Top 10 Songs Describing Me

1. "Remember When"- Alan Jackson:  This song describes me because I look back at all the memories I have with people. I do dwell on the past by remembering when times were perfect and all of my friends were together. I like looking back at memories I have with my boyfriend because they always seem to make me smile. The song is about a man looking back at his relationship.

2. "Find Out Who Your Friends Are"- Tracy Lawrence: Through high school I had the typical drama with some friends. I figured out who actually would be there for me and who made a positive impact in my life. "You find you who your friends are. Somebody's gonna drop everything, run out and crank up their car. Hit the gas, get there fast, never stop to think, "What's in it for me?" or "Its way too far." They just show on up, with a big old heart."

3."Where I Come From"- Montgomery Gentry: This song describes me because I grew up in a little town in the middle of nowhere. I grew up with the country values living on a farm. I am proud of where I came from and my country roots. 

4. "International Harvester"- Craig Morgan: Even though I'm a fan of John Deere, the other parts of "International Harvester" describe my life. Like stated earlier, growing up working on the family farm was part of me. From 4-H to FFA and driving tractors, this song explains some aspects of my life.

5. "Don't Blink"- Kenny Chesney: Kenny Chesney sings about how life moves by so fast. Thinking in a few years that I will be graduating college and going into my future job doesn't seem surreal. 

6. "9-5"- Dolly Parton: Working has become a huge thing in my life going into college. I now feel like I work too much, but need to work a lot to pay for tuition. Dolly Parton sings about waking up in the morning and working all day.

7. "My Happy Ending"- Avril Lavigne: I got rid of people in my life that created a negative atmosphere to give myself a happy ending. Avril Lavigne is singing more on an ex-boyfriend, but in my life it is more just friends. Trying to be as happy as possible with the people that make me as happy as possible. 

8. "The Climb"- Miley Cyrus:  The perfect song describing all the hard work it takes to accomplish your goals. I have tried my hardest to get where I am today and Miley sings the about the climb you take to get to where you want to be. 

9. "Stronger (What Doesn't Kill You)"-Kelly Clarkson: Things that may feel as if they would kill you actually make you stronger. I gain something from almost everything I do and have gained better confidence throughout doing so. 

10. "Swing"- Trace Adkins: The words of this song aren't much what describes me, but this song was my walk up song to bat during softball. Many people would walk up to me and say, "Aren't you the girl that walked up to "Swing"?" That was almost my signature song as that's what I was remembered by. 

Top 5 Skills

By the time I leave college I would like to gain some skills for my future including time management, synthesizing information, speaking in front of a crowd, working with a deadline, and working with others I may not know as well. 
I would like to build strength in my time management skills. Once my schedule drastically changed from high school to college, I needed work on being effectively productive. Balancing multiple jobs, classes, homework, sleep, etc. is a very important aspect in my schedule. I would also like to build strength in my synthesizing skills.  Finding the important parts of work is necessary when reading material. I need to determine the importance of my lessons when I become a teacher. Speaking in front of a crowd has been a very weak spot for me throughout high school and the beginning of college. I have gotten stronger with these skills through this semester and hope to continue building them. I also hope to get better at working with a deadline. I procrastinate on absolutely everything! I hope to get better at working on things gradually before the due date to cause less stress on myself. The final skill I would like to gain through college is working with others I may not know as well. I tend to only want to work with people I know and feel uncomfortable with people I have not really talked to before. In my future job I will need to talk to parents of my students almost everyday and I won't personally know them right away. I hope to be more comfortable around others!

Concussions

I have gotten many concussions throughout my high school career. My first concussion occurred when I was watching my sister's softball game on the side of the fence. I had looked down at my phone and heard my mom yelling to move so I looked up to see what the commotion was about. A ball had been overthrown and just as I looked up it hit me in the jaw causing it to shift back and shake my skull. My second concussion occurred during gym class when we were playing football. There was a scissor lift in our end zone fixing the gym scoreboard. I got thrown the ball and caught it in the end zone but continued running and ran right into the scissor lift. I split open my ear and hit my head very hard on the solid metal extension. My third concussion happened during an away basketball game versus Riverdale. I had dove for a lose ball and a girl jumped on top of my head causing it to smash into the floor. My fourth and final concussion also happened in gym class when we were playing triangle kickball. A girl was going to throw a ball at me to get me out but I jumped in the air to avoid getting hit. The ball hit my feet and flipped me over so I landed head first on the gym floor. To this day I still don't remember what happened the hour after I got the concussion. After receiving all these concussions my memory has grown worse!

