My character is currently working down in L.B. Industries to grind their Shadowy a bit, and I know why the rats aren't a faction. We're not worthy of them. They have on-site babysitting.

Why ACOTAR 5 Is (Without a Doubt) Elain’s Book

Warning: This post will be a long one, and will analyze the series as a whole (including ACOSF). As you read it, please consider taking your shipping goggles off, as none of this has anything to do with shipping and everything to do with character development/plot/the overall narrative of the series/good storytelling. Thank you!

Main points: 

Elain’s role in the ACOTAR series

Elain’s character evolution throughout the series

The foreshadowing in ACOSF (+ bonus POVs)

The overarching plot 

SJM’s own words

The ACOTAR Series and Elain’s Role

We have multiple interviews of SJM saying that Nesta and Elain’s role started off as a fairytale trope: that of the evil sisters. Then, Nesta surprised her when she decided to go after Feyre in ACOTAR, and the rest is history.

The sisters went from being a trope to being an instrumental part of the series. In ACOMAF, they were a link to Feyre’s human life (a final thread that she needed to let go of), as well as a means to an end (first, by being a bridge between the IC and the Queens, and then, as leverage, or weapons that were used against Feyre in Hybern). The final scene in ACOMAF was the catalyst for everything that happened in ACOWAR—and everything that is yet to come—but, most importantly, it also opened the door to two new character arcs/journeys—two new protagonists.

The protagonist exists as a sympathetic device to drive a story. To be effective in this role, they are usually there from the inciting moment to the end.

The similarities between their journey and Feyre’s are astounding: human made into something that she was raised to fear; coming to terms with trauma; letting go of the past; accepting her new condition; and the list goes on and on.

Now, who had more to lose by becoming fae?

And who lost more than anyone else?

Elain lost a future.

She was happy, content, in love.

Then, everything was ripped away from her in the span of a few minutes.

She was turned into something she had been raised to fear, something that her own fiancée had been raised to hate.

And, if that wasn’t enough, she was also forced into a bond neither her, nor Lucien, wanted. Mated to a man who participated, even if unknowingly, in the loss of her life—of her future. A man who did not know her, want her, love her.

This, right here, is good storytelling. It sets the stage for what is to come—for Elain’s future story and character arc.

ACOWAR is centered around repercussions:

For Elain, this book is one of healing, at least on the surface. SJM built the foundation of Elain’s journey, evidenced by:

Elain hitting rock bottom

Erasing any hope of a future with Graysen

Severing the last thread to her human life (with the death of her father)

This book also emphasizes Elain’s vital role in future books by:

Making her powerful (a seer)

Making her instrumental in the war against Hybern (due to her visions)

Having her save both, Nesta and Cassian (the protagonists of ACOSF)

Creating a connection between her and Vassa (and, ultimately, between Lucien, Vassa, and Jurian)

Having her introduce the next big bad (Koschei)

Hinting at her being the only one who can locate the one thing that can kill Koschei (the onyx box)

So, when you add everything that we know from ACOMAF and ACOWAR, what do we have? Potential.

We also have a character whose journey has been building since ACOTAR. The most significant hint is the constant use of the “dirty hands” imagery in reference to Elain. But more on that later.

Once the ACOTAR series wrapped up, we learned that, while Feyre and Rhysand’s journey was over, Sarah had more stories to tell—specifically, Nesta, Elain, and the ICs. As such, ACOFAS had two purposes:

To wrap up Feyre and Rhys’s story.

To introduce the future plot/main conflict and, with it, the next couple.

ACOFAS, however, also served to set up the stage for future protagonists, as well:

We saw some progress in Elain (her keeping busy with gardening and baking, her still having bad days, her friendship with Nuala and Cerridwen, and her slowly finding her place within the IC)—all of this was brought up again in ACOSF.

We got hints about Azriel and Elain’s growing feelings for each other (a storyline that was present throughout ACOSF, and confirmed in Azriel’s Bonus POV).

We learned about Azriel’s estate—Rosehall.

We got Mor’s POV, and learned some new things about her which will probably factor into her future book.

Again, SJM spent time focusing on Elain, fleshing out her character (while still giving Nesta and her journey center stage), which only solidifies the fact that she will be getting her own story soon.

It’s interesting to note that Azriel was not given a POV like Mor, and had very little character development (in comparison to Elain).

Now, let’s look at ACOSF. We have:

New conflicts—with the Queens and Beron

A new villain—Koschei

An overarching plot that connects the conflicts with the villain—the alliance between Koschei, the Queens, and Beron

A secondary, but related, plot—Vassa and, with her, the Band of Exiles (Lucien and Jurian)

Potential weapons—the Made objects

A potential solution—the onyx box

What do all of these have in common?

Elain.

She is directly tied to both, the Queens and Beron (and the Autumn Court). She’s had ties to Koschei since ACOWAR (she was the first to tell the IC about him, after getting visions about him). Her visions, in turn, led to the introduction of Vassa, which created a link between them both (and Lucien, because of their mating bond). She is the only one, apart from Nesta, who can find the Made objects (and a 4th one was introduced in ACOSF). She is also the only one, apart from Nesta, who can Make an object. Finally, she is the only one who can locate the onyx box (an image she’s been seeing since ACOWAR).

As a seer, Elain is arguably the most valuable character in the NC. She has been having visions about both, Koschei and Vassa, since ACOWAR.

Most importantly, however—her journey has been hinted at since ACOMAF:

Her role in future books having already been established, what about Elain as a character, as a protagonist? 

Let’s begin by looking at what a character arc is:

While main characters might face big challenges, character arcs have to do with internal, personal change. Characters will find their strengths and weaknesses tested over the course of the story—so that by the time they arrive at the story's end, they are a changed person.

When the protagonist overcomes external obstacles and internal flaws in order to become a better person, it becomes a hero’s journey.

At its core, this arc is made up of three points:

The Goal: Every character needs to have a goal. It might be to fall in love. Or it might be to make as much money as possible. Either way, their journey will be hindered by...

The Lie: A deeply-rooted misconception they have about themselves or the world that keeps them from reaching their true potential. In order to reach their goal, they’ll need to acknowledge and overcome the Lie, by facing…

The Truth: While the character may have their own plans, the positive change arc has its own goal: self-improvement. This is achieved when they learn to reject The Lie and embrace The Truth.

Now, let’s look at what we know about Elain:

The Goal: To defeat Koschei/the Queens/Beron.

The Lie: That she doesn’t have what it takes. That she is not as strong as her sisters. That she is the weak link, too gentle and sweet to get her “hands dirty.”

The Truth: That she is just as powerful AND capable as her sisters, and that she can do anything she puts her mind to (find the 4th object, discover the location of the onyx box, fight against Koschei/the Queens/Beron).

We already see SJM start to break down the Lie in Feysand’s Bonus Chapter:

This is followed by Feyre saying:

So not only is Elain not afraid to get her hands dirty, she’s also not afraid of getting hurt in the process.

ACOSF is filled with moments that hint at Elain becoming just as powerful (if not more so) than her sisters. She has a very important role to play in future books, because she is the only one who can locate Koschei’s box and the 4th object. Her visions have been instrumental in the series so far, and there is a big hint that she might have more than just seer abilities:

Powers. Plural.

It makes sense for Elain’s book to be next. SJM has been scattering crumbs for her story since ACOTAR, and she is the character who would add the most to the plot—the only character who can move the plot forward.

You cannot ignore all the foreshadowing:

= a literary device that writers utilize as a means to indicate or hint to readers something that is to follow or appear later in a story.

Clear foreshadowing in ACOSF (it would take too long to list all the passages in previous books, as well): 

These are just a few examples but, for me, the one that gives it away is this passage (that can easily be overlooked) in Feysand’s Bonus POV:

SJM is basically telling us that, once Nesta’s journey ends, Elain’s will begin.

And it makes sense!

This series is about the Archeron sisters. About human women turned fae.

The first three books were about Feyre. The fourth about Nesta. It would not make sense to skip Elain, only to return to her story in the final book. Why?

Because, in order to defeat Koschei, all three sisters need to have reached their full potential. All three need to be healed, and strong, and fully in control of their lives and powers. You cannot cram everything into one book: Elain’s healing journey/character arc, Vassa’s own journey (because there is no way that SJM will NOT write a Swan Lake retelling—just look at her Pinterest board!), finding the 4th object, finding the box, and, ultimatly, defeating Koschei.

Feyre had a whole book to heal—ACOMAF

Nesta had a whole book to heal—ACOSF

Elain will have a whole book to heal, as well.

No other character adds as much value—or has as much untapped potential—than Elain.

Also, there is no way that SJM will postpone telling her story in favor of a male character (Azriel). If you’ve read any of her books, you know that it is always the female characters that eclipse the male characters.

Also, if Elain will become dark or even a villain (temporarily), then this will take place in her own story, and will not be used as a plot device for angsty!Azriel or for another couple to make sense/be pushed together.

If we look at the pattern in ACOTAR, we have:

The first book ends with a happily ever after. The MC has defeated the big bad and has walked off into the sunset with her LI. There are hints about a future conflict, but nothing is fleshed out (in ACOTAR, Feyre’s bargain with Rhys + a potential conflict between the courts and with Hybern).

The second book is all about development (both, character development, in the form of the MC’s healing journey, and plot development). The scene is being set for the final conclusion (the war/battle), and everything that takes place serves to bring the characters closer to the main conflict resolution. The book ends on a false happily ever after (Feysand’s mating bond, having what they need to annul the Cauldron’s powers), followed by a cliffhanger (the sisters turning fae, Feyre returning to the Spring Court).

The last book is centered around defeating the big bad and ends on a happily ever after for (almost) everyone involved. It brings the main players together in a final showdown that ends with good ultimately defeating evil.

If we are to look at this pattern, then:

ACOSF - Ends with a happily ever after (Nesta has healed, reconnected with her sisters, found her place in the IC, and has a family outside the IC—Gwyn, Emerie). She has defeated Briallyn, but the biggest threat—Koschei—has barely made an appearance, and there is no ending in sight.

ACOTAR 5 - Elain’s healing journey. Finding the 4th object. Knowing exactly what has been happening behind the scenes with Beron, the Queens, and Koschei. Finding the 4th object and uncovering the location of Koschei’s onyx box. Cliffhanger: Koschei has been freed/has found a way to free himself.

ACOTAR 6 - The journey to find the onyx box or a way to destroy whatever is inside. The repercussions of Koschei’s freedom. Vassa’s story coming full circle. Now that all three Archeron sisters have reached their full potential, they will most likely join forces/powers to hold off Koschei long enough for Vassa (because she NEEDS to have the killing blow) to finish him off.

This post is already long enough, but here are some honorable mentions that I haven’t spoken about because I wanted this to be a mostly character-driven argument:

The mating bond—Elain needs to either accept it or reject it, and I cannot see this happening in the last book because it would lose its effect (considering that they need to defeat Koschei in this book)

Elriel—The unresolved feelings between them need to be addressed/dealt with.

The Blood Duel—There is no way this isn’t happening. SJM wouldn’t mention it without it playing some sort of role in Elain’s book.

I might make another post (because I still haven’t addressed everything I wanted to), but Elain’s book is (without a doubt) next.

As a reminder: SJM has recently said that writing about characters that are hated/disliked is something that she loves doing. I think it’s safe to assume that, given the recent wave of hatred/dislike towards Elain, we are in for an epic journey.

Injury Attorneys in Macon GA

Macon Injury Attorneys that Can Help!

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Fine Line - Harry Styles Album Review

Go easy on me, I am no professional at writing, reviewing, explaining my thoughts, nor at grammar.

Everything is as objective as possible but some reviews may definitely and will definitely be biased slightly. :-)

Golden - summer. A song filled with incredibly upbeat lyrics that carry a stronger message than they initially and melodically suggest. Catchier than the flu. It takes a hold of the listener and turns their neck to the sunset beyond the meadow and says, “listen.” It fills you with a harmony of “da da da da’s” that encompasses both ears. Tremendous energy.

Watermelon Sugar - summertime in the 90’s. Laid back, funky, but most importantly, short reverb on the voice. California-esque lead guitar. Horns as the perfect level of mid-high tones. Makes you think of delicious watermelons and warm air.

Adore You - the theme of fruit continues, purity. a love letter written to the love of the author’s mind. “I’d walk through fire for you, just let me adore you.” Deep rich bass with the main melody in full motion. A rhythm that keeps the head bobbing, shoes tapping, and shoulders moving. Hopelessly romantic, this author. ‘No need for you to do a thing honey, just let me adore you.’ Incredible. Great distorted guitar tones.

Lights Up - The song is emptier in composition. Short to zero reverb on instruments. Simple, quiet drums. The message of confusion, the absence of sound amplifying this. “Do you know who you are?” “(Shine) step into the light! (Shine) so bright sometimes! (Shine) I’m not ever going back!” A command given by a confused person. Their beliefs of this lover completely flipped around and demanding answers. Just one loose theory but maybe not.

Cherry - another song that sounds lonely, just his voice. Nobody else and a confession. Begging, remorse. Please don’t call anyone what you called me and maybe it was for the better that we split but know I love you and respect you don’t call him what I used to be to you. The longing in the arrangement of the sounds and the addition of the strings to the song add to the melancholic feel of the voice. The upbeat progression overshadowed by the pain. Cherry on top is the voice note at the ending and the silence from him as he speaks his love language of music to her, whilst she speaks. (Personal favorite but I tried to approach this as objectively as I could.)

Falling - there is nothing but me, empty room, and sadness. The piano reverberates throughout the emptiness he feels. “The love letters are many about you, and we’ve run out of excuses to give ourselves.” He feels he might be nothing of notice in their life once they revert to strangers. He was another ordinary guy. He’s scared of himself being the reason the relationship fell apart too. Depression as a song.

To Be So Lonely - the guitar sounds muted and quiet. A moment where the sounds are coming back and the beat returns. Slow and mellow yet still strong. Buzzing strings, tremolo or vibrato on the electric guitar. Strings remain yet sing a new tune of possible hope. “Don’t call me what you used to call me, I need to be alone.” He’s climbing from the bottom of the spiral and has regained his strength.

She - another love letter, in odd form. She’s so important to me that I cannot get her out of my mind. The time being important as a reminder that even the time, numbers on a clock face, means something about her. He delegates the run for coffee like he knows what to do at the simple look of the time because it is for her. He wants to sail away and tell none of his friends because he couldn’t explain how he felt. She’s incredibly impacted his entire life and he doesn’t want anything else. “I don’t know where she is.” Could be that he’s aware of how incredibly romanticized his perception of her is and that he’d rather it anyway. He plays pretend and he doesn’t know where “she” is but he daydreams of her. Incredible guitar solos and yes - there is more than one guitar being played!

Sunflower vol. 6 - a sunflower is beautiful to look at and see and will always be so. you never want to bother one or block it’s sun, you love the shade. An entry in another page of the love letter. The author wants to let their lover know that he’d never think about disturbing her. Very strong melody and backing instruments with a strong and simple drum loop. The electric sound effects adding a touch of whimsy and fun, upbeat.

Canyon Moon - the author uses a calmer tone, back to the beginning of a solid, percussive rhythm with rich, deep acoustic guitar. The chorus returns and he sings so much more like himself. Excitement to return home and to familiar feelings, normalcy. Bright melody, cheery even.

Treat People with Kindness - rejuvenated spirits and the urge to treat everyone with incredible compassion. forgiving those who wronged him and regaining confidence. The solitude isn’t gruesome any longer and he remembers what the day feels like and comes out more gleeful. Tough stuff happens but we continue. Evidenced strongly by the entire choir singing and the strong voice and confidence. A mantra for positivity.

Fine Line - atmospheric, empty, and filled with sorrow and lethargic sounds. the slow, quiet guitar, not refined, as if played in the moment of grief. Beautiful deep bass notes with isolated highs that add depth and a feeling of loss and weightlessness. Falsetto singing to add to the angelic and somber ambience. “We’ll be a fine line.” We could be an example of a good thing or we could move forward in life together as friends. The song is the confession that was written in the middle but sounds amazing at the end. It’s almost as if the final minutes of the song serve as nothing but reassurance that they will live after this pain.

The ending that perfectly encapsulates the constant up and down a person experiences during a break up with someone significant to them. The “we’ll be alright, we’ll be alright” lyric demonstrates the growth and healing the author has done and reveals maturity behind the excuses. Perhaps too late because the relationship has ended romantically, but it doesn’t have to spell the end of a good platonic relationship.

Overall, this album is a strong 9.5/10 in my books. It has all the themes I love to talk and think about. Beautiful sounding vocals and absolutely incredible tunes.

Hope this wasn’t so muddled to understand and will gladly elaborate on anything in my asks!

