Post #27: The End(ing)

It's strange, but some of my favorite films, books, and short stories are not ones that I would say have the best and most memorable endings.  I loved them for other reasons; maybe they stick in my mind because of the crazy and twisted plot, because of the unexpected and entertaining characters, or because the writing was absolutely superb.  But even the best films, books, and short stories I have ever seen may not know how to end a story well.

Some great endings to films that I have seen have come from The Departed, Million Dollar Baby, and Titanic.  Each of these ending are extremely well and almost perfectly sum up the story of the film.

In The Departed, the movie ends with Mark Wahlberg killing Matt Damon and a rat scurrying across the windowsill.  This was a perfect ending, actually the first thing I thought of when asked, "What is a good ending?"  There is that element of foreshadowing, as the purpose of the movie is for the Boston police to find the "rat" infiltrating their force and for the Irish mob to find the "rat" hidden among their men.  And, as Leo DiCaprio and Matt Damon had both been brutally murdered, the actual rat running across the windowsill is the only "rat" to survive.  There is no other word to describe how I felt at the end of this film but excited.  First of all, I was excited because the bad guys didn't get away with their plan--the good guys didn't, either, but I'd rather have nobody win than a victory for the enemy.  Secondly, and most importantly, having an actual live rat in the last seconds of the film ties everything together.  You know that feeling when you finally see how the elements of a story connect, and you think you are the smartest person in the world for realizing it?  That's how I felt.  That's why I was excited.

Whereas The Departed ended in a way that was memorable for its cleverness, Million Dollar Baby's ending made me sad.  Clint Eastwood follows Hilary Swank's wishes and pulls the plug--literally--on her breathing machine and walks away, and Morgan Freeman ends his letter to Clint's estranged daughter.  Ninety-nine percent of the time, we view people who kill other people as evil, but Clint Eastwood is different.  What he does is illegal, but he is complying with Hilary's dying wish.  He doesn't want her to die, but he puts her happiness ahead of his own.  He is like a best friend and father combined, and maybe, as Morgan Freeman suggest, Clint's own daughter can recognize this, too.  That ending made me hate the movie, but hate it in a good way.  Hate it because it killed me to watch, killed me that this girl who came from such a horrible life ended up dying, when she deserved so much
better--not because I didn't enjoy watching it.  It was the right ending for the film.



I, too, am a sucker for happy endings, so when Titanic ended with Young Rose finding Jack at the top of the stairs in the ship's ballroom in Heaven, I couldn't stop bawling.  The film is a love story, and so of course, it has to end with the two people together in some way; preferably physically, but if not, at least spiritually.  I am a very emotional person--sometimes too much so--so I cried a ton when Jack dies, and I cried a ton--happy tears this time--when he and Rose finally find each other in the afterlife in the end.  Had they still been alive, this would have been every girl's fantasy; two people utterly in love and finding each other for the first time after years apart.  However, it's not so much this fantasy that makes this ending memorable; it the fact that after all these characters have gone through, they are finally getting their happy ending.  Like I said, I am a sucker for happy endings.

Some great endings that I have read/seen in works of literature have come from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Thirteen Reasons Why, and Les Miserables.  Some are ordinary, or offer a simple message, but they are still unforgettable.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows ends the present story with Harry having just defeated the darkest wizard who ever lived, and even in his glory, he remains modest and just wants everything to go back to normal--or as normal as it ever was.  After seeing Voldemort, Young Dumbledore, and Grindelwald, Harry realizes how crazy and evil immense power can make a person and he locks up the Elder Wand where no one can ever get to it.  This almost makes me feel bad about myself; Harry has suffered so much and always pushed through it, has seen others suffer and has always fought for them, and now that he is probably the most loved and admired person in all of the Wizarding World, he doesn't even try to take advantage of it.  That is why it's memorable; such a good person could be considered cheesy, but the genuineness of his character make him an aspiration, not someone to mock.  The epilogue of Harry's future is just as good, because it provides me closure with the characters.  That is probably the number one thing I need when it comes to moving on from a situation: closure.  I need to know how it all ends, that everyone will be okay.  And showing me how Harry, Ron, Hermione, and their families end up gives me that, so I can finally move on (as hard as it is to move on from Harry Potter).

The ending of Thirteen Reasons Why is another ending that I really enjoyed.  Again, not because I actually liked it, but because it fit the story and made sense.  In the end of Thirteen Reasons Why, Clay Jensen packs up Hannah Baker's seven tapes, the thirteen reasons why she committed suicide, and ships them off to the next person intended to hear the tapes.  There is nothing out of the ordinary that happens in the end, just the fact that Clay is now miserable because of these tapes, and the next person on the list is destined for that same fate.  It's this kind of thing that I can relate to the most, because it can so easily happen in real life.  Though these stories occur externally from Clay, they have an enormous impact, messing with his emotions, triggering his internal struggle, and destroying his preconceived ideas about reality.  Maybe all that happens in the end is that Clay packs up a box and takes it to the post office, but under the surface, between the lines, lies so much more: everything that people don't want to acknowledge.

