Love / Hate / Death

          Love is an affection that you form for someone both physically and mentally. I think that love at first sight does not exist, and what you think is love is only lust. You cant truly love someone only for their appearance and I think in order to love someone you have to get to know them and accept their flaws. And with that, age does matter when it comes to marriage because the person you think you want to be with forever right now, could completely change over the years. Not only that but your feelings could change over time and if your feelings for that person is strong enough, marriage can wait. The only person that gets to choose who you marry is you. In certain countries, it is recommended that your parents pick who you marry. Yes, sometimes (rarely) you guys are compatible with each other and everything works out but most of the time they're just forced to be together. This could go wrong because you might think your significant other is too different from you, or too alike. However I do believe that there could be a "perfect someone", but then again, they might be perfect for you but you might not be perfect for them.
           Not far from love, is hate. Hate is like disliking someone, but 10x worse. If you hate someone and they want to fight, you don't necessarily have to fight them. I personally think fighting is unreasonable but in certain cases you should fight to defend yourself. If you passionately really do hate that person though, it would probably be a natural instinct for you to want to fight them. And the same thing goes with hating someone your friends hate. Yes, I understand that they're your friends and you want to be "loyal" and hate who they hate, but you don't have to. If they did something really hurtful to your friend, then it's okay to hate because why wouldn't you? but if it's for something simple then you have no reason to hate them. Also, I don't think it's reasonable to hate someone who's different than you because basically everyone is different in their own way. Hate is a really easy thing to form. Everyone hates someone for something whether it's because of jealousy, what they wear, what the have, how they act, or for no reason at all. And for that reason love and hate are pretty close to each other because you can have the same amount of hate for someone, as much as you can have love for someone.
             Death is unpredictable and I would probably sacrifice/die for the person(s) I love. For example, if it was one of my family members I would be there for them in a quickness. But if it's a scenario where some girl is dramatically depressed because the guy whom she "loves" doesn't feel the same so she suicides,  then I would NOT die for the person I "love". Vice versa, if the person I loved died, I would definitely not kill myself because that's just dumb. Yeah, I would be super heartbroken and down but I'd get over it because everyone dies, just at certain times. For certain people, vengeance is necessary and for me, I think I would react the same. If someone killed you sister/mom/dad/etc. out of spite, wouldn't you want to get them back? I would. Not only that, but if you kill someone, you shouldn't be killed for doing that because would if you killed for a good reason? that person that you just killed could have been raping and murdering people for years and you finally stopped it. I'd like to say that when a war is started, peace can always be made, but that isn't true. War only stops when someone wins and marks their territory. After someone does win, it still won't stop because the person who lost will always try to get back at them and the war will never end.

Alligator River Response

          In my opinion I feel that Abigail was the most offensive. She did what she had to do in order to cross and see Gregory, even if that meant giving "favors" to  Sinbad, and I understand her reason for doing that. However, I hate the fact that she enjoyed seeing him in pain. If she really did love him, she would've been hurt seeing him get hurt. So technically, she truly didn't love him. Abigail showed her true colors with her reaction.
          Second offensive on my list, would probably be Sinbad. As a riverboat captain, in my opinion, is supposed to cross people over because that's their job. Yet, he had to have something in return. The only way that he would sail Abigail over was if she would have sex with him, and Abigail as desperate as she is, she did. He was just being selfish and tried to take advantage of her because he knew she really wanted to cross over.
          Third, in my opinion would be Gregory. I think he was just overreacting to the issue. Yes, Abigail did sleep with another man, but it didn't really mean anything (I assume). He was too busy being hurt that he didn't even appreciate her sacrifice for him. If I were his position, I'd be mad too but I'd get over it because she did what she had to do to cross over.
          The person who I thought was least offensive would probably be Ivan. Ivan just didn't want to get in anyone's business. Yeah, he could've just crossed her over without a problem and sail back, but he probably didn't want to be responsible if someone bad were too happen to her. And to add, she was a complete stranger so I understand why he didn't really want to sail her over.
          Overall, I think everyone is bad in there own way. However, Slug was the most innocent to me. He was the one who beat up Gregory after Abigail had told him what had happened. It wasn't right for him to go and brutally beat up Gregory for reasons that aren't his, but I understand his compassion. He was only doing what he did because he thought it was reasonable to hurt the person that hurt Abigail.

My Educational Experience

           I remember towards the end of 8th grade year and how I was picking which high school to go to. At first I wanted to go to a school out of the area because I'm already so used to mine but then again why would I go to a school that's distant when Lincoln is literally 5 minutes away? Everyone would always say negative things about the school, and the funny part is; they never even experienced Lincoln. They'd always tell me that if I went there I'd get into fights everyday, that it would turn me "ghetto", and that overall it was just bad. I just laughed it off because how could they judge a school that they only know about about because of rumors and social media? How could Lincoln "turn me ghetto" if I've literally been in this area my whole life and I'm still doing fine?
          It's now 6 weeks before the end of the school year and I'm at Lincoln. And guess what, I'm still the same. I haven't turned "ghetto", I haven't been to any fights (although I did see a lot of them), and my grades are good. I think people misjudge Lincoln because of it's past because it's not all bad. They offer all these clubs and programs that benefit different varieties of students. It just depends on the type of people that you surround yourself with and the choices you make.

Overcrowded Lifeboat

I find that the captain is guilty. He basically puts himself in charge of picking whether or not someone lives. One of the reasons why I disagree with his actions is because he says the weak must be kicked off the boat. Not only are there adults but children. Obviously children aren't fully grown making most of them weak, so how is it fair to kick them off the boat? I think there could've been a better solution than killing off all those people. He was being completely selfish. He knew that if there were some people left on the boat, that people would understand his sacrifice and consider him a hero.

The Blackfish Argument

In my opinion, the movie, Blackfish, was very convincing. They use lots of techniques to try and convince the audience that Seaworld isn't what it seems like. They include the technique pathos into their documentary to make us feel bad for the whales. They show us cruel videos of baby whales being trapped, then taken away from their mothers. Not only that, but they also show how suffering it is for whales to be in captivity for more than half of their lives. People who were involved in the movie also brought in former workers of Seaworld to share their horrific experiences.

Ain't I A Women?

In this poem, a women in church stands up for her rights as a women. Sojourner Truth proves her point using example such as how they say women need to be helped into carriages, but she's never been helped. Why? because she's a black women. She can do everything a man can do but she still gets no respect for it because in this time, the color of your skin came before everything else. She persuaded the readers by using repetition, she repeated the same phrases to get her message across to us. Nor only that, but she also included analogies in her poem so that we could understand her reasons better.

"Yes We Can" Comparison

For Obama's audience he chose to target republicans and people who are old enough to vote. His technique was to use the "3 examples" to convince the audience and he used quotes from historical figures. But for Will.I.Am, he decided to target the younger generation and he did that by using logos. He included celebrities from all different types of genre and added music.