#15 Blog Reflection

When I was first assigned to write a blog for my Journey in Literature class a lot of things came across my mind; from the idea of it being seen publicly (since it's a blog) to the fact that what was going to be seen were going to be my ideas on various topics. This was soon overcome since we were told that our classmates (especially the Sunshine Travelers) were required to comment on my ideas on the class topics. From the activity the part I got the most from was the comments I left on my classmates' blogs, since I not only commented on my thoughts but also heard feedback and even made a type of conversation with my classmates. This helped us compare and contrast the different perspectives each of us had related to the topics discussed in class. Since we were encouraged by our Professor to be creative on our blogs, it was also nice to see the personal things everyone shared on their blogs related to their pastimes and to their interests. I did a blog before for another class but it was not in any way as this one since we were not encouraged to participate from our classmates' blogs as we were for this activity, and in my opinion this is a great way for us to not only see the true identity of our classmates, but also the external and internal journeys they experience.

#14 Travel Book: Hermit in Paris

Italo Calvino’s book gives the reader a vivid example of how the major events from his diverse life experiences occurred. In Hermit in Paris we see how an author, who was born in Cuba but soon taken to Italy by his parents, where he lived for more than twenty years, and whom also travelled from place to place, including France and the United States, narrates his life through the perspective he gets as a tourist/traveler from the cities he visits or those he lived in and the othering he partakes in during his travels, but also by the sense of home, the identity, and the external and internal journeys he overcomes throughout his younger years, since these are the years that shape the world of his imagination, even though he clearly states that New York, one of the many cities he visits, is his city.  Calvino also adds that even though he included some places he traveled to, like New York and Paris, in some of his writings, he is not inspired completely by neither the city nor the events that occurred while traveling, by being a tourist or from even living in these cities. The author not only portrays his perspective as a native of a country, but also shows his experiences as a tourist and a traveler during his two years in America, which gave him enough time to compare the two clashing cultures, the Italian and the American, from which he describes, through othering and stereotyping, his experiences and opinions upon traveling through the different cities in the United States. Calvino also portrays his experiences as a traveler in France and how, even though he spent many years in Paris, where he got married and even procreated, it never felt like it was his home.

#13 Group Reflection (Sunshine Travelers)

I can say that the Sunshine Travelers is the best group! We were always organized and prepared for what we had to present or discuss in class and we all were always eager to do the work that was required in order to present any of the themes discussed that day or those that were assigned for us to present. The best group activity was the one for Puerto Rico's Perspective since we all are Puerto Rican's but share very different ideas on how Puerto Rico is viewed by us and by others. This activity was a nice head start for the group because not only was it a good theme for group discussion but also it brought us together since even though we didn't share the same ideas, they all came from the same place, from undergraduate students living in Puerto Rico.

In general, my opinion of the groups is a very positive one because we sometimes tend to take our classes and leave without even seeing who was seated next to you for a whole semester, and being in a group "forces" you to see your classmates in a different perspective from what you would see them by only taking the class without saying anything to each other. This may also influence our internal/external journeys because we find out that even though their perspectives are different we all share the same internal journey, the need to graduate and become something in a near future, which is sometimes hampered by our external journey, The University of Puerto Rico Río Piedras Campus. To conclude I may say that after being in a group, that was chosen by my professor, made up of other classmates whom I'd never before talked to, my perspective changed because it is not the same to pass by a class without talking to anyone than sharing your ideas and thoughts, related and unrelated to the class themes, with other classmates!

#12 Old San Juan as a Tourist/Traveler

It was a Sunday morning when I decided to go for the tourist/traveler role on the Old San Juan in Puerto Rico. There are some places and activities in this tourist zone that are a must do if you are here for your first time. Among these is El Morro, which is on the top of the main attractions in Old San Juan; followed by many other things of which I had the opportunity to experience from another perspective than the one I am used to being treated with. ElMorro is the street name given to the Castillo de San Felipe, and though many people tend to think of it as a fort it was actually built to serve as a castle but confused with a fort by the U.S. government. Families now come to the grounds leading to the entrance to fly kites or even enjoy a nice picnic under the shinning sun. 

