I remember when I was in high school and was taking the Calculus exam. The tension was high. This was the mother of all Calculus exams, the exam in which your score was summed up by one, two, three, four, or five, with five being the highest grade you could get. This was the AP Calculus exam. I was on the open ended section and was feeling good about what I was doing. I was breezing through the problem even humming a song to myself. I could hear people in the stands cheering me on. I was almost finished when to my horror I realized I made a horrible mistake. I started to panic. Time was running out. The proctor of the exam had signaled there was only 10 minutes left and I was starting to perspire. My heart was pounding, my vision was blurry. Then, I remember I had a pencil with an eraser. I turned that pencil around so the eraser was pointing directly towards the paper and the lead was pointing to the ceiling and I erased my error like no man had erased an error on an exam before. Quickly my mistake vanished and I was able to write down the correct answer.
A couple of months later I got my score. I had passed the exam. The pencil had once again saved the day and I began to appreciate and love the pencil. Am I different from any other human on this planet? I doubt it. Just as the pencil was beneficial to me during that exam, the pencil has been an essential part of people’s lives ever since the pencil’s birth. While there are color pencils and mechanical pencils, one pencil still seems to pop any time writing something down is necessary – the wooden pencil. However, most people don’t realize that the wooden pencil has a history, is made in a factory, and its effects on the environment. After reading this essay you will develop a d...
... middle of paper ...
...s.usa.gov/epublications/gettysburg/g2.htm>.
9. Manetti, Michelle. "Gardening Idea Suggests Using Pencil Shavings To Help Your Plants Grow." The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 12 June 2013. Web. 23 Apr. 2014. .
10. Martin, Doug. "List of Manufacturers." List of Manufacturers. N.p., 2012. Web. 23 Apr. 2014. .
B. Books
11. Price, Jennifer. Flight Maps: Encounters with Nature in Modern American Culture. New York: Basic, 1998. Print.
12. Warren, Louis S. American Environmental History. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub., 2003. Print.
C. Course Materials
13. “Colonial Environments”, HIST 334, NJIT, Lecture, 1/30/14
14. “The CONSERVATION MOVEMENT”, HIST 334, NJIT, Lecture, 3/6/14
15. “Cars & the RESHAPING of NATURE, HIST 334, NJIT, Lecture, 3/27/14
Nowadays, people can use computers or pencils to compile their works. “Which way is more competitive?” has become a controversial issue. “An Ode to the User-Friendly Pencil” by Bonnie Laing, explores “the pencil wins over the computer hands down” by using irony.
Cronon, William “The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature” ed., Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature, New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1995, 69-90
Leslie Marmon Silko, Landscape, History, and the Pueblo Imagination, A Sense of Place, Forbes Custom Publishing 1999
Print. The. Wilson, Elizabeth B. -. " History, Travel, Arts, Science, People, Places | Smithsonian. " History, Travel, Arts, Science, People, Places | Smithsonian. Smithsonian Magazine, Sept. 2006.
In the essay from Pencils to Pixels, Dennis Baron details the world’s journey from the use and making of the pencil to the computer. Barron states that the pencil wasn’t originally intended to be used as a writing device. There’s a bit of information you probably hadn’t heard before. Yes, pencils were actually adopted as a tool by “note takers.. ..scientists...and others who need to write”. They were taken from artists and adapted it for use as a writing tool ( Dennis Barron 44).
Wilderness is a highly idealized concept in today’s society – we simply put it on a pedestal and choose to admire it as we see fit. Nature and wilderness are considered distant and remote concepts, separate from our everyday, civilized lives. By approaching the natural realm in this sense, we simply detach ourselves from our origin, which leaves us to fantasize about the great outdoors as an escape from the artificial creations of our everyday life. This desire to escape our artificial lives has lead to the construction of locations such as national parks, which merely appear to be the natural world, yet in reality they are simply just facets of the modernized world we have created.