Godzilla Kong ellen teljes film (𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟏-𝐇𝐔) magyarul ☑️

👓 Godzilla Kong ellen 2021 Teljes Film Magyarul 👓

Nézd meg most📺 ▶️▶️▶  https://tinyurl.com/2xynr7g4

Mind tudtuk, hogy egyszer megtörténik. Világunk szörnyei nem kerülhetik el egymást. A legnagyobbaknak előbb-utóbb szembe kell találkozniuk, hogy összemérjék az erejüket. De ahol King Kong és Godzilla csatázik, ott senki más nincs biztonságban.

felszabadított: 2021-03-24 Runtime: 0 percek Műfaj: Akció, Sci-Fi Csillag: Alexander Skarsgård, Millie Bobby Brown, Kyle Chandler, Rebecca Hall, Brian Tyree Henry Rendező: Terry Rossio, Eric McLeod, Ronald R. Reiss, Sarah Halley Finn, Owen Paterson

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its somewhat ironic that a movie about time travel can’t be reviewed properly until your future self rewatches the movie. It’s bold of Nolan to make such a thoroughly dense blockbuster. He assumes people will actually want to see ~Tenet more than once so they can understand it properly, which some may not. This movie makes the chronology of Inception look as simplistic as tic-tac-toe. Ergo, it’s hard for me to give an accurate rating, without having seen it twice, as I’m still trying to figure out whether everything does indeed make sense. If it does, this movie is easily a 9 or 10. If it doesn’t, it’s a 6. It’s further not helped by the fact that the dialogue in the first 15 minutes of the movie is painfully hard to understand / hear. Either they were behind masks; they were practically mumbling; the sound effects were too loud; or all of the above. The exposition scenes are also waayyy too brief for something this complex — a problem also shared with Interstellar actually. (Interstellar had this minimalist exposition problem explaining Blight, where if you weren’t careful, you’d miss this one sentence / scene in the entire movie explaining that Blight was a viral bacteria: “Earth’s atmosphere is 80% nitrogen, we don’t even breathe nitrogen. Blight does, and as it thrives, our air gets less and less oxygen”). I guess it’s a Nolan quirk. Hopefully, a revision of the film audio sorts the sound mixing out. I do like the soundtrack, but it’s too loud initially. I liked all the actors. You think John Washington can’t act at first, but he can, and he grows on you as the film progresses. And Pattinson is his usual charming self. Elizabeth is a surprise treat. And so on. Its worth a watch either way. See it with subtitles if you can. And definitely don’t expect to fully understand whats going on the first time around. Its one hell of a complicated film. It will be very hard for an average viewer to gather all the information provided by this movie at the first watch. But the more you watch it, more hidden elements will come to light. And when you are able to put these hidden elements together. You will realize that this movie is just a “masterpiece” which takes the legacy of Christopher Nolan Forward If I talk about acting, Then I have to say that Robert Pattinson has really proved himself as a very good actor in these recent years. And I am sure his acting skills will increase with time. His performance is charming and very smooth. Whenever he is on the camera, he steals the focus John David Washington is also fantastic in this movie. His performance is electrifying, I hope to see more from him in the future. Other characters such as Kenneth Branagh, Elizabeth, Himesh Patel, Dimple Kapadia, Clémence Poésy have also done quite well. And I dont think there is a need to talk about Michael Caine Talking about Music, its awesome. I dont think you will miss Hans Zimmer’s score. Ludwig has done a sufficient job. There is no lack of good score in the movie Gotta love the editing and post production which has been put into this movie. I think its fair to say this Nolan film has focused more in its post production. The main problem in the movie is the sound mixing. Plot is already complex and some dialogues are very soft due to the high music score. It makes it harder to realize what is going on in the movie. Other Nolan movies had loud BGM too. But Audio and dialogues weren’t a problem My humble request to everyone is to please let the movie sink in your thoughts. Let your mind grasp all the elements of this movie. I am sure more people will find it better. Even those who think they got the plot. I can bet they are wrong. ~Tenet is the long awaited new movie from Christopher Nolan. The movie that’s set to reboot the multiplexes post-Covid. It’s a manic, extremely loud, extremely baffling sci-fi cum spy rollercoaster that will please a lot of Nolan fan-boys but which left me with very mixed views. John David Washington (Denzel’s lad) plays “The Protagonist” — a crack-CIA field operative who is an unstoppable one-man army in the style of Hobbs or Shaw. Recruited into an even more shadowy organisation, he’s on the trail of an international arms dealer, Andrei Sator (Kenneth Branagh in full villain mode). Sator is bullying his estranged wife Kat (Elizabeth Debicki) over custody of their son (and the film unusually has a BBFC warning about “Domestic Abuse”). Our hero jets the world to try to prevent a very particular kind of Armageddon while also keeping the vulnerable and attractive Kat alive. This is cinema at its biggest and boldest. Nolan has taken a cinema ‘splurge’ gun, filled it with money, set it on rapid fire, removed the safety and let rip at the screen. Given that Nolan is famous for doing all of his ‘effects’ for real and ‘in camera’, some of what you see performed is almost unbelievable. You thought crashing a train through rush-hour traffic in “Inception” was crazy? You ain’t seen nothing yet with the airport scene! And for lovers of Chinooks (I must admit I am one and rush out of the house to see one if I hear it coming!) there is positively Chinook-p*rn on offer in the film’s ridiculously huge finale. The ‘inversion’ aspects of the story also lends itself to some fight scenes — one in particular in an airport ‘freeport’ — which are both bizarre to watch and, I imagine, technically extremely challenging to pull off. In this regard John David Washington is an acrobatic and talented stunt performer in his own right, and must have trained for months for this role. Nolan’s crew also certainly racked up their air miles pre-lockdown, since the locations range far and wide across the world. The locations encompassed Denmark, Estonia, India, Italy, Norway, the United Kingdom, and United States. Hoyte Van Hoytema’s cinematography is lush in introducing these, especially the beautiful Italian coast scenes. Although I did miss the David Arnold strings that would typically introduce these in a Bond movie: it felt like that was missing. The ‘timey-wimey’ aspects of the plot are also intriguing and very cleverly done. There are numerous points at which you think “Oh, that’s a sloppy continuity error” or “Shame the production design team missed that cracked wing mirror”. Then later in the movie, you get at least a dozen “Aha!” moments. Some of them (no spoilers) are jaw-droppingly spectacular. Perhaps the best twist is hidden in the final line of the movie. I only processed it on the way home. And so to the first of my significant gripes with ~Tenet. The sound mix in the movie is all over the place. I’d go stronger than that… it’s truly awful (expletive deleted)! Nolan often implements Shakespeare’s trick of having characters in the play provide exposition of the plot to aid comprehension. But unfortunately, all of this exposition dialogue was largely incomprehensible. This was due to: the ear-splitting volume of the sound: 2020 movie audiences are going to be suffering from ‘~Tenetis’! (LOL); the dialogue is poorly mixed with the thumping music by Ludwig Göransson (Wot? No Hans Zimmer?); a large proportion of the dialogue was through masks of varying description (#covid-appropriate). Aaron Taylor-Johnson was particularly unintelligible to my ears. Overall, watching this with subtitles at a special showing might be advisable! OK, so I only have a PhD in Physics… but at times I was completely lost as to the intricacies of the plot. It made “Inception” look like “The Tiger Who Came to Tea”. There was an obvious ‘McGuffin’ in “Inception” — — (“These ‘dream levels’… how exactly are they architected??”…. “Don’t worry… they’ll never notice”. And we didn’t!) In “~Tenet” there are McGuffins nested in McGuffins. So much of this is casually waved away as “future stuff… you’re not qualified” that it feels vaguely condescending to the audience. At one point Sator says to Kat “You don’t know what’s going on, do you?” and she shakes her head blankly. We’re right with you there luv! There are also gaps in the storyline that jar. The word “~Tenet”? What does it mean. Is it just a password? I’m none the wiser. The manic pace of ~Tenet and the constant din means that the movie gallops along like a series of disconnected (albeit brilliant) action set pieces. For me, it has none of the emotional heart of the Cobb’s marriage problems from “Inception” or the father/daughter separation of “Interstellar”. In fact, you barely care for anyone in the movie, perhaps with the exception of Kat. It’s a talented cast. As mentioned above, John David Washington is muscular and athletic in the role. It’s a big load for the actor to carry in such a tent-pole movie, given his only significant starring role before was in the excellent BlacKkKlansman. But he carries it off well. A worthy successor to Gerard Butler and Jason Statham for action roles in the next 10 years. This is also a great performance by Robert Pattinson, in his most high-profile film in a long time, playing the vaguely alcoholic and Carré-esque support guy. Pattinson’s Potter co-star Clemence Poésy also pops up — rather more un-glam that usual — as the scientist plot-expositor early in the movie. Nolan’s regular Michael Caine also pops up. although the 87-year old legend is starting to show his age: His speech was obviously affected at the time of filming (though nice try Mr Nolan in trying to disguise that with a mouth full of food!). But in my book, any amount of Caine in a movie is a plus. He also gets to deliver the best killer line in the film about snobbery! However, it’s Kenneth Branagh and Elizabeth Debicki that really stand out. They were both fabulous, especially when they were bouncing off each other in their marital battle royale. So, given this was my most anticipated movie of the year, it’s a bit of a curate’s egg for me. A mixture of being awe-struck at times and slightly disappointed at others. It’s a movie which needs a second watch, so I’m heading back today to give my ear drums another bashing! And this is one where I reserve the right to revisit my rating after that second watch… it’s not likely to go down… but it might go up. (For the full graphical review, check out One Mann’s Movies on t’interweb and Facebook. Thanks.) As this will be non-spoiler, I can’t say too much about the story. However, what I can is this: ~Tenet’s story is quite dynamic in the sense that you won’t understand it till it wants you to. So, for the first half, your brain is fighting for hints and pieces to puzzle together the story. It isn’t until halfway through the movie that ~Tenet invites you to the fantastic storytelling by Christopher Nolan. Acting is beyond phenomenal, and I’d be genuinely surprised if neither Robert Pattinson nor John David Washington doesn’t receive an Oscar nomination for best actor. It’s also hard not to mention how good Elizabeth Debicki and Aaron Johnson both are. All around, great acting, and the dialogue amps up the quality of the movie. The idea of this movie is damn fascinating, and while there are films that explore time-travelling, there’s never been anything quite like this. It has such a beautiful charm and for the most part, explains everything thoroughly. It feels so much more complex than any form of time-travelling we’ve seen, and no less could’ve been expected from Nolan. Oh my lord, the score for this film fits so perfectly. Every scene that’s meant to feel intense was amped by a hundred because of how good the score was. Let me just say though, none of them will be found iconic, but they fit the story and scenes so well. In the end, I walked out, feeling very satisfied. Nevertheless, I do have issues with the film that I cannot really express without spoiling bits of the story. There are definitely little inconsistencies that I found myself uncovering as the story progressed. However, I only had one issue that I found impacted my enjoyment. That issue was understanding some of the dialogue. No, not in the sense that the movie is too complicated, but more that it was hard to make out was being said at times. It felt like the movie required subtitles, but that probably was because, at a time in the film, there was far too much exposition. Nevertheless, I loved this film, I’ll be watching it at least two more times, and I think most of you in this group will enjoy it. I definitely suggest watching it in theatres if possible, just so you can get that excitement. (4/5) & (8.5/10) for those that care about number scores. At first, I want to ask Christopher Nolan one question, HOW THE HELL YOU DID THIS? Seriously I want to have an answer, How did he write such as this masterpiece! How did he get this complicated, fabulous and creative idea? What is going on in his mind? The story is written and directed perfectly, the narration style was absolutely unique. I have no idea how can anyone direct such as this story, that was a huge challenge, and as usual Nolan gave us a masterpiece that we’ll put beside (Memento), (Inception) and (Interstellar) The movie is so fast-paced in a good way, there was no boring moment. The chemistry between John David Washington and Robert Pattinson was great and funny and both of their performance was really good. Elizabeth Debicki performance was the best in the movie because she had the chance to show her acting abilities and she cached up that chance and showed us an A level acting. The music wasn’t unique and distinct as the music of Interstellar for example and I think this movie needed the touch of Hans Zimmer, I’m not saying that Ludwig Göransson failed but Hans Zimmer in another level. If there was something I’d say that I didn’t like it in the movie would it be that Nolan discarded any set up or characters backgrounds except Elizabeth Debicki dramatic story but it wasn’t that bad for me, I didn’t care about that, the exciting story didn’t give me the chance to focus on it. But the actual problem was the third act, it was really complicated and I got lost and I convinced myself to discard the questions that were in my head and enjoy the well-made action sequences and Elizabeth Debicki performance. I think this kind of movie that gets better with a second and third watch. I honestly don’t quite know where to begin with ~Tenet. I love Christopher Nolan’s work but I have never seen a more complicated film (and I understood Memento). ~After nearly three hours, I came away from ~Tenet not knowing myself, my mind reduced to nothing more than piles of ash. Was there time travel involved? Hmm, there was definitely something about time inversion. I mean, does Nolan even understand what he wrote? Look, I give credit to the director because he’s one of the few directors left who knows how to create a compelling and intelligent blockbuster. ~Tenet is full of Nolan trademarks — the gratuitous Michael Caine cameo, a loud, really loud score, complete with stunning cinematography and slickly

{||~1080p-HD~ ]] Regarder C'est la vie  film complet [[2020]] en Franacais

29 avril 2020  / 1h 43min / Comédie De Julien Rambaldi Avec Josiane Balasko, Léa Drucker, Alice Pol Nationalités Français, Belge 29 avril 2020  / 1h 43min / Comédie De Julien Rambaldi Avec Josiane Balasko, Léa Drucker, Alice Pol Nationalités Français, Belge

PLAY==> http://ver.yess-movie.com/movie/tt9162090/c-est-la-vie.html

Its somewhat ironic that a movie about time travel can’t be reviewed properly until your future self rewatches the movie. It’s bold of Nolan to make such a thoroughly dense blockbuster. He assumes people will actually want to see C’est la vie more than once so they can understand it properly, which some may not. This movie makes the chronology of Inception look as simplistic as tic-tac-toe. Ergo, it’s hard for me to give an accurate rating, without having seen it twice, as I’m still trying to figure out whether everything does indeed make sense. If it does, this movie is easily a 9 or 10. If it doesn’t, it’s a 6. It’s further not helped by the fact that the dialogue in the first 15 minutes of the movie is painfully hard to understand / hear. Either they were behind masks; they were practically mumbling; the sound effects were too loud; or all of the above. The exposition scenes are also waayyy too brief for something this complex — a problem also shared with Interstellar actually. (Interstellar had this minimalist exposition problem explaining Blight, where if you weren’t careful, you’d miss this one sentence / scene in the entire movie explaining that Blight was a viral bacteria: “Earth’s atmosphere is 80% nitrogen, we don’t even breathe nitrogen. Blight does, and as it thrives, our air gets less and less oxygen”). I guess it’s a Nolan quirk. Hopefully, a revision of the film audio sorts the sound mixing out. I do like the soundtrack, but it’s too loud initially. I liked all the actors. You think John Washington can’t act at first, but he can, and he grows on you as the film progresses. And Pattinson is his usual charming self. Elizabeth is a surprise treat. And so on. Its worth a watch either way. See it with subtitles if you can. And definitely don’t expect to fully understand whats going on the first time around. Its one hell of a complicated film. It will be very hard for an average viewer to gather all the information provided by this movie at the first watch. But the more you watch it, more hidden elements will come to light. And when you are able to put these hidden elements together. You will realize that this movie is just a “masterpiece” which takes the legacy of Christopher Nolan Forward If I talk about acting, Then I have to say that Robert Pattinson has really proved himself as a very good actor in these recent years. And I am sure his acting skills will increase with time. His performance is charming and very smooth. Whenever he is on the camera, he steals the focus John David Washington is also fantastic in this movie. His performance is electrifying, I hope to see more from him in the future. Other characters such as Kenneth Branagh, Elizabeth, Himesh Patel, Dimple Kapadia, Clémence Poésy have also done quite well. And I dont think there is a need to talk about Michael Caine Talking about Music, its awesome. I dont think you will miss Hans Zimmer’s score. Ludwig has done a sufficient job. There is no lack of good score in the movie Gotta love the editing and post production which has been put into this movie. I think its fair to say this Nolan film has focused more in its post production. The main problem in the movie is the sound mixing. Plot is already complex and some dialogues are very soft due to the high music score. It makes it harder to realize what is going on in the movie. Other Nolan movies had loud BGM too. But Audio and dialogues weren’t a problem My humble request to everyone is to please let the movie sink in your thoughts. Let your mind grasp all the elements of this movie. I am sure more people will find it better. Even those who think they got the plot. I can bet they are wrong. C’est la vie is the long awaited new movie from Christopher Nolan. The movie that’s set to reboot the multiplexes post-Covid. It’s a manic, extremely loud, extremely baffling sci-fi cum spy rollercoaster that will please a lot of Nolan fan-boys but which left me with very mixed views. John David Washington (Denzel’s lad) plays “The Protagonist” — a crack-CIA field operative who is an unstoppable one-man army in the style of Hobbs or Shaw. Recruited into an even more shadowy organisation, he’s on the trail of an international arms dealer, Andrei Sator (Kenneth Branagh in full villain mode). Sator is bullying his estranged wife Kat (Elizabeth Debicki) over custody of their son (and the film unusually has a BBFC warning about “Domestic Abuse”). Our hero jets the world to try to prevent a very particular kind of Armageddon while also keeping the vulnerable and attractive Kat alive. This is cinema at its biggest and boldest. Nolan has taken a cinema ‘splurge’ gun, filled it with money, set it on rapid fire, removed the safety and let rip at the screen. Given that Nolan is famous for doing all of his ‘effects’ for real and ‘in camera’, some of what you see performed is almost unbelievable. You thought crashing a train through rush-hour traffic in “Inception” was crazy? You ain’t seen nothing yet with the airport scene! And for lovers of Chinooks (I must admit I am one and rush out of the house to see one if I hear it coming!) there is positively Chinook-p*rn on offer in the film’s ridiculously huge finale. The ‘inversion’ aspects of the story also lends itself to some fight scenes — one in particular in an airport ‘freeport’ — which are both bizarre to watch and, I imagine, technically extremely challenging to pull off. In this regard John David Washington is an acrobatic and talented stunt performer in his own right, and must have trained for months for this role. Nolan’s crew also certainly racked up their air miles pre-lockdown, since the locations range far and wide across the world. The locations encompassed Denmark, Estonia, India, Italy, Norway, the United Kingdom, and United States. Hoyte Van Hoytema’s cinematography is lush in introducing these, especially the beautiful Italian coast scenes. Although I did miss the David Arnold strings that would typically introduce these in a Bond movie: it felt like that was missing. The ‘timey-wimey’ aspects of the plot are also intriguing and very cleverly done. There are numerous points at which you think “Oh, that’s a sloppy continuity error” or “Shame the production design team missed that cracked wing mirror”. Then later in the movie, you get at least a dozen “Aha!” moments. Some of them (no spoilers) are jaw-droppingly spectacular. Perhaps the best twist is hidden in the final line of the movie. I only processed it on the way home. And so to the first of my significant gripes with C’est la vie. The sound mix in the movie is all over the place. I’d go stronger than that… it’s truly awful (expletive deleted)! Nolan often implements Shakespeare’s trick of having characters in the play provide exposition of the plot to aid comprehension. But unfortunately, all of this exposition dialogue was largely incomprehensible. This was due to: the ear-splitting volume of the sound: 2020 movie audiences are going to be suffering from ‘C’est la vieis’! (LOL); the dialogue is poorly mixed with the thumping music by Ludwig Göransson (Wot? No Hans Zimmer?); a large proportion of the dialogue was through masks of varying description (#covid-appropriate). Aaron Taylor-Johnson was particularly unintelligible to my ears. Overall, watching this with subtitles at a special showing might be advisable! OK, so I only have a PhD in Physics… but at times I was completely lost as to the intricacies of the plot. It made “Inception” look like “The Tiger Who Came to Tea”. There was an obvious ‘McGuffin’ in “Inception” — — (“These ‘dream levels’… how exactly are they architected??”…. “Don’t worry… they’ll never notice”. And we didn’t!) In “C’est la vie” there are McGuffins nested in McGuffins. So much of this is casually waved C’est la vie as “future stuff… you’re not qualified” that it feels vaguely condescending to the audience. At one point Sator says to Kat “You don’t know what’s going on, do you?” and she shakes her head blankly. We’re right with you there luv! There are also gaps in the storyline that jar. The word “C’est la vie”? What does it mean. Is it just a password? I’m none the wiser. The manic pace of C’est la vie and the constant din means that the movie gallops along like a series of disconnected (albeit brilliant) action set pieces. For me, it has none of the emotional heart of the Cobb’s marriage problems from “Inception” or the father/daughter separation of “Interstellar”. In fact, you barely care for anyone in the movie, perhaps with the exception of Kat. It’s a talented cast. As mentioned above, John David Washington is muscular and athletic in the role. It’s a big load for the actor to carry in such a tent-pole movie, given his only significant starring role before was in the excellent BlacKkKlansman. But he carries it off well. A worthy successor to Gerard Butler and Jason Statham for action roles in the next 10 years. This is also a great performance by Robert Pattinson, in his most high-profile film in a long time, playing the vaguely alcoholic and Carré-esque support guy. Pattinson’s Potter co-star Clemence Poésy also pops up — rather more un-glam that usual — as the scientist plot-expositor early in the movie. Nolan’s regular Michael Caine also pops up. although the 87-year old legend is starting to show his age: His speech was obviously affected at the time of filming (though nice try Mr Nolan in trying to disguise that with a mouth full of food!). But in my book, any amount of Caine in a movie is a plus. He also gets to deliver the best killer line in the film about snobbery! However, it’s Kenneth Branagh and Elizabeth Debicki that really stand out. They were both fabulous, especially when they were bouncing off each other in their marital battle royale. So, given this was my most anticipated movie of the year, it’s a bit of a curate’s egg for me. A mixture of being awe-struck at times and slightly disappointed at others. It’s a movie which needs a second watch, so I’m heading back today to give my ear drums another bashing! And this is one where I reserve the right to revisit my rating after that second watch… it’s not likely to go down… but it might go up. (For the full graphical review, check out One Mann’s Movies on t’interweb and Facebook. Thanks.) As this will be non-spoiler, I can’t say too much about the story. However, what I can is this: C’est la vie’s story is quite dynamic in the sense that you won’t understand it till it wants you to. So, for the first half, your brain is fighting for hints and pieces to puzzle together the story. It isn’t until halfway through the movie that C’est la vie invites you to the fantastic storytelling by Christopher Nolan. Acting is beyond phenomenal, and I’d be genuinely surprised if neither Robert Pattinson nor John David Washington doesn’t receive an Oscar nomination for best actor. It’s also hard not to mention how good Elizabeth Debicki and Aaron Johnson both are. All around, great acting, and the dialogue amps up the quality of the movie. The idea of this movie is damn fascinating, and while there are films that explore time-travelling, there’s never been anything quite like this. It has such a beautiful charm and for the most part, explains everything thoroughly. It feels so much more complex than any form of time-travelling we’ve seen, and no less could’ve been expected from Nolan. Oh my lord, the score for this film fits so perfectly. Every scene that’s meant to feel intense was amped by a hundred because of how good the score was. Let me just say though, none of them will be found iconic, but they fit the story and scenes so well. In the end, I walked out, feeling very satisfied. Nevertheless, I do have issues with the film that I cannot really express without spoiling bits of the story. There are definitely little inconsistencies that I found myself uncovering as the story progressed. However, I only had one issue that I found impacted my enjoyment. That issue was understanding some of the dialogue. No, not in the sense that the movie is too complicated, but more that it was hard to make out was being said at times. It felt like the movie required subtitles, but that probably was because, at a time in the film, there was far too much exposition. Nevertheless, I loved this film, I’ll be watching it at least two more times, and I think most of you in this group will enjoy it. I definitely suggest watching it in theatres if possible, just so you can get that excitement. (4/5) & (8.5/10) for those that care about number scores. At first, I want to ask Christopher Nolan one question, HOW THE HELL YOU DID THIS? Seriously I want to have an answer, How did he write such as this masterpiece! How did he get this complicated, fabulous and creative idea? What is going on in his mind? The story is written and directed perfectly, the narration style was absolutely unique. I have no idea how can anyone direct such as this story, that was a huge challenge, and as usual Nolan gave us a masterpiece that we’ll put beside (Memento), (Inception) and (Interstellar) The movie is so fast-paced in a good way, there was no boring moment. The chemistry between John David Washington and Robert Pattinson was great and funny and both of their performance was really good. Elizabeth Debicki performance was the best in the movie because she had the chance to show her acting abilities and she cached up that chance and showed us an A level acting. The music wasn’t unique and distinct as the music of Interstellar for example and I think this movie needed the touch of Hans Zimmer, I’m not saying that Ludwig Göransson failed but Hans Zimmer in another level. If there was something I’d say that I didn’t like it in the movie would it be that Nolan discarded any set up or characters backgrounds except Elizabeth Debicki dramatic story but it wasn’t that bad for me, I didn’t care about that, the exciting story didn’t give me the chance to focus on it. But the actual problem was the third act, it was really complicated and I got lost and I convinced myself to discard the questions that were in my head and enjoy the well-made action sequences and Elizabeth Debicki performance. I think this kind of movie that gets better with a second and third watch. I honestly don’t quite know where to begin with C’est la vie. I love Christopher Nolan’s work but I have never seen a more complicated film (and I understood Memento). After nearly three hours, I came C’est la vie from C’est la vie not knowing myself, my mind reduced to nothing more than piles of ash. Was there time travel involved? Hmm, there was definitely something about time inversion. I mean, does Nolan even understand what he wrote? Look, I give credit to the director because he’s one of the few directors left who knows how to create a compelling and intelligent blockbuster. C’est la vie is full of Nolan trademarks — the gratuitous Michael Caine cameo, a loud, really loud score, complete with stunning cinematography and slickly inventive action set-pieces. This time around however, Nolan has finally managed to ‘out-Nolan’ himself: the palindromic plot, whilst creatively ambitious, is simply far too complicated for its own good. C’est la vie is overlong, overstuffed, pretentious and too exhausting to comprehend in its entirety — it makes Inception and Interstellar look like Peppa Pig by comparison. I’m aware of the technical wizardry and creative mastery in this film and lord knows I’ll have to watch this again. For those who want a puzzle, C’est la vie at least provides a unique cinematic experience. But to actually enjoy solving it Nolan wants you to work