Even though my adventure started in the morning the sun was not shy at all and was showing all its glory, due to this I had to indulge in one of the most tempting parts of my day, a Piragua, a shaved ice treat made with your favorite flavor, that came perfectly with the show off the sun was making. This is a must try in Old San Juan and there is a Piragüero (name given to the man who creates the shaved ice) in all the highly visited corners in Old San Juan. This was the first part of my adventure and I can say that my perspective changed a bit given the fact that I spoke in strict English and instead of just telling him the flavor I had in mind (tamarind, a must try!) I went ahead and asked the flavor he recommended, and the best seller. He answered that the one he recommends was coconut, which I tried and was a bit disappointed, and the best seller was Strawberry. I continued experimenting and asked him that after I went to El Morro what place would he recommend for a late breakfast/early lunch, he pointed out a bakery/pizzeria that was about three to four blocks away from his kiosk, La Tortuga. 

Piragua Kiosk from which I also bought platanutres, plantain chips made with plantains from the island.

I kept his advice in mind and went ahead to El Morro, but before that I had to ask a Puerto Rican, to please take a picture of me, my piragua, and the amazing view of the ground of El Morro. This was my second interaction and I can say it was a pleasant one since he was nice enough to not only take a picture but I also asked him where to eat, so I can have a second opinion, and he answered that he’s not from Old San Juan, and that he and his family are on their way to look for a nice place to have lunch, making me feel a bit in group since we, the traveler and the Puerto Rican, were both looking for a place to eat. 

A fun fact about El Morro is the fact that in the extensive grounds that lead you to its entrance (everything that's green behind me) was used by the U.S. Navy to build a golf club for its officer’s entertainment.

El Morro right behind me!

I continued to El Morro and asked a couple of tourists to take a picture with a nice background. After this I went to La Tortuga, and was greeted by the waiter in Spanish, but I quickly answered “Hi, do I seat on any table I want” and I felt the othering she gave me since she even changed her tone from a rushed one in Spanish to a more attentive and passive one in English, she even explained what each sandwich was made of, something I knew she wouldn’t have explained in Spanish. 

Met new people while eating!

Since my experiment was being held solo, I took this advantage and across from where I was eating, I saw a twenty-something year old guy that went in to eat breakfast (also solo) and left his surfboard near the entrance, I later asked him if there was a surfer’s beach in Old San (I know there is one but there had to be something that started the conversation). He answered that in fact there is one and he went on explaining where it was in vivid detail. I saw his enthusiasm and imagined the question he in fact made a couple of minutes after we started talking “Do you surf?” I said that I’ve tried it a couple of times but that I’m not a pro at it. 

San Juan Cemetery

He invited me to the beach in Old San Juan, located next to the Cemetery, where he explained most of the famous Puerto Rican’s were buried there, and it was also very close to a not-so-good place in Old San Juan, La Perla, a neighborhood with a very bad reputation of drugs and criminality. This interaction influenced my internal journey since I had heard of the beach in La Perla, but I had never surfed there, something I would soon have overcome, even though it is said to have good waves, due to the external journey I hadn’t overcome which involved the fear of it being next to a bad neighborhood. Before we left La Tortuga I asked the waiter to take a picture of us and after he invited to take me to the beach I broke character and told him I was doing a project and I was actually Puerto Rican, just in case he got tired of talking about the island and started questioning my false identity as a traveler/tourist for a day.

View of the Cemetery and of the surfer's beach

Extra Credit: Dr. Adam Riess

I was recently given the opportunity to hear the insights from Dr. Adam Riess, about the fact that “The Universe looks static…but it’s not!” We were introduced by the fact that the universe is not only expanding, as we all knew was happening, but that it is doing it more rapidly than before, and this may be due to the components of the dark energy Dr. Riess talks about.

