I was inspired to write this piece just two weeks ago after I had accomplished a big goal that I had set in my life. The piece is a narrative (though, not a literacy narrative) and it is a reflection on a process that I went through. Please point out either what was effective or confusing (or both) about the piece. What resonated with you? What would have made it stronger (what did you still want to know)? Your response should be six to nine sentences long.
18 thoughts on “Blog Post #2: A Piece by Professor Corva”
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There could be more descriptions on theater, maybe describe some surroundings, does it look any different? or even your childhood memory? . But instead of those details i only saw the theater at beginning, speak more of it if the feeling of visit theater if thats the central idea. don’t even mention theater if the central idea is something else, use a different story as intro.
It does feel like shit when you expose in the rain, being wet does feel horrible and i’m not the kind of person that watch climate report so i can understand more than anyone how it feels being in the rain. But think using another perspective, if we are in a comfortable place and outside is raining, then watch the rain, listen to rains fall on everything, feel the cold wind blow in to your ear, the rain seems better now wouldn’t it?
I truly did enjoy your piece, however, I was expecting a flashback of a memory you had at the theater. I believe that if the readers were able to picture the emotion and memory you had toward this location, it would draw more attention. Although you did include two movies you watched there, adding a couple more details (who went with you, how you felt after leaving) would’ve been more captivating. Adding on, if you were to include thoughts that were running through your head while the bad weather was occurring would’ve been great. You could’ve used those thoughts to show how you still were determined and tied it into your thesis as well. However, the line where you address the current issues really resonated with me. The fact that you stated, “If we are truly going to embrace the idea that Black Lives Matter, and if we are to cope with the challenges of a pandemic, climate change, and the whole host of other issues that we are currently facing, then the first changes we need to make are internal.” was very appealing and relatable. Overall enjoyed how you turned a short-term goal into a much bigger lesson. Adding more descriptive language would’ve been more pleasing to the readers.
From my first read, this piece you wrote resonated a lot with me. Just like you once the gyms shut down in March, I found myself slowly getting to point I didn’t engage in any physical activity and was just staying home all day. It took me about a month to myself to actually get out and be active, I found that using my bike to get out and just travel to places all while trying to get myself be more active. Although I did not travel on an insane 108 mile bike ride, I frequently biked to the city to explore it while it was abandoned by the millions of tourist that are usually there during the summer season. Biking not only helped me get out and be active, but I also found something I loved to do now to let go and be a stress reliever in my life. While biking, it allowed me to not worry about college starting up and the anxiety that comes with it. Instead, I get to travel and go places I have never visited before, or make some memories with my friends that I wouldn’t have made if it wasn’t for me using my bike during the quarantine. Some things I wished you elaborated on was the pains you were going through on that bike ride to the theatre, what cool things did you encounter on the bike while getting or coming back( I have many stories about crazy things I have seen while I go on my bike rides), do you wish to that trip again? This would’ve helped us really picture what you were going through during that whole ride. I really enjoyed this piece on how you came to better yourself during a time that wasn’t ideal for anyone in this world and also how you mentioned BLM and other challenges and your message behind that.
I enjoyed reading your piece. I wish you talked more about the trip going there and how difficult it was, also if you ever thought of giving up while going. Reading the first paragraph I thought that the rest of the story was going to be about the bike ride and about the movie theater and your memories there. I liked the part when you said ” There is freedom on the other side of fear,” because once we get over what we fear we end up more comfortable and accomplished to get it done. I also like when you said you had to learn patience because thats important so that you don’t give up on yourself . Would you ever go on a longer bike ride then this?
I liked how you’re a bit vague in the 1st paragraph, you didn’t elaborate on the other 2 goals for yourself and what was the cause and meaning behind your journey, immediately. By doing so, it captured my attention and made me want to read on to find out more details. I wish you could’ve elaborated more on what the theater means to you and the community. I would understand why it would be significant to you, since your family used to partially own and operate it, but why is it significant to the community? I ask this because when I was younger, me and my friends constantly went to the theater to catch early premiers of movies we had been dying to see, but it was always “just a theater” to us, so I would’ve like to understand more on how the theater was important to the community.
