Flavian Philip

Professor Janelle Poe

FIQWS 1018

17 December 2018

Self-Reflection

This semester has taught me a lot of things. Firstly being that I am barely as great of a writer as I thought I was, and that I need to take my time proofreading my papers other than using technological applications to scan them. Even though I did fairly bad on my RCA I picked out my faults on the paper. Although I proofread it a plethora of times the app grammarly which I had installed, corrected most of my paper which was already fairly correct. Therefore, my paper which I believed I would get at least a B on ended up getting me a C plus. I will not lie it did hurt me a bit as a student because knowing that I put a lot effort especially into my final draft for it to be practically all for a C plus kind of sucked, but I am grateful because it was a learning experience and taught me a lesson which was that a computer cannot read and understand my paper better than I can and that it is fairly important to reread and revisit parts of the essay that I feel need the most help before I turn it in.

I believe that over the course of this semester that I have actually become better at both of the essential English skills of reading and writing. This is due to the fact that Professor Poe consistently gave us writing assignments and sessions in class where we would free-write in class for 7-10 minutes. While sometimes very stressful and an overbearing load, every assignment helped me to improve my skills in a way that I haven’t really realized till most recently. The bi-weekly Pass the Mic sessions not only stimulated my brain for me to be more attentive in class, but it also helped me to collect my thoughts together at a faster and  quicker speed. When being given a topic and being expected to expand upon it within a short time frame it practically forced my brain to think of ideas to write and this helped me a lot, especially with discussion board posts. However, I realized that when writing major essay assignments that it was much more difficult and way harder for me to formulate an idea clearly, it would take me days to put together in words what I was thinking of on paper in words that would make sense to readers, and although I did better on some than others like my literacy narrative, I still have acknowledged the fact that my writing to this day carries many faults and ithas been showneven in my peer reviews given by my classmates.

Throughout the course of the semester I was exposed to numerous pieces of literature from non-fiction pieces such as “Coming Into Language” by Jimmy Baca to Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s poetry novel “Dictee”. These pieces of literature not only  helped me to understand the importance of rhetoric, but it made me start to become more inquisitive when reading and analyzing texts. Before the semester I would read and underline and jot a few notes but most of the time I still wouldn’t understand the purpose or the overall theme of the pieces that I was reading. On the contrary, if I was to read a piece of literature today I would constantly ask myself the questions “What point of view is this piece in?”, “What is the main idea or message that’s being conveyed throughout this piece?” , and “What element of persuasion is the author using to gain his audience’s attention, pathos, logos, or ethos?” These questions helped me to become a better reader and better at analyzing significant details within more difficult pieces of literature such as Jean Rhys “Wide Sargasso Sea”, this piece took a lot of analysis, for if a significant detail was missed it would lead to ultimate confusion, but reading the pieces in the way that I did allowed me to process the words being read and helped me to understand that within the excerpt, the author flipped the racial treatment between racial groups within society. Therefore, the black people were viewed as the majority and the white people were depicted as the minority.

Although I learned a lot of things such as the acronym PREP which stands for point of view, reason why, explanation, and point of view, which is an easier way to understand the makeup of an essay, and even though I took extensive notes on the planning process of a research critical analysis, there are a few things that I’ve learned through the course of the year that I still do not understand  such as how to create a proper annotated bibliography. I have tried on many occasions to create one and even have watched YouTube videos on how to indent everything on every line other than the first line. However, it still feels extremely difficult to me. I believe that our tech lab visits were very effective, other than the fact that I am still uncertain on how to create a proper bibliography myself, the tech lab visits made me more familiar with the school resources and online resources such as JSTOR and how to search the CUNY databases. All of this information is extremely essential for the rest of my college experience and I feel almost like an expert at it now.

My favorite assignment this semester was the poetry unit. It made me think on a level and sense of creativity and had no barriers or constrictions. It allowed me to think freely and express my ideas to not only my professor, but my entire FIQWS class which was pretty exciting. Writing each piece I thought of the many literary devices such as similes, metaphors, imagery, personification, and repetition and how it could help convey my theme or message across to my intended audience just as Cha’s messages in her pieces was conveyed to myself. Moreover, it also made me think of the structures of my poems. For one of my poems which I had entitled “Letters To A Young Black Girl” I was influenced by Frank Lima’s poem Haiku which was a series of haikus which made up one poem. In addition, I felt influenced by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha when she occasionally revisits her past and her childhood within her poems.