"The Universe looks static...but it's not!"

Dr. Riess also talked about the erroneous number that was given to the Earth’s age of 2.2 billion years, when as he states, there are things on Earth that date older than 2.2 billion years. This date was later established to be a lot more different than the mentioned number, since as he mentioned there are species that date to have lived more than 2.2 billion years ago. This example was given by him due to the fact that while making his research he encountered the fact that something that was stated by Einstein, was wrong, and he and his team were about to uncover the real answer.

During the conference we were explained the way in which this expansion is measured using a sound mechanism for the distance of the galaxies and a formula for velocity for the measure of how far the galaxies have moved.  Another fact brought up by Dr. Riess is the way in which they found out if the Universe was accelerating was by placing a telescope in an assigned position and taking a picture, some time later they looked at the same position and took a picture and as they compared all the pictures they took through time, they were encountered with the fact that new supernovae appeared in a surprisingly increased rate revealing an accelerating Universe.

Publications by Dr. Adam Riess: http://www.stsci.edu/~ariess/Publications.htm

Extra Credit: Dr. James Penner

As I was suggested to see the conference on Dr. James Penner’s book Timothy Leary: The Harvard Years, it never passed through my mind the fact that the main theme of his book was such a controversial one as psychedelic drugs is for the society. I was very much impressed by the fact that an English Professor from the Río Piedras Campus of the UPR wrote about such a controversial theme that may not seem to be suitable for college and invited his and other students to accompany him in his conference.

From the many insights I got from the conference I can say that the one that impacted me the most was the use that is currently given to LSD and the comparison with what it was used before, during Timothy Leary’s years, around the 1960’s. Dr. Penner stated that Timothy Leary’s experiences with these psychedelic drugs, such as LSD, was before these drugs went underground. Nowadays LSD is mostly common with the “young crowd” and it may be a problem because most of these drugs are not made in the most adequate places, since you may end up buying a drug, such as LSD, that could’ve easily been made by a twenty-something year old in his mom’s kitchen. Another surprising insight I got from Dr. Penner’s conference was the fact that LSD is currently being used to treat many addictions and mental diseases, such as depression, and is having a positive effect on the patients its been given to. An example of this so called success, is given by Dr. Penner when he talked about nicotine addiction and the fact that of the patients that have been treated with psychedelic drugs, 7% of them gave it up, this was by a sort of epiphany they had as a result of the psychedelic drugs in which they didn’t want to smoke more.

If given the chance to vote in favor of the psychedelic drugs being used as a treatment of other diseases, I would have to vote in favor since some of these drugs, as are the magic mushrooms Dr. Penner talks about, come from nature, they are not lab derived, as are most of the drugs used to treat many diseases. There’s also the case of a terminal cancer patient whom is supposed to be left to die, but if given the psychedelic drugs, as Dr. Penner says, the patient tends to accept more his or her fate and ends up having a more acceptable death.

#11 The Rum Diary

As I finished watching The Rum Diary I could’ve mentioned a couple of things that caught my attention. From these things I can choose the one that captivated more my attention and it’s the compare and contrast given to Puerto Rico by the tourist/traveler perspective portrayed in the movie. A couple of weeks before, we were assigned to study the perspective a person gets from the Internet about Puerto Rico in the current year, 2014. Of all the perspectives I heard from my classmates the ones that I could relate most to the movie were the idea researchers get from the news articles that talk about the island and the fact that they’re all related to either corruption in politics or high criminality. Now a days, it is clearly not as dangerous, as it is seen in the movie, to go outside the tourist areas if you don’t know the island well enough but there could still be a chance that, even in the tourist areas, you may even get robbed in a street or even followed by strangers with the intent of hijacking your car, like our Professor told us happened to her. In the current years we have been also exposed to the types of corruption that is seen in the movie, but they may have a twist on what happened in the movie with the land that was wanted by the investors. Also the fact that the in the movie the media was manipulated to publish another version of the story is seen nowadays in the political campaigns the major parties or Puerto Rico have.