Les Miserables is my favorite play of all that I have ever seen, and it is the ending in part that makes an impact on me.  Each character has had their own struggles--whether that be always being on the run, being forced into prostitution to save her daughter, fighting the government because of their mistreatment of the public, etc.--and yet they still steadfastly believe that love conquers all.  Maybe this is a cheesy statement, that "love conquers all," but it is still true.  The bishop excuses Jean val Jean for stealing, and gives him a new chance at life.  Fantine, who loved her daughter with all of her being, died so that Cosette could have a better life.  Jean val Jean, who had been running from Javert's wrath for years and years, finally has the chance to kill him, but his love is what finally makes the policeman back off.  And, connecting them all, having given Cosette a loving home is what makes Fantine takes Jean val Jean to heaven.  In the end, it is being a good person that makes not just your life worthwhile, but the others' lives around you, as well.

Lastly, short stories.  I am fairly picky about the endings I like, especially in short stories, because with so little time to state the plot, there is even less time to end the story in a satisfactory way.  But, here is one that I think did a pretty good job.

"A Temporary Matter" has an ending that, though I didn't particularly like it, left an impact on me.  It was a horrible, horrible thing that this couple lost their child, but I didn't want them to get a divorce from this.  This tragic incident should have strengthened their relationship instead of weakened it, for "when the going gets tough get going."  But, as my mother works in a children's hospital where she deals with stories like this quite often, I have learned that these outcomes are quite common.  Thus, these things do happen in real life, so the somewhat ordinariness of this ending is what makes it relatable and memorable.  I have never dealt with this kind of situation, but I can easily see it happening.  In a way, this kind of ending scares me because of that, reminding me that reality is not perfect.

Okay, so this post is already over 1,500 words--that's more than five times what Louis asked for.  So I'm going to be quick:
Basically, I have stated all the qualities I like in an ending: cleverness, sadness, happiness, closure, relatability, a message of perseverance, and ordinary lives.  Not all together--trying to incorporate all of these qualities into one ending would be disastrous--but in separate stories.  It depends on the context.  I guess I am not so picky after all.

I think that I will write the ending to my own story that is ordinary, is relatable, and ties everything together.  I like endings that seem to solve a puzzle and connect all prior elements of the story, and so, to the best of my ability, I will try to do that.

Post #26: Cheating Is Wrong

The article "Cheating Upwards" begins with the story of Nayeem Ahsan and his incredible cheating scandal at Stuyvesant, an elite academy in lower Manhattan.  There are no thoughts, reflections, or even related facts stated by the author in the first one and a half pages; he just describes what happened this historic event, and so it reads like a short story.  However, at this point, the article shifts to listing and briefly describing related incidents of cheating, and as a result, the research that has been done to discover cheating statistics and why students cheat.  The author even throws in an experiment about what people think is acceptable to do without even realizing that it is cheating, and talks about the biological, psychological, and outside influences that make teenagers want to cheat.  In the last third of the article, the author shifts back to describing Nayeem Ahsan's cheating history up until this most recent scandal, and what will happen to him--and all the 140 others--now that he has been caught.

In "Cheating Upwards," Nayeem Ahsan is the main character, or the protagonist, and his cheating scandal is the rising action being caught by the principal and kicked out of school is the climax.  However, the passage about Nayeem's years of cheating leading up to the climax is also part of the rising action, and the discussion of what is to be done with him (in terms of where he will finish school), the other 140 students who were part of the cheating scandal, and the school itself is the resolution.  And everything in the middle--the related incidents of cheating, the research that has been done about why it happens, when cheating is acceptable vs. when it's not, biological/psychological/outside influences on students to cheat, etc.--is the falling action, the information we are learning that leads us up to the resolution.

I remembered a fair amount of the article before I read it--that Nayeem cheated, that he had cheated many times before, that he had been kicked out of school, etc.--but I had forgotten, or maybe had not even noticed, Nayeem's attitude toward all of this, even in the end.  I was shocked at how unwavering he was in his notion that his cheating has helped people, and he would do it all over again if he could, despite where it had gotten him.  I just don't understand that; I believe that, especially when it comes to academic work, people have to earn their own way.  They can be helped, and tutored, and tested endlessly, but when it comes to a test, or writing a paper, they can't have someone answering the questions and doing the work for them.  I understand that the teenagers who are more prone to cheating don't yet have fully developed brains like the adults who punish them do, that they prioritize the "thrill" of something over the morals it provides.  I understand that families, colleges, and other outside sources are pressuring their children to produce amazing pieces of work, and that said children are just trying to do what they can to live up to those expectations.  But, I stand by the decision I made back in May when I first read this article: cheating is still wrong.

