The FIinale

All the writing I’ve done has been for my English class at college. It has been a different experience writing something for the whole world to see. I really liked doing it because it was a way to get something that bothered you off your chest. I feel my writing is good. I wrote about a good variety of things, definitely got me to think clearly after I wrote it. Maybe, but all in all I had a lot of fun writing about the free topics and letting my mind wonder about things as I spoke. I really liked the one blog I talked about if everyone knew what the other was thinking by body language. Something like that really is fun to think about what would happen if something small were to be changed. I didn’t like how I would get stuck on writing for a blog and get stuck. I would eventually just repeat everything, not the smartest but, what are you going to do when you’re stuck? Just keep swimming (Finding Nemo quote from Dory). But I don’t know if I’ll keep writing or if I’ll just stop and forget about it. Blogs seem like a fun way to just let your mind wonder in the hopes someone out there would read it and care enough about it. I’m glad I was exposed to something like this in college and had the chance to explore with the topics my teacher gave to me. It was a bit of a hassle if I almost forgot to do one. Usually Sunday afternoon I’ll be like “oh snap! I almost forgot about the blog for English class I need to write”. In the end I just look at the finished blog and say, “yup that’s all I got to say about that” (Forest Gump).

expertise

Sometimes I feel I’m ok in everything, not amazing in one. I can run average, I draw because I love to and I’m not amazing (although I wish I was). One thing I feel I can be or will be an expert in is learning the anatomy and physiology of the human body. I absolutely love the human body. It is by far the most amazing, complex, and beautiful thing ever created. I know so much about it, not every little detail about it, but I know a lot of facts, structures, and processes of how the body works. I have books, posters, and I’ve taken classes about the body. In high school my anatomy teacher had me fall in love with learning more about the human body. I thought it was going to be a hard class, to learn so much detail about the human body, I was scared. But he made it the best experience I’ve ever had in high school. With learning about the human body, it gets me to draw better. I’m amazed at how flowing the body looks how everything connects perfectly and flows amazingly. Hopefully in a couple of years, I’ll become a nurse and get to work with the human body every day. I would love nothing more than to pursue nursing and not only help people, but learn about the human body and get up close. I went the body world’s exhibit and that just blew my mind away. That exhibit made me appreciate the body even more than I do now. Since I was little, I’ve loved the human body, it all started out with mummies and from there it just expanded to the human body. I know I’ve mentioned this before, but I’ll say it again. When I pass away ( can’t believe I’m talking about death and I’m only 19) I want to donate my body to body world’s and show the world what lies beneath their skins.

Emotions and college

Emotions tend to be the most annoying thing in the world sometimes. I’m friends with a guy on my floor and in the beginning of the year; we hung out and spent a lot of time together as friends. It was fun just chilling, then feelings started to emerge. Of course, how else are you suppose to feel when you spend almost every day with this one person who’s your good friend and just makes you laugh all the time (and not to mention how cute he his). My roommate would joke around and say (and this was said last semester so in maybe November) by mid next semester that he and I would be dating. I just laughed and said no way. Funny thing is, in one week we spent almost every meal together, it was fun because he made me laugh, even though he is really quiet. Some weekends when his roommate would head for home, he would ask me if I wanted to have a sleepover and just bunk in his roommate’s bed I was like why not? Nothing was going to happen because he knew I had a boyfriend and I can tell he didn’t want to ruin that. Pulse there were separate beds. Funny part was I woke up at nine and he didn’t wake up till eleven. It was pretty chill actually. Eventually people on our floor would ask, are we dating yet, or are we together yet. It was a bit awkward because, well I guess we didn’t see each other dating. I have a boyfriend back in my home town. We’ve been dating for about 19 months already. I love him to death, I just don’t like being far away from him and not seeing him for an extended period of time. And when you have a really awesome guy friend here that you spend a lot of time with, it gets confusing. I felt like I’ve gotten nudges that he likes me but I keep on saying “no I will not like him back” in the affection way and i keep telling myself that he doesn't like me that way. I care for him all the time because friends care for each other. The sucky part is that some nights when I’ve heard that he hung out with other people and some girls were in the group, I got a bit jealous. Really, really stupid reason to get jealous. I guess because of that I’m afraid I won’t just get to hang with him anymore. Then I just keep telling myself, that nothing will ever happen, that he is just a really good friend, and that I have a loving boyfriend, who I sometimes get to see. But if I wasn’t dating my boyfriend and we split before college, then I met this guy on my floor, and he asked me to date him, I probably would. Does that make me a bad person?