There are many more examples on how, I may also call it othering, affects the tourist, since an American is treated differently by the locals when they are visiting the island. This may be because of the history between Puerto Rico and the United States, which is in part portrayed throughout the entire movie, The Rum Diary. A part related to the tourist/traveler perspective the movie portrays is when we are exposed to a married couple of Americans that are interviewed at a bowling alley and all they have to say about the good things in the Island are the Duty Free shopping or the casinos they go to spend more money. In another question they are asked about what happens outside the areas they normally visit, they respond in such a way that they seem to display a scary attitude since their response is that outside from where they go it is unsafe, due to the criminality of the native Puerto Ricans. This is still something that is not only seen in the movie but it is also seen today, as in the article posted below in which the investor wanted to make an image of Puerto Rico that wasn't the real one, since the real one was not as good as what they needed it to be. 

In the following link, titled A Ritz Ups the Ante in Puerto Rico, there is a clear example of how the Media or the business sector wants to change the image that Puerto Rico has on the world as it says: “It is in a corner of the Caribbean that for decades has been more associated with grit than glamour.”

Link to article

#10 Jim Cooper's Down on the Island

As I read through the two chapters, Teaching and Helping, from Down on the Island by Jim Cooper my attention was mainly caught by the fact that it was a professor who didn’t understand Spanish and is moving to a place in which he will mainly teach native people in times in when as he mentions, neither the teachers in 1954 nor 20 percent of the Puerto Ricans on 1993 could speak English. We see through the chapters that Cooper shows us his internal and external journeys, since he mainly explains his adventures while teaching in a place full of students he most certainly wasn’t used to and also narrates about the things that happened to him while helping across the island. An internal journey Cooper goes through is the fact that he has to deal with a new perspective of seeing things since he is not only living in a new place, but also he doesn’t know how to communicate in the language spoken by the natives of his new adventure. If we go ahead and look for an external journey that is directly related to the change of location Cooper has, we can take the part I which not only is he exposed to a gift given by his students as the year ended, surprisingly after he passed even the worst student with a C, but Cooper is also exposed to having the different teachers have a sort of rivalry feeling as they compared the gifts given to them by the students, Coopers says that he noted this in his diary as a “mercenary note”.

While teaching in Mayaguez, Cooper gives us an example of othering as he talks about his impressions upon seeing the departmental tests given to the students the year before and his comparison of the test, which consisted of relatively easy questions to a test, since he says he would have expected these questions in a freshman English class in the United States. Through the helping phase, Cooper narrates in such a way in which we can see a clear example of othering when he uses, once again, the United States vs. Puerto Rico factor to emphasize on the ways in which a Puerto Rican or American student would behave during a test. He mentions that a Puerto Rican student would most probably let his neighbor look at his test since he wants to help him get a good grade and Cooper mentions that, on the opposite side, an American student would hide his paper since for him he is the only one interested in getting a good grade without lending a hand since he thinks of the neighbor as a rival, not a as person in need of help, as a Puerto Rican thinks of him.

#9 Journey Journal - First Thoughts

As the first week went by, my mind wasn’t really used to writing for 10 minutes nonstop, but as the days passed I got used to doing the exercise. It wasn’t until the 6^th or 7^th entry that my mind stopped thinking and just poured all that came to me in those ten minutes of, I may say, relaxation. Never before had I done any sort of activity similar to this one, in which I took ten minutes from my day to just sit down and write about what was going through my mind, which is most certainly what’s going on in my life.

It was a bit strange for me to write personal things in a place in which I had to hand in to my professor when I finished my 40 entries. Once I got over the fact that my professor wasn’t going to read it (I hoped so), I even included this crazy thought I had in some of the entries, I got more comfortable with the idea of the exercise, which was based on first thoughts.