Post #25: What Is Academic Writing?

In high school, I always wrote academic papers.  We had journal time for the first year or two, where we could just write about anything, but we were only even graded and critiqued on our academic papers; the traditional and clichéd five-paragraph essay.

It was good that we learned how to write in this way.  The five-paragraph essay gave us structure, and taught us how to organize writing so that it was argumentative and proved a point to the reader.  However, once the skill of writing organized papers is accomplished, it is okay to evolve to the more personalized, comedic, and in-depth writing that focusing on one specific blog topic can give.  It is very true; term papers are really only written to be rewarded with As, whereas with blogs, people write because, as Matt Richtel says, "they love writing for an audience, engaging with it" and "feel as if they’re actually producing something personally rewarding and valuable."  It is more fun to write something that is interesting and that people feel a connection with, and it is easier to do a good job when the task is more enjoyable.

In essence, structure and organization are basics that everyone needs to learn how to do and how to do well, but after, there is no reason why they can't break from the pattern and explore.

I can see the transition from structured and organized academic writing to more free-spirited and personal thoughts and analysis even in my blog posts over these last few months.  My first post, a reflection on the short story "First Day," and in it, I don't talk about my own thoughts or feelings at all--just what I observed in the text.  I was still in that mindset of "just analyze what is there; subjective writing is not professional."  Moving to my post about Jaja from Purple Hibiscus, I include more about what is happening in between the lines of the story, my predictions on what is going to happen, and even an image, but I don't use the word "I," because that is not professional.  But after that, I am not afraid to share my opinions in my writing, like with "Great Movies" when I discuss what it is that (I think) makes a movie great.  

I am someone who has a lot of opinions, but the more structured academic writing a always wrote in school, I never got to share that.  It is nice to be able to do, not just because I am very opinionated, but because being able to see my own thoughts helps me see connections in the text, thus analyzing them more thoroughly.  The audience started out as someone how I basically described the narrative of the text I was reading and the description of its characters to, but that someone became an audience who's purpose was to hear my opinions and ideas of the story and these characters and the connections made between them--intra-post, inter-post, or worldly.

However, I sometimes worry that all this personal yet informal writing has infiltrated the more formal writing that I still do have to do.  I often don't realize when I'm writing informally now, and so when the words "I" or "like" show up in my paper, I don't notice until it is too late.  While it's true that those words can help personalize a paper, they are definitely not professional.  

I seem to have reached both ends of the writing spectrum: the extremely structured, organized, and predictable academic writing of the five-paragraph essay, and the personalized and comedic writing of the blog.  Now, I need to find a happy medium between the two.

Post #24: Sleep is a Very Complex Thing

I don't understand sleep.  I feel like college students are on a COMPLETELY different sleep schedule from normal people, both in when they sleep and when they feel like sleeping.

I don't understand how I was able to get up at 6am in high school.  Getting up at 10am for class is bad enough.  How has my body adjusted to this so badly?  I just don't understand.

I get so tired in the middle of the day, too.  I just want to go to bed, but when I try to take a nap, I end up playing stupid games on my phone or computer, which is an even LESS productive use of my than sleeping would be.  And at night?  I can't help but going out or hanging with friends when something fun is going on.  It's basically impossible for me to do work on Friday or Saturday nights, but sleeping? I can do that.  I should do that.  But I DON'T do that.

I am so tired.  Like, right now.  Writing this post is a struggle, because sleep is fatiguing me.  Sleep is actually making me tired.

These are the kind of things I say when I am too tired to write.

Post #23: A Good Blog Post

What makes a good blog, or rather, a good blog post?  Well, it's got to have some color to it.  Whether that's color in the background, crazy images in the individual posts, it doesn't matter--it just needs to be appealing to the eye, not bland and boring.  Then nobody will want to read it.

I also love blog posts that are about more than just facts--they tell a story or a personal memory, are relatable to their readers, and can sometimes have a humorous tone that makes people laugh.  Like my post about good movies, if a person can't identify with or make a connection to a blog post, it isn't worth reading.

Kelly L.'s posts are great--the blog has a background of crazy colors, and she never fails to include images that catch my eye in her posts.  Her latest post is about John, someone she saw doing his math homework.  Even though she know absolutely nothing about him, she is able to describe him in immense detail, from the town in which he grew up to his goodbyes at the airport before coming to the University of Michigan.  I love all the metaphors Kelly uses--they made her writing sound very sophisticated, and yet the things she describes, like a boy in a messed-up situation with his parents, are not at all complex to us, and we can really identify with them, or at least understand them.

