Personal experiences Essay Example for Free

Personal experiences Essay My life is one that is full of trivialities. Of course every one has been through hard times but I believe my case is on a different level. However, I am proud to say that my determination led me to overcome life’s obstacles. It all started when I was still in grade school. I have always taken a liking to sports. Even as a girl, I am the sporty type. Whenever there are sports fests, you can always count me in. I wanted it to last forever until I was diagnosed with a heart disease called ‘supraventricular tachycardia’. It’s like all my dreams ended when the doctor explained everything to me. My illness prevented me from engaging in any more sporting activities since my heart since will beat too fast causing me to have breath shortness, chest pains, and dizziness. In extreme situations, it may even cause me to lose consciousness. While it is good that my illness is not life threatening, it did prevent me from doing something that I really love, and this is participating in sports. As I can get stubborn sometimes, I insisted to participate in a badminton tournament in Vancouver. Everything seemed okay as I managed to reach the championships without any trouble despite my medical condition. I thought everything would go well until everything went blank. I woke up in the hospital bed and the last thing I remember was my chest throbbing loudly as I am preparing to hit the shuttle cock quickly coming towards me. My parents told me that I fainted during the championship match. I thought my medical condition would not prevent me from doing what I like. Initially, I thought that this would not be a hindrance but now, I am starting to realize that I may be wrong and I will forever be procrastinated in the world of sports. In spite of these trivialities, a small glinting ray of hope remains inside of me. I believe that I would again see myself in a badminton court filled with spectators in a championship match against the best in the district. My life has never been the same after these events. School became difficult. I could not face everything in a steadfast manner just like I used to. Everything was falling apart since I was restricted from doing the things I want to do. I later found myself in a state of depression and anxiety which resulted in me performing poorly in school. My parents got extremely worried but even as I do not want them to worry, I cannot pretend that everything is all right when it is not. Everything in my life is in shambles until that day, that very special day. I, with my mother, went on my regular visit with our family doctor and the doctor reported that my condition is getting better. Then out of nowhere, the doctor uttered, â€Å"I have a colleague who might be able to cure you. † I just replied with a smile but the small glinting ray of hope inside me sparked brighter. If this treatment becomes successful, then my limitations would be gone and I can again participate in sports. Time came for my surgery, I was excited yet anxious. As I lie down on the operating table, I’m thinking, â€Å"After this, I can go and claim that badminton championship title that should have been mine a few years back. † The anaesthetics were injected and I slowly fall in a deep slumber. The next thing I know, I was greeted by my mother in the hospital bed a few hours after the operation. I asked, â€Å"How’d it go? † â€Å"It went fine dear,† my mother responded. â€Å"Can I play badminton again? â€Å"We’ll have to wait for the doctor’s confirmation on that. You just rest for now,† she smiled while exuding a calm aura. The next thing I know, it was like the scene from a few years back. I am in a badminton court filled with spectators. It is the championship match and my opponent is in front of me. I see the shuttle cock coming quickly towards me. This time, I didn’t wake up in the hospital bed. I returned the shuttle cock to the other side of the court just like how a real pro would do it. I emerged victorious and as I hold the trophy, I am thankful that I did not lose hope. Even as I have experienced trivialities that would convince other people to give up, I did not give up all hope until the perfect opportunity came for me. Since then, everything has been in order. I can participate in sports all I want and my studies are now doing well. My next goal is to get a degree in the school that I want all the while participating in sporting competitions. I am proud to say that despite being down at some point, I never lost sight of my goals. Even as health became an issue I still tried to go for it. And even as I have failed the first time, I waited for an opportunity to go at it again.