The objectives of the activity were set since the first entry:

·    Keep your hands moving

·    Don’t cross out

·    Don’t worry about spelling, grammar or punctuation

·    Don’t think. Don’t get logical.

·    Go for the jugular

From the objectives mentioned above I can say that I followed each and every one, especially the one that incites us to go for the jugular. Once I got over the fact that nobody would read my entries my mind made sure to use the ten minutes to pour out the things that were causing me some troubles and sort of resolved them for me through the course of the minutes left once I wrote them in the journal. I am pretty sure once I get my Journey Journal back I will finish the few pages left of it and continue the exercise, at least a couple of times a week. This is because once I finished writing I felt as if the things I wrote might one day help me or even make me remember what was going on in my life that exact day, and probably help me if I were going through the same problems as those days.  The Life Compasses had a similar effect because if I look back at them I can see how I felt those days in various factors: spiritually, emotionally, mentally and physically, and the causes of why I felt that way. In conclusion, this activity served as an effective way of permanently recording my internal journey, full of thoughts, problems and solutions, for future consideration.

#8 Remembering Dreams

As I made sure to do the right things in order to successfully remember my dreams once I woke up, I started by following one of the comments from my Professor’s blog in which it suggested to put my notebook and pen under my alarm clock, so I did it. Once I woke up, I took my phone, which is my alarm clock, turned it off and immediately started writing about what I could remember. Once I started writing, I remembered only some details about my dreams, like the place I was or the people I was with while dreaming, but I didn’t remember most of my dreams. As I wrote about the things I could remember, my mind started pouring out all the details that I dreamed about and I quickly could remember many, if not all, of the details from my dreams, including other dreams I had the same night, which I started writing down as soon as I remembered the detail from the other dreams I had the same night, and went back to them when I finished writing about the dream I was currently remembering.

I can say this activity had an impact on me because I usually don’t remember all my dreams, and by doing this exercise it made me remember things that normally I don’t remember from my dreams. This also impacted me because once I know what I dream about, I can relate it to the things that are happening to me at the moment, and I found out that they’re HUGELY RELATED! They are not only related, but also they may seem as to have some solutions to the problems or the dilemmas I am having this current week and if I wouldn’t have wrote about them maybe I wouldn’t remember my mind had set out the solutions to them already.

            Something not completely related to the activity, but that I often do, is the fact that when I dream of something really odd I tend to look for the symbolism behind it through the internet or from a book I have at home called “The Book of Dreams” which has many kinds of meanings to the things you dream about. For example the other day I dreamt about being stuck in an elevator between floors, I could get out but the elevator was still stuck. I looked for the meaning of this and it said: “To dream that the elevator is out of order or that it is not letting you off symbolizes that your emotions have gotten out of control.” And as a matter of fact, this week my emotions have been REALLY OUT OF CONTROL!

Here is the link from where I mostly get the symbolisms in my dreams on the Internet: http://www.dreammoods.com/dreamdictionary/

#7 A Small Place - Kincaid's Identity on Ch. 1 & 2

Upon reading the first two chapters from A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid, I can say that even though Kincaid was born and partly raised in Antigua, she does not consider her identity to be Antiguan. This is partly because of the tone that she portrays throughout the first two chapters in which she comments on Antigua’s past and present, seen through the eyes of a tourist and through her own eyes, a past resident of Antigua. Kincaid talks about the things that happened to Antigua that led it to be what it is now, she uses the example of the Barclays Brothers and how they went from being successful slave traders to becoming rich and powerful bankers, and explains the feeling of retribution she gets whenever she thinks about the bad deeds and bad thoughts that the Barclay Brothers and many others, had put upon the Antiguans while being slave traders or bankers. 