ENG 101 at ISU

So far in ENG, I feel it’s really different from other English classes I’ve taken. Obviously because this is college, it’s completely different from high school. It’s just when I think of English I think of long essays, reading assignments that we have like fifteen questions to answer in the end. Plus those lovely tests about books and grammar. It’s definitely not what I expected it to be. I’m not saying it’s easier, but I feel there is a lot less to do compare to high school English. Plus all the reading that isn’t assigned is quiet nice. I remember in my English class we wouldn’t have so many peer reviews, we ourselves were our peer review, so I like how we have others look over our work. It really helps on what needs to be fixed to make the paper better. In high school we would only get, what felt like, a couple of days until a huge research paper is due. Here it feels more spaced out and more time is given. I really like the use of the computers to save all the work, plus with the way we are saving our work, it helps me title my future work so it’s easier to find. One thing I do want to learn a bit about is the different types of papers and their different set ups. I always get stuck on how to set up a good paper, or what to choose to tell my audience. When I get a topic I want to tell everyone about everything about the topic but need to pick out only the important details. How do you choose what you think is important compared to what your audience thinks is important. I guess that’s the hard part of English, getting the audience involved and interested. That’s another thing, different techniques used to get the audience wanting to read more and more of a research paper, or informative paper.

Body language

So in bio of last week, we started to learn more about behavior and body language. I always knew about it but never really payed attention to it because every little movement could mean something so I was just like, ok this is cool but it’s so nitpicky. But now I wish I knew more about it, so I can somewhat read people better. I know my boyfriend is really into this stuff and he can read me like a book, and I just know what he’s thinking because I just know how he acts. I looked over it all and I was like wow that means that, and we humans just do it out of free will. We subconsciously think of this stuff, and our body just acts it out without us even knowing it. It’s a bit creepy, but really awesome to think about. If you think about it, our bodies already do so much for us automatically, and now it’s even showing our emotional physically. Thank God a lot of people may not know too much detail about body language or else, life would just be no fun, if you think about it. If everyone knew body language signs, then everyone could read each other, there would be no secret admirers, or no need for court actually, because you would be able to tell if someone did the crime or not. Ok maybe not that dramatic, but life would just be a full on open book, with everyone’s emotions handed to one another. Also, if we all did know more about body language, I mean to every last little detail, we would have much better liars too. That would be chaotic, if everyone was amazing at lying then our world would be a lie. Interesting to see how one topic, if known a lot, could possible mess up our world.

Rec. Volley ball

One event I went to recently is my rec. teams’ volleyball game. Me and a couple of friends on my floor made a volleyball team and play every Thursday and Sunday. We named our team, team hand-hug. It’s an inside joke we have and we even got jerseys as well, which look awesome. I have to admit we aren’t the best team because we keep on losing games, but we have a blast playing in the game. Before our game, we would either go to our school’s foot court and get some food together, or go out to a nearby restaurant and just hang with each other. Somehow we always end up getting to the courts a half hour before the game starts, but it gives time to warm up and just goof around before we start to play. When we do play, it’s just a bunch of laughs all around. There are times where the ball would go over with the most ridiculous acts ever. This one time we tipped the ball, tipping is just when you hit the volley ball with the tips of your fingers, all three times and it got over. I remember there were plays where we just kept laughing while we played. Definitely the best stress reliever ever especially a night before classes the next day. Every time after the game we always head back, shower off, and watch Burn Notice, a T.V. show that has now gotten everyone on our team addicted to the show, and play an old school game called Phantesy Star Online with three of my team mates. It’s a lot of fun being with my floor-mates and making a volley ball team just for fun and socializing and not being all serious about it.

Video game similarities

So this past weekend, my friend got a new game that came out called Dante’s Inferno. It is a great game and great poem too. I really liked how creative the game got and how they depicted hell and each circle. Basically for anyone who hasn’t played the game, Dante committed sins and lost his loved one, Beatrice, to hell and he’s going after her. Another game I love is a trilogy set, God of War trilogy (even though the third one hasn’t come out yet). Kratos has as well committed a huge sin (which I’m not giving away to those who haven’t played the game) and his goal is to be forgiven for it. The game design from Dante’s Inferno was created by the same game designer of the God of War trilogy. I laughed a little because of how similar the two characters are in the game. Through appearance, they pretty much are the same. Both Dante, from Dante’s Inferno, and Kratos, from the God of War trilogy, have symbols on their bodies that cannot be removed and both are red. The fighting style is a lot the same as well; just basic button mashing and you’ll get through the game. Both characters even have weapons taken from God like figures. Dante’s weapon is Death’s scythe that (spoiler) he got from killing Death (ironic right?). Kratos’s weapon is called the blades of Athena that he got. Both character’s go on ridiculous adventures regardless of their own specific goals. The game does have its differences and its own creativity that I love. Sadly I don’t own either of the games, but my boyfriend first got me into God of War and then when Dante’s Inferno was getting ready to be released, he and I both couldn’t wait.