Something that resonated with me was that no matter at what age, there is still so much we can learn about ourselves and the world, and constantly making adjustments in ourselves can help us to grow and improve. I also really liked how you suggested looking at the world through an alternate lens, “a lens that does not default to all cops being bastards or to people — whether black, white, brown, yellow, etc. — being judged on their outward appearance.” All in all, I really enjoyed reading your narrative.
I know I’m supposed to point out what you need to fix but I can really relate to you. Since quarantine, I haven’t been out and I have just been rotting at home. It was around June when my friends started to go out again and they walked around our area to look for parks that has rims since the rims got taken down. They ended up finding a. school court that was like a 30 minute walk. I had to practically go on my knees and beg my mom to go out with them. My endurance was not the same anymore and I can feel everything that has gone wrong. I started to go more frequently because I’m very competitive and doesn’t like it when others are playing better than me. I checked my Health app and it went from 20,380 steps a day last year to only 7,368 a day this year. Your experience really resonated with mine and that’s the first thing I wanted to point out when replying. You mentioned the movie theatre in the beginning so I thought the rest of the essay was going to be about your experience at the theatre. It just didn’t make sense to me to include that but you did use it to link with the hardships you went through.I liked how unpredictable it was and how vague the intro was so it will make the rest a mystery for the reader to find out what you want to display. I would have liked to know more about your biking trip. Did you see anything that was funny? Stopped to get Mcdonalds? After all, I really resonated with your writing and I hope to write like this one day.
Reading your writing piece is truly interesting and relatable to what it means to be a young adult and a New Yorker. Throughout the first paragraph it felt like it was lacking an elaboration to why the theater was so meaningful to you and I wanted to know more of how it led you to wanting to come back to it. I truly commend you for your great journey towards getting back into shape and expressing your thoughts on paper regarding your uncensored mentality.
It was quite inspirational when you stated “I’m learning to substitute compassion for criticism, I’m learning to build before tearing down, and I’m learning to take steps instead of falling into the paralysis of analysis” as it was very well said in the manner of simply striving for more in not just a harder way, but a smarter way. After reading that specific paragraph, it left me with the thought of respecting you at an even higher level for being able to say this and accepting that in order to achieve a goal it does not come overnight and is not given to you.
Overall I personally had a revelation of wanting to get back into shape during quarantine as one day me and my friends just simply weren’t happy with such a mentally draining schedule of waking up at 1pm and sleeping at 3am. So one day we decided to all wake up and just start going out for walks and being active at home from reading this. I saw a bit of correlation within your writing with my life too and truly enjoyed reading this piece.
It was inspiring to learn how you managed to gain empathy in your life. I firmly believed that it is necessary for every one of us to have the ability to understand others feeling. Today we are seeing such crises where people are divided because of their color, race, religion and etc. If we people believe in division rather than unity, we should not be proud of ourselves. This is why learning how to be empathic we will lead us to a nicer society.
Besides, due to the pandemic, I started to feel claustrophobic even though I am not one. I was tired of doing the same thing over and over again. As the pandemic started to slow a little bit in New York, I started to go to a park near my house. Seeing outside after such a long time I felt relieved and happy. But the first few days were challenging. I felt fatigued very quickly, but I was determined to improve my strength. I also planned to go hiking in bear mountain. Slowly I was gaining my confidence back.
One thing that would have made the article stronger would be a more detailed description of your hardship or your success. For example, a detailed description of your journey from Brooklyn to long island.