Throughout the second chapter, Kincaid not only talks about the fact that the island was for some time part of England but also, about the rich English men that came to Antigua. She explains to us that not even the fact that the English had more money than the Antiguans, made them better people than the Antiguans. I say this mainly because even though the island was part of England none of the residents, as said by Kincaid, felt inferior. It was actually the other way around, the Antiguans felt superior, since they were better behaved and full of grace, and the English, says Kincaid, were badly behaved and empty of grace, even though after saying this she adds that she now knows that good behavioris the posture of the weak, of children, this phrase or fragment really got to me.

In her second chapter, it seems as if Kincaid is letting us know that she doesn’t consider herself part of any land, that she has no identity, no motherland. The author says that she feels as one of those many people that were made orphans by the English with:

 “no motherland, no fatherland, no gods, no mounds of earth for holy ground, no excess of love which might lead to the things that excess of love sometimes brings, and worst and most painful of all no tongue.”

This can be interpreted as a sense of rebellion against the English since they left her with the language with which she is writing this book, English, but also as a rebellion to the Antiguans who supported and kept doing throughout the years the types of activities the English did to make Kincaid feel neither English nor Antiguan.

#6 A Small Place - Personal Reaction on Ch. 1 & 2

Before starting to read the book I chose to look for some background information about the author, Jamaica Kincaid. From the many interesting accomplishments she’s made throughout her life, the most memorable and most related to the book is the fact that even though she was born in Antigua, she decided to change her name from Elaine Potter Richardson to Jamaica Kincaid, partly so that the people of Antigua wouldn't know she was writing. I find this interesting given the fact that on the first two chapters of a “A Small Place”, Kincaid speaks so cynically about Antigua, and explains everything with detail, even though she now lives and teaches in Vermont, USA.

The perspective Kincaid writes about in the book, related to the ideas you get when you visit a place that you’ve never before seen, are true at least for me. When we arrive to any place in the world that we paid some of our hard earned money and we see that the place is worse than where you live, we tend to start pointing out the things that are wrong or out of place and we don’t look at the “why” and “how” that got to be how it is. An example of this is seen when Kincaid talks about how you, a tourist, react to the fact that the driver that will take you from the airport to the hotel you chose, has a better car than the one you have back at home, just by being a taxi driver. She also says that what you don’t ask yourself is that if besides the nice car, does the driver have a nice house to go after his shift, or does he, as it happens to be, goes to a house that is far beneath the status of the car. This example can also go the other way around in which we go, for example, to Orlando and we see all these sophisticated highways and improvements and we tend to ask ourselves, how it would be like if we had that back in Puerto Rico, or we say how good is this compared to the rubbish we have in the island. This reaction may be related to the identity each and everyone has, since we are comparing the identity of the country we are visiting and comparing it to our own identity from whichever country we consider ourselves to be.

Below is the link from where I found the interesting facts about Kincaid's life! Enjoy.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/arts/features/womenwriters/kincaid_life.shtml

#5 Identity - Peter Roberts (Sense of Home)

            No matter what part of the world you are currently in, the word identity may have a similar definition. Based on what Peter Roberts writes about, my identity is completely Puerto Rican; and no matter what part of the world I am it will not change, for the time being. I feel as if my sense of home is where I’ve grown up and still live in, which could be said is my habitat. If I were to define my sense of home it would be mainly based on the place I am more attached to emotionally and physically and by where my heart is, as Roberts says. I am more attached to Puerto Rico because most of my good memories come from spending time in the island with family and friends and by visiting places that are two-hour drive or less away from my house.

