Traditional Woman.

The title of this course is Drama, which is the third Humanities course in the "Global Stories," track and is my last Humanities course as a Sophomore. The Drama course is an investigation of feminism through plays. In the first Unit called "Shrew" we read In the Taming of the Shrew to gain an understating of roles in the 16th century. In the first Action Project 1, we created a sonnet that addressed one of the main characters in "The Taming of the Shrew." I picked to write to Bianca, who was seen as a traditional woman. Her role in the play was to obey the men in her life and everyone loved her for that. Once Bianca got married she changed, showing her husband and others in her life that she wasn't going to be told what to do. She showed them that she had her own voice. I think what Bianca did was right because in a marriage, the couple should treat each other equally and no one should rule. Overall, I really enjoyed the first Unit, and can't wait to see what the others are going to teach me. 

Bianca you were so quiet everyone was in love with you
you were seen feminine and beautiful
men thought you were obedient and
would make the perfect bondmaid
but you were the bomb that was made
Your father loves you
He sees you as the perfect daughter

Yeah you were quiet but you
played the game better than Kate could

You were smarter than Kate now you
have the man you love
the freedom to speak what you think
Kate thought you were the better woman
You were seen as a “traditional woman”

Am I your bird? they thought you would follow all of their rules
I mean to shift my bush; but you showed them who ruled
Gamesome is what you played
while turning heads you were turning them away
And then pursue me as you draw your bow. 

Keep up having your strong voice
Have your merriment
Show women that they can have power too
It’s good that you stand up to what you believe is true
You are welcome all.

The Yellow Fever Epidemic.

In the last unit in the disease class called World, we learned about how diseases can cause an epidemic. For this Action Project, we had to map and graph the path of an epidemic caused by a disease that we picked. I picked Yellow Fever, the reasoning for picking that disease is because I wanted to learn more about it. I have heard about it before but didn't know a lot of information. What I enjoyed most about this Action Project was finding information about my disease. What I found most challenging is graphing information on Gapminder. Overall I enjoyed doing this project, and I also really liked this term.

Yellow Fever. wwnc.cdc.gov. 2008.

Yellow Fever originated in Africa and was likely brought to America on ships during slave trade. The number of Yellow Fever cases has increased during that time because of the rising population cause dense living and not the right sanitation. The climate was also changing causing a rise of mosquitoes.

Yellow fever is caused by the Yellow Fever virus YFV, also called Flavivirus. The virus is transmitted by female mosquitoes, who pick it up from monkeys or humans, then delivers it to a new human when they bite and suck blood. The disease cannot be spread from person to person. Yellow fever epidemic of 1793 started during the summer in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The disease was brought by refugees and mosquitoes on ships from Saint-Domingue. The disease rapidly spread to Prot City. About 5000 people died, ten percent of the population of 50,000.

Gapminder. Created by JV. 2015.

Above is a graph that shows a drought and epidemic deaths that occurred in the 1990's in Kenya. This epidemic that is shown may have been Yellow Fever. I picked Kenya because that was one part of Africa that was infected with Yellow fever. Two risk factors for this graph is drought, farms in that area lost crops because of low water continent. That will cause people not getting the right nutrition and weaking their immune system to fight off disease. That will cause an epidemic to spread because if you are weak and than get sick with an illness, you can fight it off. 

In 1853, the disease killed 7,849 residents of New Orleans. The press and the medical team did not alert citizens of the outbreak until the middle of July, after more than one thousand people had already died. The New Orleans business community feared that an epidemic would cause a quarantine to be placed on the city, and their trade would suffer. The steamboats carried passengers and the disease from New Orleans to other cities along the Mississippi River. Norfolk, Virginia 1855. A ship carrying passengers infected with the virus arrived in Hampton Roads in southeastern in June 1855. The disease spread quickly through the community, eventually killing over 3,000 people, mostly residents of Norfolk and Portsmouth.

The symptoms to Yellow Fever is affecting the kidney and liver causing high fever and jaundice. This disease is not curable, but is preventable with the Yellow Fever vaccine. The first vaccine was made in the 1930s and that controlled most of the outbreak. The vaccine coverage reach 60% to 80% of a population at risk.

The R0 for Yellow Fever is 4.1 so for every 1 person 4 people get infected. Vaccination is the only way to prevent the disease. If this disease would happen to break out again, I would say to quarantine people who may be infection because that would stop the spread of the disease. I would also recommend the vaccine because that brought down the infection rate.


Citations:

Gapminder. www.gapminder.org. N.P.N.D. Web 15 March, 2015. 

The importance of climate to global distribution of dengue and yellow fever.climate-services.org. Michael A Johnson. N.D. Web 15 March, 2015.

Yellow Fever.healthline.com. Colleen Story. 2012. Web. 15 March, 2015.