These two links are the main characters from the two games. The first one is Dante from Dante’s Inferno and the second is Kratos from God of War. It just shows how similar their character design looks.


http://media.giantbomb.com/uploads/1/14030/899744-screen009_super.jpg
http://fc06.deviantart.net/fs45/f/2009/110/a/b/Kratos___God_Of_War_by_Ninjatic.jpg

Memories of Books

Wow, trying to think of a children’s book that I loved to read when I was young. Honestly, I just looked at the pictures a lot and talked for the characters instead of reading the dialogue. If I had to remember one book as a child is was the book, The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstone. As for my favorite book today, I’m not really all that sure. I guess I have to say Twilight saga, just because it was just a love story that was sweet to read. I guess it was because of the forbidden love that made it the more exciting and passionate to read. One book that I haven’t read or even own, is a book called Things that can Kill you. I’m not sure who the author is, but I found it at a store on the corner or Adam’s and Michigan Av. in Chicago. It was a cute store right by the art museum. When I looked through it, it had pages and pages of everyday diseases and everyday things that can kill people. Sounds bad, but it’s really interesting and amazing to read. It had data about how painful the object or disease is, the time it took to kill someone, how deadly it is, information on the diseases, how common it is in America and famous people who died from it. I seriously smiled when I picked it up because this is definitely the book for me. As bad as that sounds, I’m really interested in things like that. I told myself the next time I go back to Chicago, I’m going to find that book and buy it as a gift for myself. I can’t wait.

About me

So, I’m here at Illinois State University’s Preview program, and we are all in this big group talking about ourselves. We are all going around in a circle, taking turns explaining where we are from, what we like to do, favorite foods and more! Oh great, here goes my turn. “Hey!” I say with a nervous voice, “My name is Cynthia. I was born half-Chinese thanks to Mama and half- German thanks to Dad. I was born and raised about 20 minutes from Naperville, Illinois, and I moved to Naperville after 2nd grade. My house isn’t nearly as cool as Spongebob’s house. I’m a big fan of the colors black and purple. My favorite foods are cheeseburgers and dumplings- they are the best! Oh, and I love drawing, watching and reading anime, running, listening to music, and playing the piano. “Onomatopoeia” is the best word ever. I don’t know why I love the word, but it is just a fun word to say. I think that it’s awesome because it means a word that imitates a sound. For example, “moo” is the sound that a cow makes. The word “moo” is onomatopoeia. Seriously, the worst word ever is the word “legit”. I absolutely hate that word. Its way overused and reminds me of the feeling someone gets when you scratch fingernails on the chalkboard. Doesn’t that just make you want to cringe? Nothing beats the sound of my parents and my boyfriend when they aren’t yelling though. I just love listening to them and what they have to say.”


I’m getting a lot of smiles and my nervousness is wearing down, so I guess I’ll keep going. “I have big turn ons and turn off’s,” I say, “If you really want to see me excited, take me to an art museum or an anime convention, a place where people get together and watch different anime movies. Some people even dress up as anime characters, which is fun to see! I love watching other peoples’ artwork and anime. Something interesting about me is that I draw in my own signature style. If you were to see a piece of artwork, you would be able to tell if I drew it. My drawing style is mostly dark genre, and the body figures I draw are very tall and slender and don’t really follow the average shape of the body but they do look elegant and beautiful in their own way. If you want to turn me off, critique someone’s work while thinking that you are better than anyone else. Also, own up to what you do. A huge pet peeve of mine is when it’s obvious that someone took something of mine and won’t admit it. So, if you’re an arrogant know-it-all or a thief, you might want to stay at least 100 feet away from me. I think I say, “That’s adorable!” more than anything else in my vocabulary. I’m patient too! Once, I spent 45 minutes waiting in a line just to get the 4th Twilight book. I believe in ghosts, but if I get haunted by one, I’ll go Ghostbusters on it and zap that thing to the next world!”

