Yesterday I went to the “How to Read a Sonnet” workshop. We read one of Shakespeare’s sonnets and broke down the meaning while learning the components of an actual sonnet and differences in thee works of Shakespeare. The instructor was very excited about this topic it seemed. It was pretty refreshing o see. We read the sonnet out loud a s a group about 3 times and heard a recording. Then we went on to learn the basic structure of a typical sonnet.it’s typically 14 lines with 10 syllables per line. Shakespeare though, his rebellious self, actually wrote some of him sonnets with 11 syllables per line, like the sonnet we were reading during the workshop , for example. We then went on to talk about the rhythm of sonnets, stresses and unstressed words and how they play into the reading of a sonnet which are meant to be read out loud or with an inner voice. After that we went deeper into what Shakespeare was actually talking about and who he was writing about. Interestingly enough it turned out to be about nature making a human, starting off female, then nature falls in love with it’s creation and places a penis on the original woman to satisfy nature. It was an interesting conversation as we all participated in dissecting the meaning of the sonnet and once again reading one of Shakespeare’s twisted works. All in all I enjoyed it.

Art-A-Thon Review

The event that I attended was the ‘Improv Theater Session’ which took place at the Mason Hall. This event was hosted by Professor Debra Caplan, who was friendly and a great instructor that made learning improv interesting and easy. The session began by each student, which was a total of five, introducing themselves and the activity of pronouncing the letter ‘o’ differently. This activity may sound simple, but each time it was your turn to say the letter ‘o’ you had to say it with a different meaning and a different tone, this could be saying it as a question or saying it confused. After concluding this activity, I found it astonishing that there were so many ways to pronounce a letter. The activity that Professor Caplan planned next was, doing the opposite of what she said. There were different stages to the activity, first she used the word ‘stop’ to make us start walking and she’ll say ‘go’ out of nowhere to make us stop walking. The second stage she added the pair of commands ‘clap’ and ‘jump’ which made it a little bit more difficult to follow her instructions of doing the opposite. The last stage she added the pair of words ‘knees’ and ‘head’ to make it extremely difficult to complete the activity. At the end of this activity she explained that the purpose of it was to prove how difficult it was to complete a task even if our brains are thinking about it, she further explained that we are ‘programmed’ from a young age to do this and that’s what makes it difficult to do the opposite. The final activity Professor Caplan planned was an improv game called ‘Party’, which is a game where one individual is hosting party, he/she has guest invited and these guesses play a made-up character that the host must guess their relation to. This was a difficult one, because the guess had to make up stories of how they knew the host to help the host guess who they were. The session ended with this game, this event taught me how to think quickly and how to improvise. Prior to this event, I had no idea of how improv was used and I also never knew how interesting it was to take part in. Summing up, I was satisfied with the experience I gained from attending this event, it has sparked an interest in theater for me now and it has also persuaded me to take a theater class next semester.

The event I went to was “Play The Blue In One Simple Lesson.” In this event a music professor at Baruch taught us the basic cords needed to successfully play the blues. She taught us that to play the blues we need to use the first, fourth, and fifth roots of a key. She then sat at the piano and played us an example of incorporating those roots into a Blues song. Then the fun part came. Each person in the room got a chance to sit at the piano and learn how to play the cords and even how to add more notes to them to make a simple chord sound more embellished. In the end we left learning more than just about the blues. We learned a technique musicians use to make the piano would like a harp. We learned how to do a glissando on the piano, which is when the musician slides their finger continuously up or down between two notes.
At first I was a little nervous to do this event because I thought we would be using complicated instruments. When I entered the room and there was only a piano I was relieved. This event was very enjoyable to me. The professor was very encouraging of us. The professor was also very patient with us and was open to answer what every questions we had about music in general or playing the blues specifically. This helped me to feel like there was no pressure to be perfect, and comfortable enough to actually be one of the first people to volunteer to try playing on the piano. This event was especially interesting for me because I haven’t played the piano since ending my music class senior year of high school. Doing this blues lesson was actually an eye opening event for me. It made me realize that because I haven’t practiced music in almost a year some of the knowledge was leaving me. After going to this event, I’m actually motivated again to keep learning and rehearsing my piano playing and music reading.

Yesterday I attended How to read a sonnet workshop, and I must say it was pretty cool. I had low expectations for this workshop and I thought that I would want to leave as soon as I came but it was very intriguing ( mostly because our instructor was so enthusiastic and engaging that made the workshop better) and proved me wrong. I learned so many things besides how to read a sonnet which was very pleasing. For example, did you know words had gender? Yup, if a word has 2 or more syllables is feminine and if it only has 1 syllable it’s masculine.

