For my Pre-Calculus class in junior year, we were assigned project groups to calculate the growth of one factor of the industrial revolution. My group chose to focus on coal production after the 1970's and created a slide show on what we found.
The graphs above shows the total U.S. coal consumption and production since 1970 until 2010. The graph to the right shows the same trend, but also a projection of what will happen in U.S. coal production and consumption by the year 2030 (if we continue on the same trend as before).
Math Project
English Essay
The following essay was the latest essay I wrote in my English 3/4 class. It is themed around Transcendentalism and I try to answer the question "As time goes on, how can transcendentalism be applied to our modern day society?"
Transcendentalism has not only been around for over one hundred years, but has also had a wide impact on the way we can view our lifestyles. Transcendentalism emerged during the early nineteenth century and was heavily shaped by Ralph Waldo Emerson’s written pieces such as “Nature,” “Self-Reliance,” among other famous writing pieces. Transcendentalism ended up influencing various other writers like Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman and many more. Despite transcendentalism originating a long time ago, it has still had the ability to influence individuals during our modern era. For example, Chris McCandless is depicted as following a transcendentalist lifestyle in “Death of an Innocent” by Jon Krakauer. McCandless relied solely on himself to live alone in the wild and survive off of the nature that surrounded him (1). As time goes on, how can transcendentalism be applied to our modern day society?
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Highlighting individuality amongst our society, diminishing our uses of technology, and altering our educational system would take key aspects of the transcendentalist movement in the 1800s and translate it to our modern day. Although it is hard for an individual to stand up to the institutionalized government, challenging and questioning authority through civil disobedience can help us have our voices heard. Transcendentalism focused on interactions with society and its conformities along with uncovering your identity.
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Encouraging solitude to find our individuality while still having a unified society would help us acknowledge our own beliefs and preferences. In “Song of Myself” Walt Whitman carries a singular tone, repeating the use of the personal pronoun “I” but still writes “For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you” (3). Walt Whitman kept his individuality throughout his writing while still contributing to others through his ideas. It was very common in transcendentalism to encourage individuality, but how transcendentalists achieved their individuality varied. One way to keep your individuality during our modern day society is to take some time to discover yourself first. For my “Living Deliberately” English assignment, I decided to take more time for myself every day to discover what interested me. This gave me the opportunity to look at different schools/future paths to pursue in the long run along with discover my preferences and distaste for certain aspects of my life. For example, I learned that I do not like colleges that have Greek life due to the loud and rowdy effect. I prefer a peaceful learning environment and my learning style along with other preferences have structure who I am as an individual. I even had more time to think to myself and reflect on my day which I had never done before. Even though I spent a lot of time alone, I tried my best to also not stay in complete solitude. Being able to still interact with others made me feel more unified to my friends and the situations surrounding me. After we are done discovering ourselves, we can move on to forming and strengthening our relationships with others.
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Reducing the time we invest into the surrounding technology would allow us to communicate better and strengthen our relationships with others. Henry David Thoreau wrote about technology’s advancements in Walden and its effects on mankind's ability to interact with each other. Thoreau elaborated about the invention of a magnetic telegraph and makes the point that societies “main object [is] to talk fast and not to talk sensibly” (41). Thoreau believed that the nation seemed more intent on forming the technology to interact quickly rather than make the time and effort to connect with each other. Our current generation has the same societal issues that Thoreau highlighted during his era. According to a research study done by Pew Research Center, around 77 percent of Americans have smartphones and 95 percent have some kind of cellphone today. We have become absorbed in technology like smartphones and do not communicate in the same way as before. We rely on the cellphones around us to communicate instead of spending physical time together hanging out. Reducing our time spent on our cellular devices would help us build stronger relationships with one another through more social interactions. Knowledge on how to interact with each other can not only be taught through cutting back on tech, but also through our educational system.