The Art Of Companionship

          As Booker Dewitt in BioShock: Infinite, you look on as an idling Elizabeth stops over a dead body, clasps her hands to her mouth and stares, eyes wide with remorse, and it seems like to you an increasingly - and tragically - sense of innocence lost. It’s just a dead body, and you’re playing a first-person shooter. You’ve seen this sight hundreds of times. Under other circumstances, you’d think almost nothing of it, so familiar are you with the sight. Yet suddenly, in a way you never have before, you appreciate the gravity of it. That inert form is a dead human being. They had a life and feelings. People that cared. Elizabeth’s reaction forces you to think of this, even if only on some small level. Still, it is more than what you would ever think normally, which makes such a quite, small moment able to feel so profound.

          As Joel in The Last Of Us, you listen to an enthusiastic Ellie express her optimism about your survival chances, or confusion about what could lead people to commit the horrors of something you’re witnessing. Joel, annoyed, tells her off with a harsh rebuke of how naïve she is and how grim human nature is, sometimes more subtle in manner and sometimes as overt as can be. Given Joel’s past, you understand there’s another reason why he’s so hostile that makes him less of an asshole than he seems: these moments of Ellie’s remind him of the innocence of who he lost, a reminder of a pain he wants to forget and isn’t allowed to because of those circumstances. Underlying his terseness is something more than annoyance as well, you understand coming from this past of his: a sort of paternalism. He doesn’t want to see this person meet the same fate. He wants her to learn so she can survive where someone else didn’t, even if it takes tough love...but love, understated.

          As Kratos in God Of War, your son asks a question about his mother - your wife - whose death drives you both forward. Being so gruff of a person, at times these questions are met with anger and annoyance and a demand to quit prying and focus. At times they are met with quiet, with an eventual answer being short and elusive, avoiding greater detail; perhaps it is in his nature to not talk at length, but an understanding is there that it’s also because feelings are involved in the subject at hand for the love lost, feelings being one thing the character, for all his power, has almost no skill in dealing with well. And at times, Kratos’ voice goes unusually soft for him, and a heartfelt admission about who his wife was as a person and what she liked is made, in part for the boy’s sake, to give him a larger piece of her to have in the absence of her living, as well as in part, you realize, for Kratos himself, a reminder of the peace he had and that violence isn’t all there is to life, a reminder that there are other forms of strength in the world than his own, kinds of strength that he needs to find now in himself in her absence in order to honor her memory as well as to fully give the boy the love he was intended to have. The hard exterior of this man, you realize, belies a great depth of emotion and thought...even if something his enemies will never see.

          What do all these moments have in common? They all demonstrate a potent element games can possess that we’ve seen emerge more and more in recent years: that of the singular, constant companion. While certainly credit must be given to the writers and others behind creating these characters that makes the specific examples referenced so well executed, I do think that there is something inherently special about this type of element that makes any game that incorporates it with purpose and puts thought into it a game that is much more liable to be well received, or even celebrated. Why is this so?

          The key here I think is the inherently limited nature of perspective you get from the player character: on events, on the world, on themselves and even any broader moral or philosophical themes that might be a part of the larger narrative. Our world and any fictional one includes a host of people with differing perspectives about it, yet we often only get to perceive these fictional worlds through the very limited scope of the player character’s viewpoint, or with no perspective at all in the case of the many silent FPS protagonists. Having a critical companion throughout the story of a game ensures a layer of depth unattainable for the narrative otherwise.

          This can be in reacting to events, offering opinions and sharing lore we otherwise wouldn’t know, but it also provides the chance to create more depth for the player character as well: when the companion reacts to what they do, it creates more of sense of that protagonist’s existence in that world, fleshing them out, as well as providing something for the player character to react to, directly revealing more of their personality and opinions in the process where they otherwise simply wouldn’t have a chance to do so. In the course of all this, there is an understated but powerful sense of connection to the player character that players can come to have from this relationship which bolsters a sense of ownership of and care for what’s happening in the game. This occurs because the player character and players themselves both develop a sense of attachment for these companions in tandem. When this connection has been established, everything going on with the experience takes on a greater significance, and since the ostensible goal with narrative-based games is to have players care about the story, about the world and these characters and what happens to them all, then fostering this kind of regard from players is certainly an important step toward achieving that goal of creating a meaningful experience.

          The trick, of course, is that while being a game provides a sense of being there with these companion characters that makes moments with them potentially so profound, that same format poses a unique challenge: how to incorporate them into the gameplay mechanics of the experience. When we look at the examples given at the start of this piece and comparing them, given they all succeeded extraordinarily well with their companion elements, certain patterns emerge on how best to do this effectively.

          One, which I think overall is most important, is to not have game progression failure tied to their actions. Part of this is ensuring no actions that deviate from player intentionality in a scenario. In other words, they don’t take an action that can cause something undesired to happen, particularly as concerns enemies where the player is attempting to strategize in their approach. The most salient example of this would be in stealth scenarios, where the companion taking more overt action or just being scene would cause a break from the stealth mechanics of the game against the players will, frustrating them in their lack of culpability in that having occurred.

The Last Of Us presents a great example of this, where Ellie is literally incapable of alerting enemies to her presence when moving in stealth. While her pathfinding is pretty strong about positioning her to where she gets into cover with realistic timing, at times she doesn’t. I remember watching a design talk done by Naughty Dog where it was explained this was deliberate, because it was seen as worth it to potentially have the odd immersion-breaking moment where an enemy doesn’t see Ellie when she’s clearly in view in order to guarantee she could never trigger enemies’ alert status and garner negative feedback from the player for her actions. I personally experienced a few of these moments playing the game and have to admit it was the right call: more than I was put off by any sense of “Really? You idiots didn’t see her right in front of you?” I was just relieved to not have an alert status triggered, leaving me free to keep attempting the checkpoint rather than initiate a manual restart of it because the element of surprise was gone against my will. This made it clear that having your companion unable to cause any failure of your attempted approach as a smart way to design their performance, as the suspension of disbelief for it to occur is outweighed by the benefits in progression.

          Another means to avoid progression failure is simply ensuring they can’t die. It is always critical in good game design when it comes to the difficulty aspects to ensure that player action is the determining factor in successful progression, not that of an external party beyond their control. Since these companions by definition have a great deal of their own agency, then if they could die there is always a chance that event would occur due to factors that weren’t necessarily the player’s fault. That just leads to player frustration that puts them off the gameplay experience, as well as weakening the companion’s narrative strength by having such player frustration be directed toward them, which is of course counterproductive to the empathy and love for them players are intended to have. As far as why they always escape a grim fate, this can be explained away easily enough with them being stealthy or nimble enough to avoid efforts to hurt them, seen manifested in their gameplay behavior, or simply with the “bigger target” philosophy: the enemies focus far more on you because you are the bigger threat offensively. This leads nicely into the next point...

          Two, have the player character be the star offensively. Players want who they are in the story to be the dominant offensive force, so having the companion dwarf you be killing more effectively than you do would only generate resentment on the player’s part. In gameplay terms, this doesn’t mean that they can’t be capable of killing, just that the ceiling for their potential kill rate can never surpass what the average killing rate for the player character is. So that they don’t feel like an escort that steals a few kills, however, the crucial dynamic for those companions is to have them be useful in other ways, such as using their size or other skills to bypass obstacles and deal with puzzles. Having them find useful items or indicate points of interest can also serve this purpose really well. In the examples mentioned before, Elizabeth, Ellie and Atreus all have their focus as companions be in these areas, to great effect.

          Third and finally, have their useful capabilities grow as you progress, right along with you. Your character will always have to deal with increasingly more difficult enemies and obstacles over the course of the game, so having the companion’s own abilities increase accordingly sustains their sense of viability as you deal with those greater challenges. In the noted examples, Elizabeth progresses to opening extremely useful tears, Ellie starts getting kills of her own that minimize the threat to you (noteworthy because of how high the sense of vulnerability is for you throughout the game) and Atreus can better weaken and kill enemies of his own. This plays back into the last point I made, which is to ensure that they only get better offensively in a way that makes them more supportive, but never deadly on the scale the player character is.

          With these criteria met, from there it is simply up to the writers to make them strong characters in the emotion they express and story they create as they interplay with the player character. Done right, this type of companion relationship stands to be one of the most satisfying experiences you can have in modern games. Fortunately, the special quality these have is something that’s been noticed, as we can see it in more games all the times in modern gaming. Sony in particular has been seemingly focused on producing these narrative-focused experiences with companion interactions.

          It’s worth noting that while the singular, main companion experience is generally which seems to have the greatest potential, there’s something to be said for deviations that at least have interactions with a core set of companions as the key, or a more dynamic narrative relationship with what companions one has. Speaking of Sony titles, the recent Spider-Man game is a strong example of this: while you don’t have gameplay companions generally, you do have constant interactions with a few key allies remotely, who you understand to be conceptually driving the narrative forward and also providing a chance to see more layers of Peter Parker’s personality.

          In other cases, we can see where embracing more dimensions of the critical companion dynamic has occurred. Halo, for instance, had Cortana as a beloved character for its’ entire history as a franchise with her useful intel on the world and events, comic relief and the conceptual help she provided in opening doors and enabling you to pursue certain objectives. With Halo 4, though, that dynamic evolved in a great way as the Master Chief started talking back to Cortana, with her talk now being used to draw out and show an emotional depth to the Master Chief that made an already loved character even deeper and more worth loving, which was a victory for fans of the franchise and for fans of deeper storytelling in games; in fact, their dynamic was I believe that title’s standout element over all others.

          All these cases go to show that while there may be a place for the titular solo hero in games, there is certainly a place for the hero who gets by with a little help from his or her friends, or at least, a friend. As the potential has grown for realism in games, the capability has grown to tell more meaningful stories through the presentation of more believable characters, and with that capability I believe there is an impetus that should be felt by more developers to create more games with these kind of dynamic critical companions. They can immerse us more in the worlds of games and create opportunities for fresh new gameplay elements in the process, making their continued and ever broader incorporation into new games we have yet to experience be something that will be a boon to all who are entertained by the medium.

          And Ellie, we’ll see you soon. ;)

Gem Ascension Tropes (Lapis-specific: A - C)

Primary General Post ♆ Full Article ♆  Primary Peri Post 

Accidental Hero: Could be considered one for Peridot when they first met, seeing as this was also when both were introduced to Jasper… and the very first thing Lapis witnesses when meeting her two new teammates is Jasper coming very close to raping Peridot, which only stops when Jasper catches sight of Lapis and becomes entranced, losing all interest in the technician and dropping her on the spot. While disturbed by the scene, Lapis had no reservations about letting Jasper have her way with Peridot if it meant she wouldn’t have to worry about the brutish quartz. She encouraged Jasper to just ignore her and carry on, but Jasper had already make up her mind to exclusively pursue Lapis from there on out. So, despite having no intention of sparing Peridot from a grim fate that would have permanently damaged her mind had it gone any further, Lapis did exactly that just by existing and coming in just in time to disrupt the assault with her mere presence. Though Peridot is aware Lapis never meant to save her, the fact remains that she not only saved Peridot from becoming little more than Jasper’s sex toy, but ended up taking all of the punishment from Jasper that was originally meant for her. In hindsight, it’s much easier to see why Peridot was so subservient to Lapis when they were roommates, even when Lapis herself treated Peridot very poorly while the latter just took it without complaint.

Affectionate Nickname: Laps by Amethyst, Lapi and Lap by Bismuth.

There are times Peridot will call her Lazuli, but this is more of a Term of Endangerment type of nickname (Peridot exclusively called Lapis this prior to her canon Heel-Face Turn), and a clear indicator that Peridot is seriously upset with Lapis if she refers to her as this.

Armor-Piercing Slap: On the receiving end of this from Peridot after trying to calm her down and stop her constant badgering of Steven to save Pumpkin, who was well beyond saving.

The Atoner: Downplayed compared to other sharers of this trope; Lapis’ past behavior in canon regularly haunts her in GA and is frequently Lampshaded. Especially after she ends up being the only gem to get poofed in the final battle of Act I and learns that Peridot was Left for Dead, Lapis is resolved from Act II onwards to permanently detach herself from her commitment issues and truly be part of the Crystal Gems both as a teammate and a member of the family.

Beauty, Brains and Brawn: The Beauty to Peridot’s Brains and Bismuth’s Brawn.

Be Yourself: When Steven asks Lapis how to act around Peridot now that he’s fully aware of how enamored she is with him in Chapter 7 of Act II, this is the advice Lapis gives him.

Big, Thin, Short Trio: The Thin to Bismuth’s Big and Peridot’s Short.

Blinded by Rage: Just seeing White Diamond parade about in Blue Diamond’s body causes this, as Lapis had just hours ago made her peace with Blue Diamond and her sacrifice. This leads to her getting poofed during Act I’s climax.

Broken Bird: Per canon. Lapis does make some forward movement in GA, largely due in part to the efforts of Bismuth and Peridot. Most notably, losing Peridot after Act I and knowing she’s being tortured while Lapis recuperates on Earth actually makes her want to become stronger and a more reliable Crystal Gem. Despite her PSTD stemming from Malachite (and Jasper in general), Lapis is open to fusing with Bismuth in order to do what needs to be done when they return to Homeworld. Becoming Moonstone goes a long way in helping Lapis heal from her past trauma. Bismuth in general is a very good influence on Lapis. Being able to branch out and make other friends helps greatly in Lapis truly bonding with the group. So much to the point where she actually decides to live with the Crystal Gems under one roof at the end of GA, to everyone’s surprise.

Character Development: Lapis was this close to relapsing back to her old ways just before the start of GA and run away once more, as she initially had no desire to take part in the rescue mission. Not because she didn’t care about her imperiled friends, but because Lapis feared the prospect of returning to Homeworld (knowing how that worked out for her last time); her instinctive self-preservation still overrode any desire to save her fellow Crystal Gems. Getting poofed during her big comeback definitely took a lot of the wind out of Lapis’ sails. However, by humoring Bismuth’s suggestion to wait and see how Peridot would handle this situation when she reformed, Lapis was inspired to truly hold back on her selfish instinctive urges and take a chance to trust her friends… even though she barely knew Greg (who wouldn’t be of much use in the mission anyway), Bismuth was a total stranger (and the one who inadvertently started the chain of misfortune that plagued her life thousands of years ago), and her friendship with Peridot was severely strained due her heinous past actions earlier in the season. Still, with some help, Lapis was not only able to eventually branch out and put her trust in others, but actively work with her friends to save everyone despite the mission being extremely dangerous with a low chance of succeeding. She made her peace with Bismuth and managed to form a bond with her with Greg and Peridot’s help. She even managed to make peace with Blue Diamond shortly before the latter’s death. After Act I, when Lapis got poofed again and Peridot was forcibly abandoned on Homeworld at the end of their mission, that served as the most significant wake-up call to reality of Lapis’ life. After further bonding with Bismuth and Greg and finally seeing the full extent of the damage she left on Peridot through her actions via her designated Video Will, now knowing her friend still went through with her mission despite knowing early on she’d likely not survive it, Lapis was finally compelled to act like a True Companion to her fellow Crystal Gems. She was resolved to no longer run away from her problems, and by keeping Peridot’s sacrifice in mind, Lapis was even able to overcome her fusion PTSD by choosing Bismuth as her fusion partner – which in turn deepened that friendship. While a few personal issues with Peridot are not yet fully resolved, the two have officially made peace with each other by Act III’s end. Additionally, Lapis learned to legitimately open up to others; she managed to branch out beyond Steven and Peridot and made other friends, which in turn strengthened Lapis’ loyalty to the Crystal Gems overall. Lapis ultimately surprised everyone when she announced she was going to be a full-time tenant in the temple, as well as a full-time Crystal Gem. In just a little under two weeks, Lapis made giant leaps in the progression of her character. She still has her issues, she can still be moody and awkward, and she might even come off as unpleasant even now – but she finally understands not only what it means to be a Crystal Gem, but what it means to be a true friend.

