Journal #31 - Job Shadowing

My job shadowing experience was very interesting. I was able to shadow a bunch of different people in a couple of different fields of work. I had the privilege of going to Illinois Department of Central Management Services. Don Warren, the manager of the whole building, took me on a tour of the CMS data room. The room was on the third floor of the building, and only certain people had access to the room. It was around 30,000 square feet of raised flooring, which is used so that the cables can be run under the floor for organization. He explained that the rows of tape data was being transferred to digital storage, so a lot of the space would soon clear up for more servers. Some of the computer equipment was water cooled, which I found to be very interesting. After finishing the tour, Mr. Warren dropped me off with workers in the building. The first person that I shadowed was an IT person. Through out the course of an hour or two, he showed me what his normal day was like. He started by installing applications onto a couple of the different servers in the building, but while he was working on that, he received an email asking him to fix a field on one of the state sites. He also was working on another major project, so he had a lot going on at one time. After I finished shadowing him, I was moved to the networking group. Even though it has nothing to do with the job, they were really funny and relaxed. They took me back up to the data room, but this time they walked me over towards the LAN area. They talked to me about fiber optic cables and the technological advances that are coming around, which was the first thing that I actually understood all day. They talked about fiber cable that instead of sending one wavelength of light through it to pass data, it would send 70 different wavelengths of light in the tube, and because they were all different wavelengths, the data would not interfere with anything. It was really cool stuff. I was most interested by the LAN group. The final person that I was able to shadow was a guy who worked with Unix. I was only with him for a few minutes, but he was the most basic introduction to the field, which was very helpful. He told us that he mainly worked with Unix servers, as opposed to Windows servers. He was very insightful to all the questions that I had to ask him. Overall, I really enjoyed my time job shadowing, but I will be going into the Engineering field for sure.

Video Blog - Langston Hughes

Bibliography Citations:


De Santis, Christopher C. "'The Negro Speaks of Rivers'." In Anderson, George P., Judith S. Baughman, Matthew J. Bruccoli, and Carl Rollyson, eds. Encyclopedia of American Literature, Revised Edition: Into the Modern: 1896–1945, Volume 3. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2008. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE54&SID=5&iPin= EAmL1256&SingleRecord=True (accessed May 3, 2012).


Hughes, Langston. "The Negro Speaks of Rivers." Poets.org. Academy of American Poets, 1997. Web. 03 May 2012. <http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15722>.

Favorite Whitman Poem

http://whitmanarchive.org/published/LG/1891/poems/194  -- This is my favorite Walt Whitman poem.

"O Captain! My Captain!" is my favorite Walt Whitman poem for many reasons. One of the major reasons that it is my favorite is because of the multitude of ways that it can be interpreted. Taken at its literal meaning, the poem describes a ship that is returning from a journey. The ship has sought and found what it was searching for, but the captain did not make it back alive. He lies cold and dead on the deck of the ship. Many people come and place flowers on the deck of the ship in honor of the captain, who was probably respected by many. Again, the poem repeats that whatever the captain and his crew were searching for was found, but the captain is still dead.

Taken at a very specific interpretation, the captain can be assumed to be Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln's mission, the item the ship was searching for, was to reunite the Union during the Civil War. The captain in the story was killed after the ship came back from its mission, meaning that its goal was completed. Lincoln was assassinated, but not until after the end of the Civil War. Many people came to mourn the death of the captain. Thousands of Americans mourned the death of Abraham Lincoln. The poem can also be taken 180 degrees in the opposite direction. The ship in the poem could represent the Confederacy. The captain, much like the captain in the south, is represented as slavery. When the Confederacy came out of the civil war, slavery was dead to the Union. Many southerners were upset by the end of slavery, and Confederacy was no longer a country.

The most popular interpretation of the poem is probably the first of the two, but I believe that both are very valid interpretations. Whitman uses the strategy of repetition, repeating the phrase "fallen cold and dead" through out his poem. Whitman's poem was written in a time following the Civil War, which is why the previous two interpretations come to mind over others. Overall, "O Captain! My Captain!" is a great poem.