Overall, throughout the course of the year I have learned a plethora of things that has helped me to become a better reader and writer than I was before. Although I am not the best at writing, I have improved drastically over the course of the last 4 to 5 months, and even though I may not comprehend how to properly do an annotated bibliography, I have learned more throughout the year such as rhetoric, the importance of proofreading, the essential elements of persuasion, how to properly use the CUNY databases, and how to analyze and conjecture ideas at a faster speed.

This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Flavian Philip

Professor Janelle Poe

FIQWS 1018

17 December 2018

Self-Reflection

This semester has taught me a lot of things. Firstly being that I am barely as great of a writer as I thought I was, and that I need to take my time proofreading my papers other than using technological applications to scan them. Even though I did fairly bad on my RCA I picked out my faults on the paper. Although I proofread it a plethora of times the app grammarly which I had installed, corrected most of my paper which was already fairly correct. Therefore, my paper which I believed I would get at least a B on ended up getting me a C plus. I will not lie it did hurt me a bit as a student because knowing that I put a lot effort especially into my final draft for it to be practically all for a C plus kind of sucked, but I am grateful because it was a learning experience and taught me a lesson which was that a computer cannot read and understand my paper better than I can and that it is fairly important to reread and revisit parts of the essay that I feel need the most help before I turn it in.

I believe that over the course of this semester that I have actually become better at both of the essential English skills of reading and writing. This is due to the fact that Professor Poe consistently gave us writing assignments and sessions in class where we would free-write in class for 7-10 minutes. While sometimes very stressful and an overbearing load, every assignment helped me to improve my skills in a way that I haven’t really realized till most recently. The bi-weekly Pass the Mic sessions not only stimulated my brain for me to be more attentive in class, but it also helped me to collect my thoughts together at a faster and  quicker speed. When being given a topic and being expected to expand upon it within a short time frame it practically forced my brain to think of ideas to write and this helped me a lot, especially with discussion board posts. However, I realized that when writing major essay assignments that it was much more difficult and way harder for me to formulate an idea clearly, it would take me days to put together in words what I was thinking of on paper in words that would make sense to readers, and although I did better on some than others like my literacy narrative, I still have acknowledged the fact that my writing to this day carries many faults and ithas been showneven in my peer reviews given by my classmates.

Throughout the course of the semester I was exposed to numerous pieces of literature from non-fiction pieces such as “Coming Into Language” by Jimmy Baca to Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s poetry novel “Dictee”. These pieces of literature not only  helped me to understand the importance of rhetoric, but it made me start to become more inquisitive when reading and analyzing texts. Before the semester I would read and underline and jot a few notes but most of the time I still wouldn’t understand the purpose or the overall theme of the pieces that I was reading. On the contrary, if I was to read a piece of literature today I would constantly ask myself the questions “What point of view is this piece in?”, “What is the main idea or message that’s being conveyed throughout this piece?” , and “What element of persuasion is the author using to gain his audience’s attention, pathos, logos, or ethos?” These questions helped me to become a better reader and better at analyzing significant details within more difficult pieces of literature such as Jean Rhys “Wide Sargasso Sea”, this piece took a lot of analysis, for if a significant detail was missed it would lead to ultimate confusion, but reading the pieces in the way that I did allowed me to process the words being read and helped me to understand that within the excerpt, the author flipped the racial treatment between racial groups within society. Therefore, the black people were viewed as the majority and the white people were depicted as the minority.

Although I learned a lot of things such as the acronym PREP which stands for point of view, reason why, explanation, and point of view, which is an easier way to understand the makeup of an essay, and even though I took extensive notes on the planning process of a research critical analysis, there are a few things that I’ve learned through the course of the year that I still do not understand  such as how to create a proper annotated bibliography. I have tried on many occasions to create one and even have watched YouTube videos on how to indent everything on every line other than the first line. However, it still feels extremely difficult to me. I believe that our tech lab visits were very effective, other than the fact that I am still uncertain on how to create a proper bibliography myself, the tech lab visits made me more familiar with the school resources and online resources such as JSTOR and how to search the CUNY databases. All of this information is extremely essential for the rest of my college experience and I feel almost like an expert at it now.

My favorite assignment this semester was the poetry unit. It made me think on a level and sense of creativity and had no barriers or constrictions. It allowed me to think freely and express my ideas to not only my professor, but my entire FIQWS class which was pretty exciting. Writing each piece I thought of the many literary devices such as similes, metaphors, imagery, personification, and repetition and how it could help convey my theme or message across to my intended audience just as Cha’s messages in her pieces was conveyed to myself. Moreover, it also made me think of the structures of my poems. For one of my poems which I had entitled “Letters To A Young Black Girl” I was influenced by Frank Lima’s poem Haiku which was a series of haikus which made up one poem. In addition, I felt influenced by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha when she occasionally revisits her past and her childhood within her poems.