To read a Sonnet you need to keep 3 questions in mind. 1.What does it sound like? 2.What does it mean? and 3. How does the sound affect the meaning? In order to answer these question our instructor suggested to split the sonnet. Sonnets are usually 14 lines and each line holds 10 syllables. You split the sonnet into 3 quatrains and 1 couplet. Quatrains consist of 4 lines and Couplets consists of 2 lines. As you go through the sonnet you should be able to hear the sound of it and you should be able to slowly get the meaning.

I attended the Playing the Blues event. This was a very fun and teachable experience. Although I had background knowledge in music, I had never played a song in the genre of the blues. I was a bit frighten when I went in because the room was very small and crowded with people which I didn’t know. The moment I went inside, Professor Anderson told me to try playing the piano. I was so nervous to try because of the other people who were there. Exactly at that moment, however students from my English class arrived and the other students which I didn’t know left because of the tight space. That made me feel more relaxed and started to feel happy about trying something new. The professor was very patient and helpful throughout the session. She taught us techniques and numberings. I would truly recommend it, this experience helped me realized how college doesn’t only have to be about books but fun as well. The style of the music also changed my mood. The music was so jumpy and happy that I began to enjoy my day in school. I was only able to attend for an hour but learned a lot about the style. When I got home I was eager to practice what I had learned. Additionally, I discovered that there are rooms available for students at Baruch to go and practice the piano. I believed this school didn’t have any music rooms but it does and became surprised to discover that. Furthermore, I learned different techniques to the blues. I loved that the teacher was full of energy and passion for this session. One could know this when she began to sing on top of the music. Although she knew we didn’t know much she was still willing to work with us. She wasn’t annoyed that we couldn’t get things right but was delighted that we were trying our best. What I liked the most about this session was the hands-on experience. It wasn’t a lecture and a teacher speaking but the student playing and learning from his/her mistakes and taking action while learning. I believe that there should be more courses in school with this type of experience. I would love to attend one of these events next year if I could.

The art-a-thon event I went to was the sentence one.At first I thought it was going to be boring because there is not much in a sentence .I believed they were just going to be explaining how we can formulate different sentences.What I learned from the workshop is that there is actually so much that can come from just one sentence .The sentence we focused on was “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”Jane Austen,Pride and Prejudice(1813).The sentence starts with the word “it”.The first thing that was asked to us was what does that “it” mean exactly.The “it” is actually referring to “that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife ” or the it could be referring to the ” truth universally acknowledged “.The sentence has a lot to play around with and during the workshop the Professor who was hosting it used a diagram to separate each clause and said every sentence has a clause ,but not every clause is a sentence.Also in the sentence the author wants to to believe that what she is saying is true but she doesn’t mainly say it’s true by the word placement.She wants everyone to believe that a man should have a nice wife and frames it in a way in which you will believe her but she is not stating that is completely false or true .The workshop was very interesting from the parts that I stayed for and it made me think about word placement and it is something I will look out more for.

Why did the counselor stop and ask Dina why she said she wanted to be a revolver when she said it clear to understand?

Would they have treated Dina the same if she wasn’t a colored girl and said revolve?

What caused Dina to be a misanthrope and why did she let Heidi in if she did not like people?

I went to the event on How to read a sonnet. At first, I thought the event would be boring because it is about poetry. I am not good with poems and I often do not enjoy reading them. To me, poems are all riddles and you have to find out what the author is actually trying to tell the readers. I do not know much about poems but today I learn what a sonnet is. A sonnet in poetry usually tells a story and has rhymes. It has 14 lines and 10 syllables. The one we read in the class is Shakespeare sonnet 20. I have no idea what the sonnet is about when I first read it. In the class we discuss sonnet having 10 syllables, however, in this sonnet, it has 11 syllables in each line. There was an extra syllable in which it was weird. Professor Kolb says that a rhyme has genders; feminine and masculine. From the sonnet, every rhyme is feminine because it has two or more syllables. I thought the sonnet is about a woman but in the end, it was not. We discuss the meaning of the first 8 line which is mostly praising that person’s beauty. The author is telling us that the person is a woman but also not like a woman. So far, the gender of that person is ambiguous. In the next 4 line, we all figure out that the person is a man. The clue is that in this sonnet nature is a “she” and straight, so in the creation, she has an affection for it and therefore she added one extra thing. This tells us that, that extra thing made the person a man. The author says that in the last 2 line that he can be with all the women but still love him.Now going back to the 11 syllables the reason for that extra syllables is the one extra thing added to the person. It was a really interesting sonnet and the story behind it was just like a surprise. I thought I would not enjoy this event but in the end, it was really fun. The idea of searching for the meaning behind this sonnet was a great experience. It was also funny in how in the end we figured out that it was a “he”. Before coming to the event I had thought about leaving once it gets boring but instead, I stay to the end.

1. What is the reason that Dina chooses to become a revolver?
2. What was Dina’s thoughts about her relationship with Heidi?
3. Why was the title named Drinking Coffee Elsewhere? Does it have any significant meaning?