"Chanting the Square Deific" - Analysis

Walt Whitman spent a great deal of his life searching for his transcendental self. A large part of his transcendental self was the religion that he was introduced to in his life. Whitman's poem "Chanting the Square Deific" is a different view on traditional religious views. The Christian faith believes in a trinity, consisting of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Whitman's poem was a depiction of a "square deific" (Whitman). The four aspects of the square deific are God, Christ, Satan and the Soul (Oliver). Whitman provided a rough outline of his transcendental self, using the square deific, by describing the for parts of his being.

God, the first stanza and side of the square deific, is depicted as many different gods from other cultures. The "God" characterization is very similar to a father character. The God in Whitman's square deific believes "whoever sins dies" (Whitman). The God does not believe in forgiveness, and even after the days of no redemption for humans, will continue to give out criticism to the people (Whitman). The God does not sound like our version of God because this God is not an understanding God. This God is a merciless God, and he described himself as such. When compared to a father character, God must be strict. It is the father's job, much like God's job, to have little remorse towards all people. 

The next side of the square deific is almost the complete opposite of the God. The Christ is a completely understanding and compassionate Christ. He acknowledged that  he had been crucified many times, and would be again (Whitman). Christ was a "half man/half God" character, much like the other examples from the poem. Hercules and Hermes, both half God characters, are referenced in the poem (Whitman). The Christ sacrificed many things for little in return, and even offered wisdom as well as affection. Christ will "absorb" all the sorrow and suffering in the world, all for the soul's sake (Whitman). This side of the square deific is one of the most important. Christ is a comparison for selflessness. Christ is a person who is more concerned with others than himself, which is a characteristic of transcendental self that a person should aspire to have. Christ would give everything up for someone else, just like a truly good person will give up themselves for another person.

Satan is the side opposite God in the square deific. Satan, according to the Bible, is a fallen angel. Satan is the "brother of slaves," confirming that he is a fallen angel. Since the poem is written in first person, Satan would refer to his "brothers," the other angels, as slaves to Christ (Whitman). Whitman stressed the importance of both good and evil in the deific, demonstrating that a truly well rounded person will have both good and bad qualities. Satan would not change his ways, leading the reader to assume that stubbornness is a common quality in a person's transcendental self, upon deep reflection. Whitman wrote that Satan was "in the depths of my heart, proud as any" (Whitman). Whitman was concluding that even he, not wanting to admit it, had a darker part of his true being deep down.

The Spirit side of the square deific is a much more abstract concept to analyze. However, Whitman even wrote that the Spirit was "the most solid" (Whitman). The Spirit represents many things, including the people, life and the light. God transfers himself through light or fire, meaning that God transfers himself through the Spirit. The Spirit is a "breather of life" (Whitman). The Spirit is responsible for giving life purpose, a very important part of Whitman's transcendental self. The soul is, in essence, Whitman's transcendental self because contained in the Spirit are the other three sides of the square deific. Would that really make it a square deific, or just a trinity like many other religious forms. Were we even talking about religion at all?

Oliver, Charles M. "'Chanting the Square Deific'." Critical Companion to Walt Whitman: A Literary Reference to His Life and Work, Critical Companion. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2005. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE54&SID=5&iPin= CCWW082&SingleRecord=True (accessed April 3, 2012).

Whitman, Walt. "Chanting the Square Deific." The Walt Whitman Archive. Ed. Kenneth M. Price. N.p., n.d. Web. 3 Apr. 2012. <http://whitmanarchive.org/published/LG/1891/poems/247>.

"I Felt a Funeral, In My Brain" - Analysis

Emily Dickinson was known for writing a great deal of poetry on the subject of mortality, and this poem is no exception. "I Felt a Funeral, In My Brain" was a poem that was a large metaphor. The poem was not a simile because it did not use words such as "like" or "as" to compare the funeral in her brain. The funeral was in her brain. Dickinson used many metaphors throughout her poem to discus the funeral in her brain. Many of her metaphors came when describing the difference between her actual self and her intangible self. In the first line of the poem, Dickinson says "I felt a funeral, in my brain" (Dickinson). She uses a metaphor to refer to her physical self, such as her brain, but in line 8 she uses the term "mind," which refers to an intangible part of her body. The mind is not a physical thing that can be grabbed, or be "numb" (Dickinson).