Synthesizing Hitchcock Themes from Groups

When looking at Hitchcock's films, one can see how he uses ethics, psychology, historical context, and technology/science. Ethics used in Hitchcock's film include women's clothing, kissing scenes, alcohol, and affairs. I believe Hitchcock portrays some bad ethics but gives the movie a good story line. The women (mostly Alicia) wear clothing that is quite revealing for the time period and Alicia also gets married but continues to love Devlin. Also, Alicia is seen driving while under the influence and kissing scenes were not as ethical in the 40s. Psychology is seen in a few scenes in Notorious including Alicia realizing the wine room is where her husband is hiding something and Alicia realizing she had been poisoned. I believe these involve psychology because they deal with thinking and how the character is feeling. Historical context of the film can be seen in a few ways including the laws of kissing scenes, women's behavior, Nazis and uranium (Germany vs USA). I believe these scenes include historical context because they were different in the 1940s. Back then the women were suppose to be homemakers and kissing scenes were not suppose to last over 3 seconds. Also, Germany and the United States were feuding after the war and had many issues with each other. Technology and science can be found throughout Hitchcock's Notorious including the scenes using different camera angles and rear projection process shots. I believe these scenes include technology and science because the different ways Hitchcock used the camera was brilliant and high tech in the 40s.

Future Plans

After graduating from Defiance College I have many plans for my future. I would like to move somewhere out west such as Colorado or Wyoming. I would like to raise beef cattle on a large ranch. I wish to teach first grade in a small rural town and coach softball. I would like to raise a family with my husband and have three children and many dogs! I am very excited and hope that my dreams for my future come true.

Ethics in Hitchcock Films

During the 1940s, morals and ethics played a large role in motion pictures. Hitchcock portrayed ethics in some very interesting ways in his films. In many scenes, he also found ways around being completely ethical, but still staying within the guidelines. Some specific parts where this can be seen in Notorious are in some of the women’s clothing, the kissing, alcohol and drunk driving, women being a part of an undercover job, and women participating in adultery.

The clothing that women wore throughout the 1940s was meant to form a sort of silhouette. Woman wore dresses with broad, wide shoulders and tight waist bands to form an hourglass shape. In Notorious, you can see that Alicia wears long, tight waisted dresses with square shoulders. This gives her an hourglass shaping to her body and makes her look professional. You can even see when she wears the suit on the airplane that it still follows these ideal aspects.

Throughout Notorious Alicia (Ingrid Bergman) and Devlin (Cary Grant) begin to become closer as they work together undercover. Eventually, the two find themselves in love. Of course being in love requires some kissing scenes, though this was difficult in the 1940s. The Production Code of 1930 was created to set some moral guidelines for motion pictures in the United States. This occurred during the period of Silent Movies switching to Sound. Due to the code, “Excessive and lustful kissing, lustful embraces, suggestive postures and gestures, were not to be shown.” This meant that even though they were in love, Ingrid and Cary could not show their characters’ true emotions. Hitchcock’s way around this was to have the couple do multiple short kisses, rather than one long kiss. Though it may look odd if you were to watch Notorious today, it was a very clever way around the rule then to be able to still show passion in his movies.

One scene portrayed in Notorious showed Alicia driving a car with Devlin after a party. The scene clearly shows Alicia is under the influence of alcohol as she is swerving all over the road and she cannot see straight. After World War II, the car market was on a rise. Everyone was buying cars and most drivers were uneducated. Laws prohibiting drunk driving began in 1910 but intoxication was not clearly defined at this point. In the 1930s lawmakers stated that a driver with a BAC of 0.15 percent or higher is inebriated. By the 1970s DUI laws become more strict and the legal drinking age was raised to 21. Today, drunk driving is an incredibly unethical action and a driver with a BAC of 0.08 percent is considered inebriated. In 2014, 9,967 people died and 290,000 people were injured in accidents due to drunk driving. In the 1940s, drunk driving may not have been seen as unethical as it is today because the laws that were placed then were not as strict as today. Also, less accidents had been reported then versus today.

