Job Shadowing!

For my job shadowing I went to H&R Marketing Company. The main person we were going to talk to was the CEO Wally Hamlin. We went from one o'clock to four o'clock, which I wish could have been longer! 
The experience for me was FANTASTIC.  When we first go their we were introduced to Wally and his VP.  Wally then left and we talked with the VP for a little bit and she gave us a very good overview of the company and what we will be doing. After that she split all four of us up into two groups of two; Mackenzie and I and Melissa and Kirstyn. Mackenzie and I went with Connie first, who was the project leader of the company.  She was the person who was in charge of dealing with a lot of the customers and finding out how they want to be advertised.  First, she learns their business and exactly what they do.  She explained to us that this was important because you can't accurately make a good marketing plan without knowing the company.  Then the women went onto saying that next she develops a budget and general outline of what the company wants.  The idea that they build an entire plan for someones individual company is awesome to me! This is a great way to make a living in my opinion!
She then set us up with a job she was working on which was  tabletop pop up display and actually let us design it! Which was awesome and a great experience for me! We then got to take our design to the actual graphic designer (Stacey) who made our pop up! She actually printed it out and Connie is going to use it, but with her own edits of course :)
All in all the experience was wonderful and basically made me finalize what I want to do for the rest of my life.  I absolutely loved the what Connie did and would want to do her job, which made this experience very worth it and influential to me. I am very grateful  for the opportunity and that Wally Harmin allowed us to be in his building and learn from his employees.

Modernism Project

Journal 30- Favorite Whitman Poem

My favorite Whitman poem isn't exactly one of the most popular poems. My favorite is Old War Dreams. I have three main reasons on why this is my favorite poem.
The first reason is that it has a line of repetition which I really like in poetry. This technique helps me to realize how important the statement is. The repeated line is "I dream, I dream, I dream" (Whitman)which is repeated three times, once at the end of every stanza. This to me shows how each stanza is something that he dreams. This is why the title begins to make sense because it talks about dreams.
The second reason I like it is because he talks about a mans story in the war. I like poems that have a realistic background because it makes it more relate-able to people. Although I can not relate to being in the army I can have a better understanding of the content in the poem because it is something that is real.
Lastly I like the poem because it involves nature. Nature is used a lot in Whitman's poetry because he felt a very large connection with nature. This is why I am a big fan of Whitman because he involves nature into a lot of his poems. This gives me a better visual when I read his poetry. This makes me want to continue reading because I have a hindrance that when I read things I need to be able to visualize what the story is actually saying.
This poem combines all the things that I like in my readings and poetry as well as just a good story line. Without these key things I would not have picked this poem to be my favorite of Whitman.




Whitman, Walt. "The Walt Whitman Archive." OLD WAR-DREAMS. (Leaves of Grass [1891-1892]) -. Web. 18 Apr. 2012. .

Chanting The Square Deific

This is a reflection over "Chanting The Square Deific" by Walt Whitman. This is going to be analyze just the title itself for it has a lot of meaning to it. The first word which is "Chanting" means to shout or express loudly while a deific means divine or godlike. The mixture of the two means that Walt Whitman is showing the divine and Godlike qualities in something. In the first section of the poem he describes and refers to the square saying, "Out of the old and new, out of the square entirely divine,; Solid, four-sided, (all the sides needed,) from this side Jehovah; am I, " (Whitman) Here he explains the square as the whole and complete idea of the deific by saying it is a solid thing in which all pieces are needed. This refers to humans in a sense because humans are all much like a this because humans all have things that humans must have and without all the pieces humans may not survive. This would then make humans not complete.

In the first section he begins to describe himself but it isn't until the second section that he really begins to explain himself. He says he is affection and hope bringing, meaning is the brings happiness and purpose to those around him. He then goes on to say something that catches many eyes because of its shocking and blunt nature. This quote from the poem is, "Young and strong I pass knowing well I am destin'd myself to an; early death; ". This is very much an intense statement that definitely is a statement on how he sees himself and on what Whitman believes. Going on to say that although he will die the things he did in life will live on, little did he know that that was probably more true than he could have ever imagined.

In the third part it goes into a darker more demented state of mind, showing that Whitman felt he himself had a dark side. For example he says, "Defiant, I, Satan, still live, still utter words, in new lands duly; appearing, (and old ones also,)" (Whitman) He shows his dark side that is more demented and dark. This is not shown in the upper parts of the poem. At last he wraps in up bringing together the happier and the demented parts giving his whole personality in one final wrap up. This is used in many Whitman poems because he was such a spiritual man. A literary critic describes him by saying, "Whitman can never be classed, as Spinoza was by Schleiermacher, among "God-intoxicated" men; but he was early inebriated with two potent draughts—himself and his country" (Higginson)

Higginson, Thomas Wentworth. "Whitman." Contemporaries, 1899: 79–84. Quoted as "On the Poetry of Walt Whitman" in Bloom, Harold, ed. Walt Whitman, Classic Critical Views. New York: Chelsea House Publishing, 2007. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE54&SID=5&iPin= CCVWaW047&SingleRecord=True (accessed April 3, 2012).



Whitman, Walt. "The Walt Whitman Archive." CHANTING THE SQUARE DEIFIC. (Leaves of Grass [1891-1892]) -. Creative Commons License. Web. 03 Apr. 2012. .

