Best of Week: Sea of Information

Sea of Information is a short story written by Andrea Barrett. In this short story she writes about the struggles she has with writing and what helps her get back on track. I felt that Sea of Information was the best of the week because we spent most of the week discussing the story. The assignment was to pick the top three insights about creativity, but she wrote about so many it was difficult to choose only three. In order to find and understand those insights, you had to read in between the lines. 


On almost every page of Sea of Information she wrote about creativity and how it influences her writing. For example, on page 14, she writes about how much she reads and that its the only way she knows to deeply inhabit a world other than the limited one of my own experiences. It's pretty much straight forward but in between the lines she's telling her audience that reading can give you access to live you have not lived. Also on page 10, she does research and reads about tuberculosis. Her research gave her a new perspective on the situation of tuberculosis because she read about others experiences and not just her own. 


Barrett also writes from her own experiences which is very influential on her writing. She was in New York City during the attacks of 9/11 and she said that many writers had difficulty with writing after the attacks because everything felt different. Most writers just asked themselves what the point was. Then Barrett figured out that if she wrote, that maybe she would make some sense out of what happened. Since the experience was still too "raw" it was hard for her to start getting some ideas on paper. But in the end she was able to find relief and continue writing from experiences. 


Barrett researched, experienced, read, and imagined which all inspired greater creativity in her writing. All these elements led her to better writing and which is one of the reasons I felt that this was the best of the week. It interested me that so many things are factors to writing and creativity. One other reason was her use of details. Each page and each paragraph used a sufficient amount of details to explain the point she was trying to get across. Overall I think Barrett is a good writer and I enjoyed reading her short story last week in class. 

Connection: television vs. real life

For the past few weeks in humanities we have been studying creativity. We have read a variety of articles and we just watched a film. I have been able to read and visualize how anyone can be and become more creative. One of the articles that we read that I felt was most interesting, was the pass the plate article about Feynman. And ever since I read the article I had been thinking about a television show that I watch. 

The television show is called Dawson's Creek. The show is based on four teenagers struggling with high school, love, and their futures. In one of the episodes, one of the lead female characters began drawing and she realized that she just might have some artistic talent up her sleeve. So in order pursue this new found passion, she broke up with her boyfriend. She believed that if they were apart she would be able to find herself and figure out if drawing is the right thing for her.

When she broke up with her boyfriend she told him that all she was was his girlfriend and she wanted to be more than just that. So she took several art classes and started enjoying the new creative person she had become. She went into drawing open minded and in the end a whole new world was opened right before her. Drawing kept her entertained so she kept doing it. Feynman kept himself entertained by doing what he loved. He loved science and enjoyed not knowing the right answer. He just wanted to have fun. And in the end he did. He was a very intelligent and successful man. 

Feynman and the girl in Dawson's Creek are similar because they were both curious and open minded to everything, that in the end they experienced a whole different side to life. And they enjoyed experiencing that new side because they were having fun and loving what they were doing. 

I realized that two things that are completely different can also be completely similar. I never thought that a show about four teenagers could relate to a article about a famous scientist. It just goes to show that creativity is everywhere and anyone can be creative. 

Captured Thought: choosing the right classes...

Near the end of junior year we were choosing our classes for next year and I thought to myself, do I want an easy senior year or a somewhat difficult year with some AP classes. So I decided to take some AP classes to become more prepared for college. The AP classes I chose were Spanish language and psychology. Classes have begun and it has been only a couple of weeks and I came to the quick realization that those AP classes that I was taking were going to be a lot harder than I had expected them to be. 


There is a lot of hard work an effort that goes into these classes. Each night for psychology we have to read a decent amount from the textbook and for Spanish we study at least 20-30 vocabulary words a night. The expectations for these classes is much higher than those of my other classes because we take the AP tests in May and if you do well on those you get college credit. And I think those credits can help me out once I get to college. My sister thought the same thing, until it came time to start college.


My older sister, Maddy, just left for her freshman year of college. She took an AP math class her senior year but she didn't take a foreign language. Since she didn't get the credit for foreign language, she had to take one this year. I guess she didn't put much thought about what AP classes to take as well as I did. 


So, I'm glad I decided to take some difficult classes this year because I hope that after all the tests are over that I come out an accomplished student with a new and better set of skills to help me in college for the next four or more years.