Commitment Issues: Beyond learning to trust others and to move on from her traumatic past, this is Lapis’ most persistent issue that is relentlessly lampshaded across the series. Peridot especially grills her former roommate over this, most notably via her Video Wills in Act II. Lapis’ actions earlier in the season has made virtually all the Crystal Gems see her in this light, but come Act III, Lapis seems to be very resolved to overcome this trope once and for all. She’s made enough progress to even indulge in some self-deprecating humor over this very subject, and Lapis ultimately surprised everyone at the end of GA when she decided she wanted to live with all of the Crystal Gems under the same roof. As of the end of the main series, Lapis is now solidly a full-time Crystal Gem and is never far away when she’s needed. 

The Confidant: Lapis is the first one Peridot confesses her uncertain feelings for Steven to, though she isn’t telling the whole story at the time and was pretty much roped into confessing this to her due to the circumstances. She also coincidentally ends up being the first one to see Steven and Peridot getting intimate with each other in GA. What’s very telling of this trope, however, is Peridot’s Video Will to Lapis in Act II. Peridot spills her heart out hard in her message to Lapis and confesses details of her life that only Amethyst and Steven would know about.

Crippling Overspecialization: When it comes to combat, Lapis is one of the most powerful members of the Crystal Gems… so long as she has access to water. Without water, Lapis really has nothing going for her.

‘Avengers: Infinity War’ - A Movie Review

Here’s how this is going to play out – this first section is a spoiler-free review of the general characteristics of this movie. I still point out all of the films’ accomplishments and shortcomings, but in a sweeping way that’s not too specific about plot details. After the first score which summarises the film in a spoiler-free way, we’ll be diving into complete spoiler territory. I want to talk about the details of this film but I don’t want to spoil it for anyone, so check out the spoiler-free review if you haven’t seen it yet, then go watch it, and then come back for my full thoughts after you’ve done all of that.

         Avengers: Infinity War would be an impressive accomplishment if it just showed up and existed. Marvel was tasked with its most difficult juggling act to date with this film, having to bring in countless characters who have each had significant roles in their own movies, and find a way to allocate the appropriate amount of time to each of them so that nothing feels forced or clunky. Oh, and it had to convey the established personalities of these characters almost instantaneously so that familiar viewers are happy to see them again, while newcomers get a sense of who they are without too much explanatory dialogue bogging down the run-time / pacing of the movie. Oh! AND it had to introduce a central character who has been hinted at for a long time but hasn’t really had more than three minutes of screentime across any of the 18 movies up to this point, and develop him enough to make him seem like a legitimate threat, as well as a compelling enough character to take the weight that’s placed on his shoulders as the source of conflict in this two-part grand finale.

         Not only does Infinity War pull all of that off, but it does so while telling a cohesive story which constantly marches forward with an unwavering sense of purpose. It delivers on the promise of being this colossal team-up event movie while also taking you by surprise as the scale and stakes of the movie start to sink in. As the film progresses, the tone causes you to feel an ever-increasing amount of adrenaline and uneasy dread. They are both in constant balance with each other, making you wonder when, if ever, one of these feelings is going to win out over the other. Some characters don’t get much room for an emotional scene or to do much more than show up, be themselves, and engage in some enjoyable banter with old friends and new faces they’ve never met before. Even so, there are a great deal more characters who get the chance to have a meaningful moment or just sit down and talk than you might expect. Infinity War is a film that’s filled to the brim with content, but it has a clear focus to it which gives it a coherent theme and makes it work as its own movie, and not just the last act of an ongoing series. I’d be lying if I said that I was as invested in some of its threads as I was with others, and there is going to be a lot of debate over whether every character was handled as well as they ought to have been. But Infinity War, despite the hype, meets many of the lofty goals it has set for itself over the years, and its story also ended up giving me something I didn’t expect which has caused me to sit and process this film long after I finished watching it.

8/10 – I don’t know if it breaks the Top 5 MCU movies, but its tone and impressive balance in many areas certainly makes it one of the better films in the series.

OKAY SPOILER TERRITORY FROM HERE ON OUT GUYS

         After having time to sit on the film and reflect on how each character was used, I’d say that each character was properly represented and used effectively. Given the apocalyptic circumstances and the particular nature of what Thanos is after and what each person involved brings to the table, the film ensures that the characters all act in a way that scans with their personal history and what they would feasibly do in this situation. The fact that the film pulls this off with arguably every single character, whether they’ve got the luxury of time with full emotional conversations like Gamora and Quill, Thor and Rocket, or Vision and Wanda, or if they’re present but not quite focused on like Okoye, Bucky, Black Widow, or Captain America, is hugely commendable. Those are some of my favourite characters in the series, but I didn’t feel short-changed because I still felt that they were the same people I’ve grown to care for, and I’m pretty confident that a good number of them will have more time dedicated to them in Part 2. With the film spinning as many plates as it does, you’d expect one or two of them to fall down and break, and depending on the individual audience member’s level of investment in certain characters, they may well feel like someone they cared about was under-served. But I was personally satisfied with the overall handling of the characters.

         However, one area where the film felt uneven for me was how invested I felt about each of the individual ongoing threads. Character groups move back and forth throughout the film, occasionally overlapping or splitting up, which means that things are constantly shifting, but not so rapidly that you can’t keep track of everything, which I appreciated. I enjoyed the characters simply being together, so ultimately the specifics of what they were doing didn’t matter all that much to me. Nevertheless, two threads which felt weaker to me for different reasons were Thor, Rocket, and Groot’s quest to forge Stormbreaker, and the stuff on Earth with Cap’s group between his awesomely triumphant entrance, and Thor’s group arriving onto the battlefield at Wakanda. I loved seeing Rocket and Thor interact, as Rocket shows some growth and actually reaches out to Thor to try and offer support and check he’s okay, and Thor shows Rocket genuine respect and heartfelt comradery in their conversations. However, while it’s cool to see where Mjolnir and the Infinity Gauntlet were forged, the amount of time dedicated to these guys as they forge Stormbreaker feels like busywork, and lacks the palpable sense of tension which is ever-present throughout the rest of the movie. We don’t doubt that they’ll forge Stormbreaker, and while I wasn’t sure whether Thor would make it through the movie, the danger of the forging sequence never sold me on the possibility that Thor might die here. I do appreciate what this plot thread brings to the ending when Thor uses Stormbreaker on Thanos and comes so close to preventing calamity, but still ends up failing, even after all the work they put into forging this weapon. However, when they’re actually forging Stormbreaker, it all just feels a little too removed from everything to do with Thanos, which makes it feel too removed from the main thrust of the narrative.

         The reason the group on Earth and their fight to protect vision left me a little cold is that, while the other groups get more time to slow down and actually talk to one another, I felt less of that with Cap’s group. More than any other group in the film, their dialogue felt preoccupied with what needed to be done next, making the conversations and character lines feel functional rather than opportunities for unique moments of introspection. Granted, there may have been more of these quiet emotional moments going on than I give the film credit for which could have passed me by, and I might just catch some of them when I go see it again for my second viewing. Still, when I hear some people talking about how they had an issue with how the film never stops moving forward, this is the section of the film that comes to mind for me. Neither of these threads are weak enough to drag the film down all that much, but because the rest of Infinity War felt so lean and well-balanced, they do stand out.

But I’ve danced around it long enough. Let’s get to the real meat of this movie and talk about Thanos and its ending.

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SERIOUSLY GET OUT NOW JUST GO SEE THE FILM ALREADY

         As many others have pointed out, this is Thanos’ movie. I love seeing this character land as well as he has with people after all this time, and hearing all the various thoughts about his twisted hero’s journey, his understandable yet inherently broken philosophy and conception of what love is, and all the debate around just how much we’re intended to see where he’s coming from. What stuck out to me was that, when the film is over and the credits have rolled, we see the typical Marvel ‘X will return’, with X being the main character(s) of the film you’ve just seen, and the statement serving as a simple yet tantalising promise that, while you’ve just enjoyed a complete narrative with this hero, their story isn’t over yet. This time, however, the final tagline is not ‘The Avengers will return’ (though that statement would certainly be very confusing to our emotions after that ending); it’s ‘Thanos will return’. That made everything slot into place in my head, and suddenly made me realise that we were watching Thanos’ movie this whole time. This isn’t a film about the Avengers facing a new villain and finding a way to triumph over them like in Age of Ultron. It’s a film about someone with such overwhelming power and conviction in what he must do that he succeeds in his goals, even though getting to that point meant coming close to losing or receiving a fatal blow, and even having to sacrifice everything he cared for in this world. By the end, as we sit and look at this man, we see the scope of what he has worked so hard to accomplish, and his sad acceptance of the role he had to play, and that no one will thank him for doing what he truly believes was the right thing. It just so happens that the thing this man wanted to do is horrifying, and that the people opposing him on his journey are the Avengers, the heroes we’ve grown to care for over this series. Bringing in this villain at this stage in the game and having him land as strongly as he has is a triumph, but it didn’t happen because the MCU spent this long hyping the character up in his brief appearances up to this point. It happened because this film executed the character masterfully through a combination of Josh Brolin’s commanding and nuanced performance, and the exceptional CGI work through motion-capture which creates a kind of villain we really haven’t seen before.

         The ending is profoundly unexpected. Not just because the heroes lose, not just because we see so many of our heroes die, but because the final tone of this huge movie, what all this whole series has been heading towards, is not grand or bombastic, but quiet and understated. It simply lets the horror of what just happened speak for itself, and it echoes out as we take in the stillness of the aftermath and realise just how much has been lost. In our anticipation for this film, many of us thought that the Old Guard, the original six from the first Avengers, would surely fall, dying in a moment of noble sacrifice as they protect the new heroes and the world that these films have built up over the last decade. Perhaps that might happen in the sequel, when things resolve in a way which fixes what lies so immensely broken at the end of this first part of the story. But right now, it just feels so intensely wrong that all of these old soldiers are left behind, while the young, the people they took it upon themselves to protect, are the ones who were snatched away.

         This is why, although I understand and, in some ways, share the opinion that many people have voiced when they say “oh come on, they’re all coming back, there’s no way they’re killing Black Panther, 90% of the Guardians, and Spider-Man, we’re not buying it for an instant”, I still think this emotional ending works. It doesn’t matter if we, the audience, don’t believe that these people are gone forever; what matters is that the characters within the film believe it, and that the emotional performances of the actors portraying them sells us on that idea. We see, in a matter of minutes, moment after moment of intense heartache and devastating loss, and it all registers because of the strength of these performances and the writing which adds so much weight to what each of the survivors has just lost. Rocket’s heartbroken response to seeing Groot die for a second time, Okoye’s world being shattered when her king and the young man she’s protected for so long is suddenly blinked out of existence, Tony seeing his worst fears come to pass when Peter begs him not to let him die, and Steve being overwhelmed by the magnitude of what’s been lost, both on the large scale and on the small scale with his friend and last connection to his old life fading away. All of these hit, and they hit hard. For me, even if next year’s follow up to this film undoes much of this and brings those characters back, that won’t rob this ending of its power. Whenever I watch this film, I will always believe that these characters are seeing their dearest friends disappear, and, within the context of what we see within the borders of this contained film, nothing changes or undoes this. For the next year, these characters are dead. After that, they will always feel dead whenever I finish watching this film. That’s what makes this instalment in this ongoing series as powerful and as praiseworthy as it is.

         Infinity War is both a thrilling joyride with some of your favourite characters and a haunting story about facing inescapable loss even after you fight with every ounce of energy you have. Some of its components aren’t as strong as others, and it hinges on the audience being invested in these characters, which means it’s not going to change your mind about the MCU or be the best entry point for the series, but that much should be obvious to anyone signing up at this point. But in every other respect, this film impresses and surprises, even with all the anticipation that has been leading up to it.

8/10 – Balances countless characters as well as feelings of elated joy and devastating loss. Depending on my ever-changing mood on this subject, this could just be my favourite of the mainline Avengers films so far.

Module Three: The Classroom As A Place To Be

For this progress log task, I used personal instances from a wide range of grade levels, from K-12. I did this because I thought it would be more meaningful and reflective when thinking of these classroom rules to consider perspectives and experiences from students of all age groups.

Jointly Established: On the first day of Grade 4, we were called to sit on the carpet and give introductions about ourselves. After the introductions were given, my teacher brought forward a large sheet of paper and used magnets to stick it to the whiteboard. In the middle, there was a large bubble that said “Classroom Rules”. My classmates and myself looked at each other with confusion as to why the rest of the paper was entirely blank, with one of my peers even raising their hand and jokingly asking if there were no rules. This brought our teacher to laughter, and then she explained to us that as a class together, us students would work with her to come up with set rules and expectations of the classroom to follow. For about thirty-sixty minutes, we worked as a class to discuss certain rules, write expectations down, and decorate the sheet of paper before deciding on its wall for the year. This experience was super memorable and rewarding because it is the first instance I can remember where an Educator trusted myself and my classmates as independent people, mature enough to recognize and create rules on our own, rather than relying on a teacher to do so for us. I also think this was extremely beneficial to the creation and establishment of the teacher-student relationship in the classroom, as she immediately took the time to speak with us, get to know us, and allow us a sense of freedom, rather than spending her first day lecturing us and establishing her superiority. I think this first day set a very positive, open premise in our classroom, as I hardly remember much conflict and tension (both between classmates as well as between the teacher with students) that year.

Reasonable: By my final years of elementary school, the rules seemed to become more fair and open, rather than limiting and constricting. My seventh grade teacher understood that we soon would be making the transition into secondary school, which was a much more independent environment. He understood that some of the school rules were much more applicable to the younger children and were ultimately unfair on the older students. For example, having to play on the playground at recess. He thought the constant berating of us with rules such as that downplayed the significance of much more important rules, such as handing in homework on time/academic honesty, acting appropriately in the classroom, and treating others with kindness. His ability to give us space and let us breathe regarding “smaller” rules, and in turn prioritizing rules that lead to student success was very logical and sensible.  

Clearly Defined: I remember an experience from Grade 1 in which the rules were not clearly defined and explained to us, leading to confusion in the classroom. One of the big rules we had was that we were not allowed to speak to our peers during class time—that was quiet work time. However, one day we were expected to work on a writing and colouring project with a partner she had assigned to us, and upon sitting with our partners, none of us spoke to one another. We initially did our work independently, saying very little. At first, she was confused, as to why we were silent, but slowly picked up on our confusion and explained to us what that specific rule meant. This wasn’t necessarily a negative experience, but it is an experience I can learn as a teaching experience to always be as specific as possible with my students, especially if they are that young.

Observable: In Kindergarten, I remember many of the rules being things such as: keep your hands to yourself, no talking while someone else is talking, and treat belongings gently. They were very easy for me to follow and that was probably because of the specific, descriptive, action-based words used. Having observable rules is good for many reasons, and these reasons can apply to any age group, but I believe it is especially important and beneficial for rules to be observable in a classroom filled with such young children—especially as this is most likely one of their earliest exposures to rules an authority outside of their family. Having observable rules lessens the chance of confusion, which contributes to a more effective classroom.

Positive: My eleventh grade French teacher was a very fiery, passionate, positive presence within our lives as well as within the school. She was not strict at all and everyone liked her. However, this did not mean she had no rules within the classroom. She did have many rules—just as many rules as the average teacher throughout my years of schooling had. Rather, the difference was how these rules were presented to us. Rather than framing and wording them in a negative way that emphasized the wrongdoing and its following punishments and consequences, she framed all rules without negative language, such a “no”, “stop”, and “never”. At the time, I never really realized, noticed, or appreciated it, but upon looking back and reflecting, the modification of her language to be less hostile and controlling really did have a positive impact on us students in her classroom. Students were less likely to “challenge” her, because there was not much to challenge, which led to more efficient and effective use of classroom time overall.

Succinct: My fifth-grade teacher was a very no-nonsense woman who did not spend even a minute of extra time on something she deemed unworthy of it. Sometimes this short attitude was frustrating, but when it came to her explaining the rules, it was a blessing. I have had far too many teachers spend an excessive amount of time going over rules, leaving us students restless for the rest of class time. This teacher definitely spent no more than ten minutes on the rules, and we were able to spend more time on things that she felt mattered more, like our first homework assignment. If anything, the little time spent on rules left a positive first-impression on us, as we weren’t immediately restless and annoyed due to first-day redundancy.

Few in number: By the final year of high school, you have had every rule in the book read to you in every possible way. At that point, it feels so redundant and repetitive that the constant reminder of these rules almost makes you want to break them out of annoyance. I think a lot of teachers at a Grade 12 level understand this annoyance and frustration their students can feel, especially when they have heard these same rules for the last 13 years and want nothing more than to move on to the freedoms of Post Secondary and/or life. One teacher who expressed their understanding regarding our general annoyance was my History teacher in Grade 12. On the first day of class, rather than being met with a sheet of paper explaining each classroom expectation he had, he told us “You have been hearing this since you were five years old. All I will say is do your work on time, do not be loud and disruptive, respect your classmates, and cell-phone use is permitted once work is complete. I think you all know how to act in a classroom”. His briefness regarding classroom expectations not only showed his immediate trust, belief, and faith in his students, but it also removed a barrier of superiority many Educators tend to be walled behind. We knew we could be open with him, and we did not have to spend three months trying to judge his character. Additionally, the short amount of time spent on rules on that first day allowed him to give us a more in-depth course description and a chance to read through the textbook, while most other teachers ended up keeping us in for a extra few minutes so they could rush through extremely important course information after the spending the majority of their time on basic rules.

Enforceable: In grade ten, I had a Social Studies teacher who absolutely despised cellphones. Her hatred was justified, however, it caused her to act in impulsive, negative ways that ultimately led to the creation of rules she did not know how to handle or enforce. Once specific instance was her idea of having a “Cellphone Jail”, which was a basket you placed your cellphone in upon entry to the classroom. The idea itself wasn’t bad, and I know it has been correctly implemented in many classroom settings, but she soon realized was unable to enforce this Cellphone Jail for two main reasons:

Due to very little available Computer Lab/IPad time, she often had us use our cellphones for research purposes, such as for the research and discussion of current events. How could she have expected us to research with no resources? The situation that actually led to her stopping the use of a Cellphone Jail altogether was a situation that reflected her inability to effectively monitor it. A student in the classroom had their cellphone stolen out of the basket and we were stuck in class fifteen minutes into the lunch break until whoever had it came forward. The situation was resolved in less than an hour, but it reflected the disastrous events that could come out of it. This also led to a breaking of trust between the student who had their phone taken and the teacher, as the teacher was consistently dismissive of theft-related points.This was a negative experience because this teacher should not have expected us to adhere to rules she had not fully planned the enforcing, executing, and monitoring of. Rather, she made an impulsive decision using her anger that led to consequences both for her students and herself.

