Aswin

 So  when it comes to the question: does Othello really love Desdemona ? The answer is definitely a NO and this itself is a tragedy. At first glance, their romance seems like one of fairy tale. She chooses her husband over her father and society, and Othello is mesmerized by her beauty but as the play continuous, we start to wonder, if Othello’s feelings are more about possession and control rather than love.    At first Othello sure acts like he’s head over heels for Desdomona and that they’re inseparable but as soon as he hears a rumor from Iago, all that love disappears. How can one who loves someone so much, lose all trust in them from just hearing a rumor. No way real love breaks so quickly. It’s also hard to ignore how Othello treats Desdemona when jealousy takes over. Instead of talking to her, he believes Iago’s lies and starts seeing her as his enemy. His violent acts towards her such as slapping her in public in front of her own brother, whom she chose to...

Why is everyone an “Expert” on social media ? Lately everyone proclaims themselves as gurus, life coaches and strategists who suddenly start to give wisdom on everything.    Scroll for 5 minutes, and you see a wannabe Andrew Tate who calls himself a “wealth coach”, like dude your 20, you just graduated high school and how you gonna start giving everyone else advice. It’s a digital circus with these so called “mindset mentors” who offer a fresh guide on how we unlock our potential for the low, low price of 5 dollars. And the most sad part is people actually falling for these scams, like think about it, if these “mindset mentors’s” courses actually work then why can’t they just use it for themselves to get richer and why would they need profits from our subscription.  The hustle guru—the type who insists that if you’re not getting up at 4:30 a.m.,  you don’t want it enough. These people post that if you  really  wanted success, you’d be grinding while others ...

  This week in class we discussed about the complex relationships of characters in literature. Also this week in class I started to read “Their eyes were watching god” and this book weaves many complex relationships, where the novels protagonist, Janie Crawford, battles with her evolving sense of identity and societal expectations of marriage. Janie is single and sexualized by many men around her. At the beginning, Janie’s relationship with nanny(her grandmother) is one of caring love and also of control. Nanny is born into slavery and is deeply shaped by her traumatic past and who also desires Janie to marry for financial security rather than love. She arranges and forces Janie to marry Logan Killicks, a much older farmer. The relationship between these two characters are complex since Janie who dreams for romantic love, now feels trapped in a loveless marriage. Logan also sees Janie as someone who can help him as a worker rather than a wife. Eventually Janie leaves him after she ...

  The moment you start college apps is when you realize it’s the real deal. You feel like you have been preparing the last 4 years for this, yet you still feel unprepared. The classes you took, the extracurriculars, SATs or ACTs are all preparations, but now, you’re  starting an application process that will shape and decide your future, it’s a terrifying process.  I’m sure everyone can relate that the pressure is undeniable. Your whole high school experience feels like it’s being summed up into essays and transcripts. The “what ifs” to torture your mind: What if my essays not good enough? What if my essay doesn’t have stylistic choices? What if I don’t have good grades or enough extracurriculars? And finally, what if I don’t get into my dream school? This is when your realize your life just became real, this is the first step for becoming an adult, living on your own, making your meals, you feel like your next steps are in your hand and you don’t want to screw it up....

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS :     I would like to thank the whole classroom for making AP LANG fun, especially my friends Shiv, Janav, and Shovik. You guys made English class an unforgettable experience. From the first day to the present , you infused each class, everyday with laughter, and creativity, transforming what could have been a boring class into the most fun times of school. I’d like to thank Shiv with his iconic energy drink each morning, for his jokes and enthusiasm which never failed to lighten the mood, turning every parter workshops into enjoyable challenges. I’d like to thank Janav, your insightful comments and encouragement made me feel confident to express my opinions too. I’d like to thank Shovik, for his jokes and comments that made everything more amusing, keep on doodling dinosaurs !!   Together, y’all made me regret not choosing to sit in your guys table from the start of the semester.      I would also like to thank our teacher, whose gui...

  In the huge landscape of the internet, where countless articles, videos, and headlines catch our attention, there’s a curious phenomenon: watching contents labelled, "dangerous" or "non-violent." Whether it's a warning     or a promise of peace that you can feel, whatever it may be, these labels cause us to have a magnetic pull on our curiosity. But why do we feel that we have to click on them, even when we know they might lead us to become unsettling ? Well the answers to that might be 3 points listed below   The Thrill Of Something we Don’t know : Humans are wired to seek out excitement. The possibility of encountering something dangerous or non-violent increases our sense of curiosity. Causing us to be drawn to the unknown, curios to explore and expand our understanding of the world.  The Desire for Knowledge : As the last reason finished of with, we always have a desire to expand our knowledge. Knowledge is power, and clicking on content labeled as dangero...