Overall, throughout the course of the year I have learned a plethora of things that has helped me to become a better reader and writer than I was before. Although I am not the best at writing, I have improved drastically over the course of the last 4 to 5 months, and even though I may not comprehend how to properly do an annotated bibliography, I have learned more throughout the year such as rhetoric, the importance of proofreading, the essential elements of persuasion, how to properly use the CUNY databases, and how to analyze and conjecture ideas at a faster speed.

This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Flavian Philip

Professor Janelle Poe

FIQWS 10108

10 December 2018

                                                      The Evil of Ambition

        People such as Kim Jong-un, Robert Allen Stanford, Domenico Dolce, and Stefano Gabbana all have had one thing in common which is the ambition to advance their careers, even to the cost of being labeled as a criminal. In society having a lot of ambition is always deemed positively because it is always associated with excelling in life. However, no one ever shines a light on the fact that having too much ambition can perhaps cause a person to become corruptive. Within the 2018 film Billionaire Boys Club (which was a recreation of the 1987 movie) filmed and directed by James Cox, the main characters Joseph Hunt and Dean Karny (played by Ansel Elgort and Taron Egerton) are introduced as the the most unfortunate out of all of their former Harvard high school classmates. However, even though Karny and Hunt were both depicted as less fortunate, Karny was given more privileges than Hunt because his family ranked higher in socioeconomic class. Throughout this minor difference, the two friends then embarked on a journey to become two of the richest men in Beverly Hills and created a company called the Billionaire Boys Club, but due to their strong-willed ambition to further their careers, their journey to wealth led them to an even greater path of destruction.

        Within the film Billionaire Boys Club, the main character Joseph Hunt, also known as Joe, was depicted as an intellectual white male with an unfortunate upbringing, but with a substantial amount of ambition and charming personality he gained a massive amount of wealth when he created a social and investment club by the name of the Billionaire Boys Club, also known as the BBC, with his friend Dean Karny. Contrarily, the pair lost their sense of humanity striving to fulfill the American dream. It had always been Joe’s dream of to invest in the gold market, and when his best friend Dean had given him ten thousand dollars to start off, he felt overjoyed and didn’t hesitate to start his investments. However, shortly after, the market plummeted immensely. Therefore, it left Joseph and Dean the choice to either be honest and truthful to their former high school classmates or to sell them a fantasy to maintain their wealth. They chose to lie, but lies can only be kept for so long, this then marked the downfall for both the BBC and Joe Hunt’s entire life.

        Joseph Hunt was the ideal definition of “started from the bottom”. He grew up within a lower-middle incomed household and ended up becoming one of the wealthiest men in Beverly Hills. However, after a few months Joseph and Dean shortly began to realize that obtaining wealth in the 80’s was more of a facade than actual reality itself, and that to acquire great wealth required an even greater level of corruption. This all coincides with Robert Agnew’s strain theory which describes how society emphasizes on goals that are practically unrealistic and extremely hard to fulfill. Thus, it unintentionally motivates people (usually under the age of 50) to strive to successfully accomplish the goal/goals, but due to the lack of legal opportunities that are presented to obtain it  people then feel restrained from greatness and feel practically feel forced to engage in criminal activity. Sadly, Joseph was one of many people in America who had fallen into the society’s trap with his great ambition to become successful which  derived from the little acceptance that he felt within society when he was younger. His knowledge and his determination was not acknowledged because he was seen as a poor and struggling boy. Moreover, this led him to push even further with his career and create a name for himself to prove his worth to not only to people, but also to himself.

        Many fans of Joe Hunt believed and still believe to this day that he is innocent and that was falsely accused because of his less fortunate upbringings. Although Dean and Joe were partners Dean faced no prison time because he gained immunity. In court Dean was depicted as a person who couldn’t pose a threat because of his family’s financial stability, whereas Joe is currently almost 60 years old still facing life. After the release of the 2018 film, people have been discussing about releasing Joseph Hunt, who has been imprisoned since 1987, and even created a website by the name of freejoehunt.com, a site where people can sign a petition in attempt to get Joseph Hunt parole for him to be released. The website states all of the great things that Joseph has done in his lifetime even after his incarceration. It brings a light to the fact that out of the three people that were sentenced he is the only one that had been sentenced to life imprisonment, and also entails that while Joe has been imprisoned for 30 years he has never had an altercation in prison,  and that he deserves a second chance.

