was when the U.S. began to start to really begin to modernize.
As we expanded outward we were scared of the European’s taking over and so we acquired a new Navy. Navy was so important in the 19th century that it was said that, “Whoever rules the waves, rules the world,” by Alfred Thayer Mahan. We started to change our old wooden ships to steel, and we started to care about other things and territories outside the continental U.S. too. When the U.s took over Hawaii it proved what path of globalization we wanted to take. The U.S. businessmen wanting to have sugarcane and pineapple farms in Hawaii, backed by a militia forced Hawaii to hand itself over. The U.S. now had clearly defined itself like one of the European counterparts wanting to take over and transform into their ideal.
When the twentieth century turned around the corner, the businessman shaping the country started to become too big. The businessman the U.S. had taken over Hawaii for had now began to hate. In 1906, the case for monopoly of Standard Oil Company began. The U.S. became a country that focused on growing quickly, too a country that cared about the shifts of power. Somebody like Rockefeller, could effectively do whatever he wanted back then and for the Government that wasn’t going to be okay.
WWI was the next thing that really shaped our diplomatic view in the world. The U.S. after WW2 began to realize that war wasn’t worth it to us. The U.S. was only wanting war if it benefited us, and in war the outcome isn’t always clear. After WWI, we tried to help other countries with their debts but soon the Great Depression hit. The rest of the world although not being the U.S. was greatly affected by it. The U.S. was a big player on the world market, and was now having a bad time. The U.S. struggling with so much began to lose sight of anything but really trying to fix itself.
WWII was an interesting time for the U.S. We had just fixed ourselves from the Great Depression and was weary of helping anyone and risking it. At first it was, “No we cannot join war it’s too risky,” but because of how much money we could make it became, “Well, it would be nice to grow while they fight.” The U.S. began to ship guns and ammunition to Britain and it’s other allies, making could money, really making into a Superpower. Then Pearl Harbor happened, the production of war materials had stopped shipping to Japan, and Japan was running out quickly. The Japanese army attacked the U.S. attempting to take over areas with gas for their army and Hawaii was one spot. Pearl Harbor began our entrance into WWII, and left us with the world’s most powerful weapon, the nuclear weapon.
The nuclear bomb was so powerful, it flattened cities. The whole world was in a frenzy, how did they get their hands on those. The Japanese were so shocked when they heard from the U.S. that we were going to drop a bomb that would destroy a whole city, and it actually happened. Later through the decades until the late 50s we began to run into problems again. After WW2 too many people had lost loved one’s and didn’t want to lose anymore. When the Vietnam war came around the U.S. both supported it and didn’t. This caused a spit but it became less and less as the war urged on. By the end of the war the media frowned upon any war.
In the mid 60s we also saw new changes. So many other places in the world gave the right to do many things to people not based on their skin color. As we went through this change, the U.S. became like many of its European counterparts who had also done the same things earlier. Our outlook to the world became more unified and looked up to by many. Up until 9/11, the U.S. saw no big changes, except for some scandals and small wars and things like such, but our economy and look grew a lot. On 9/11, The world was terrified to see planes crash and the World Trade Centers fall down. The look on the U.S. was weak. The U.S. outraged by such things, declared war on Al-Qaeda, showing our strength against our enemies.
Since then, war in the Middle East has remained constant, although some saying we are soon to pull out. The Obama administration has helped our people and made us look more like our European brother’s, but made us look apart from other allies, also. The Obama Administration did a lot for the people, but weakened our economy; but also pulled it out of a recession. When Donald Trump came around, it made some people very mad and others very happy, showing the world how split we are like them. It was so weird, with Hillary winning the Popular vote but Trump, the electoral votes. Since Trump has been in office our country has leaned away from Liberal beliefs a little toward republican angering our European brothers but making us look tougher to the rest of the world. Trump has stopped North Korea, and is in a trade war with China. He has helped our economy and Global Power.
Work Cited
“The United States Becomes a World Power.” Digital History, Digital History, 2019, www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtid=2&psid=3159.
Network, The Learning. “Jan. 17, 1893 | Hawaiian Monarchy Overthrown by America-Backed Businessmen.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 17 Jan. 2012, learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/17/jan-17-1893-hawaiian-monarchy-overthrown-by-america-backed-businessmen/.
“2016 United States Presidential Election.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 18 July 2019, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_presidential_election.