  Rewilding, in its core, is about restoring balance to our natural ecosystems by reintroducing native species, creating habitats, and allowing nature to reclaim areas impacted by human activity. This idea holds immense potential to improve our world in many ways. Down below are 3 of the many ways rewilding could improve our word.   Restoring Biodiversity: Imagine the heartwarming sight of a once-empty landscape now thriving with life such as birds chirping, butterflies fluttering, and native plants thrivings. Rewilding allows us to reconnect with the wonder of biodiversity, connect back with our nature, preserving the web of life that sustains us all. Logically, diverse ecosystems are more resilient to threats such as disease and climate change. By reintroducing key species and restoring habitats, rewilding helps safeguard our planet's biological diversity for future generations. Extreme Climate Change: Picture a vast expanse of forest, absorbing carbon dioxide from t...

  Subject: Urgent Report from the Future: Earth’s death   Date: April 7, 2024  To: Leaders and Humans of the 21st Century, the year 2024  From: Aswin, Environmental-Research Institute(ERI) of 2074 Dear People of the 21st Century,  As a representative of the ERI from the year 2074, I bring an important message from the future. The EARTH is going to die. Our world stands on the brink on environmental collapse, an event that was set in motion by the actions and decisions made by of those who were before us. These decisions made in your time by you people has eventually led us to the funeral of our world. It hurts and scares me to say that there won’t be an earth after the year 2080, 6 years from now. Fifty years ago, in your time, warnings about consequences of environmental degradation were brought to the public. Scientists, activists and citizens gave you many alarms about effects of exploitation of natural resources, air pollution, water pollution and the destru...

Cancel Culture is very common in our society. We all know someone, a celebrity or a friend that has been canceled somehow, and with that being said, the question being posed, is cancel culture an effective method to hold individuals accountable for their actions ? Well it depends on various perspectives. Firstly, what is cancel culture ? Cancel culture refers to the practice of canceling public figures or common individuals after they have done or said something that is considered offensive, controversial, or harmful. It might sound like it’s a useful method but it has its pros and cons.   Cancel culture can hold individuals or organizations accountable for their actions, especially when some fail to address their behavior. It can also serve us a method for social justice or accountability for people with a lot of power. For example, a famous NBA player, Ja Morant was suspended and fined from the NBA because of an incident where he showed his gun on a live stream. This wasn’t liked...

  Ever since I was born, I had what some would call superhero identities. My first years of preschool, I didn’t care what the teacher called me because I was too young to realize that my name was being mispronounced but around second grade, it started to affect me. My name is supposed to be pronounced Aswin - us/win which is different from how it’s spelled. But I don’t know what the right way to pronounce it is anymore. My name has been pronounced so many different ways that I forgot what the right way is. My first grade Indian math teacher, with her really thick accent pronounced it as us/win, my 4th grade Indian-Australian teacher pronounced it as Azz/win, I have no idea where she got Z from, after I moved to the states, my PE teacher pronounced it as Ush/wins, he added a S to my name, but the most common pronunciation was Ash/win which is I am now used too. When lived in India, when someone asked my name, I would pronounce it as us/win but in the states I pronounce it Ash/win, e...

 Blog Title -  Basketball Player Credits Kobe Bryant For Inspiring Him To Score 4 Points In Rec League Game link -  https://www.theonion.com/basketball-player-credits-kobe-bryant-for-inspiring-him-1851261195 The blogs main focus is about a local basketball player, Alan Jennings who credits Kobe and his motivational speeches that apparently motivated Jennings to go and score 4 points in an amazing 48 to 12, wait for it, LOSS. The blog has uses sarcasm, irony and humorous tone to mock Alan Jennings and his amazing performance. Firstly, the blog starts of by saying “pointing up in the sky as he landed a backs shot”, the way this is being described, someone would think that this shot mattered a lot and it was a important point in the game. But later as the read on, we find out that this the second shot that went in for Jennings who had previously scored only 2 pts, overall a huge 4 pts out of 12 shots. Then blogs states that Jennings credits Kobe and Kobe’s dedication and his...

  Addison highlights the power and potential of ridicule in society, but also states that misuse of its power can also cause negative impacts in our society. Thus it’s important that we recognize that the effects and impact of ridicule depend on its intent, context and use. Let’s take a look at both types of ridicule and it’s effects, negatively and positively. First, ridicule can have a positive impact when used in the  correct way, which can help to serve as a method of critiquing social problems and helps to challenge unique social ideas, for example, George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” uses ridicule as its main strategy to highlight corruption, communism and the labor force rebelling against the oppressive government.  Another  example is in the Nacirema piece, where ridicule is used to   critique certain practices in society such as everyone devoting themselves to their body and to critique the anthropologists tendency to increase the perceived weirdnes...

  During my childhood, I had a vast collection of playthings and toys, from action figured to nerf guns but one creation was my favorite: Legos. A simple but very clever concept, Legos originally from Germany have had a huge influence on the minds and imaginations of young and old people for generations, research shows that Legos really helped to improve cognitive development and cultural experiences for Kids than any other toys.  If you have never played with Legos, first of all you had a bad childhood but don’t worry, I’ll help you experience it. Picture this: a sea of colorful plastic bricks, each one a potential masterpiece waiting to be constructed. From towering skyscrapers to whimsical spaceships, the possibilities with Legos are as endless as your mind. With just a few blocks, a child can turn a pile of colorful Lego blocks into a huge structure, a house, a car or even a plane and also don’t forget the occasional foot injuries when parents step on the sharp legos. But ...