In Notorious, we see one of the main characters, Alicia Huberman played by Ingrid Bergman, get thrown into the world of covert intelligence and spy business. What many don't know is that if this was actually set in the late 1940’s, Alicia might not be there. Women were not a big part of federal intelligence agencies during that time period, as far as field agents. Now during WWII, there was a substantial increase in women police officers, but even they were put on leash for what they could do while in the law enforcement. Indeed there were women in agencies, but they were doing desk work. Field agents were seen as a “thing only for boys”. It wasn't until 1972, that women were allowed to join FBI training. This goes to show that Alfred Hitchcock wanted to make his film stand out, and probably got heads to turn when they saw what a woman was doing in the film.

During the movie Notorious, after Alicia and Alex get married, Alex keeps suspecting her of having an affair with Devlin. Back in this time period, there was a different belief about marriages. They encouraged women to think of marriages as a successful career. They believed that it was the women's job to make sure the marriage was happy, his career was successful and that it didn’t end in divorce. Even if the problem in the marriage was alcohol or an affair from the men, it was the wife's job to change something to bring him back home. There was a thought back then that the wife was supposed to make the marriage work and nothing was her fault even if the man was having an affair. If a woman had an affair in the time period, it was much more taboo and less common than a man. If the woman had an affair it looked bad on the husband and not her.

https://twentyfourframes.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/review625.jpg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_Picture_Production_Code

http://www.artsreformation.com/a001/hays-code.html

http://automobileandamericanlife.blogspot.com/2010/12/brief-history-of-drunk-driving-in-post.html

http://www.liquorlaws.net/duilaws.html

http://www.madd.org/drunk-driving/about/drunk-driving-statistics.html

http://eds.b.ebscohost.com/eds/detail/detail?sid=720b1235-df16-454d-9728-b251f3184cfc%40sessionmgr110&vid=7&hid=111&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWRzLWxpdmU%3d#AN=510858586&db=bft

http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2012/02/27/a-glimpse-into-marriage-advice-from-the-1950s/

http://www.thebluegrassspecial.com/archive/2010/june10/bergman-grant-screen-kiss.php

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/ten-miles-square/2015/01/weekend_film_recommendation_no053659.php

http://www.deepfocusreview.com/reviews/notorious.asp

The Transition to College Writing

Dear high school student, 
Hjortshoj explains five main differences between high school and college. Two of those differences are that high school teachers are normally generalists and college professors are specialists and college work requires new kinds of motivation. In high school, teachers aren't specifically trained in an area of study. They are competent in different fields so they may not know everything there is to know about one specific area. College teachers on the other hand are specifically trained in one area of study and are highly skilled in a specific study. In high school I had a teacher that was my AP calculus and AP physics teacher and also taught pre-algebra, algebra, and geometry classes. While in college my professors mainly teach one specific area such as early childhood education. Another difference from high school to college is that college work requires new kinds of motivation. In high school it was the same daily routine and I often did not need to study for tests and quizzes. In college there is often a different routine and new kinds of ways to succeed are needed.  I now need to study for all tests, not procrastinate on homework, and meet teachers outside of classes. 
I believe two major differences from high school to college are time management and class style. In high school the routine was normally the same from day to day while in college you have different classes and activities each day. In high school I had the same schedule of going to school, having sports practice or game, doing homework, eating supper, showering, and then going to bed. In college that dramatically changed and I have more free time. I also believe the class style is different in college. In high school half of the class was used to just talk to the teacher about things unrelated to the class.  Also, the teacher would accept late homework and be more lenient when it came to due dates. In college my classes tend to be straight to the lesson and homework is not accepted late.
 We lie to ourselves about college by not getting properly prepared, believing that high school to college will be an easy transition.  Students believe high school just continues into college. They lie to themselves by believing they can easily skate by in college and not have to try hard (just like high school). Good luck with your transition to college and I hope my examples have prepared you to create a better transition for yourself!
Sincerely, 
Kayla Rethmel