Enforced: I remember my first year of high school as extremely hectic. My grade 8 year had an abundance of students who were rowdy, classroom clowns who did not follow the rules. However, even the rowdiest of students seemed to follow rules in the classroom of just one teacher: the eighth-grade Science teacher. She was very strict with high expectations—she made to drill the rules into us more than any other Educator I met. However, along with her strictness and high expectations, she was an amazing teacher who was passionate about what she did and never lost her temper with us. Although, she did not give second chances and did not hesitate to make a point out of your wrongdoings when discussing them afterwards. She never once let something happen without consequences, but in doing so she never went overboard. This created probably one of the healthiest, most productive classroom environments I have ever been in.

Constantly Evaluated: In Grade 6, I had a teacher who was quite strict with high expectations and little tolerance. This description may make her sound cold and harsh, but she was probably one of my most eye-opening, trustworthy, and memorable Educators. Yes, she spent a lot of time enforcing rules and laying laws down throughout the year, but she was also constantly working with us and let it be known that these rules were more for our benefit than her own. Whenever an incident happened where a rule was broken, whether that rule was related to respecting ourselves, each other, or our environment/classroom, she would stand in front of us and revisit the rule that was broken. She would explain the rule and discuss her intentions and reasons behind implementing it, then open the floor to us to have an open discussion about it. In that open discussion, we would talk about what was working/not working, ideas for change, and suggested minor improvements. She always took our suggestions, concerns, and ideas seriously—we knew we were heard. She would make appropriate changes and often revisit the class as a whole for a reevaluation, as so to prevent whatever incident from happening again. I think what she did was extremely positive because it showed that she cared about each student individually as well as her class as a whole—she wanted happiness, success, and support for each one of her students, and took extra steps to ensure that conflicts were avoided through the reevaluation of rules upon incidents.

Week 11 Peer Interaction Task

Take a minute to reflect on the relationship between the environment and your behaviour. Identify some settings where you feel comfortable. What is there about the setting that makes you feel comfortable? What things about a setting attract you to it? How do you feel when you are in settings that are cluttered or ugly? What type of setting do you think is most appropriate for learning? What do you think can be done to improve classroom environments to prevent problems and enhance learning? Have any of you put energy into creating positive environments for some one else? A baby? A loved one? A grandparent? Students? What did you do? What made you choose those things? Share these experiences. The idea here is to become aware of the importance of putting energy into physical space beyond merely putting up a poster. Answer this question. Would you permit students to sit where they want in your classroom? Why? When?

The settings where I feel most comfortable are my bedroom, the forest, and near-empty grocery stores with poor lighting. What makes me feel comfortable in these settings is how familiar they are to me. If I spend enough time in one place, it ends up feeling like part of a routine, which really comforts me.  I am attracted to quiet, dimly-lit settings. Settings that I can be alone in and settings that are familiar to me. I don’t like being in brightly-lit, loud, unfamiliar settings. They make me uncomfortable, unable to relax. However, quiet settings allow me to focus on my thoughts, dimly-lit settings don’t irritate and distract my eyes, and familiar settings ease feelings of anxiety.  I like clutter if it’s familiar clutter. I like the clutter of my bedroom and my friends bedrooms, but I have always hated being in cluttered classrooms, vehicles, or workplaces. It makes me feel distracted and uncomfortable. Ugly settings also make me feel distracted and uncomfortable. unable to focus or relax.  The setting I consider to be most appropriate for learning is quiet but not completely silent, open (non-cramped), and finds a balance between boring and overpowering. The reasons for this are: Quiet settings allow students to listen to themselves think and focus, but I have found (from my own experience and the experiences of my peers) that completely silent settings can feel stressful and uncomfortable. Additionally, I know many students were less likely to ask for help in a completely silent classroom, as it felt much more “obvious” and embarrassing. I believe in an open classroom layout because it’s beneficial for the teacher and student to see each other. Also, this layout would encourage classroom interaction and discussion. The balance between boring and overpowering is in referral to how I have seen classrooms decorated throughout the year. I believe it’s important to have posters reminding students of grammar rules and their potential, but I have seen classrooms with far too many of these posters—leading the classroom to appear as cluttered or busy, distracting the students.  A strong opinion I have is that I believe the setup of a “typical” classroom does more negative than positive for the classroom. When I say “typical classroom”, I am envisioning a brightly lit classroom with single-file desks. The reason why I believe this setup does more negative to a class/student is because it makes the classroom feel more cramped/pack and less open, and it can also feel very lonely that way. I have always preferred looking at the faces of my classmates and teachers, as well as the open space of the classroom—when students are staring at the back of another child’s head for over an hour, it can get pretty boring. Additionally, as a teacher I would not like single-file desks as I would not be able to see all my students clearly throughout the lesson/day. Yes, I would allow my students to sit where they want in my classroom. Of course, this privilege would be taken away with the presence of bad or off-task behavior, or issues such as exclusion or alienation, but at the beginning of the year, I would place trust in all my students to make the right decision and be able to self-regulate. I want them to have freedom and fun in the classroom—not feel controlled and constricted. No, I wasn’t surprised by any of my answers as I have given a lot of thought to this before and am firm on my beliefs about healthy, effective learning environments.

Assignment 3: Gender Equity in the Classroom

Part 1: Summary of Observations

I chose to observe a classroom lesson off YouTube for this assignment. The video is titled “Jean Cole 4th Grade Frontier Elementary Classroom Discussion”. The instrument I used to assist me in my findings consisted of paper and a pen. On my sheet of paper, I wrote down each of the discussion questions given to assist us in our observations and findings. Underneath each question, I created two columns—one titled “Female Students”, and one titled “Male Students”. Throughout the video, I tracked the answers to each question. The first time I watched the video, I wrote under each column for each question. I then watched the video a second time to double check my findings and create any interesting notations I thought would contribute to my completion of the assignments. One of the reasons why I believe this tool aided me in my findings is its simplicity and accuracy. Its simplicity was helpful to me because I tend to get distracted and overwhelmed during assignments that require you to watch videos, leading me to lose focus on the task at hand. Using a simple tally system let me keep all my attention and focus on the lesson, preventing me from getting caught up writing anything while there was more going on in the video. Double-checking this system by watching the video twice and then creating notes on what I saw also helped me be as accurate in my observations as possible. In my group’s discussion on our shared findings, I noticed that at least 3 of us used a very similar, if not the same system, in tracking our results: using tallies based on the assigned questions of the course. It seemed we all went for something that was simple, ensured accuracy, and non-distracting, allowing us to focus more on what was occurring in the classroom real time, rather than what was on our paper. Something really interesting I learned from the group discussion on the shared findings was that despite male students, on average, seeming to be more “involved” in classrooms and the displayal of knowledge (answering and asking more questions, called upon more often, blurting out answers), the female students were more attentive and on-task. I find this extremely interesting as I believe it speaks to the difference in socialization of male and female children, primarily in their contrasting confidence and voice—boys are constantly seeing their achievements and power and being told how powerful they are in society, while girls are encouraged to be modest and humble regarding their achievements, with a society that silences them. Another thing I learned is the importance of noting how many boys and girls there were in each class—I hadn’t even thought about that until a discussion group member included it in their post. This is an important thing to consider and remember as it can really impact the results—for example, my observations found the girls to be more involved in the class, contrasting what we read prior, but the classroom I observed had many more female students—contributing to the results. My findings did not shock me, despite them being a stark contrast to what we are told in Mary Pipher’s Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls”, written in 1994. However, I understand that there are many factors that come into play with these things. The teacher I observed may have turned her classroom into a space where female students feel comfortable to openly participate in classroom discussions without fear of ridicule or judgement—but I recognize that there are many female students throughout the world that do not receive this same treatment.  In the classroom I observed, the female students were more active, contributing members of the classroom. They simultaneously answered more questions, were called upon more often, talked with the teacher more often, raised their hands more, called out answers frequently, and seemed to be more on-task (and engaged with the lesson) than their male classmates. The boys of the classroom, however, required more individual assistance and guidance from the teacher, asked more questions, and seemed to be more off-task.

Part 2: Personal Reflection

I went to school in East Vancouver in a generally accepting, progressive, leftist community—at least in comparison to other communities and neighborhoods I’ve heard of in Metro Vancouver. Throughout my years of schooling, both in Elementary school as well as Secondary school, I believed I was extremely lucky to have teachers who cared enough to educate us on many sensitive topics, including topics of sexism, feminism, and misogyny. I was also lucky enough to go to schools with strong female leads and presence in clubs and sports teams, and I grew up with many female members of school administration. I still do believe I am lucky in a sense, as I know things could be much worse, but it seems as though the older I grow, the more I realize how prevalent gender inequality and inequity within the school really was. Although I learned of this oppression from a young age and knew gender inequality and inequity existed, I didn’t quite understand that it could manifest in ways that weren’t so overt. I didn’t start understanding microaggressions and subconscious behaviors of men and boys in the classroom until I grew older, and if I am being completely honest, I am unsure if I am even able to completely recognize and pick up on these harmful behaviours today, due to factors such as socialization. However, looking back on my experiences throughout school, especially Secondary School, I realize how gender inequity has impacted me and my education in ways I have not given much thought to in the past.An experience that has really stuck in my memory and resonated with me as time has passed by is the experience of being one of six female students in my Biology 12 block—a class that was also taught by a male teacher. This experience is almost hard for me to discuss, because I now realize it’s an experience where I was complacent, accepting even, of misogyny unknowingly. It’s an instance that I allowed to happen and laughed along as if I weren’t the target. This is the instance of the “offended” reaction I got from the boys, and potentially even the teacher, of my Biology 12 class when I received a higher grade.  Some background information (that does not justify their behavior whatsoever) is that I was an extremely stereotypical “girly girl”, and I was quite close to a group of male students in the class. Sometimes I wonder if these are reasons that contributed to this treatment, however I recognize that women are belittled for simply existing. In class, I sat at their table, I studied with them, and we worked on our assignments and labs together. I was generally weaker in the Sciences and Math in secondary school, which led me to somewhat lean on others for support as well as ask many questions. Despite my understanding of Biology being on a “lower” level in comparison, I worked extremely hard throughout the course, putting what felt like more effort into that one course than all my other courses combined. This effort really paid off, especially in the third term, as we got results for a test back and had found I had done better than the rest of them. However, it was like this threatened them. Immediately, they started making jokes about how it was because of the help they gave me and about how I “needed” them in Biology. Even the teacher made a comment ,jokingly asking me which one of the boys helped me study for the test. This especially offended me, as this spoke to how he gauged my intelligence as a student. I laughed along and even made a couple jokes of my own, but I knew it felt wrong. I felt hurt and offended. The initial excitement of the high grade faded to anxiety and feelings of unworthiness. I questioned my own intelligence—Was I smart? Did I really need those boys? Did I come off as unintelligent in class? I was dwelling on these classes for the entire period and for quite some time following. It did not help that throughout the class, they volunteered me to answer questions I did not know and participate in classroom demonstrations I did not fully understand. After that class, I felt very anxious and on-edge sitting there. I tried to avoid the spotlight at all costs. I never let these boys know how this behaviour and treatment made me feel, because I considered them my friends and I’m unsure if there was any actual malicious intent behind their treatment of me. However, this is a situation that really highlights how normalized the belittling and minimizing of women is in society—it is so normalized that men, including the newer generation of men, can hardly recognize when they are the ones perpetuating this.

Reflection:

I included the Week 10 Progress Log because it really helped me understand what makes a classroom run smoothly and successfully while allowing me to reflect back on how the classrooms I grew up in were run. I was able to point out positives and negatives, what worked and what didn’t. This is an effective skill to have, because as a teacher, the sooner you find out something will not work or is not working, the better. If classroom rules are effective, more time can be spent on real teaching, learning, and educational conversations. I think about the time wasted in my classrooms growing up for scolding's and lectures, and I think about how time invested into the creation of effective classroom rules could have saved us time. I included this in my portfolio because I think this Progress Log activity was extremely educational and useful, as I was able to apply real-life experiences to the effective classroom rules discussed. I included the Week 11 Peer Interaction task because I think ensuring the comfort of my students in the class is something I have learned a lot about throughout this Module. I am a strong believer that the classroom belongs to the students just as much as it belongs to the teacher, therefore the teacher should put effort into making sure it is an environment that each student feels comfortable, both physically and emotionally, in. However, I was unsure how I would be able to effectively ensure comfort for students. Luckily, doing this Peer Interaction Task as well as reading the responses from my group members really helped me in understanding how to make the classroom a place of comfort for my students. Lastly, I included Assignment 3: Observation on Gender Equity in The Classroom. I included this assignment because I think it was interesting to read about and explore modes of observation that I could potentially use in the future to observe gender equity in my classroom. I also found this assignment extremely useful and necessary, as I have seen and experienced instances of gender inequity in the classroom and how these instances affect how students learn.

I think the Week 10 Progress Log task was one of the most helpful, eye-opening activities I did in this course. I believe that using past classroom experiences to reflect on the Effective Classroom Rules allowed me to create a deeper understanding of why certain rules work out more than others. I really enjoyed reflecting back on my past classroom experiences with a bit of a more critical lens as it allowed me to also reflect on things such as classroom dynamics, student behaviour, and student-teacher relationships. It is very interesting to be able to look back on past Educators, both ones I found amazing and ones I found average, and have my view of my experience in their classroom changes. Because I have developed an understanding as to why and how certain classroom environments were either positive or negative, I now know better ways to approach rule-making in the classroom. This Peer Interaction Task of Week 11 was very useful to me, as it opened my eyes to how I approach work. I tend to look at things on a “big picture” scale, when I know I should be focusing on more important, fine details. This was evident in that I struggled a bit with envisioning the fine details of my future classroom. I have always had much more general, vague ideas regarding the layout, look, and design of my classroom. Though my response to the Peer Interaction task does not reflect this, after having some time to look back on my response, it has really opened my eyes and made me realize that I need to be much more specific when thinking of things such as comfort in the classroom. As the comfort of my students will be of utmost importance, I must put sufficient time into the cultivation of this space. For example, a deeper, more reflective answer could talk about my classroom ideas such as the inclusion of quiet, separate work spaces, an art (self expression through drawing, writing, painting) corner, and the option of stools as well as a carpet. After reflecting on this response, I recognize the need for a change in how specific I am when addressing topics that require creative and critical thinking and am working on that.

Assignment 3: Observation on Gender Equity in the classroom was extremely useful, educating, and interesting. I feel as though it also made me experience growth and development. I have experienced growth in how I notice inequity. Prior to answering the questions given to me for this assignment, I always thought of instances of inequity in the classroom as very obvious—if there is inequity in the classroom, the teacher will notice it quickly (ex: a male student calling a female student stupid). However, I now realize this is not the case. As a teacher, I need to go beyond and ask the questions and make the observations that will lead me to noticing gender disparities regarding participation and performance. As a teacher, I need to make sure the oppressed group (female students) feel comfortable and as though their experience in my classroom has been fair. Something I am in the processing of developing is other modes of observation I could use. Yes, the tallying system I used did give me accurate results, but as gender equity is something I plan to definitely measure multiple times throughout the school year with my classes, I need to have other ways of observation. Additionally, all students are different, so one mode that provides me with accurate findings for one class one year may not work with another in a different year. I think another interesting tool that could be used to observe gender equity is the pairing/grouping of male and female students to observe their dynamics in how they work with one another (how they approach work, how they speak to each other, etc).

Overall, this Module provided me a lot of insight into the hard work and effort it takes to truly make your classroom a comfortable, safe space. It taught me the importance of these spaces and the impact one’s environment has on their learning experiences and I like that we used some of our own thoughts, feelings, and experiences to come to an understanding of this importance.

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Rendező: Tim Story Forgatókönyvíró: William Hanna, Joseph Barbera Szereplők: Chloë Grace Moretz, Ken Jeong, Michael Peña, Daniel Eghan, Rob Delaney Minden idők egyik legikonikusabb párosa, Tom és Jerry eljön, hogy meghódítsa a mozivásznakat. Eljött az idő, hogy kiderüljön, miként ismerte meg egymást a duó.  Jerry, a huncut..