  Beauty and the beat is a popular fairy tale that has been adapted into the popular Disney film, animated and with real people. The summary of the movie is really simple, a young woman, Belle tries to find her father who is imprisoned by a Beast, a prince who’s cursed due to his selfishness and lack of compassion. Belle offers her place instead of her fathers as Beasts Captive and she slowly starts to fall in love with him. But other than the entertaining plot, this movie also portrays genders in traditional and unconventional ways, offering the exploration of masculinity and femininity. Let’s first look at the traditional gender roles, the main characters both Belle, Gaston and Beast’s characteristics can be seen as traditional, for example, Belle initially conforms to the conventional role of the Disney princess who dreams of romance and adventure. She is depicted as compassionate, nurturing, and kind-hearted, embodying traditional feminine traits and Beast represents the mascul...

I have read many graphic novels, mostly comic style books when I was younger about superheroes like Spider-Man and Superman that made me think graphic novels were always childish and couldn’t mean anything. But when I read Maus, my opinion changed. I never knew that a graphic novel could have such a deep meaning and could be very powerful. The book revolves around the harrowing narrative of the Holocaust with a complex father-son relationship that depicts the terrors of a Holocaust survivor better than history books or documentaries. Spiegelman achieves that by using a combination of motifs, rhetorical devices, and visual elements. For example, a prominent motif is the use of animals to represent different ethnic groups, with Jews portrayed as mice, nazis as cats, polish as pigs, and Americans as dogs. This motif emphasizes the predator-prey relationship in the Holocaust such as mice getting tortured and killed by cats and the cats being feared by the dogs. Visual elements such as the ...

  Maus is rich with motifs. Each page is filled with them, when analyzed, conveying a deeper meaning. For example, the page after 101, in the first page of the comic “Prisoner on the Hell Planet” written by Artie, the page has a photo of Anja and Artie when Artie was young boy . This photograph shows us that that though the characters are presented as caricatures inside the comic, they are, in fact, real people this also goes bac Maus k to the animal metaphor, throughout the book, characters are depicted as different animals depending on their races(rats as Jews and cats as Germans) but when seen as people, they all look the same and have no differences are all equal other than their “races”. Also on the first page, we can that Artie is wearing a prison costume with black stripes which might suggest that Artie is imprisoned by his mother’s death and trauma. In later pages of chapter 5, we see Artie and Vladeck go to the bank where have conversations about inheritance, but in t...

  In the narrative of "Sweat" by Lynn Nottage, the web of characters' relationships represents their pursuit of dreams and aspirations. Within the story, friendships emerge as pillars of strength, fostering an environment where characters can achieve their dreams. For instance, when Tracey and Cynthia together, try to pursue economic stability, their friendship becomes a driving force. Nottage captures this alliance, portraying how shared friendships can create a powerful way to achieve dreams together as they navigate the challenges of the factory floor, the support they offer each other becomes important in their journey. However, the same relationships that create dreams can also become the very barriers to them. When familial and friendly ties unravel due to jealousy or betrayal, the fallout is unstoppable. Stan and Chris's friendship, initially very important in the book later disintegrates under the weight of resentments and aspirations. This problem exemplifies...

  Hughes's selection of words and rhetorical devices such as imagery, repetition, and metaphors emphasize the importance of dreams in a person’s life. “Hold fast to dreams” implies an urgency, suggesting that one should hold their dreams tightly and never let them go. Hughes uses imagery when he says “broken-winged bird” as he compares it to a life that’s broken due to letting go dreams which emphasizes the central message “hold fast to dreams”. Hughes describes the downside of a life without dreams by using imagery as when he says “barren field/frozen with snow” to paint a picture of a cold, lonely life. He repeats several words and sentences such as the word “life” that often serves as a reminder that dreams play an important role in a person’s regardless of having them or not having them.

 In this alternative universe, far different from the roaring twenties of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s New York, a shimmering city filled with technology that is a thousand times more advanced than what we have in the present, can be found in the middle of the Nevada Desert. Gatsby, in this world, was a legend, a master of technology and illusions as in this universe the age of holograms and virtual reality is rising. This Gatsby 2.0 was just like the Gatsby of the old, Gatsby 2.0 had a huge appetite for success and a desire to rewrite his past. This Gatsby 2.0, instead of throwing huge parties in his mansions, he threw lavish VR(virtual reality) gatherings where celebrities, influencers, and politicians could attend from their places behind a screen. Their holographic avatars could be seen but they were hiding behind their avatars from their homes. Across the city, Daisy Buchanan was Daisy Mitchell, an up-and-coming digital artist. Her creations captivated the city's elites, her works, ...