The group begins to split into smaller groups. We are talking more about ourselves. “I have goals in life. Before God says, ‘Welcome! Come on in!’, I would like to graduate college, make it on my own and earn money, get a job in nursing or something related to the body, get married, and pay back my parents for everything they did for me. I am so thankful for my parents.” A few of the group members were mentioning what they were majoring in, so I added, “At this time, I’m majoring in nursing. I want to help people with their health. No offense to those who are business majors, but I would never want to be in that profession. I just think that it’s boring. I don’t know how I would help someone in that profession. Maybe I would be able to set up a business that donates stuff to those in need, but physically I’d just be sitting in a chair at business meetings. I would be helping indirectly, but I would rather be up-front-and-center helping someone in-person. If I did change majors, however, I would look forensics. You know the CSI: Crime Scene Investigation stuff? I think that it’s interesting.” One guy, named Kevin asks me what my favorite movies are and what type of music I like to listen to. I said with a ton of enthusiasm, “My favorite movie is Princess and the Frog! I’ve never seen any movies or shows that make me gag, including the Saw series and Dirty Jobs. I guess that’s what makes me a good candidate for nursing, since they deal with blood and stuff. I love pretty much any techno band, Metallica, and Safety Suit. Hopefully I will be able to go and see one of their concerts-that would be so cool!”

So, the small groups are finally over and the Preview guide tells us that we are going on a tour of the dorms. I get up and walk with the group, when Kevin asks me, “Have you gone to anywhere cool?” I didn’t need a second to think, I simply replied, “The best life experience I’ve had was going to China over the summer of 2009. I stayed in Beijing the first week, went up in the mountains the second week to see the minorities of the area and learn how they live, and then we went to southern China to see my grandparents, who live in Shen yang, which is a really nice beach-area. It was a local reserve area with trees taken down from the mountains, which I thought was awesome. Overall, it was about three weeks long. There was one town that we went to that was very old. There was a conflict that the town was going to be torn down for tourism. They only had enough money to tear half of the town down, but luckily they kept half of it up because you get to see all of the old art and architecture, for example, the wooden doors with carvings. I have a love for art, so seeing ancient art and modern art at the same time was simply mind-blowing!” Kevin’s mouth dropped. “That’s so cool!” he said.

So when the dorm tours were over, the Preview guide asked us “If you could be any animal/creature/character, what would you be and why?” I think that I would want to be an assassin because they have a good reputation for being the definition of awesome. She also is asking what we would bring with us if we were on a stranded island. I’m thinking to myself, “If I were stranded on an island, I would like to have an IPod, my boyfriend, and food, but I guess that if my boyfriend were with me it would not be a deserted island. I would be happy if I had those things though. I would also be happy if I had a million dollars, but honestly, what are the odds of that happening? Someone once told me that you have a better chance of getting hit by lightening while biking to the gas station to buy your lottery ticket than actually winning it. I don’t like the idea of lightening hitting my head and zapping me to death, so hypothetically, if I had a million dollars, I would find a way to get off of that stupid island. Actually, I’d probably make a boat out of the money and get the heck out of there. Well, one can imagine.” I don’t think that I’m going to tell her that though. She’ll probably think I’m nuts!

So the Preview even is over and soon I’ll be in college and just trying to get through all the classes. But throughout my four, or more, years here, I hope to make a lot of friends. I believe that everyone needs to find his/her niche, and then they will be happy with where they are at. I’ve found some pretty good friends, like Kevin, and I’m working on finding my niche. Once I do, these next few years will be awesome!

My college nights

A lot of people think that once you get to college, its complete freedom. No parents to tell you what to do, no curfew, and of course the drinking. I feel that everyone thinks that college is just drinking, drinking, drinking. That’s cool, whatever they want to do for fun. For me, I’m not a fan of drinking, it just doesn’t taste all that good to me. My weekend nights consist of a couple of my friends, and myself rocking it up in the dorms. A group of my floor buddies, which I will not say the names of but instead say code names for them, got rock band two. It is the best game ever to play obviously because it can have up to four people play. Each of us is usually good at one instrument. J-dog is really good at drums; he’s able to play up to expert which gets pretty ridiculous if you have ever seen drums on expert. It’s just a rainbow of rectangles coming at you. E-dog plays expert base, M-dog sings medium, and I play guitar, usually, on expert. Of course we all switch it up and go on easier levels so we all get a chance to play each instrument. Definitely nights I enjoy a lot, but not only them but another group of my friends got rockband at another dorm building. Only difference is they got rockband one and Beatles rockband, and ACDC rockband. So basically, a lot of games are going around. It’s hilarious when we play Beatles rockband because everyone sings the songs together and it’s really just a full on happy time together. I love having friends who don’t go out drinking every weekend but instead just stay in and goof off like high school kids again, it really brings back good times before college.

The good, the bad and “this doesn’t make sense”, of writing.