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Its somewhat ironic that a movie about time travel can’t be reviewed properly until your future self rewatches the movie. It’s bold of Nolan to make such a thoroughly dense blockbuster. He assumes people will actually want to see ~Tom és Jerry more than once so they can understand it properly, which some may not. This movie makes the chronology of Inception look as simplistic as tic-tac-toe. Ergo, it’s hard for me to give an accurate rating, without having seen it twice, as I’m still trying to figure out whether everything does indeed make sense. If it does, this movie is easily a 9 or 10. If it doesn’t, it’s a 6. It’s further not helped by the fact that the dialogue in the first 15 minutes of the movie is painfully hard to understand / hear. Either they were behind masks; they were practically mumbling; the sound effects were too loud; or all of the above. The exposition scenes are also waayyy too brief for something this complex — a problem also shared with Interstellar actually. (Interstellar had this minimalist exposition problem explaining Blight, where if you weren’t careful, you’d miss this one sentence / scene in the entire movie explaining that Blight was a viral bacteria: “Earth’s atmosphere is 80% nitrogen, we don’t even breathe nitrogen. Blight does, and as it thrives, our air gets less and less oxygen”). I guess it’s a Nolan quirk. Hopefully, a revision of the film audio sorts the sound mixing out. I do like the soundtrack, but it’s too loud initially. I liked all the actors. You think John Washington can’t act at first, but he can, and he grows on you as the film progresses. And Pattinson is his usual charming self. Elizabeth is a surprise treat. And so on. Its worth a watch either way. See it with subtitles if you can. And definitely don’t expect to fully understand whats going on the first time around. Its one hell of a complicated film. It will be very hard for an average viewer to gather all the information provided by this movie at the first watch. But the more you watch it, more hidden elements will come to light. And when you are able to put these hidden elements together. You will realize that this movie is just a “masterpiece” which takes the legacy of Christopher Nolan Forward If I talk about acting, Then I have to say that Robert Pattinson has really proved himself as a very good actor in these recent years. And I am sure his acting skills will increase with time. His performance is charming and very smooth. Whenever he is on the camera, he steals the focus John David Washington is also fantastic in this movie. His performance is electrifying, I hope to see more from him in the future. Other characters such as Kenneth Branagh, Elizabeth, Himesh Patel, Dimple Kapadia, Clémence Poésy have also done quite well. And I dont think there is a need to talk about Michael Caine Talking about Music, its awesome. I dont think you will miss Hans Zimmer’s score. Ludwig has done a sufficient job. There is no lack of good score in the movie Gotta love the editing and post production which has been put into this movie. I think its fair to say this Nolan film has focused more in its post production. The main problem in the movie is the sound mixing. Plot is already complex and some dialogues are very soft due to the high music score. It makes it harder to realize what is going on in the movie. Other Nolan movies had loud BGM too. But Audio and dialogues weren’t a problem My humble request to everyone is to please let the movie sink in your thoughts. Let your mind grasp all the elements of this movie. I am sure more people will find it better. Even those who think they got the plot. I can bet they are wrong. ~Tom és Jerry is the long awaited new movie from Christopher Nolan. The movie that’s set to reboot the multiplexes post-Covid. It’s a manic, extremely loud, extremely baffling sci-fi cum spy rollercoaster that will please a lot of Nolan fan-boys but which left me with very mixed views. John David Washington (Denzel’s lad) plays “The Protagonist” — a crack-CIA field operative who is an unstoppable one-man army in the style of Hobbs or Shaw. Recruited into an even more shadowy organisation, he’s on the trail of an international arms dealer, Andrei Sator (Kenneth Branagh in full villain mode). Sator is bullying his estranged wife Kat (Elizabeth Debicki) over custody of their son (and the film unusually has a BBFC warning about “Domestic Abuse”). Our hero jets the world to try to prevent a very particular kind of Armageddon while also keeping the vulnerable and attractive Kat alive. This is cinema at its biggest and boldest. Nolan has taken a cinema ‘splurge’ gun, filled it with money, set it on rapid fire, removed the safety and let rip at the screen. Given that Nolan is famous for doing all of his ‘effects’ for real and ‘in camera’, some of what you see performed is almost unbelievable. You thought crashing a train through rush-hour traffic in “Inception” was crazy? You ain’t seen nothing yet with the airport scene! And for lovers of Chinooks (I must admit I am one and rush out of the house to see one if I hear it coming!) there is positively Chinook-p*rn on offer in the film’s ridiculously huge finale. The ‘inversion’ aspects of the story also lends itself to some fight scenes — one in particular in an airport ‘freeport’ — which are both bizarre to watch and, I imagine, technically extremely challenging to pull off. In this regard John David Washington is an acrobatic and talented stunt performer in his own right, and must have trained for months for this role. Nolan’s crew also certainly racked up their air miles pre-lockdown, since the locations range far and wide across the world. The locations encompassed Denmark, Estonia, India, Italy, Norway, the United Kingdom, and United States. Hoyte Van Hoytema’s cinematography is lush in introducing these, especially the beautiful Italian coast scenes. Although I did miss the David Arnold strings that would typically introduce these in a Bond movie: it felt like that was missing. The ‘timey-wimey’ aspects of the plot are also intriguing and very cleverly done. There are numerous points at which you think “Oh, that’s a sloppy continuity error” or “Shame the production design team missed that cracked wing mirror”. Then later in the movie, you get at least a dozen “Aha!” moments. Some of them (no spoilers) are jaw-droppingly spectacular. Perhaps the best twist is hidden in the final line of the movie. I only processed it on the way home. And so to the first of my significant gripes with ~Tom és Jerry. The sound mix in the movie is all over the place. I’d go stronger than that… it’s truly awful (expletive deleted)! Nolan often implements Shakespeare’s trick of having characters in the play provide exposition of the plot to aid comprehension. But unfortunately, all of this exposition dialogue was largely incomprehensible. This was due to: the ear-splitting volume of the sound: 2021 movie audiences are going to be suffering from ‘~Tom és Jerryis’! (LOL); the dialogue is poorly mixed with the thumping music by Ludwig Göransson (Wot? No Hans Zimmer?); a large proportion of the dialogue was through masks of varying description (#covid-appropriate). Aaron Taylor-Johnson was particularly unintelligible to my ears. Overall, watching this with subtitles at a special showing might be advisable! OK, so I only have a PhD in Physics… but at times I was completely lost as to the intricacies of the plot. It made “Inception” look like “The Tiger Who Came to Tea”. There was an obvious ‘McGuffin’ in “Inception” — — (“These ‘dream levels’… how exactly are they architected??”…. “Don’t worry… they’ll never notice”. And we didn’t!) In “~Tom és Jerry” there are McGuffins nested in McGuffins. So much of this is casually waved away as “future stuff… you’re not qualified” that it feels vaguely condescending to the audience. At one point Sator says to Kat “You don’t know what’s going on, do you?” and she shakes her head blankly. We’re right with you there luv! There are also gaps in the storyline that jar. The word “~Tom és Jerry”? What does it mean. Is it just a password? I’m none the wiser. The manic pace of ~Tom és Jerry and the constant din means that the movie gallops along like a series of disconnected (albeit brilliant) action set pieces. For me, it has none of the emotional heart of the Cobb’s marriage problems from “Inception” or the father/daughter separation of “Interstellar”. In fact, you barely care for anyone in the movie, perhaps with the exception of Kat. It’s a talented cast. As mentioned above, John David Washington is muscular and athletic in the role. It’s a big load for the actor to carry in such a tent-pole movie, given his only significant starring role before was in the excellent BlacKkKlansman. But he carries it off well. A worthy successor to Gerard Butler and Jason Statham for action roles in the next 10 years. This is also a great performance by Robert Pattinson, in his most high-profile film in a long time, playing the vaguely alcoholic and Carré-esque support guy. Pattinson’s Potter co-star Clemence Poésy also pops up — rather more un-glam that usual — as the scientist plot-expositor early in the movie. Nolan’s regular Michael Caine also pops up. although the 87-year old legend is starting to show his age: His speech was obviously affected at the time of filming (though nice try Mr Nolan in trying to disguise that with a mouth full of food!). But in my book, any amount of Caine in a movie is a plus. He also gets to deliver the best killer line in the film about snobbery! However, it’s Kenneth Branagh and Elizabeth Debicki that really stand out. They were both fabulous, especially when they were bouncing off each other in their marital battle royale. So, given this was my most anticipated movie of the year, it’s a bit of a curate’s egg for me. A mixture of being awe-struck at times and slightly disappointed at others. It’s a movie which needs a second watch, so I’m heading back today to give my ear drums another bashing! And this is one where I reserve the right to revisit my rating after that second watch… it’s not likely to go down… but it might go up. (For the full graphical review, check out One Mann’s Movies on t’interweb and Facebook. Thanks.) As this will be non-spoiler, I can’t say too much about the story. However, what I can is this: ~Tom és Jerry’s story is quite dynamic in the sense that you won’t understand it till it wants you to. So, for the first half, your brain is fighting for hints and pieces to puzzle together the story. It isn’t until halfway through the movie that ~Tom és Jerry invites you to the fantastic storytelling by Christopher Nolan. Acting is beyond phenomenal, and I’d be genuinely surprised if neither Robert Pattinson nor John David Washington doesn’t receive an Oscar nomination for best actor. It’s also hard not to mention how good Elizabeth Debicki and Aaron Johnson both are. All around, great acting, and the dialogue amps up the quality of the movie. The idea of this movie is damn fascinating, and while there are films that explore time-travelling, there’s never been anything quite like this. It has such a beautiful charm and for the most part, explains everything thoroughly. It feels so much more complex than any form of time-travelling we’ve seen, and no less could’ve been expected from Nolan. Oh my lord, the score for this film fits so perfectly. Every scene that’s meant to feel intense was amped by a hundred because of how good the score was. Let me just say though, none of them will be found iconic, but they fit the story and scenes so well. In the end, I walked out, feeling very satisfied. Nevertheless, I do have issues with the film that I cannot really express without spoiling bits of the story. There are definitely little inconsistencies that I found myself uncovering as the story progressed. However, I only had one issue that I found impacted my enjoyment. That issue was understanding some of the dialogue. No, not in the sense that the movie is too complicated, but more that it was hard to make out was being said at times. It felt like the movie required subtitles, but that probably was because, at a time in the film, there was far too much exposition. Nevertheless, I loved this film, I’ll be watching it at least two more times, and I think most of you in this group will enjoy it. I definitely suggest watching it in theatres if possible, just so you can get that excitement. (4/5) & (8.5/10) for those that care about number scores. At first, I want to ask Christopher Nolan one question, HOW THE HELL YOU DID THIS? Seriously I want to have an answer, How did he write such as this masterpiece! How did he get this complicated, fabulous and creative idea? What is going on in his mind? The story is written and directed perfectly, the narration style was absolutely unique. I have no idea how can anyone direct such as this story, that was a huge challenge, and as usual Nolan gave us a masterpiece that we’ll put beside (Memento), (Inception) and (Interstellar) The movie is so fast-paced in a good way, there was no boring moment. The chemistry between John David Washington and Robert Pattinson was great and funny and both of their performance was really good. Elizabeth Debicki performance was the best in the movie because she had the chance to show her acting abilities and she cached up that chance and showed us an A level acting. The music wasn’t unique and distinct as the music of Interstellar for example and I think this movie needed the touch of Hans Zimmer, I’m not saying that Ludwig Göransson failed but Hans Zimmer in another level. If there was something I’d say that I didn’t like it in the movie would it be that Nolan discarded any set up or characters backgrounds except Elizabeth Debicki dramatic story but it wasn’t that bad for me, I didn’t care about that, the exciting story didn’t give me the chance to focus on it. But the actual problem was the third act, it was really complicated and I got lost and I convinced myself to discard the questions that were in my head and enjoy the well-made action sequences and Elizabeth Debicki performance. I think this kind of movie that gets better with a second and third watch. I honestly don’t quite know where to begin with ~Tom és Jerry. I love Christopher Nolan’s work but I have never seen a more complicated film (and I understood Memento). ~After nearly three hours, I came away from ~Tom és Jerry not knowing myself, my mind reduced to nothing more than piles of ash. Was there time travel involved? Hmm, there was definitely something about time inversion. I mean, does Nolan even understand what he wrote? Look, I give credit to the director because he’s one of the few directors left who knows how to create a compelling and intelligent blockbuster. ~Tom és Jerry is full of Nolan trademarks — the gratuitous Michael Caine cameo, a loud, really loud score, complete with stunning cinematography and slickly inventive action set-pieces. This time around however, Nolan has finally managed to ‘out-Nolan’ himself: the palindromic plot, whilst creatively ambitious, is simply far too complicated for its own good. ~Tom és Jerry is overlong, overstuffed, pretentious and too exhausting to comprehend in its entirety — it makes Inception and Interstellar look like Peppa Pig by comparison. I’m aware of the technical wizardry and creative mastery in this film and lord knows I’ll have to watch this again. For those who want a puzzle, ~Tom és Jerry at least provides a unique cinematic experience. But to actually enjoy solving it Nolan wants you to work very very hard

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Rendező: Will Gluck Forgatókönyvíró: Will Gluck, Patrick Burleigh, Beatrix Potter Szereplők: Margot Robbie, Domhnall Gleeson, Rose Byrne, James Corden, David Oyelowo Bea, Thomas és a nyulak egy igazán különleges családot alkottak meg, de valahogy Péter még a legnagyobb erőfeszítései ellenére sem tudja levetkőzni korábbi rossz hírnevét. Miután.

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Its somewhat ironic that a movie about time travel can’t be reviewed properly until your future self rewatches the movie. It’s bold of Nolan to make such a thoroughly dense blockbuster. He assumes people will actually want to see ~Nyúl Péter 2 - Nyúlcipő more than once so they can understand it properly, which some may not. This movie makes the chronology of Inception look as simplistic as tic-tac-toe. Ergo, it’s hard for me to give an accurate rating, without having seen it twice, as I’m still trying to figure out whether everything does indeed make sense. If it does, this movie is easily a 9 or 10. If it doesn’t, it’s a 6. It’s further not helped by the fact that the dialogue in the first 15 minutes of the movie is painfully hard to understand / hear. Either they were behind masks; they were practically mumbling; the sound effects were too loud; or all of the above. The exposition scenes are also waayyy too brief for something this complex — a problem also shared with Interstellar actually. (Interstellar had this minimalist exposition problem explaining Blight, where if you weren’t careful, you’d miss this one sentence / scene in the entire movie explaining that Blight was a viral bacteria: “Earth’s atmosphere is 80% nitrogen, we don’t even breathe nitrogen. Blight does, and as it thrives, our air gets less and less oxygen”). I guess it’s a Nolan quirk. Hopefully, a revision of the film audio sorts the sound mixing out. I do like the soundtrack, but it’s too loud initially. I liked all the actors. You think John Washington can’t act at first, but he can, and he grows on you as the film progresses. And Pattinson is his usual charming self. Elizabeth is a surprise treat. And so on. Its worth a watch either way. See it with subtitles if you can. And definitely don’t expect to fully understand whats going on the first time around. Its one hell of a complicated film. It will be very hard for an average viewer to gather all the information provided by this movie at the first watch. But the more you watch it, more hidden elements will come to light. And when you are able to put these hidden elements together. You will realize that this movie is just a “masterpiece” which takes the legacy of Christopher Nolan Forward If I talk about acting, Then I have to say that Robert Pattinson has really proved himself as a very good actor in these recent years. And I am sure his acting skills will increase with time. His performance is charming and very smooth. Whenever he is on the camera, he steals the focus John David Washington is also fantastic in this movie. His performance is electrifying, I hope to see more from him in the future. Other characters such as Kenneth Branagh, Elizabeth, Himesh Patel, Dimple Kapadia, Clémence Poésy have also done quite well. And I dont think there is a need to talk about Michael Caine Talking about Music, its awesome. I dont think you will miss Hans Zimmer’s score. Ludwig has done a sufficient job. There is no lack of good score in the movie Gotta love the editing and post production which has been put into this movie. I think its fair to say this Nolan film has focused more in its post production. The main problem in the movie is the sound mixing. Plot is already complex and some dialogues are very soft due to the high music score. It makes it harder to realize what is going on in the movie. Other Nolan movies had loud BGM too. But Audio and dialogues weren’t a problem My humble request to everyone is to please let the movie sink in your thoughts. Let your mind grasp all the elements of this movie. I am sure more people will find it better. Even those who think they got the plot. I can bet they are wrong. ~Nyúl Péter 2 - Nyúlcipő is the long awaited new movie from Christopher Nolan. The movie that’s set to reboot the multiplexes post-Covid. It’s a manic, extremely loud, extremely baffling sci-fi cum spy rollercoaster that will please a lot of Nolan fan-boys but which left me with very mixed views. John David Washington (Denzel’s lad) plays “The Protagonist” — a crack-CIA field operative who is an unstoppable one-man army in the style of Hobbs or Shaw. Recruited into an even more shadowy organisation, he’s on the trail of an international arms dealer, Andrei Sator (Kenneth Branagh in full villain mode). Sator is bullying his estranged wife Kat (Elizabeth Debicki) over custody of their son (and the film unusually has a BBFC warning about “Domestic Abuse”). Our hero jets the world to try to prevent a very particular kind of Armageddon while also keeping the vulnerable and attractive Kat alive. This is cinema at its biggest and boldest. Nolan has taken a cinema ‘splurge’ gun, filled it with money, set it on rapid fire, removed the safety and let rip at the screen. Given that Nolan is famous for doing all of his ‘effects’ for real and ‘in camera’, some of what you see performed is almost unbelievable. You thought crashing a train through rush-hour traffic in “Inception” was crazy? You ain’t seen nothing yet with the airport scene! And for lovers of Chinooks (I must admit I am one and rush out of the house to see one if I hear it coming!) there is positively Chinook-p*rn on offer in the film’s ridiculously huge finale. The ‘inversion’ aspects of the story also lends itself to some fight scenes — one in particular in an airport ‘freeport’ — which are both bizarre to watch and, I imagine, technically extremely challenging to pull off. In this regard John David Washington is an acrobatic and talented stunt performer in his own right, and must have trained for months for this role. Nolan’s crew also certainly racked up their air miles pre-lockdown, since the locations range far and wide across the world. The locations encompassed Denmark, Estonia, India, Italy, Norway, the United Kingdom, and United States. Hoyte Van Hoytema’s cinematography is lush in introducing these, especially the beautiful Italian coast scenes. Although I did miss the David Arnold strings that would typically introduce these in a Bond movie: it felt like that was missing. The ‘timey-wimey’ aspects of the plot are also intriguing and very cleverly done. There are numerous points at which you think “Oh, that’s a sloppy continuity error” or “Shame the production design team missed that cracked wing mirror”. Then later in the movie, you get at least a dozen “Aha!” moments. Some of them (no spoilers) are jaw-droppingly spectacular. Perhaps the best twist is hidden in the final line of the movie. I only processed it on the way home. And so to the first of my significant gripes with ~Nyúl Péter 2 - Nyúlcipő. The sound mix in the movie is all over the place. I’d go stronger than that… it’s truly awful (expletive deleted)! Nolan often implements Shakespeare’s trick of having characters in the play provide exposition of the plot to aid comprehension. But unfortunately, all of this exposition dialogue was largely incomprehensible. This was due to: the ear-splitting volume of the sound: 2020 movie audiences are going to be suffering from ‘~Nyúl Péter 2 - Nyúlcipőis’! (LOL); the dialogue is poorly mixed with the thumping music by Ludwig Göransson (Wot? No Hans Zimmer?); a large proportion of the dialogue was through masks of varying description (#covid-appropriate). Aaron Taylor-Johnson was particularly unintelligible to my ears. Overall, watching this with subtitles at a special showing might be advisable! OK, so I only have a PhD in Physics… but at times I was completely lost as to the intricacies of the plot. It made “Inception” look like “The Tiger Who Came to Tea”. There was an obvious ‘McGuffin’ in “Inception” — — (“These ‘dream levels’… how exactly are they architected??”…. “Don’t worry… they’ll never notice”. And we didn’t!) In “~Nyúl Péter 2 - Nyúlcipő” there are McGuffins nested in McGuffins. So much of this is casually waved away as “future stuff… you’re not qualified” that it feels vaguely condescending to the audience. At one point Sator says to Kat “You don’t know what’s going on, do you?” and she shakes her head blankly. We’re right with you there luv! There are also gaps in the storyline that jar. The word “~Nyúl Péter 2 - Nyúlcipő”? What does it mean. Is it just a password? I’m none the wiser. The manic pace of ~Nyúl Péter 2 - Nyúlcipő and the constant din means that the movie gallops along like a series of disconnected (albeit brilliant) action set pieces. For me, it has none of the emotional heart of the Cobb’s marriage problems from “Inception” or the father/daughter separation of “Interstellar”. In fact, you barely care for anyone in the movie, perhaps with the exception of Kat. It’s a talented cast. As mentioned above, John David Washington is muscular and athletic in the role. It’s a big load for the actor to carry in such a tent-pole movie, given his only significant starring role before was in the excellent BlacKkKlansman. But he carries it off well. A worthy successor to Gerard Butler and Jason Statham for action roles in the next 10 years. This is also a great performance by Robert Pattinson, in his most high-profile film in a long time, playing the vaguely alcoholic and Carré-esque support guy. Pattinson’s Potter co-star Clemence Poésy also pops up — rather more un-glam that usual — as the scientist plot-expositor early in the movie. Nolan’s regular Michael Caine also pops up. although the 87-year old legend is starting to show his age: His speech was obviously affected at the time of filming (though nice try Mr Nolan in trying to disguise that with a mouth full of food!). But in my book, any amount of Caine in a movie is a plus. He also gets to deliver the best killer line in the film about snobbery! However, it’s Kenneth Branagh and Elizabeth Debicki that really stand out. They were both fabulous, especially when they were bouncing off each other in their marital battle royale. So, given this was my most anticipated movie of the year, it’s a bit of a curate’s egg for me. A mixture of being awe-struck at times and slightly disappointed at others. It’s a movie which needs a second watch, so I’m heading back today to give my ear drums another bashing! And this is one where I reserve the right to revisit my rating after that second watch… it’s not likely to go down… but it might go up. (For the full graphical review, check out One Mann’s Movies on t’interweb and Facebook. Thanks.) As this will be non-spoiler, I can’t say too much about the story. However, what I can is this: ~Nyúl Péter 2 - Nyúlcipő’s story is quite dynamic in the sense that you won’t understand it till it wants you to. So, for the first half, your brain is fighting for hints and pieces to puzzle together the story. It isn’t until halfway through the movie that ~Nyúl Péter 2 - Nyúlcipő invites you to the fantastic storytelling by Christopher Nolan. Acting is beyond phenomenal, and I’d be genuinely surprised if neither Robert Pattinson nor John David Washington doesn’t receive an Oscar nomination for best actor. It’s also hard not to mention how good Elizabeth Debicki and Aaron Johnson both are. All around, great acting, and the dialogue amps up the quality of the movie. The idea of this movie is damn fascinating, and while there are films that explore time-travelling, there’s never been anything quite like this. It has such a beautiful charm and for the most part, explains everything thoroughly. It feels so much more complex than any form of time-travelling we’ve seen, and no less could’ve been expected from Nolan. Oh my lord, the score for this film fits so perfectly. Every scene that’s meant to feel intense was amped by a hundred because of how good the score was. Let me just say though, none of them will be found iconic, but they fit the story and scenes so well. In the end, I walked out, feeling very satisfied. Nevertheless, I do have issues with the film that I cannot really express without spoiling bits of the story. There are definitely little inconsistencies that I found myself uncovering as the story progressed. However, I only had one issue that I found impacted my enjoyment. That issue was understanding some of the dialogue. No, not in the sense that the movie is too complicated, but more that it was hard to make out was being said at times. It felt like the movie required subtitles, but that probably was because, at a time in the film, there was far too much exposition. Nevertheless, I loved this film, I’ll be watching it at least two more times, and I think most of you in this group will enjoy it. I definitely suggest watching it in theatres if possible, just so you can get that excitement. (4/5) & (8.5/10) for those that care about number scores. At first, I want to ask Christopher Nolan one question, HOW THE HELL YOU DID THIS? Seriously I want to have an answer, How did he write such as this masterpiece! How did he get this complicated, fabulous and creative idea? What is going on in his mind? The story is written and directed perfectly, the narration style was absolutely unique. I have no idea how can anyone direct such as this story, that was a huge challenge, and as usual Nolan gave us a masterpiece that we’ll put beside (Memento), (Inception) and (Interstellar) The movie is so fast-paced in a good way, there was no boring moment. The chemistry between John David Washington and Robert Pattinson was great and funny and both of their performance was really good. Elizabeth Debicki performance was the best in the movie because she had the chance to show her acting abilities and she cached up that chance and showed us an A level acting. The music wasn’t unique and distinct as the music of Interstellar for example and I think this movie needed the touch of Hans Zimmer, I’m not saying that Ludwig Göransson failed but Hans Zimmer in another level. If there was something I’d say that I didn’t like it in the movie would it be that Nolan discarded any set up or characters backgrounds except Elizabeth Debicki dramatic story but it wasn’t that bad for me, I didn’t care about that, the exciting story didn’t give me the chance to focus on it. But the actual problem was the third act, it was really complicated and I got lost and I convinced myself to discard the questions that were in my head and enjoy the well-made action sequences and Elizabeth Debicki performance. I think this kind of movie that gets better with a second and third watch. I honestly don’t quite know where to begin with ~Nyúl Péter 2 - Nyúlcipő. I love Christopher Nolan’s work but I have never seen a more complicated film (and I understood Memento). ~After nearly three hours, I came away from ~Nyúl Péter 2 - Nyúlcipő not knowing myself, my mind reduced to nothing more than piles of ash. Was there time travel involved? Hmm, there was definitely something about time inversion. I mean, does Nolan even understand what he wrote? Look, I give credit to the director because he’s one of the few directors left who knows how to create a compelling and intelligent blockbuster. ~Nyúl Péter 2 - Nyúlcipő is full of Nolan trademarks — the gratuitous Michael Caine cameo, a loud, really loud score, complete with stunning cinematography and slickly inventive action set-pieces. This time around however, Nolan has finally managed to ‘out-Nolan’ himself: the palindromic plot, whilst creatively ambitious, is simply far too complicated for its own good. ~Nyúl Péter 2 - Nyúlcipő is overlong, overstuffed, pretentious and too exhausting to comprehend in its entirety — it makes Inception and Interstellar look like Peppa Pig by comparison. I’m aware of the technical wizardry and creative mastery in this film and lord knows I’ll have to watch this again. For those who want a puzzle, ~Nyúl Péter 2 - Nyúlcipő at least provides a unique cinematic experience. But to actually enjoy solving it Nolan wants you to work very very hard