Characterization of Scully in Tim Winton’s The Riders Essay -- Tim Win

The Characterization of Scully in Tim Winton’s The Riders  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   One of the most endearing aspects of The Riders is the clever characterization. This allows the reader to relate to the typical national stereotypes and yet very extravagant personalities portrayed in the novel. The characterization, together with Winton’s considerable skill at using the characters’ view to evoke a sense of place, are two of the strengths of The Riders. The character of Fred Scully, the ‘hero’ of The Riders, is one of the most wonderfully written characters to have come out of Winton’s writing so far. Scully’s character encompasses all the traditional traits of the Australian: his use of vernacular, appearance, humor, as well as the outlook and many more. Winton has the reader accompany Scully in his desperate struggle through Europe and it is Scully’s personality that the reader finds themselves enjoying more than the sightseeing trip. "...Scully [is] one of the most memorable characters in Australian fiction." Scully is memorable because his traits could be found in someone known by the reader; he could easily be the ‘man next door’. The beauty of Scully is that Winton has allowed for the character to evolve, and he has adapted along with his character. At the beginning of the novel Scully is the "...big friendly shambles of a man who followed them like an ugly hound, loyal and indestructible..." yet not long after Scully is seen as "...sheepish like a lamb unto the slaughter...". These changes which occur in the character of Scully fit into the structure and plot of The Riders. Before the disappearance of Jennifer, Scully was a ruggedly handsome optimist, content to wait out the bad times, yet after the trauma of loss and heartache, ... ... is based around the idea that Scully is an emotional person, one who considers the needs of others. Scully follows Jennifer because of the baby. Yet he does not pursue Connor Keneally, because he understands that it would not be right, no matter how much he feels that he wants to. Tim Winton’s Scully is a very memorable Australian character. His connection with the reader enables them to enjoy his individual humour, vernacular and his generally unsinkable optimism. Winton’s writing skills allow the reader to be drawn to Scully by the character’s particular outlook on situations. Scully once said "What you see is what you get". Within The Riders this is not necessarily so, Winton gives Scully much more than what is printed on the page and it is up to the reader’s discretion of how much they perceive. Work Cited Winton, Tim. The Riders Prentice Hall 1996. Characterization of Scully in Tim Winton’s The Riders Essay -- Tim Win The Characterization of Scully in Tim Winton’s The Riders  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   One of the most endearing aspects of The Riders is the clever characterization. This allows the reader to relate to the typical national stereotypes and yet very extravagant personalities portrayed in the novel. The characterization, together with Winton’s considerable skill at using the characters’ view to evoke a sense of place, are two of the strengths of The Riders. The character of Fred Scully, the ‘hero’ of The Riders, is one of the most wonderfully written characters to have come out of Winton’s writing so far. Scully’s character encompasses all the traditional traits of the Australian: his use of vernacular, appearance, humor, as well as the outlook and many more. Winton has the reader accompany Scully in his desperate struggle through Europe and it is Scully’s personality that the reader finds themselves enjoying more than the sightseeing trip. "...Scully [is] one of the most memorable characters in Australian fiction." Scully is memorable because his traits could be found in someone known by the reader; he could easily be the ‘man next door’. The beauty of Scully is that Winton has allowed for the character to evolve, and he has adapted along with his character. At the beginning of the novel Scully is the "...big friendly shambles of a man who followed them like an ugly hound, loyal and indestructible..." yet not long after Scully is seen as "...sheepish like a lamb unto the slaughter...". These changes which occur in the character of Scully fit into the structure and plot of The Riders. Before the disappearance of Jennifer, Scully was a ruggedly handsome optimist, content to wait out the bad times, yet after the trauma of loss and heartache, ... ... is based around the idea that Scully is an emotional person, one who considers the needs of others. Scully follows Jennifer because of the baby. Yet he does not pursue Connor Keneally, because he understands that it would not be right, no matter how much he feels that he wants to. Tim Winton’s Scully is a very memorable Australian character. His connection with the reader enables them to enjoy his individual humour, vernacular and his generally unsinkable optimism. Winton’s writing skills allow the reader to be drawn to Scully by the character’s particular outlook on situations. Scully once said "What you see is what you get". Within The Riders this is not necessarily so, Winton gives Scully much more than what is printed on the page and it is up to the reader’s discretion of how much they perceive. Work Cited Winton, Tim. The Riders Prentice Hall 1996.