I also really like Matthew's posts; he doesn't have all the spurts of color that Kelly has, but the title of his blog, "Kippin' It Real," is a funny play on words.  That alone makes me want to read more of his blog.  His most recent post is about The Michigan Daily, which already makes it sound very professional.  I like how Matthew was able to take something professional and make it relatable to the readers, talking about how a newspaper is hard work, especially because of all the strict deadlines.  In school, we all have due dates for homework, but if we miss those due dates, it really only affects us.  If Matthew misses those deadlines, it not only affects him, but also all the people who read The Michigan Daily.

You can't have a post that includes all of things--personal stories, professionalism, and humor--because then it would just come off a chaotic.  You need to find a good balance between the three, like these previous posts have done, to attract a reader's attention.

Post #22: Martha

This girl has long, brown, curly hair and a round face.  Her eyes are big and brown, and she keeps rubbing them, as well as rubbing her nose, her forehead--her whole face, really.  Her eyelashes are very black, most likely with mascara.  She often twirls strands of her hair around her finger, making it even curlier.  She has a smaller nose, which is pierced on the left side, and her lips are very pink and pointed.  She has light skin and is wearing a black-and-white-striped short-sleeved shirt, where the stripes are diagonal on the sleeves and horizontal on the bodice.  She is also wearing red pants, which could possibly be jeans but I think are corduroy pants, and rugged black boots finish off her look.  She is reading a textbook, some type of math I think, but as she keeps playing with her hair and face, I don't think it is holding her attention very well.  She was also texting on a cell phone earlier, maybe talking to a friend or a parent, but she is here alone.

This is Martha, who is supposed to meet her friends for a calculus study group at the Shapiro library, but they all never showed up.  This makes Martha nervous, as she had trouble making friends in high school and thought that this was finally her chance, but it is not at all working out as she had planned.  She gets out her cell phone to call or text them, to ask where they are and if they are coming, but she chickened out at the last minute.  She doesn't want to seem too desperate, because then people won't like her.  Martha gets out her textbook, thinking maybe if she stops paying attention to who is coming in and out of the library and actually gets some work done, her friends will show up.  But this is to no avail, as Martha can't help but glance around as she tries to do her calculus homework, and she keeps twirling her hair around her fingers, a sign of anxiety.  She is constantly rubbing her face, trying to keep herself awake and focusing on calculus rather than what she could be doing if her friends were there, and finally, she gives up and accepts reality that not only are her friends not showing up, but she is getting nothing done.  Martha puts her calculus textbook back in her backpack, puts on her headphones, gets up, and leaves the library.  Maybe she will head to dinner, where her friends are eating dinner...or maybe she will eat alone tonight.

Post #21: Learning is Hard, But I Think Teaching is Even Harder

The most exciting thing that has happened to me lately is my Education 118 Teaching and Learning: Historical Investigation final paper.  I got the assignment last Wednesday for it to be due this morning, and of course, I didn't even start on it until yesterday.  And it was a 1,800 word paper.  AAAHHHHH!!!!!!

It's not usually like me to procrastinate like that, but we write so many papers for that class that I was just tired of it.  So, as a result, I started writing yesterday afternoon, had to make the appendix (which annoyingly took a few hours), was still writing last night, and didn't finish until about 3am.  And then I went down to the Community Learning Center of Alice Lloyd to print the entire assignment, AND THE PRINTER WAS BROKEN.  Yeah.  The printer was broken.  So I had to angrily go back upstairs and get up earlier than I would have liked so I could go to Mojo and hope someone would be nice enough to let me into their Community Learning Center so I could use their printer.

So when I went upstairs, I was super tired, the lack of a working printer put me in a bad mood, so I decided to play Candy Crush Saga on my phone.  It is the stupidest game, like a little-kid Candyland version of Bejeweled, but I am addicted to it.  Plus, it was a bad idea to play because it was already 3am, I was really tired, and I would have to get up and go out of my way to Mojo (okay, so not really out of my way as it's right there, but still).  But I still did, even though I am dead today, which was a terrible idea, but whatever.  This is college.  College is full of terrible ideas.

But guess what?!?!?!  I printed my paper this morning!  And I turned it in!  All 1,798 words!  I am actually pretty proud of myself--not just that I was able to write a 1,798-word paper in one day, but I was pretty pleased with my writing, too.  It was on a few of the learning claims (thesis statements) I had made, a few of the teaching claims I had made, and the history lesson I had taught to my brother.  In mid-October, we were all taught a simple but in-depth lesson about Pearl Harbor and Japanese internment camps by our professor, observed the professor teach this same lesson to a local high school student, and then had to go out and find an individual we could teach it to ourselves.  I taught my brother, with was an interesting experience, but I really enjoyed it, and he did a really good job.  I got some really interesting information, mostly his thoughts, feelings, and opinions on the material, out of him, and I was able to use most of it in my paper.  I think I did a good job, hopefully A-worthy.