Entry 7 - Supervisor evaluations and future professional development requirements

It's always a nervy time when your being evaluated at a professional level, especially in an environment that is only very new. Knight (2011) suggests that workplace performance reviews can be extremely difficult conversations for the employee and employers. According to Drogomyretska (2014), workplace evaluations are a systematic and objective method of judging the ability of an employee. As hard as a performance review can be sometimes, Connor (n.d.) states that the best appraisals focus on both the positives and areas of improvement. 

The Amy Gillett Foundation (AGF) evaluation was a really good opportunity for me to see how I was performing in a new environment and under the pressure of a professionally functioning workplace. Prior to the evaluation, I felt confident in the fact I was progressing well, with areas of improvement definitely needed. I found self evaluation a useful coping mechanism which allowed me the ability to track my own progress, making sure I didn't feel overwhelmed in my appraisal. Heathfield (2019), recommends self evaluations as a tool of tracking goals and performance, allowing the employee to always be monitoring their output and productivity. 

Fortunately for me, I have been extremely blessed with the two supervisors I have at AGF. Dan Kneipp (CEO) and Stevie Rae Brown (Office Manager) have both been exceptionally supportive in all aspects of the internship. They have allowed me to utilise my prior skill set in many projects but also challenged me to a level they felt I am capable of. Rather than just reading their thoughts on the evaluation form, we spoke over a Zoom call which allowed for the opportunity to delve deeper into discussion about my performance so far as the role of Community Engagement & Events Intern. 

We began by discussing the tasks done thus far which was a great way to reflect on what exactly has been accomplished in the short amount of time. Each task tested me both technically and professionally as they required an array of skill sets. Dan and Stevie were both very pleased with my willingness to apply myself to each task/project given, which gave me confidence to continue to carry this attitude moving forward. They were also very happy with my teamwork, communication, writing skills and ability to work autonomously. It’s not without coincidence that these were areas I have pleased in as coming into the internship, I certainly considered them as strengths, however, a professional office environment is new to me so it was nice to hear I was able to successfully transfer these skill across.

Looking at areas of improvement, Dan and Stevie spoke heavily about not being overwhelmed by a new task. They mentioned that I have a tendency to overthink which has a significant impact on task performance. I certainly agreed with this feedback with the most notable occurrence of this happening was when I had to plan tasks for other staff members. That was overwhelming due to the fact of not enjoying instructing others who are more knowledgeable in this area, though I was reminded that I wasn't receiving judgement on what tasks were given, more so on how I planned for them to unfold and their allocation. This was great feedback and it has since been suggested to write down my strengths and weakness prior to complex tasks, which will allow me to have a clearer focus on my capabilities and where I should ask for assistance. 

There were two points that stood out to me in this video. One was constant communication with my supervisors, which has very prevalent in this internship. Not once have I felt lost or ashamed of asking for help as Dan and Stevie has created an extremely supportive environment. The other point was intern inspired projects. I must say, to have our first major project being a virtual trivia night, was a great/fun way to plan an event, get to know the staff and show off the talents Ben and I posses.

Overall, the evaluation process was very enjoyable and very constructive. I’m looking forward to my final appraisal and future areas of improvement. 

Note* The GolfBarons internship had come to a unfortunate end prior to this entry and submission. There was no evaluation completed. 

References:

Heathfield, S 2019, ‘Why You Should Use an Employee Self-Evaluation’, www.thebalancecareers.com, 22 August 2019, viewed 19 November 2020. https://www.thebalancecareers.com/use-an-employee-self-evaluation-1918856

O’Connor, P n.d., ‘How to Give a Positive and Negative Employee Review’, smallbusiness.chron.com, viewed 19 November 2020. https://smallbusiness.chron.com/give-positive-negative-employee-review-36995.html

Knight, R 2011, ‘Delivering an Effective Performance Review’, Harvard Business Review, hbr.org, 11 November 2011, viewed 19 November 2020. https://hbr.org/2011/11/delivering-an-effective-perfor

Drogomyretska, A 2014, ‘THE MOST PROMISING EMPLOYEE EVALUATION METHODS IN MODERN ORGANIZATIONS’, Network Intelligence Studies, pp.38–44, Romanian Foundation for Business Intelligence, viewed 19 November 2020. https://seaopenresearch.eu/Journals/articles/NIS_3_5.pdf

3 Secrets to Obtaining Your Goals

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3 Secrets to Obtaining Your Goals

One of the best ways to be successful in business or life is to set goals. In fact some say, you can’t be successful without them. Afterall, if you don’t know where you are going, how will you get there?

Anyone can set goals but why is it that some achieve them where others fail? I believe some people have dreams of what they want instead of real goals. Goals are not just about what you want your life to look like, but they should be a destination that you want to reach.

Let’s say you want to plan a trip. What steps do you need to take to arrive at your destination? First you need to focus on what you want, be motivated to get there and then take action to make it happen. It’s the same with setting goals for anything you want in life.

Focus

Focus is important not only during the initial goals setting process but also when working toward your goals. For now let’s assume you have already set your goals and concentrate on how to stay focused on achieving them.

Ignore Distractions

Distraction comes in all shapes and sizes. Sometimes, distraction even comes from within. Distraction can be your greatest enemy. Like temptation, it is insidious and will find all sorts of ways to mess with your concentration. Before you even start working, you should start by eliminating all possible sources of distraction.

Distraction can also be internal. These are those niggling doubts and worries that do nothing to help you reach your goal. This is the worst obstacle of all because how do you ignore something that lives inside your mind or heart? You need to practice pushing them to the back of your mind.

Be sure to log off of social media and email and put your phone on silent. It’s okay to check your phone periodically but you don’t want to be distracted by the ringing and dinging that can sometimes be constant. Staying focused on the task at hand, ensures that you are always on the right path to reaching your goals.

Meditate and Visualize

Numerous studies have already proven that meditation techniques – just like breathing exercises – are helpful in clearing your mind and improving your focus. 

You do not need to chant any mantras to meditate – although if you feel it will help, go ahead and do so. But in any case, finding a quiet place to sit and close your eyes and let your mind wander freely is good enough. Do try not to lie down while meditating as you may end up sleeping instead. This always happens to me!

Adding a short visualization and affirmation exercise to the end of your meditation session can also be very helpful. Think about and visualize what your life will look like when you have reached your goals for a while and then repeat your affirmations. A great guide for a daily meditation, visualization and affirmation session can be found at ….

Good Self Care

Eating right, exercising and getting adequate sleep is the best thing for everyone. These habits can be difficult to develop and maintain, but can make a huge difference not only for focus but for your overall well being. They can make or break you when it comes to accomplishing your goals. If you are lacking in one or more of these areas I strongly suggest you set them as goals too. 

Diet impacts your ability to stay focused. A proper and healthy meal plan for the day will go a long way in improving your mind’s ability to work and increase your stamina. Make sure you also take in enough vitamins and minerals as well. If necessary, take health supplements.

This is one of those cases when science has the last say, and according to its experts, sleep can have a significant impact on your ability to concentrate. Having enough hours of sleep will improve your concentration. Having too little or too much of it, however, would cause you problems with staying focused. To get enough sleep every night, you should try keeping regular hours or at least have a fixed schedule for sleeping.

You may argue that exercising may not have anything to do with helping you save money for your first home or reaching this month’s sales quota, but actually it does. Or at least that is what most scientific studies are suggesting. Like meditating and sleeping, the right amount of daily exercise will also help improve the state of your mind. 

Action

You must take action toward your goals for them to become reality. Goals are not like dreams or prayers. You cannot just close your eyes and wish for it to happen. You have to do something.

The first step is always the hardest. Your mind may come up with all sorts of scenarios to prevent you from taking that scary first step toward your goal. That does not mean you are a coward, though. It’s just your brain’s way of defending yourself.

Certainly, taking the first step toward reaching your goal is the most crucial but it is not the only thing you have to do. There are a lot more steps to take and work hard on, and for that you need to stay focused. Taking action is what gives you direction toward your goal. 

Make a plan 

Once you’ve set your goal you should research and make a plan to accomplish them. There may be new skills you need to develop or work you need to delegate to others. Write down every step you believe you will need to take to reach your goal.

Create a checklist from the steps you have written down. Use the checklist daily to show you where you are, how much you have progressed, and what still needs to be done in order to achieve your goal. Even if you suddenly fall sick and are unable to work for a week, the moment you get back your all-important checklist will be enough to bring you up to speed.

Set a schedule and be consistent with your tasks. You want the daily work toward your goals to become a habit. The quickest way to reaching your goal is to create a schedule for it – and stick to it. How many hours each day can you truly set aside for reaching your goal? What part of the day is the best time to work on reaching your goal?

Delegate and Leverage

Taking action also does not mean that you have to do everything alone. Say your goal is to build a house. Does that mean you should do everything, from putting up boards and painting the walls? Of course not! 

Taking action may also mean finding the best person to do the job. So do not be shy to admit if something is well beyond your actual KSAs (knowledge, skills, and abilities). There are just some things in life that are better left in the hands of an expert. Delegating tasks that are beyond your skill set is a smart thing to do.

Also, don’t overlook the power of leveraging the work of others. While you may be perfectly capable of doing all the work it may make more sense to pay someone else to do some of the work for you. For example if you wanted a logo for your business, it might make sense to pay someone on Fivver $25 to create a logo for you even if you have the skills, especially if it saves you hours of work.

Motivation

And lastly, motivation is what makes sure that you will do anything and everything to reach the end of the path, arrive at your destination, and achieve your goal. Staying motivated can be a big problem when working toward a goal, especially if the goal is a long term goal. 

As you move forward toward your goals you will most likely have some bad days. There may be days when it feels like your goals are impossible or you reach a problem that seems insurmountable. This is when motivation kicks in. As the old adage goes, when the going gets tough, the going gets tougher.

Remember: motivation is a matter of perspective. If you cannot see it from one angle, then maybe you need to look at things from another perspective. There will be plenty of times when you will need to motivate yourself in order to take action. 

Chunk Down Your Goals

Set some milestone goals to reach for as you progress toward your goal. For example, if you need to lose 50 pounds, perhaps you can set an initial goal of losing 10 pounds in 30 days. Chunking down your goals into more manageable pieces can make them feel easier to obtain. Put these small goals on your checklist and add them to your schedule to make tracking easy.

Celebrate Milestones

Reward yourself for milestones. The reward can be something as simple as letting yourself laze the weekend away doing nothing and enjoying other small luxuries that you usually don’t have time for. 

Material rewards can certainly be nice too. It doesn’t have to be anything extravagant although if it is something you can afford and truly want, then you can promise yourself a big reward when you reach your goal.

Try to be a little creative about your rewards. You can pamper yourself with a massage, take a trip out of town, or allow yourself a night out dining in the most expensive restaurant in the area. Ultimately, just think about what will make you happy – and do it!

Be Inspired 

Make a vision board. It is easier to keep yourself motivated when you are able to visualize reaching the life of your dreams. Search online or magazines for photos of things that represent your goals. For example if you want to buy a home, print out a photo of a home you like. 

Gather as many photos as you can that will inspire you to reach your goals. Glue them onto a poster board or pin them to a bulletin board. Place your vision board in a prominent position where you will see it often. When you look at your vision board try to imagine how it will feel when you reach your goal.

Keep a Gratitude Journal 

If Oprah herself does this, then surely everyone has the propensity to benefit from it as well? Every day make a list of at least 5 things you are sincerely thankful for.

If you feel that you have absolutely nothing to be thankful about, then you are wrong. You are alive, aren’t you? You can still read this and perhaps take up a pen and write your first post in your thank you journal, can’t you? Then that already gives you three reasons to be thankful about.

Examine Your Goals

Keep your goals where you can see them as much as possible. Are they still accurate? Do they need to be revised? Sometimes, the reason why you have a hard time motivating yourself is because your goal is no longer important. From time to time, you should reevaluate your goals and find out if they are still important or whether they need to be redefined.

Final Thoughts

Striving toward a goal is what gives us purpose in our lives. It’s what gives us self-confidence, pride and joy. I believe goals are what gives our life true meaning and makes us feel alive.

So please, believe in yourself! Taking action requires you to have faith in yourself – especially when everyone around you is telling you that you cannot do it. In the end, you have to remember that you know yourself best. You know what you are capable of, and if you believe that the goal you have in mind is well within your reach, then it truly is – no matter what others may say.

You can take baby steps and there’s no need to rush. After all Rome wasn’t built in a day. It is very important that you don’t give up on your goal just because your route to success turned out to be longer and more twisted than expected. That is the card life has dealt you so deal with it and move on.

Aim to be better, not perfect. Aiming to be perfect is like aiming for the moon. You will never be able to reach it with your hands. But what you can do is to improve yourself and make yourself or your situation better. And don’t be afraid to start over. You have to know when to give up and change tactics if situations in your life take you in a different direction.. 

Never say never You may change tactics, rest for a while, and redefine your goal but none of those means you are quitting. Never should never be a part of your vocabulary – even if that sounds contradictory; the moment you start entertaining doubts is the moment you start losing. The only difference between a person who succeeded and a person who failed is that one of them stopped trying.

Module Three - The Classroom As A Place To Be

Week 10 Progress Log

For this progress log task, I used personal instances from a wide range of grade levels, from K-12. I did this because I thought it would be more meaningful and reflective when thinking of these classroom rules to consider perspectives and experiences from students of all age groups.

Jointly Established: On the first day of Grade 4, we were called to sit on the carpet and give introductions about ourselves. After the introductions were given, my teacher brought forward a large sheet of paper and used magnets to stick it to the whiteboard. In the middle, there was a large bubble that said “Classroom Rules”. My classmates and myself looked at each other with confusion as to why the rest of the paper was entirely blank, with one of my peers even raising their hand and jokingly asking if there were no rules. This brought our teacher to laughter, and then she explained to us that as a class together, us students would work with her to come up with set rules and expectations of the classroom to follow. For about thirty-sixty minutes, we worked as a class to discuss certain rules, write expectations down, and decorate the sheet of paper before deciding on its wall for the year. This experience was super memorable and rewarding because it is the first instance I can remember where an Educator trusted myself and my classmates as independent people, mature enough to recognize and create rules on our own, rather than relying on a teacher to do so for us. I also think this was extremely beneficial to the creation and establishment of the teacher-student relationship in the classroom, as she immediately took the time to speak with us, get to know us, and allow us a sense of freedom, rather than spending her first day lecturing us and establishing her superiority. I think this first day set a very positive, open premise in our classroom, as I hardly remember much conflict and tension (both between classmates as well as between the teacher with students) that year.

Reasonable: By my final years of elementary school, the rules seemed to become more fair and open, rather than limiting and constricting. My seventh grade teacher understood that we soon would be making the transition into secondary school, which was a much more independent environment. He understood that some of the school rules were much more applicable to the younger children and were ultimately unfair on the older students. For example, having to play on the playground at recess. He thought the constant berating of us with rules such as that downplayed the significance of much more important rules, such as handing in homework on time/academic honesty, acting appropriately in the classroom, and treating others with kindness. His ability to give us space and let us breathe regarding “smaller” rules, and in turn prioritizing rules that lead to student success was very logical and sensible.  

Clearly Defined: I remember an experience from Grade 1 in which the rules were not clearly defined and explained to us, leading to confusion in the classroom. One of the big rules we had was that we were not allowed to speak to our peers during class time—that was quiet work time. However, one day we were expected to work on a writing and colouring project with a partner she had assigned to us, and upon sitting with our partners, none of us spoke to one another. We initially did our work independently, saying very little. At first, she was confused, as to why we were silent, but slowly picked up on our confusion and explained to us what that specific rule meant. This wasn’t necessarily a negative experience, but it is an experience I can learn as a teaching experience to always be as specific as possible with my students, especially if they are that young.

Observable:  In Kindergarten, I remember many of the rules being things such as: keep your hands to yourself, no talking while someone else is talking, and treat belongings gently. They were very easy for me to follow and that was probably because of the specific, descriptive, action-based words used. Having observable rules is good for many reasons, and these reasons can apply to any age group, but I believe it is especially important and beneficial for rules to be observable in a classroom filled with such young children—especially as this is most likely one of their earliest exposures to rules an authority outside of their family. Having observable rules lessens the chance of confusion, which contributes to a more effective classroom.