It was time for grades to be do in all the classes. So, in every class I went to I did work I needed to do, except when there was a movie in that room. I tried to keep my focus on the work but I get distracted really easy. I usually turned in my work and I only had work to do in one class. I was missing four assignments in that class that was do, so when I got to that class we had option to go to a different class. Well, they were all playing movies except for one I didn't need to go to. One class had a movie I really wanted to finish and then the other rooms had movies that were good, except for the one I needed to go in. It had a movie that was about the book we were reading which I didn't really care for. It was the only class I needed to finish work in. I went to that class and the movie started. Once the movie started I knew I wasn't going to finish the assignments. I worked as hard as I could and tried not to get distracted. The closer it got to the end of class the better I felt about it and the more I believe in myself. By the end of the class I had gotten all my assignments done and I couldn't do it without my parents because they always push my to do my best and reward me if I do. And that was a time when I had to believe in
Wills, Chuck, Destination America: The People and Cultures That Created a Nation. New York: DK Publishing, 2005. Print.
On one side of the conflict, Americans have a passionate relationship with nature. Nature acts as a muse for artists of every medium. While studying nature, Jo...
J B Harley, 1989, Deconstructing The Map, Ann Arbor, Michigan: MPublishing, University of Michigan Library.
I was sure that I had used my pencil to create the next Mona Lisa at the end of those seventy minutes. Yet, years later when my family cleaned out my art folder I couldn’t even tell what the items I was supposed to have drawn were. The picture looked as if it had been drawn on a boat in the middle of a storm having its curved lines in place of straight lines. It was as if the pencil had a mind of its own and what I intended for it to do just wasn’t on the agenda for that day. During my time in art class I continued this cycle. The cycle of not thinking that I could draw, to having an epiphany moment, to realizing that what I actually created was worthless. When I began to climb the mountain of hardships involved with music and acting I had to push my failure in art class to the
A modern reader might be surprised to find that travel writings of the 18th century, books intended for the general public, featured specific scientific terms and precise descriptions of landmarks, species and resources. But how did it happen that “sentiment, imagination, and the graces have been banished” (Voltaire, Letter to Cideville) from 18th century literature? In her article “Science, planetary consciousness, interiors” author Mary Louise Pratt argues that the change in travel writing in the 18th century promoted a new type of planetary consciousness, thus triggering a shift in European colonial policies. In her subsequent article “Narrating the anti-conquest”, she argues that as travel writing evolved, so did colonial policies and she exemplifies the process by an examination of four travel writers of the era to show how travel writing changed. Pratt suggests that writing shifted from survival literature, focusing on coastal regions (an observing eye), through strictly descriptive accounts of interiors (a scrutinizing eye), to writing about the ways in which things could be improved (an improving eye). Forty years after Pratt’s last example of 18th century anti-conquest writing was published, Darwin’s Voyage of the Beagle came out of press. The ethos displayed by Darwinian his journal, however, diverged from the anti-conquest ethos as modified by Pratt. Therefore, a close reading of Darwin, one of the most prominent 19th century authors of travel writing, could be used to suggest in what direction 18th century travel writing evolved.
I added instead of multiplying. I got a grade of 74 in math, so I missed my shot at becoming one of the Top Ten. I finished 14th in my class. At first, failure was none of my business: I did not really care how high or low my grades were. But when I suddenly experienced what failure was like, I did not like it one bit.
It was around 11:00 pm during the spring on a school night, and I was working hard on my science project and paper. This paper had a lot of research and so much work to be done. I didn’t know if I was going to finish or if I was going to have a failing grade. All that I
As I looked in the mirror to myself, I thought of everything I had to do to pass. As my mom was driving me there, it felt like it had been an eternity before we got to our destination. I got out of my mom’s car with a major case of butterflies. Then a friendly man named, Russ, approached me and told me that he will be my driving instructor. When we get into the vehicle, he told me to park, reverse out, drive to the traffic light, come back and parallel park. I was going as slow as molasses with everything because I was so nervous, but he kept reassuring me that I was moving along just fine. During the parallel parking, I was trying to rush through the steps and I notice I am a little too far away from the curb. After readjusting 4 times, he gave me the news that I had passed my first and only driver’s test! With all the criticism I experienced with my dad, I had not let it phase me, since I had passed my