My main language is Spanish and I can also speak fluent English but no matter where you are in the world my Spanish and my English will differ from everyone else’s, creating a sense of identity. This barrier of languages is what Roberts says that as a factor of place, it distinguishes an outsider form an insider through accent, idiom, structure and word, he also mentions that identity may come from the sense of sameness we tend to build up. I may relate to this given the fact that no matter what are the differences between Puerto Ricans, we all share some similar characteristics that make us relate to one another no matter where we go, it is these similarities that make people from outside the island see Puerto Rico in a way that makes them generalize. It can be generalized through crime, past events in politics or many other factors. These characteristics may come from our food, our festivities, or even from the expressions we make as we speak Spanish or English or maybe any other language that we propose ourselves to learn. In my case I hope one day to learn to speak fluent Portuguese given the fact that one of the countries that may change the sense of home I have for Puerto Rico could be Portugal.  I say it may change the sense of home I have because as I mentioned already my sense of home is the place I am more attached to, and who knows if I could eventually get attached to another country if given the opportunity to live for a couple of years in Portugal for example.

Not only I say that my sense of home can change, but also I want to mention that my cultural identity will remain the same even though I change my residence. This is because as Roberts mentions, cultural identity results from a coalescence over time of highly variable factors, in other words even though my sense of home may change my cultural identity will not because it is something that has been built up over time and it involves allot more factors than sense of home does in determining a possible new identity other than being Puerto Rican.

#4 Dead Poets Society - Neil & Mr. Keating

We can say that of the two characters in Dead Poet’s Society who were psychologically analyzed the most, one of them was Neil. Throughout the first scenes we see that Neil has some personal issues with his father and the things he has planned for him. His external journey can be said to be the fact that his father has his whole life planned for him, he wants him to finish high school, go to Harvard, and last but not least finish Medical School, and has never even asked Neil if that’s what he wants.

When Neil hears this his only response to his father was: “That’s almost ten more years”. I understand his response to his father because when you have certain internal journeys of your own interests in life, like acting was for Neil, having to spend ten of your most precious years doing something that you don’t want to be doing can be really tough because you will always know that you could have done more. These interests Neil has acquired may be considered part of his internal journey in finding his true identity, an identity that is not based on his father’s choices, which is considered his external journey.

If we take the second of the most psychologically analyzed characters, we end up with Mr. Keating, who has an external journey with the school’s faculty and the students’ parents. Mr. Keating has to deal with the fact that he is teaching at an all male school in which most of the faculty consists of older men that have certain methods which they consider to be the correct ones but Mr. Keating has other unorthodox teaching methods. The external journey Keating has with the students’ parents is the fact that along with his unorthodox teaching methods he is inciting the kids to think outside the box their parents have assembled for them. An example for this is Neil’s case, in which he incites him on achieving his dream of acting and on telling his father what he really thinks he should do in life. The advice that Keating gives Neil about confronting his father and telling him the things he really wants to do in life may be Keating’s internal journey given the fact that it is because of his advice that Neil doesn’t have the guts to confront his father but instead decides to use his father’s gun to kill himself, putting Mr. Keating in a tight spot because of what he has put on the children’s mind since he first told them to seize the day.

#3 Identity (About Me)

If I start writing about myself it would be best to include my name, Gerardo Alberto Ortiz Cámara, before writing about any other aspect of my life. Nothing noteworthy comes out from my first name; but when we get to my second name, it can tell you how my late grandfather was called. Now that a family member is on the line, I can say that I come from a family in which nothing was found easily, but instead all was brought upon with great effort and sacrifice. Everything my family currently is, was brought upon by themselves. My position in my immediate family is the youngest, following a 9 year older brother, making me more like an only child than the youngest. In my house, every idea or decision that we made was never considered bad, instead it was considered a good idea or a not so good one from which we learned for ourselves why it would never be a good decision. This is mainly what created me, the fact that when you get home and share your day with your parents, you know there will never be a misjudgment but instead there will always be a positive comment with a hint of sarcasm but nothing more. Besides this, something that created me could be the friendships I had and the ones I still have. I once read that you tend to acquire something from the 5 people that surround you the most, and this I can say is true. Not the fact that there are five people, but the fact that the few people I surrounded myself with were the main reason I chose what I chose, good or bad.