Positive:  My eleventh grade French teacher was a very fiery, passionate, positive presence within our lives as well as within the school. She was not strict at all and everyone liked her. However, this did not mean she had no rules within the classroom. She did have many rules—just as many rules as the average teacher throughout my years of schooling had. Rather, the difference was how these rules were presented to us. Rather than framing and wording them in a negative way that emphasized the wrongdoing and its following punishments and consequences, she framed all rules without negative language, such a “no”, “stop”, and “never”. At the time, I never really realized, noticed, or appreciated it, but upon looking back and reflecting, the modification of her language to be less hostile and controlling really did have a positive impact on us students in her classroom. Students were less likely to “challenge” her, because there was not much to challenge, which led to more efficient and effective use of classroom time overall.

Succinct: My fifth-grade teacher was a very no-nonsense woman who did not spend even a minute of extra time on something she deemed unworthy of it. Sometimes this short attitude was frustrating, but when it came to her explaining the rules, it was a blessing. I have had far too many teachers spend an excessive amount of time going over rules, leaving us students restless for the rest of class time. This teacher definitely spent no more than ten minutes on the rules, and we were able to spend more time on things that she felt mattered more, like our first homework assignment. If anything, the little time spent on rules left a positive first-impression on us, as we weren’t immediately restless and annoyed due to first-day redundancy.

Few in number:  By the final year of high school, you have had every rule in the book read to you in every possible way. At that point, it feels so redundant and repetitive that the constant reminder of these rules almost makes you want to break them out of annoyance. I think a lot of teachers at a Grade 12 level understand this annoyance and frustration their students can feel, especially when they have heard these same rules for the last 13 years and want nothing more than to move on to the freedoms of Post Secondary and/or life. One teacher who expressed their understanding regarding our general annoyance was my History teacher in Grade 12. On the first day of class, rather than being met with a sheet of paper explaining each classroom expectation he had, he told us “You have been hearing this since you were five years old. All I will say is do your work on time, do not be loud and disruptive, respect your classmates, and cell-phone use is permitted once work is complete. I think you all know how to act in a classroom”. His briefness regarding classroom expectations not only showed his immediate trust, belief, and faith in his students, but it also removed a barrier of superiority many Educators tend to be walled behind. We knew we could be open with him, and we did not have to spend three months trying to judge his character. Additionally, the short amount of time spent on rules on that first day allowed him to give us a more in-depth course description and a chance to read through the textbook, while most other teachers ended up keeping us in for a extra few minutes so they could rush through extremely important course information after the spending the majority of their time on basic rules.

Enforceable: In grade ten, I had a Social Studies teacher who absolutely despised cellphones. Her hatred was justified, however, it caused her to act in impulsive, negative ways that ultimately led to the creation of rules she did not know how to handle or enforce. Once specific instance was her idea of having a “Cellphone Jail”, which was a basket you placed your cellphone in upon entry to the classroom. The idea itself wasn’t bad, and I know it has been correctly implemented in many classroom settings, but she soon realized was unable to enforce this Cellphone Jail for two main reasons:

Due to very little available Computer Lab/IPad time, she often had us use our cellphones for research purposes, such as for the research and discussion of current events. How could she have expected us to research with no resources? The situation that actually led to her stopping the use of a Cellphone Jail altogether was a situation that reflected her inability to effectively monitor it. A student in the classroom had their cellphone stolen out of the basket and we were stuck in class fifteen minutes into the lunch break until whoever had it came forward. The situation was resolved in less than an hour, but it reflected the disastrous events that could come out of it. This also led to a breaking of trust between the student who had their phone taken and the teacher, as the teacher was consistently dismissive of theft-related points.This was a negative experience because this teacher should not have expected us to adhere to rules she had not fully planned the enforcing, executing, and monitoring of. Rather, she made an impulsive decision using her anger that led to consequences both for her students and herself. 

Enforced: I remember my first year of high school as extremely hectic. My grade 8 year had an abundance of students who were rowdy, classroom clowns who did not follow the rules. However, even the rowdiest of students seemed to follow rules in the classroom of just one teacher: the eighth-grade Science teacher. She was very strict with high expectations—she made to drill the rules into us more than any other Educator I met. However, along with her strictness and high expectations, she was an amazing teacher who was passionate about what she did and never lost her temper with us. Although, she did not give second chances and did not hesitate to make a point out of your wrongdoings when discussing them afterwards. She never once let something happen without consequences, but in doing so she never went overboard. This created probably one of the healthiest, most productive classroom environments I have ever been in. 

Constantly Evaluated: In Grade 6, I had a teacher who was quite strict with high expectations and little tolerance. This description may make her sound cold and harsh, but she was probably one of my most eye-opening, trustworthy, and memorable Educators. Yes, she spent a lot of time enforcing rules and laying laws down throughout the year, but she was also constantly working with us and let it be known that these rules were more for our benefit than her own. Whenever an incident happened where a rule was broken, whether that rule was related to respecting ourselves, each other, or our environment/classroom, she would stand in front of us and revisit the rule that was broken. She would explain the rule and discuss her intentions and reasons behind implementing it, then open the floor to us to have an open discussion about it. In that open discussion, we would talk about what was working/not working, ideas for change, and suggested minor improvements. She always took our suggestions, concerns, and ideas seriously—we knew we were heard. She would make appropriate changes and often revisit the class as a whole for a reevaluation, as so to prevent whatever incident from happening again. I think what she did was extremely positive because it showed that she cared about each student individually as well as her class as a whole—she wanted happiness, success, and support for each one of her students, and took extra steps to ensure that conflicts were avoided through the reevaluation of rules upon incidents.

Week 11 Peer Interaction Task

Take a minute to reflect on the relationship between the environment and your behaviour. Identify some settings where you feel comfortable. What is there about the setting that makes you feel comfortable? What things about a setting attract you to it? How do you feel when you are in settings that are cluttered or ugly? What type of setting do you think is most appropriate for learning? What do you think can be done to improve classroom environments to prevent problems and enhance learning? Have any of you put energy into creating positive environments for some one else? A baby? A loved one? A grandparent? Students? What did you do? What made you choose those things? Share these experiences. The idea here is to become aware of the importance of putting energy into physical space beyond merely putting up a poster. Answer this question. Would you permit students to sit where they want in your classroom? Why? When? 

The settings where I feel most comfortable are my bedroom, the forest, and near-empty grocery stores with poor lighting. What makes me feel comfortable in these settings is how familiar they are to me. If I spend enough time in one place, it ends up feeling like part of a routine, which really comforts me.  I am attracted to quiet, dimly-lit settings. Settings that I can be alone in and settings that are familiar to me. I don't like being in brightly-lit, loud, unfamiliar settings. They make me uncomfortable, unable to relax. However, quiet settings allow me to focus on my thoughts, dimly-lit settings don't irritate and distract my eyes, and familiar settings ease feelings of anxiety.  I like clutter if it's familiar clutter. I like the clutter of my bedroom and my friends bedrooms, but I have always hated being in cluttered classrooms, vehicles, or workplaces. It makes me feel distracted and uncomfortable. Ugly settings also make me feel distracted and uncomfortable. unable to focus or relax.  The setting I consider to be most appropriate for learning is quiet but not completely silent, open (non-cramped), and finds a balance between boring and overpowering. The reasons for this are: Quiet settings allow students to listen to themselves think and focus, but I have found (from my own experience and the experiences of my peers) that completely silent settings can feel stressful and uncomfortable. Additionally, I know many students were less likely to ask for help in a completely silent classroom, as it felt much more "obvious" and embarrassing. I believe in an open classroom layout because it's beneficial for the teacher and student to see each other. Also, this layout would encourage classroom interaction and discussion. The balance between boring and overpowering is in referral to how I have seen classrooms decorated throughout the year. I believe it's important to have posters reminding students of grammar rules and their potential, but I have seen classrooms with far too many of these posters—leading the classroom to appear as cluttered or busy, distracting the students.  A strong opinion I have is that I believe the setup of a "typical" classroom does more negative than positive for the classroom. When I say "typical classroom", I am envisioning a brightly lit classroom with single-file desks. The reason why I believe this setup does more negative to a class/student is because it makes the classroom feel more cramped/pack and less open, and it can also feel very lonely that way. I have always preferred looking at the faces of my classmates and teachers, as well as the open space of the classroom—when students are staring at the back of another child's head for over an hour, it can get pretty boring. Additionally, as a teacher I would not like single-file desks as I would not be able to see all my students clearly throughout the lesson/day. Yes, I would allow my students to sit where they want in my classroom. Of course, this privilege would be taken away with the presence of bad or off-task behavior, or issues such as exclusion or alienation, but at the beginning of the year, I would place trust in all my students to make the right decision and be able to self-regulate. I want them to have freedom and fun in the classroom—not feel controlled and constricted. No, I wasn't surprised by any of my answers as I have given a lot of thought to this before and am firm on my beliefs about healthy, effective learning environments.

Assignment 3: Gender Equity in the Classroom

Part 1: Summary of Observations

I chose to observe a classroom lesson off YouTube for this assignment. The video is titled “Jean Cole 4th Grade Frontier Elementary Classroom Discussion”. The instrument I used to assist me in my findings consisted of paper and a pen. On my sheet of paper, I wrote down each of the discussion questions given to assist us in our observations and findings. Underneath each question, I created two columns—one titled “Female Students”, and one titled “Male Students”. Throughout the video, I tracked the answers to each question. The first time I watched the video, I wrote under each column for each question. I then watched the video a second time to double check my findings and create any interesting notations I thought would contribute to my completion of the assignments. One of the reasons why I believe this tool aided me in my findings is its simplicity and accuracy. Its simplicity was helpful to me because I tend to get distracted and overwhelmed during assignments that require you to watch videos, leading me to lose focus on the task at hand. Using a simple tally system let me keep all my attention and focus on the lesson, preventing me from getting caught up writing anything while there was more going on in the video. Double-checking this system by watching the video twice and then creating notes on what I saw also helped me be as accurate in my observations as possible. In my group’s discussion on our shared findings, I noticed that at least 3 of us used a very similar, if not the same system, in tracking our results: using tallies based on the assigned questions of the course. It seemed we all went for something that was simple, ensured accuracy, and non-distracting, allowing us to focus more on what was occurring in the classroom real time, rather than what was on our paper. Something really interesting I learned from the group discussion on the shared findings was that despite male students, on average, seeming to be more “involved” in classrooms and the displayal of knowledge (answering and asking more questions, called upon more often, blurting out answers), the female students were more attentive and on-task. I find this extremely interesting as I believe it speaks to the difference in socialization of male and female children, primarily in their contrasting confidence and voice—boys are constantly seeing their achievements and power and being told how powerful they are in society, while girls are encouraged to be modest and humble regarding their achievements, with a society that silences them. Another thing I learned is the importance of noting how many boys and girls there were in each class—I hadn’t even thought about that until a discussion group member included it in their post. This is an important thing to consider and remember as it can really impact the results—for example, my observations found the girls to be more involved in the class, contrasting what we read prior, but the classroom I observed had many more female students—contributing to the results. My findings did not shock me, despite them being a stark contrast to what we are told in Mary Pipher’s Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls”, written in 1994. However, I understand that there are many factors that come into play with these things. The teacher I observed may have turned her classroom into a space where female students feel comfortable to openly participate in classroom discussions without fear of ridicule or judgement—but I recognize that there are many female students throughout the world that do not receive this same treatment.  In the classroom I observed, the female students were more active, contributing members of the classroom. They simultaneously answered more questions, were called upon more often, talked with the teacher more often, raised their hands more, called out answers frequently, and seemed to be more on-task (and engaged with the lesson) than their male classmates. The boys of the classroom, however, required more individual assistance and guidance from the teacher, asked more questions, and seemed to be more off-task.

Part 2: Personal Reflection

I went to school in East Vancouver in a generally accepting, progressive, leftist community—at least in comparison to other communities and neighborhoods I’ve heard of in Metro Vancouver. Throughout my years of schooling, both in Elementary school as well as Secondary school, I believed I was extremely lucky to have teachers who cared enough to educate us on many sensitive topics, including topics of sexism, feminism, and misogyny. I was also lucky enough to go to schools with strong female leads and presence in clubs and sports teams, and I grew up with many female members of school administration. I still do believe I am lucky in a sense, as I know things could be much worse, but it seems as though the older I grow, the more I realize how prevalent gender inequality and inequity within the school really was. Although I learned of this oppression from a young age and knew gender inequality and inequity existed, I didn’t quite understand that it could manifest in ways that weren’t so overt. I didn’t start understanding microaggressions and subconscious behaviors of men and boys in the classroom until I grew older, and if I am being completely honest, I am unsure if I am even able to completely recognize and pick up on these harmful behaviours today, due to factors such as socialization. However, looking back on my experiences throughout school, especially Secondary School, I realize how gender inequity has impacted me and my education in ways I have not given much thought to in the past.An experience that has really stuck in my memory and resonated with me as time has passed by is the experience of being one of six female students in my Biology 12 block—a class that was also taught by a male teacher. This experience is almost hard for me to discuss, because I now realize it’s an experience where I was complacent, accepting even, of misogyny unknowingly. It’s an instance that I allowed to happen and laughed along as if I weren’t the target. This is the instance of the “offended” reaction I got from the boys, and potentially even the teacher, of my Biology 12 class when I received a higher grade.  Some background information (that does not justify their behavior whatsoever) is that I was an extremely stereotypical “girly girl”, and I was quite close to a group of male students in the class. Sometimes I wonder if these are reasons that contributed to this treatment, however I recognize that women are belittled for simply existing. In class, I sat at their table, I studied with them, and we worked on our assignments and labs together. I was generally weaker in the Sciences and Math in secondary school, which led me to somewhat lean on others for support as well as ask many questions. Despite my understanding of Biology being on a “lower” level in comparison, I worked extremely hard throughout the course, putting what felt like more effort into that one course than all my other courses combined. This effort really paid off, especially in the third term, as we got results for a test back and had found I had done better than the rest of them. However, it was like this threatened them. Immediately, they started making jokes about how it was because of the help they gave me and about how I “needed” them in Biology. Even the teacher made a comment ,jokingly asking me which one of the boys helped me study for the test. This especially offended me, as this spoke to how he gauged my intelligence as a student. I laughed along and even made a couple jokes of my own, but I knew it felt wrong. I felt hurt and offended. The initial excitement of the high grade faded to anxiety and feelings of unworthiness. I questioned my own intelligence—Was I smart? Did I really need those boys? Did I come off as unintelligent in class? I was dwelling on these classes for the entire period and for quite some time following. It did not help that throughout the class, they volunteered me to answer questions I did not know and participate in classroom demonstrations I did not fully understand. After that class, I felt very anxious and on-edge sitting there. I tried to avoid the spotlight at all costs. I never let these boys know how this behaviour and treatment made me feel, because I considered them my friends and I’m unsure if there was any actual malicious intent behind their treatment of me. However, this is a situation that really highlights how normalized the belittling and minimizing of women is in society—it is so normalized that men, including the newer generation of men, can hardly recognize when they are the ones perpetuating this. 

Reflection:

I included the Week 10 Progress Log because it really helped me understand what makes a classroom run smoothly and successfully while allowing me to reflect back on how the classrooms I grew up in were run. I was able to point out positives and negatives, what worked and what didn’t. This is an effective skill to have, because as a teacher, the sooner you find out something will not work or is not working, the better. If classroom rules are effective, more time can be spent on real teaching, learning, and educational conversations. I think about the time wasted in my classrooms growing up for scolding's and lectures, and I think about how time invested into the creation of effective classroom rules could have saved us time. I included this in my portfolio because I think this Progress Log activity was extremely educational and useful, as I was able to apply real-life experiences to the effective classroom rules discussed. I included the Week 11 Peer Interaction task because I think ensuring the comfort of my students in the class is something I have learned a lot about throughout this Module. I am a strong believer that the classroom belongs to the students just as much as it belongs to the teacher, therefore the teacher should put effort into making sure it is an environment that each student feels comfortable, both physically and emotionally, in. However, I was unsure how I would be able to effectively ensure comfort for students. Luckily, doing this Peer Interaction Task as well as reading the responses from my group members really helped me in understanding how to make the classroom a place of comfort for my students. Lastly, I included Assignment 3: Observation on Gender Equity in The Classroom. I included this assignment because I think it was interesting to read about and explore modes of observation that I could potentially use in the future to observe gender equity in my classroom. I also found this assignment extremely useful and necessary, as I have seen and experienced instances of gender inequity in the classroom and how these instances affect how students learn. 

I think the Week 10 Progress Log task was one of the most helpful, eye-opening activities I did in this course. I believe that using past classroom experiences to reflect on the Effective Classroom Rules allowed me to create a deeper understanding of why certain rules work out more than others. I really enjoyed reflecting back on my past classroom experiences with a bit of a more critical lens as it allowed me to also reflect on things such as classroom dynamics, student behaviour, and student-teacher relationships. It is very interesting to be able to look back on past Educators, both ones I found amazing and ones I found average, and have my view of my experience in their classroom changes. Because I have developed an understanding as to why and how certain classroom environments were either positive or negative, I now know better ways to approach rule-making in the classroom. This Peer Interaction Task of Week 11 was very useful to me, as it opened my eyes to how I approach work. I tend to look at things on a “big picture” scale, when I know I should be focusing on more important, fine details. This was evident in that I struggled a bit with envisioning the fine details of my future classroom. I have always had much more general, vague ideas regarding the layout, look, and design of my classroom. Though my response to the Peer Interaction task does not reflect this, after having some time to look back on my response, it has really opened my eyes and made me realize that I need to be much more specific when thinking of things such as comfort in the classroom. As the comfort of my students will be of utmost importance, I must put sufficient time into the cultivation of this space. For example, a deeper, more reflective answer could talk about my classroom ideas such as the inclusion of quiet, separate work spaces, an art (self expression through drawing, writing, painting) corner, and the option of stools as well as a carpet. After reflecting on this response, I recognize the need for a change in how specific I am when addressing topics that require creative and critical thinking and am working on that. 

Assignment 3: Observation on Gender Equity in the classroom was extremely useful, educating, and interesting. I feel as though it also made me experience growth and development. I have experienced growth in how I notice inequity. Prior to answering the questions given to me for this assignment, I always thought of instances of inequity in the classroom as very obvious—if there is inequity in the classroom, the teacher will notice it quickly (ex: a male student calling a female student stupid). However, I now realize this is not the case. As a teacher, I need to go beyond and ask the questions and make the observations that will lead me to noticing gender disparities regarding participation and performance. As a teacher, I need to make sure the oppressed group (female students) feel comfortable and as though their experience in my classroom has been fair. Something I am in the processing of developing is other modes of observation I could use. Yes, the tallying system I used did give me accurate results, but as gender equity is something I plan to definitely measure multiple times throughout the school year with my classes, I need to have other ways of observation. Additionally, all students are different, so one mode that provides me with accurate findings for one class one year may not work with another in a different year. I think another interesting tool that could be used to observe gender equity is the pairing/grouping of male and female students to observe their dynamics in how they work with one another (how they approach work, how they speak to each other, etc).

Overall, this Module provided me a lot of insight into the hard work and effort it takes to truly make your classroom a comfortable, safe space. It taught me the importance of these spaces and the impact one’s environment has on their learning experiences and I like that we used some of our own thoughts, feelings, and experiences to come to an understanding of this importance.