After reading your piece, I can genuinely relate to your transformation. Like you and many other indivduals, I’ve also been rotting away at home during quarantine, after months of gaming and sleeping like clock work, it has taken a physcial and mental toll on my body and mind, therefore I can understand your desire to get back into shape while also working out/leveling up your mentality over the summer. One thing that I found was interesting was when you said “It becomes easier to injure oneself at 38 if one doesn’t train properly. This has taught me both to troubleshoot and also to abandon the “No pain, no gain” philosophy of exercise, as it is almost a sure way to sideline oneself at this age.” from what I gather, you’ve accepted that age has taken a toll on you and you would not risk yourself but rather exercise in a smarter way to aviod any damages, which I totally agree with, I would also aviod any unnecessary risks if I’m at a age where I would be more vulnerable. However, I do find one thing that confused me, you said that the theater your family used to partially own is your magical place, after reading this I expected a couple more details and perhaps some flashbacks to your childhood although you did include two movies that you used to watch.
I really like your piece. It was very inspiring, however in the first paragraph you choose theater to be your finish place for your journey. You kinda of mention why you choose that place, but I feel like you could elaborate some more since that was the place you choose for your journey out of all the other places. Also you say you set three goals, but you only talk about the final goal, and not the other goals. Since you mentioned you set three goals, you could somewhat talk about the other two. It kinda leave the reader curious, maybe that could be a good thing because they want to find out what other goals you set for yourself so they will continue to read the rest of your story. I could really relate when you say “it becomes easier to injure oneself at 38 if one doesn’t train properly.even though I am not 38 I can relate because during quarantine I can’t go to the gym or anything so me and my friends would run a couple of miles and I almost hurt my self from not doing my warm up correctly and after not being outside for some time, my body and legs felt so sore after the running. I felt like during you bike journey, you could include some more details on what happening along the way like what did you see and did you stop along the way. Overall, I think ur narrative was a very inspiring piece and how you learn a lot during the process.
While reading the piece, I could evidently see the point trying to be made, and also the growth being achieved by the writer. However it just didn’t really catch mt attention, it felt very dragged on. There were numerous points in the reading where i felt like some of the info/detail could have not been there, and the point could have still gone across. I can’t say I enjoyed the reading but I in my opinion that was mostly due to the extra detail.
I really enjoyed reading the piece, the journey throughout was very exciting. I felt like I was apart of you’re journey in trying to accomplish this goal. The part in which you explained about how you have tested you’re body over the years, I personally, I would’ve liked you to explain that more such as the diet and the meditation part. That would have made the piece more interesting for me. But, overall the piece was great. I feel like you could’ve explained the theater a bit more as in how does it look like now what surrounds the theater. In addition, telling us about the bike in how the gears don’t cease up was a bit distracting for me, I was trying to get to the point in how you managed to accomplish the goal. I can relate to this piece because I also want to accomplish my goals in becoming fit. Gyms are closed so the only way to stay up to date is by doing exercise outside or at home.In a way, biking is helping you become fit while, sports is helping me. As well as, trying to test our bodies to the limit in what and what we can’t do.
It was inspirational to read the journey you went through from being overwhelmed by uncontrollable factors to doing whatever that you want because, whatever happens, it happens.
One thing I would have liked to had read was your (what you called) “internal systems” struggles. By that I mean, was their days where sadness became overbearing? What about moments of wanting to give up because the results did take a long time to accomplish? If you did go through these hiccups how did you motivate yourself to continue? You did talk about the fear and overthinking too much about a situation beforehand but nothing (from what I understood) about the emotional struggles while going through the changes you were trying to imply on yourself.
I liked and thought it was really effective how every personal issue that was presented was solved with a positive ending or outcome. It was a really great way to drill in the fact that your mental outlooks on situations have changed like ending it of the paragraph about your rainy bike trip with things you learned and how you showed your physical body development with the marathon run practices being able to get over a 4 times more than you were able to do before.
I really resonated with the “less thinking; more feeling” statement you quoted from another wise person. I personally overthink about experiencing more adult situations as I cannot stop being mortified of all the negative outcomes that could happen along with them. Recently, even though I cannot stop thinking altogether, I have been more in the moment and worrying about the outcomes when it happens rather than before it happens.