         The Billionaire Boys Club case was one of the most popular cases that occured within the 1980’s and although many people actually adored and admired Joseph Hunt for his extreme brilliance, determination, and ambition to obtain wealth. There were and still are many others who strongly dislike him, and do not think that he is at all innocent as many believe. Within the television documentary “Dominick Dunne’s Power Privilege and Justice” it portrays Hunt as suspicious, conniving, and guilty, and even though Hunt’s lawyer was one of the best in Beverly Hills his attempt to try to get Hunt off of the Ron Levin’s case fails and the case is practically thrown away once Ron Levin’s father, whom of which is very rich and powerful, stated on countless occasions that him, his wife, and son were extremely close, and that he must’ve been murdered because he always reached out to them at least once a day. Levin’s father demanded that Hunt be put to death and wanted see him become executed. Although Joe didn’t end up receiving the death penalty, he was sentenced to life in prison which  the court ended up sentencing to life which is practically a more torturous death sentence. This made television watchers begin to believe that Joseph deserved the prison sentence that was bestowed upon him. Even though everyone else that was affiliated with the case served 12 years to no time at all, Hunt was given life, but why? What made him the bad guy? Why was he truly imprisoned? Was it because he was the only one from a poor family? Or was it because he actually had committed crimes that no one else in the BBC had committed?

        I quite admired Joseph Hunt within the film, he was a very ambitious man trying to fulfill the American dream of acquiring wealth, getting beautiful women, driving exotic cars, wearing expensive clothes, and buying big houses. However, it was his great ambition that led him to imprisonment. Once he had achieved  his goals he was then accounted for all the conspiracies that had been made within his company that he partially founded. Over the course of watching the documentary and film, I have come to an understanding that the evidence found in the Levin’s case was not enough to indict him, and that he may have possibly been overlooked and ostracized  by the court because he didn’t come from a family of wealth. Finding only a piece of paper that was written by Joseph in Levin’s home does not mean that he, himself had killed him. Moreover, Hunt was being used as a pawn for Levin and was a victim of fraud as well. The only thing that he could’ve rightly been charged with was burglary and fraud.

        I believe that Joseph Hunt didn’t deserve to get life in prison. However, certain decisions that were included within Dominick’s documentary made him seem extremely suspicious. Firstly, he refused to be on the stand in his defense on the Levin case but spoke with extreme poise and respect during the case of the death of Eslaminia. Joseph actually spoke as his own lawyer on the Eslaminia case and had the case dismissed without any charges. Why did he not do the same thing during the case about Levin was it because he felt saddened by his old mentor’s death or because he felt a great sense of guilt?

        At the end of the film Joseph states that no one in America truly cares how a person acquires their wealth, and that they only care about the fact that a person has it. I strongly agreed with this quote because even though Joseph grew up in a different state and decade than I have, the same American mindset is seen today especially within the minority communities. Many black and hispanic men have the same mindset as Joe Hunt did, they believe that they need to be overly ambitious, and sometimes end up scamming or selling drugs in order to live an expensive lifestyle. This is all because money is seen as the most important thing to have when living in America, everyone wants and uses it on practically a daily basis. Although it is great to have money and wealth, sometimes it can make a person perform irrational decisions because of the societal pressure to become madly successful. Ambition is the greatest thing a person can have to achieve their goals. However,  as the saying goes having too much of a good thing is bad. Therefore, it is important to recognize the limitations of ambition, and create a fence between striving to become a success legally without shame and becoming a corrupted businessperson.

                                                         Works Cited

     Cox, James, director. Billionaire Boys Club. Billionaire Boys Club, Vertical Entertainment,2018.

     Documentaries, Crime. “The Fall of Billionaire Boys Club (Crime Documentary).” YouTube, YouTube, 14 Feb. 2018, m.youtube.com/watch?v=mLxYaalMlVA.

     Garner, Lisa Karen. “Billionaire Boys’ Club: Billionaires by Crime?” HeinOnline, heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/laent10&div=23&id=&page=.

     Floyd, Pilar. “The True Story of the Billionaire Boys Club – Filthy Lucre.” Https://Filthylucre.com/, Google, www.google.com/amp/s/filthylucre.com/billionaire-boys-club/amp/.

     Timnick, Lois, and CAROL McGRAW | Times Staff Writers. “Leader of Billionaire Boys Club Convicted of Murder.” Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Times, 23 Apr. 1987, articles.latimes.com/1987-04-23/news/mn-720_1_billionaire-boys-club.

    Plante , Yourianne. “The World’s Most Corrupt Millionaires.” 20 Jobs That Will Be Replaced by Technology, Microsoft, 26 Aug. 2016, www.msn.com/en-in/money/photos/the-world’s-most-corrupt-millionaires/ss-BBuB0lg#image=7.“Ambition Is Evil.” TV Tropes, tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AmbitionIsEvil.