Writing is probably one of the best ways to let go of emotion, to let it all out so the weight, of what feels like the world, is off your shoulders. Personally I feel that yeah there is really amazing writing and sometimes horrid writing, then there’s the stuff that just doesn’t make a whole tone of sense. I think it’s based on how the author sees it. If it’s something that no one is ever going to read, who gives a crap if it sucks and if someone does read it and tells you it suck, tell them to bug off and that it’s none of their business. If they did read it and said it sucks so badly, then they wasted three minutes of their life reading a bad story. Ha-Haaa success! I’m not a huge fan of writing something so an audience will like it. I write because it gets my creativity out. And creativity is unique to each person. I know that appealing to an audience is what almost half the jobs around the world are supposed to do. I don’t think there’s absolute down right bad writing because that’s just someone’s judgment, and their judgment isn’t the same as yours. What’s good to one person could be God awful to another. For example, Twilight saga, thousands of copies were sold and people, mostly girls, loved the story because of the passion and love but part of that is how the author presented the story through writing. This means that her writing was good and how she presented the story. Then there are people who just hate the twilight books because they just don’t like the writing (or it could be the fact the first movie sucked). All in all, I don’t have a definition on what is good writing and what’s bad writing. Writing is writing to whoever wrote it and to whoever has an open mind and an accepting thought to those different styles of writing.

The body

Ok so one time I went to the Science and Industry Museum with my family. At the time, this is when I love the human body and learning about it (note: I still do love the human body and its awesome amazingness). We were going to visit the Body World exhibit! This whole exhibit dedicated to the amazing, vastness of the human body, and the coolest part of it, it was all real human bodies, cadavers at least. They all kept their position because of the process plastination, basically all the liquid in the body is replaced by plastic. The whole exhibit is by Gunther Von Hagen, a German man with a huge imagination. When I went to this, I was just amazed by what was in us. I never saw a real cadaver before; everything I saw inside the human body was all just pictures from books. But this time, it was all in front of me in plain sight. One cadaver showed all the veins and arteries in our body, it just the chest and up. It looked like a spider that had red web just webbed what looked like the upper human body. The cool thing was that the veins pretty much outlined the whole head and everything. You could see exactly where the nose was, where the eye holes were and the ears and everything. Another cadaver, which was from an art picture and I’m sure a lot of people know, was the one of the man holding his own skin. The man held it about his head and looked at it. I felt he saw it as, this flabby piece of cells, protects my body, it is the wall that blocks me, the inner me, from the outer world. I was absolutely amazed by the whole exhibit and I would love to go back to it. I’ve always wanted to meet Gunther Von Hagen as well and just say how freaking amazing the whole exhibit was. One thing that I wouldn’t mind is that if, once I died, that my body be used for the exhibit. I would love to stand forever showing the world what’s inside of them. Creepy thought, but it would be the coolest thing ever.

This is a required assignment....gotta love college!

College is probably the one thing I wasn’t really excited about going to in the beginning. It was the idea of leaving all my friends back at home and leaving my parents. I don’t live too far away from home, maybe an hour and a half drive, that is if you drive 80 all the way back. Although that’s the case, it’s still far enough to miss everyone and have that urge to always go home. That’s probably the worst thing about college for me, just being away. I know there is an upside to college too, more freedom, people think they don’t have to do their homework, or don’t have to go to class. I must be one of those goody two-shoes then who always does her work and shows up to every lecture even if there’s one everyday at 8a.m. That must be the stress or the paranoia about it. I feel if I don’t do one reading, or don’t go to one lecture I feel that I’m pretty much screwed for the class. That’s probably not the case, but there’s always that little worry.


For my dorm I lived in a quad the first semester, so four girls to one room, not the best living space, but the girls were sweet and still are. Two of them moved out this second semester so now it’s just me and another girl, which is pretty sweet. This room is huge with just two people, or should I say one. My other room-mate, who is still here, really isn’t here a lot. Sounds kinds weird they way I worded that, but she has a boyfriend and likes to spend time with him. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a bad thing I’m glad she found someone she can trust really well and have someone this close to her at school. It’s weird though, having this giant room for myself. I know one thing at college I love is my friends from my high school and friends I’ve met. Just this Saturday, a good friend of mine said I could barrow his T.V. for the rest of the semester, I was like, wow this is such an awesome thing for him to do. When he let me borrow it, he didn’t he didn’t have a cable so T.V. shows can be watched on, but then a friend from across my hall said he had an extra one and let me barrow that. I thought, dang, this has been a really good night. It’s people like these two guys that help me get through college. Understanding that even though home is a bit far away, I know my buds are here to help me out.