“Auto Wreck”- by Kart Shapiro Essay

In â€Å"Auto Wreck†, as the title insinuates it, is a situation that describes a car accident that takes place in a city, which means, that an ambulance, a hospital, the police, and the crowd are the main actors when death is about to strike. In the development of the poem, Shapiro describes the atmosphere that surrounds a city at night when there is a car accident; Blood all over the streets and gutters, the police covering the situation and the crowd observing the tragic accident, recalling death as enemy. In a very interesting way, Shapiro describes the hurry, horror, and in a certain way, indifference of society towards an â€Å"auto wreck†, idealizing a space were these actors interact with one another creating a hostile atmosphere regarding death. In â€Å"Mid-term break†, the speaker is a boy that is at school in his daily routine, when it is interrupted by the news of his dead brother. The situation takes place in two atmospheres; the kid’s school were he heard the knelling bells that gives a feeling of mortality and his house were all the action takes place; the family’s grief, the funeral, the adults whispering and saying sorry, the ambulance, the four foot box, and the candles. An afternoon of sorrow and pain on a family environment, were death is perpetually present. Yet no one fully understands death. In Shapiro’s poem â€Å"Auto Wreck,† he  illustrates the irrationality of life for it can be taken away at any given time for no rational reason. He uses a car accident to finely detail the reaction of society towards death and the real meaning that it represents to us. During the poem, he describes how a well established system that is made of ambulances, hospitals, police men and viewers, works at its given time to strike death. But despite all the efforts and effectiveness of the system, people themselves are incapable of understanding death and its dualities (cancer that is both a flower that blooms and a tragic disease.) Society is scared and ignorant when it comes to death. Questions such as â€Å"Who shall die?† or â€Å"Who is innocent?† come to mind with no reasonable answer every time we witness a tragic event. For Shapiro, In  death, there exists firmly irrational causes for the loss of life. Death is a strange jungle, whose twisted, complicated and entangled vines represent the causes of it which can not be mapped out mathematically, but can be mapped out by the deranged explorer or the unique creator of that jungle, both of whom are irrational persons themselves. In Mid-term Break, Heaney starts the poem by mentioning the â€Å"bells knelling† that suggests a funeral bell, rather than a bell for school lessons (this fact automatically changes our mood). Since the narrator is a boy, this poem captures his unfolding consciousness of death by recounting the particulars of his experience; being kept in the sick bay until his ride arrived, his father’s crying, the awkward behavior of the old men, the â€Å"poppy bruise† on the corpse’s temple and the end, when he expresses death’s finality: â€Å"A four foot box, a foot for every year.† Makes us think yonger ones are able to understand death better than adults, with a unique calmness he observed and described the situation from a different point of view, the mourning of the people around him never affected him, in a certain way,he was assuming death as he assumes life. Figures of speech Definition Auto Wreck Mid-Term Break Alliteration The repetition of the same sounds or of the same kinds of sounds at the beginning of words or in stressed syllables. † Its quick soft silver bell beating, beating,† A four foot box, a foot for every year† Onomatopoeia The formation or use of words that imitate the sounds associated with the objects or actions they refer to. â€Å"Then the bell, breaking the hush, tolls once† Hyperbole A figure of speech in which exaggeration is used for emphasis or effect. â€Å"The ambulance at top speed floating down† â€Å"And stowed into the little hospital† â€Å"One with a bucket, douches, ponds of blood into the street and the gutter† â€Å"I sat all morning in the college sick bay† Simile A figure of speech in which two essentially unlike things are compared, often in a phrase introduced by like or as. â€Å"Pulsing out red light like an artery,† â€Å"Our throats tight as tourniquets† â€Å"Cancer simple as a flower, blooms† â€Å"He lay in the four foot box as in his cot.† Oxymoron A rhetorical figure in which incongruous or contradictory terms are combined. â€Å"Its quick soft silver† â€Å"Wings in s heavy curve, dips down,† â€Å"And breaks speed, entering the crowd.† â€Å"We speak with sickly smiles† â€Å"The grim joke† † The door leap open, emptying light† â€Å"In hers and coughed out angry tearless sights† â€Å"Snowdrops and candles soothed the beside† â€Å"Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple† Metaphor: A figure of speech in which a word or phrase that ordinarily designates one thing is used to designate another, thus making an implicit comparison. â€Å"And down the dark one ruby flare Pulsing out red light like an artery.† â€Å"One hangs lanterns on the wrecks that cling Emptying husks of locusts, to iron poles.† † A four foot box, a foot for every year† â€Å"Counting bells knelling classes to a close† Rhetorical question A question to which no answer is expected, often used for rhetorical effect. Who shall die? Who is innocent? â€Å"Our throats were tight as tourniquets, Our feet were bound with splints,† In this quote, Shapiro is trying to sketch an image of people in front of a car accident with tourniquets around their necks, supported and confined by splits that restrain the body from moving. this kind of image represents a situation were the crowd were stopped, almost speechless, as they gazed upon the wreckage contemplating the reason behind death. A shocking image by the way. â€Å"And cancer simple as a flower, blooms† By this quote Shapiro is making a comparison of what we understand as life and what we know about death. When a flower blooms, it is clearly full of life, is a stage were life can be seen at is best. And cancer will be the