There are many different ways to interpret the speaker of the poem. It can be assumed that the speaker is going through a very traumatic event in their life. The funeral going on in her head was very traumatic for the speaker, and she did not like it at all. The poem could be the metaphor for the traumatic event. It is also possible that the speaker just has a really bad headache and wanted to write about it. The speaker, assumed to be Dickinson, was not a social person, so she probably did not appreciate being around all the people at the "funeral" in her mind. The speaker begins the poem at a funeral in her brain, and as the poem progresses, they end up passing through a wood floor, through the speakers soul. At the end of the journey, the speaker is found to be alone with silence as her only companion.

Many of Dickinson's poems are on the subject of mortality. She was obviously very afraid of death, or maybe she was very curious about what would happen to her after hear death. Her poetry created a scenario to explain life after death in a way that could ease her fear, such as depicting a small funeral in her head, with little people carrying the casket with "lead boots" (Dickinson). Because Dickinson was known for creating scenarios such as the one in this poem, many of her poems can be described almost as dreams. They obviously cannot literally happen, and the setting of the poem shifts so rapidly. Her poem could have ended with the speaker waking up, or was the speaker even alive? This poem is about a funeral, but it described the event "like a drum" (Dickinson). Drums are seldom used in church-related music. The fact that the image is reiterated through out the poem is a contradiction to normal funeral proceedings. The beating of the drum could be an image for a life event that the speaker wanted to bury, but could not forget.

Dickinson, Emily. "I Felt a Funeral, in My Brain (280)- Poets.org - Poetry, Poems, Bios & More." Poets.org. The Academy of American Poets. Web. 03 Apr. 2012. <http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15391>.

Journal #29 - Transcendental Self

A prominent philosophical leader once said, "we are who we are." Who is Chris Moore? Is he an athlete? Is he a scholar? Is he a musician? Or is he all of those things? Do any of those things even truly matter? To truly discover who Chris Moore is, we must take a journey into the life of Chris Moore. Understanding the this complex human being will not be an easy task. Upon initial observations, certain characteristics can be noted. Chris Moore works very hard for everything that he wants. Through out his life, he has not had things handed to him. Chris Moore is a generally good person. He will go out of his way to do things for people. Helping people out is something that he feels is important. Treating others the way he wants to be treated is something that he believes strongly in. Upon a much more detailed examination of Chris's character, it begins to become much more clear who Chris really is. Chris is someone who does not like conflict. He does everything he can to avoid all conflicts. This tells a lot about his character and moral integrity. 

No one is harder on Chris than himself. He always strives to be the best he can be, no matter what the subject is. Chris does not let him do things halfway. He also strives to do everything that he can do. He is a strong believer in the motto "you only live once." Chris is viewed by others very highly. People see the things that he does and he is liked by many people. Adults speak highly of Chris because of his ability to do things when asked. He has great manners around everyone, especially women. It is to be noted that he has a very high level of respect towards women. He finds the way that some people act around them to be very disturbing. 

It can be clearly stated that Chris Moore is a very complex person, inside and out.

Journal #28 - "I Heard A Fly Buzz When I Died"

Dickinson's poem "I Head A Fly Buzz When I Died" was a very interesting poem. The opening line of the poem would not trouble any person who believed that the personality is a large part of a person's soul. Dickinson's main goal of the poem was to show that poetry is not used to depict photographic images, but to engage the readers intellect and provoke thought. The poem begins telling that the character heard a fly buzzing at the exact moment that she died. She recalled that the room became very still, and used the simile "like a lull in a storm." That line could be used to describe the complete quietness that she felt as soon as she died or also the relief form the pain that she was feeling during her death. Dickinson final line in the poem, "I could not see to see" has conflicting interpretations.