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Altering our educational system to allow learners to be more open to new ideas and beliefs would reduce prejudice towards minorities at a young age. Ralph Waldo Emerson talked about the prejudice taught to him at a young age in “Literary Ethics,” a speech he delivered to the Literary Societies of Dartmouth College in 1838. Emerson claimed that college was focused on one point of view and “Neither years nor books have yet availed to extirpate a prejudice then rooted in me” (1). For Emerson, college did not give him the opportunity to see other points of view and instilled more subliminal prejudice in him. The educational system since then has not changed by much, and subconscious prejudices are still brought forward in classroom settings. This is partly due to selective perception, a sociological term that defines when a person absorbs the information that confirms or reinforces their prior beliefs and rationalizes off the details that do not. For example, If there is a young immigrant boy that does not speak English fluently, the other students in his class might assume he is unintelligent. But when he gets the answer to a question right during class, then his classmates automatically believe that it is because he got help from someone else or even cheated. However, there is a way to counteract selective perception discrimination through a teaching technique called a Jigsaw Classroom. In a Jigsaw Classroom, teachers use interdependent and cooperative learning strategies in small groups to allow minorities to contribute to discussions and feel included overall. Each student is given a different piece of information than their other group members and the students then have to collaborate with each other to piece together all the information for the group to understand the topic of discussion. This makes students that do not feel included in classroom conversations an essential part of the puzzle and helps other students listen more to what they have to contribute. This also gives students that are not minorities a more open mind towards other students contributions since it affects their overall understanding of what is being taught. Discrimination has always been a topic of conversation, especially as a society becomes more polarized.
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Despite the fact that it is very complicated to disobey the institutional system and higher authority, challenging and questioning authority through small acts of civil disobedience can help us have our voices heard. Henry David Thoreau wrote the essay “Civil Disobedience” that called attention to the people that “[were] in opinion opposed to slavery… who yet in effect do nothing to put an end to them” (5). Thoreau went on to talk about how men do nothing to stop the things they disagree with, and their actions show little to no virtue. Today, the National Football League uses small actions to make a big difference in American society. As reported by The Atlantic, It all started in 2016 when Colin Kaepernick took a knee during the national anthem which many viewed as a stand against the American government and a betrayal of American morals (Garber). Regardless he kneeled since he felt unattuned with the country’s position against minorities. He told NFL media, “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color” (Wyche). Kaepernick’s small action of civil disobedience inspired a bigger movement in the NFL. More NFL players would decide to take a stand against the American Government’s views in September of 2017. Civil disobedience can also be taken up by the rest of society through peaceful protests and marches. This can be manifested through participating in group protests or even starting your own movement for what you believe in. After all, one person can trigger a whole movement, just like Colin Kaepernick did.
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Finding individuality while still standing unified, using technology less and changing our educational system would apply the transcendentalist beliefs from the 1800s into our modern day society. It is hard to stand up to authority, but using civil disobedience to question and challenge authority would help us get society ahead. Taking more time out of our days to be alone and think while also not being completely alone would assist us in finding ourselves individually while also standing united with others. Using Technology less would will help us strengthen the relationships with others that we already have while also enjoying our surroundings. Changing our educational system to instill the Jigsaw Classroom technique will help teach students to be less prejudice and more open minded to minorities. Civil disobedience can also be used to stand up to institutions and authority that we do not agree with. Despite the fact that transcendentalism started in the 1800s, we can still apply some of the key concepts to our modern society to create open minds, strengthen relationships, and stand up to authority that we do not agree with.
Biodiversity Project
For my Environmental Science class, I calculated the species diversity difference between different communities. I focused on grass, dirt and sand communities near my house. my initial hypothesis was The community that is surrounded by grass and sun will have a higher species diversity than the community surrounded by dirt or sand because grass contains more nutrients that attract insects and the sunlight makes the colors brighter for insects to see. The sand community surrounded by sun will have a lower species diversity due to the dry course landscape and the heat will dry up the sand even more, making insects unable to hydrate or consume anything.
The data presented supported our hypothesis of the grass plot in the sun having a higher diversity index, but refuted our hypothesis that the sand plot in the sun would have the lowest diversity index. The grass communities that were located in sun had a higher diversity index, which was 3. This may be due to the fact that grass attracts more insects due to the flowers that surround the area and the smell of nectar from those plants. The dirt communities in the shade had the lowest diversity index, which was 1.67. The low diversity index of the dirt community in the shade may be due to the fact that the dull colors of the dirt (dark tan) did not attract as many animals.