Self

Who am I? This is a question I ask myself about everyday and wonder what the answer may be. I don't know a definite answer yet for multiple reasons. The first reason is that I am not old enough to be able to give a definitive answer on who I am because I am not done becoming who I am going to be. In any time of life it is hard to give a definite answer because we are constantly changing and can't give make a completely true statement of who I am. There are some things that I do know though for sure of. My name is Kirsten Amber Foley. My biological mother and father are Jennifer Drennan/Rahn and Darrin Foley. I consider my parents to be my mother Jennifer and my step-father Chris Rahn. I have one older brother whose name is Darrin Mathew Foley Jr.. I also have a half brother, William Christopher Rahn. DJ is 19 and William is 5 years old. I on the other hand am seventeen years old and my birthday is October 10. I have been in and done many things in my life. I went to Virden Elementary School from pre-school to fifth grade. I was involved in flag football, cheerleading camps, and volley ball camps. I moved to Pleasant Plains the summer before my fifth grade year and I began going to Pleasant Plains Middle School. I was in volleyball until eighth grade, cheerleading from seventh to eighth grade, and Beta Club. I am now attending Pleasant Plains high school. I am in cheerleading, Beta Club, Science Club, Spirit Club, Operation Teen Safe Driving, and was in soccer my sophomore year. These are definite things in my life that I think have made me who I am today. These are the things that have made me have the personality and character I have. I don't know exactly how to explain my personality except by saying what I have been told by others. I have been told I am very outgoing, generally smart, worry to much, friendly, very defensive in what I believe in, and lastly trustworthy. I have been told many times that I could be a therapist because I like to give advise to those who ask for it. This is generally all I know for who I am as of now. This will grow and evolve as my life continues, which may be only a few months from now or many years from now, but whichever that would be I plan to continue to change and grow.

Partner Blog

In Emily Dickinson's poem "The Bee Is Not Afraid of Me" from her Nature series she talks about nature (obviously) and how she sees nature in her eyes. In the second stanza Dickinson says

"The brooks laugh louder when I come,
The breezes madder play." (Dickinson 5-6)

What Dickinson is trying to say is that things are always better and louder and more exciting when you are up close and not far away. The brooks in this poem are louder and bigger up close instead of looking at them without hearing a peep from a good distance away. The same can be applied to many different things in life like take a baseball game for instance. It is better to sit closer to the action than it is to sit in the upper deck at the cardinal game next to a bunch of drunk guys. When your are at an amusement park the rides seem smaller and less intimidating when far away, but when you are at the front of the line looking up at the ride or on top of the ride before the big drop, you are freaking out and about ready to poop your pants because things are scarier up close. Everyone in life experiences this type of effect in their life it is just different for everyone. Roller-coaster's are the thing that are big for me while I could stand up in front of an auditorium filled with people like it was nothing, but for some people it is the other way around.

Emily Dickinson likes to write about things that are going to apply to many readers, making her writing very universal in comparison to other writers such as Thoreau or Hawthorne who seem to have a particular audience that they are writing for. This idea of universal writing is what started her into wanting to write about nature. Nature is something generally everyone can connect with because we are all apart of nature, whether it is just something as simple as a tree or storm in the city to a wild forest or desert in the urban areas. A literary critic says, "Dickinson's love of nature painted a tremendously complex picture as she tried to find in the natural world a firm understanding of the relationship between people and God and the solutions to questions of shape and continuity of the universe that she could find nowhere in her background. "(McShesney) about Emily's poetry. Sandra is saying that Emily used nature and the actions of people to try and make sense of the world we live in and how God plays a part of it. This is a part of the religious aspect of Emily Dickinson's writing that was very evident in many of her poems. Having that Christian faith background is one of the only things that may disconnect her from some readers, although there still are many Non-Christian people who love many of Dickinson's poems. This mixture of nature, human nature, and religion makes Emily Dickinson's poetry so popular and so interesting for those who get the pleasure of reading it.


McChesney, Sandra. "A View from the Window: The Poetry of Emily Dickinson." In Harold Bloom, ed. Emily Dickinson, Bloom's BioCritiques. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishing, 2002. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE54&SID=5&iPin= BCED03&SingleRecord=True (accessed March 29, 2012).


Dickinson, Emily. "58. "The Bee Is Not Afraid of Me." Part Two: Nature. Dickinson, Emily. 1924. Complete Poems." 58. "The Bee Is Not Afraid of Me." Part Two: Nature. Dickinson, Emily. 1924. Complete Poems. Bartleby. Web. 27 Mar. 2012. .

Dickinson Journal

I am going a blog over the poem "I heard a fly buzz when I died" by Emily Dickinson. The poem itself is about a a person who is dieing and describing what they are feeling in and what they saw right before their final breath. She describes things by comparing it to other things instead of just saying that was literally happening at the time. For example "The stillness round my form ;Was like the stillness in the air ;Between the heaves of storm." (Dickinson) is comparing how dead the room feel to the stillness to the time between storms. This is a upper level skill in writing because it is hard to do comparisons to other completely different things while getting the point you were trying to make across. The poem also brings out emotion in the reader, especially because it is is about death. Emotions in a story is really hard to do successfully because writing about something that is going to get to most of the readers takes a lot of thought. There are things that certain people might connect to while others will. This is something that makes the author have to think about who they are writing too. In this poem Emily found a way to write to everyone because we are all going to die someday and are going to have to deal with death as some point in our lives. She says "Between the light and me; And then the windows failed, and then ;I could not see to see." (Dickinson), which is important because it is when the person finally passes away at the end. This is something that everyone can connect with because they know this is their inevitable fate as a human. There is no cheating death, which is what i believe made this poem so popular.





Dickinson, Emily. "128."I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died." Part Four: Time and Eternity. Dickinson, Emily. 1924. Complete Poems." 128. "I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died."Part Four: Time and Eternity. Dickinson, Emily. 1924. Complete Poems. Bartleby, 2012. Web. 27 Mar. 2012. .