One thing that I found a bit confusing while reading your piece was the use of the number 108. Stating that the trek was about 108 miles was enough to leave an impact on me as a reader solely because of how great the number is. It also put an emphasis on how much physical work the bike ride was. However, the following statement of “the numerical significance of which was not lost on me, but more on that in just a moment” made me think that number served a deeper meaning to you in your personal life. Then when you revealed the connection to the Vedic tradition rather than to you personally, it was almost disappointing. If you google pretty much any number you can find a profound meaning (astrologically, religiously, culturally, etc.) So, the use of it in connection to Vedic tradition seemed kind of random. Also, in the eighth paragraph, the overall message of the piece seems to get lost in the broad tie into current events.
I found the writing to be easy to follow most of the time. The way thoughts are described in the form of longer sentences to further emphasize the thoughts or emotions toward whatever it may be was effective. With this type of syntax, I found the rationalization of thoughts to resonate with myself because of how they are thought through in a conversation-like manner. It feels as if Professor Corva could be in front of me explaining this. I believe this piece could’ve been stronger if it had a clearer objective. Also, for most of the writing, events are described in the past with past tenses, but a small paragraph interrupts with the present-progressive tense: “I’m learning to substitute compassion…,” I’m learning to build…,” I’m learning to take steps….” Therefore, are you describing a past event, or explaining your journey to a future goal?
To start off I would like to explain what has resonated with me. When you said that you are now older and it is a lot easier for you to get hurt, I was able to connect with that personally since I am already starting to feel the effect. As we get older our bodies aren’t capable of taking the same impacts of daily life/working out, and alongside that it takes longer to recuperate, and it isn’t even certain will go back to 100%. Furthermore, I connected and supported your decision when you said “I’m learning to substitute compassion for criticism … This is the way”, once we start thinking this way there are no limits as to what we can do. Despite the connections I made there were a few mistakes and controversies I noticed when reading. There were a few instances in which you forgot to add a letter/word and times that you wrote the same word twice. Furthermore, it seemed like it was a little chaotic, there were too many random points that either have nothing to do with the topic or were just too broad and needed more detail to make sense of it. Another instance was when you contradicted yourself, you said you needed to troubleshoot but to abandon the “No pain, No gain” philosophy. Although you used it to make a point it could have been worded a bit different. To tie up this review, the most important statement you made in this whole writing piece was when you said “the first changes we need to make are internal.”
I truly liked your piece, and how your journey has helped you be a better person. I can also very much agree with your point on how people in todays society have to be more loving and patient, especially in a city like New York. People are always running here and there and never take a break, we should look back to see if we can do something to make a difference in the world, wether its helping out an elderly person in the street, or picking up after someones mess. I say this because if we see someone loitering, we too can be guilty of it, if we all help out we can make the place we live in a lot cleaner. Something that I wanted to know when you talked about how the past few months have been like a test, do you mean this in a religious perspective? i would’ve really liked it if you could’ve elaborated on that. Also I believe the piece could’ve been a little bit more detailed, talking about sobriety and what were the conflicts you were facing, because you mention that you were a former runner. Lastly I would like to point out that your last 2 paragraphs were very inspiring, on how we can achieve greater things if we put our minds to it, like David Goggins, in which I’ve read about.
I would like to say that I am happy you were able to accomplish that goal you had in life. I like the fact that you included an image of you at the movie theater your family partially owned, it amost makes me want to picture you as a little kid at that movie theater. When you said, “It happens when we decide that the goals we set are important enough to us to compel us to not give up and to troubleshot when obstacles present themselves,” it resonated with me because when I have a goal in mind I always start and never finish because it was too hard to complish. I often let my thoughts get in the way of my actual goal, allowing my goal to not be important anymore and this is something I need to work on. I think you could have went into detail on your thought process when you hit that 75 mile mark. When things started to be a little more difficult, were there(if any) things you told yourself to keep going? This might help me further understand the meaning of not giving up and help me train myself to accomplish my goal when things do get rough.