The script I was born into helped me choose the path I wanted to follow in life, so I can say that I don’t want to differ from it since it was chosen by my interests and experiences, brought by the good or not so good decisions I made. In a near future I see myself walking through freezing hallways wearing a white lab coat that has a tag in which after my name says, “M.D.” I can’t say that wearing the coat has been my dream because it has more elements of nightmares than it has of dreams, but instead it could be considered as a challenge I proposed to myself and will soon complete.

#2 Running Brave Post-Movie Reflection

If you happen to overcome an external and internal journey in order to accomplish something you had proposed to yourself you may be called Billy Mills. If you look at it this way it may seem as if his journeys were somewhat easy, but in fact it was the complete opposite. In his internal journeys throughout the movie he had to fight alongside his external journeys in terms of class and racial differences. Both these issues are mainly related to the fact that he is native of an Indian reservation. This is portrayed in the scene in which he is treated as a criminal/animal by the security guard of the university. The guard is completely against the fact that Mills is a student enrolled at the university since he is seen peeking at nighttime in front of the girls’ dorm. The guard calls him depictive names that incite a hint of racism since he calls Mills, “chief”, something that is offensive due to the fact that in the Indian Reservation Mills was born there's actually a Chief whom Mills is very fond of. Mills is seen outside the dorm after he catches a glance of the girl that has been so nice to him and who also contributes to both his internal and external journey. She contributes to his internal journey since she showed him that there is nothing wrong with some of the people that surround him outside the reservation, a place he’s spent most if not all of his life at. She also contributes in making Mills go back to town and keep improving for the race she knows he can win. As we talk about the external journey Mills experienced about going back home and the reaction of the people that cared about him, another group of people that influenced him in going back were the fans and followers Mills had whom he never knew existed. The most significant person portrayed in the movie is the kid that takes out a newspaper article all wrinkled from his pocket and shows Mills that the article is about him and how proud he is to meet the guy in the article. This event probably made Mills realize that there are lots of people that are expecting more from him, we can say they may have influenced in his external journey of satisfying everyone’s expectations. It is seen throughout the movie that Mills is not only influenced by the people that surround him but also by his own mind, his internal journey. For example, many people tell him that he can do more for himself if he goes back to town, contributing to his external journey, but it is not until he sees with his own eyes how Frank ends up after having the same opportunity as he did that Mills decides to return and compete for his gold medal. 

#1 Running Brave Pre-Movie Reflection

Billy Mills went through both an internal and an external journey in order to overcome his adversities and succeed in what he had proposed to himself. The first external journey Mills experienced was the fact that he was a member of an Indian reserve where nobody before him had gotten a scholarship or even went to college, this is something that puts everyone’s eyes on you and makes you feel pressured by the need to succeed. This makes it both an external and internal journey because it is something that was brought by the society but it has to be overcome only by him. Another important external journey Mills went through was the fact that when he got to college he was only used to life in the reserve, where there are customs typical to the Indians, and the fact that the people that surrounded him at college had none of these customs could've been really shocking to him. An example of this is be the fact that he was not used to running on tracks, instead he ran around the reserve in an open space surrounded by nature. The external journey of the differences in classes or customs can be also an internal journey given the fact that Mills cannot let this superiority get to him because it can affect his outcome in the races and even in his grades. A very important internal journey Mills experienced was the fact that the first days of practice his coach tells him to forget humility and start thinking in terms of competition, he has to start thinking on winning the races instead of letting others win thinking its alright, this was challenging to him because he brought with him from the reserve a large sense of humility towards others, something that the coach apparently didn’t believe in. The outcome of his winning race happened that way mainly because of the decisions he made, as it says in the video about Mill's winning race in which he narrated thee fact that he had to remove two whole minutes from his final time in order to win and he did this by taking less time finishing each lap. Since there were a total of 25 laps he just had to improve 2 seconds per lap and he would then probably win the race. The fact that he won the race shows a lot of perseverance from Mills given the background he had and also reflects that he made good decisions.