     “Home.” Free Joe Hunt, freejoehunt.com/.

      Audiopedia, The. “What Is GENERAL STRAIN THEORY? What Does GENERAL STRAIN THEORY Mean? GENERAL STRAIN THEORY Meaning.” YouTube, YouTube, 2 Oct. 2017, m.youtube.com/watch?v=YzXgdWQ-Fwg.

This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Flavian Philip

Professor Janelle Poe

FIQWS 10108

14 November 2018

            The Strength of The Dragon Tattoo

         Great things come from people who have experienced great pain. Take Oprah, Vincent Van Gogh, Jim Carrey, and Kelsi Grammar, they all share something in common other than their fame and legacy which is their experiences of trauma and hardships. Growing up my father was absent in my life for 8 years and my mother worked practically everyday to help to provide for herself, my younger brother, and I. Without the help of food-stamps and rental assistance, we probably couldn’t be able to be where we are today. These hard times of having to see my mother cry each and every night because she was not only going through a terrible divorce, but she had to raise her two children on her own motivate me to become successful and to make her proud.

        Although I’ve read a series of novels within my lifetime, one novel that has really resonated with me is The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson. Lisbeth Salander, the main character of the novel, is portrayed as a bold and fearful white woman covered in multiple tattoos with her hair shaved into a mohawk. Therefore, she stands out amongst a group of woman because of her physical appearance which is depicted as unladylike compared to societal norms. Within the second chapter of the novel, Lisbeth decided to get a new tattoo of a dragon on her shoulder to represent her strength against her sexual abuser, Bjurman, her therapist, who took advantage of her because he was in charge of her financial situation. Throughout Salander’s harsh circumstances, she never allowed her pain to have control over her life narrative, but instead took it upon herself to redefine her own identity and pursue her career of being a researcher and computer hacker.

Reading the novel, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo two summers ago inspired me, and made me come to the realization that I have both control and power over my own life. It made me come to the realization that I am more than just a lower-class black young woman within society, and that I should take it upon myself to write my own narrative. Although still unto this day I am uncertain of what career path that I want to take. I am certain that I want a job where I can encounter many human interactions and help people with something that they are going through, whether it is a medical problem, housing problem, or even an educational problem.

I always knew that I loved people growing up, because I’ve always enjoyed creating and building relationships with people. Although I may not become a computer hacker or a researcher like Lisbeth, I still felt elated to know that I could one day make a positive impact on the life of another person like Lisbeth did for the Vangar family. Within chapter 26 of the novel, Harriet and her uncle Henrik were finally reunited after her 40 year disappearance due to the severe amount of hardships that she had been through growing up, and I found that to be extremely powerful. Harriet had carried out a highly successful plan at 15 to runaway from home and live in Idaho, because of the fact that she was constantly being exposed to murders that her father, Henrik Vangar, and brother, Martin Vangar had committed, and because she was being sexually abused by them as well. Although these horrific events had occurred, Lisbeth was able to bring a sense of healing to such unfortunate circumstances by bringing the Vangar family justice by killing Martin in chapter 24, because he was still trying to carry out his father’s legacy of being both a serial killer and rapist, and by reuniting Harriet with her uncle before his passing so that she could inherit the family company.

Helping a person can change their whole life within a matter of minutes, but also when a person not only becomes more confident and accepting of themselves and their past it would help to change their own lives as well. Just as Brenè Brown once stated “When we own the story, we can write a brave new ending.” When a person does allows their past, their society, and even sometimes the people around them to hinder their success they are allowing others to take control of their destiny and their lives. Thus, it is important for a person to take the initiative and live their lives for themselves according to themselves .Even though I am uncertain of my future career path today. I am extremely certain that whatever I do will help others, whether it is medicine, education, or even social work and I will not allow the hardships that I have faced growing up to hinder my successes just as Lisbeth Salander in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson, I will use my hardships as a motivation to achieve my goals.

                                                           Works Cited
Zaillian, Steven, and Stieg Larsson. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo: 2011.
Patricia. “Friends of Ocee Library.” What’s Your Story?, 1 Jan. 1970,
www.oceefriends.org/2015/06/whats-your-story.htm
VH1, Amanda Bell. “These Celebrities’ Horrific Childhood Stories Will Make You Hug Your Parents Tightly.” VH1 News, 29 Jan. 2016, www.vh1.com/news/239439/hollywood- celebrities-tragic-childhood/

This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.