opposite, a stage were death is at is best. The thing is that, visually, both phenomenons are very similar, when the cancerous cells are seen with a microscope, they look like flowers, and they bloom rapidly. The thing is that we are not used to consider cancerous cells beautiful. â€Å"In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs† This image is quite effective; with the use of textures, Heaney can make you can feel the mother’s anger just by imagining the air around you. â€Å"Snowdrops and candles soothed the bedside† This image Heaney uses two key elements that generate a tranquil and peaceful atmosphere, the snowdrops are soft and quiet, innocent and inoffensive and the candles symbolize the ritual, to make honor and to remember a loved one. Definitely a peaceful image. â€Å"Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple† The image is pure, the bruise is discrete. A four foot box, a foot for every year† By this quote, the boy is saying that his brother was four years old when he died, the image gives a certain relief, instead of crying for his brother, he uses his mind to analyze mathematically the situation. This image is very effective, it immediately make us feel that death is not chaos. The child’s reaction towards death is completely different from the adult reaction towards it. The boy was describing the situation with a certain indifference of what happened, it seemed like the aura of death was unable to enter to his mind and body. He narrated as he was seated on a grandstand watching how the play developed and how the actor suffer during it According to his behavior, we could conclude that the boy wasn’t hit by death, and in a certain way, he is able to manage it in a right way, determining the rituals and behaviors of adults when death is around, and creating a barrier that separates de morning of the heart from the logic of the brain. And this can be seen at the end of the poem: † A four foot box, a foot for every year† he uses his logic, a math problem, no a heart one.

The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s 1892 short story â€Å"​The Yellow Wallpaper,† tells the tale of an unnamed woman slipping slowly deeper into a state of hysteria. A husband takes his wife away from society and isolates her in a rented house on a small island in order to cure her â€Å"nerves.† He leaves her alone, more often than not, except for her prescribed medication, while seeing to his own patients.​ The mental breakdown that she eventually experiences, likely triggered by postpartum depression, is supported by various outside factors which present themselves over time. It is probable that, had doctors been more knowledgeable of the illness at the time, the main character would have been successfully treated and sent on her way. However, due in large part to the influences of other characters, her depression develops into something much deeper and darker. A type of chasm forms in her mind, and we witness as the real world and a fantasy world merge. â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper† is a superb description of the misunderstanding of postpartum depression before the 1900s but can also act in the context of today’s world. At the time this short story was written, Gilman was aware of the lack of understanding surrounding postpartum depression. She created a character that would shine a light on the issue, particularly for men and doctors who claimed to know more than they actually did. Gilman humorously hints at this idea in the opening of the story when she writes, â€Å"John is a physician and perhaps that is one reason I do not get well faster.† Some readers may interpret that statement as something a wife would say to poke fun at her know-it-all husband, but the fact remains that many doctors were doing more harm than good when it came to treating (postpartum) depression. Increasing the danger and difficulty is the fact that she, like many women in America at the time, was absolutely under the control of her husband: He said I was his darling and his comfort and all he had, and that I must take care of myself for his sake, and keep well. He says no one but me can help myself out of it, that I must use my will and self-control and not let any silly fancies run away with me. We see by this example alone that her state of mind is dependent upon the needs of her husband. She believes that it is entirely up to her to fix what is wrong with her, for the good of her husband’s sanity and health. There is no desire for her to get well on her own, for her own sake. Further on in the story, when our character begins to lose sanity, she makes the claim that her husband â€Å"pretended to be very loving and kind. As if I couldn’t see through him.† It is only as she loses her grip on reality that she realizes her husband has not been caring for her properly. Although depression has become more understood in the past half-century or so, Gilman’s â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper† has not become obsolete. The story can speak to us, in the same way, today about other concepts related to health, psychology, or identity that many people do not fully understand. â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper† is a story about a woman, about all women, who suffer from postpartum depression and become isolated or misunderstood. These women were made to feel as if there was something wrong with them, something shameful that had to be hidden away and fixed before they could return to society. Gilman suggests that no one has all the answers; we must trust ourselves and seek help in more than one place, and we should value the roles we can play, of friend or lover, while allowing professionals, like doctors and counselors, to do their jobs. Gilman’s â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper† is a bold statement about humanity. She’s shouting for us to tear down the paper that separates us from each other, from ourselves, so that we may help without inflicting more pain: â€Å"I’ve got out at last, in spite of you and Jane. And I’ve pulled off most of the paper, so you can’t put me back.†