Yellow Fever Epidemic in New Orleans 1853.lafayettecemetery.org. N.P. N.D. 15 March, 2015.

History of Yellow Fever.historyofvaccines.org. N.P. N.D. 18 March, 2015.

The Color Purple.

The last unit in Forbidden books is called Diversity, we learned about why books have been forbidden for promoting diversity. To understand that better we had to pick a book for this class that has been banned. The book that I chose was The Color Purple, I picked this because when I was younger I saw the movie but didn't understand the meaning of it. I also wanted to find out why the book was censored in so many places. For this last action project we had to write a well crafted essay stating a thesis topic on the topic of our book. I picked to do an Literal, ethical, and symbolic level. I wanted to talk about God in my essay because that word was heavy used throughout the book, and so was religion. What was most challenging about this action project was writing it. Since I picked a hard topic it was hard developing my essay. What I am most proud of is how my essay came together and I really enjoyed reading the book.

The Color Purple: A new story for a Familiar Reader. library.duke.edu. 2008. 

Stages.

In the second unit of my Steam course called Mind, we learned about the nervous system, by focusing on one disorder that impacts multiple aspects of the mind: autism. We also learned about different mental illnesses. The purpose of this action project is to create a sensory experience for my classmates to experience for a moment, and see the world through the eyes of someone with a mental disorder. We also had to create a flier stating information about the disease I picked. For my action project I did some research on my Great-Grandmother who is 90 years old and has full blown Alzheimer’s. I picked Alzheimer’s because I like learning more about this mental disease and since I work at a Nursing Home and my Great Grandmother has it I feel comfortable talking about it.

In the DSM-V it says that Alzheimer's is one of the Etiological Sub types, which says that Alzheimer’s is dementia. Alzheimer's is a disease that affects the brain, it’s a disease that slowly kills the neurons in your brains and usually starts slowly and gets worse over time. Most common symptom is forgetting daily tasks. In Alzheimer's, there are four stages to Alzheimer’s, Stage 1 – No impairment. Stage 2 – Minimal Impairment/Normal Forgetfulness. Stage 3 – Early Confusional/Mild Cognitive Impairment. Stage 4 – Late Confusional/Mild Alzheimer's. An Alzheimer's patient’s mood can change for many different reasons. Sun-downing is a condition that affects people with Alzheimer’s elderly usually become confused or disoriented at the end of the day. This can last from 5-8 pm it may prevent people with dementia from sleeping well. It may also make them more likely to wander. Sun-downing is a main cause in Alzheimer's, it causes pain to the patient and also makes them very aggressive. For my project I asked questions to my Grandpa who’s mother has full blown Alzheimer’s.

Grandpa: Son of my great grandmother. “Its hard living with my mother because she constantly forgets how to do certain things. She forgets where the bathroom is, where her room is and even forgets the family members that are taking care of her. She also gets very aggressive when we are just trying to help her, going to bed at night is the worse because she just wants to stay up and walk around the house but she can’t because she ends up getting in the wrong things. Its so hard seeing her going through this but I know we are doing our best to keep her healthy and most importantly keeping her around.”

My lesson plan experiment, my classmates will wear tinted sunglasses because old people can’t see well, latex gloves with tape around two fingers so your hands feel weak trying to pick up items, and headphones with random noise playing because some Alzheimer's patients hear loud noises. This experiment will make people experience what Alzheimer patients go through.

Thirty Year War.

 The second unit in Forbidden Books is called Dogma, we learned about two main world religions which are Christianity and Islam. We learned how religions can cause huge problems between people and how some people and books can be censored or ban because of certain beliefs the book stated or the person has. To understand a religion better we visited a Muslim Mosque, where we were able to ask questions and get a better understanding of Muslim beliefs. The topic that I picked was Germany during the 1930's, when Hitler was in charge and taking over Europe. I picked this topic because I love researching about history and learning more about it. One interesting detail that I learned was the night of burning books in Berlin, I have never heard about this event and it was nice learning something new I explain this event more in my side show. What I enjoyed most about this action project was doing all my research, and finding pictures for my slides because I like to look at pictures from the past. One thing that I found most challenging was doing the research because it took up so much time. Overall I really enjoyed doing the project I learned a lot!

No more Caffeine!

My Steam course is called Disease, and focus on how the body works and how it also creates diseases and sickness in your body. In the first unit called Body, we learned about cancer, how how different diseases can manifest themselves in your body. For our first action project we were asked to pick a disease, create a patient profile for the person that we chose to interview. I picked STV which a heart disease, the reasoning I picked this disease was because my mom has it. I didn't know a lot about it, and it was really easy for me to interview her. What I enjoyed the most about this action project was drawing the profile to show the disease and were it affects the body. 

Created by JV 2015*

Lucy was at work when she felt tightness in her chest and pain on her left shoulder, she started getting really hot and started sweating. She felt like she was going to faint than all of a sudden her heart started beating so fast and felt little shocks were hitting her heart. She sat down by the nurses station, they took her blood pressure and it was really high. Her boss then took her to the hospital. The doctors didn't really know what was wrong with Lucy, they ran tests and said she just had a mini heart attack. She was than released from the hospital, but when she got home she drank a cup of coffee and ate a piece of dark chocolate, and just in a few minutes she had another attack but this time it was even worse than the first. She went back to the hospital and was diagnosed with SVT. She knew that this heart diseased was passed down in her family but didn't know she had it. She never felt symptoms until she had her first attack. She grew up her whole life not knowing she had this disease, so why would it show up now? Lucy was under a lot of stress, she works in a nursing home with 12 hour a shift. That can put a lot of stress on your body, she also consumed lots of caffeine she drank 8 cups of coffee a day. That is a lot of caffeine that the body can't handle especially the heart. This disease also makes your blood really thick, since the heart has an irregular heart beat, there is a lot of blood being pump into the body. To thin Lucy's blood she has to take aspirin, and Cartia to slow her heart rate. After being diagnosed with SVT Lucy had to change her diet, she could no longer consume anything that has caffeine in it. Lucy started having the more attacks, her heart rate would go up to 230 beats a minute. "Having attacks feels horrible, you don't know when it can happen."

 Supraventricular tachycardia was passed down genetically from Lucy's father side of the family. This can be a risk because Lucy's children can carry down the disease and pass it down. The disease mostly occurs in Women, and Lucy has 3 daughters. When Lucy is having an attack she experiences electrical impulses starting from the Sino-atrial node. Than travels to the Atrio ventricular node causing shock waves to the heart. SVT  can happen all over the world because its genetically passed down.

Questioning Love?

My humanities course is called Forbidden Books, and focuses on why books have been banned over the course of history. In the first unit called Politics, we learned about why books have been forbidden for political reasons. We used “The Apology” which was written by Plato to dive deeper about this topic. For our first action project we used the Socratic Method, which is asking a series of questions and creating a discussion between two individuals.The topic that I chose was love, I picked this topic because I always question it. I wanted to do some research and see what other people thought about love. And I wanted to raise some questions. What I learned by using the Socratic Dialogue was you can be open, and ask any question that you have on your mind. The Socratic Method can be considered dangerous because you are asking questions that maybe people don’t want to answer because they see it as a threat, or want to hide the true answer. Overall I really enjoyed this unit, I learned a lot and I hope you enjoy my video!


Characters

Jpolis (Character 1, played by JV)

Jellis (Character 2, played by NC)

Filmed 2/10/15 in Skylight

Props: Chicako sign

Topic:
Love

Character #1: Oh, Jpolis I have fallen in love and I couldn't be happier!

Character #2: Well you are glowing so tell me about your love.

Character #1: I feel amazing, I’m up in the clouds. My head is all fuzzy my ,feelings are out of control, love has got me looking crazy. It's overt love.

Character #2: Everyone knows that love can be an amazing feeling. But what is it, can it be more than just a feeling?

Character # 1 Love can be a feeling that you feel towards anything, not just a certain feeling that you have for a person. It can be love for your parents, family members, friends, and pets. It can even be a item, a necklace that someone gave you can have meaning to it, and you love it.

Character #2: I never thought love could be like that. Does a necklace make your head fuzzy and make your feelings out of control? Is that how you define love?

Character #1: Yes a necklace could do that, but also many other items. The item can have a background story that can be caused by the person that gave you the necklace.

People may have different definitions on what love is due to the people they grew up with, but in the end , love has the same effect on everyone. Parents can demonstrate what love is by being caring and understanding towards you. They will tell you they love you and that will show unconditional love. But other people can show different versions of it.

Character #2: And what are those versions?

Character #1: Well like I said before, unconditional love is when you love a person no matter what. The opposite of that is conditional love, which means living up to one's expectations and pleasing them, then they will show you love. But if you don’t do that the love will fade away, then you know they are just using you, and don’t feel love towards you. 

Character #2: I never thought love could be like that. But how can these two types of love play a role in your teenage and adult life?

Character #1: Well if you were given unconditional love then you learned how to accept yourself for who you are and are happy just being you. You will also have high levels of confidence and self-esteem. With conditional love, which is common, you will find yourself having lower self-esteem, jealousy in relationships, suspicion, and insecurity.

Character #2: So what kind of love do you give?

Character #1: I think a little of both, it’s important to show both sides because you can develop a deeper relationship. That will also show the person you truly love them. 

Character # 2: I learned so much. Thank you, for your insight on love Jellis.