Author Archives: ort9

Queens Gambit Episode 5

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This was a difficult episode for Beth. Coming back from her loss against Borgov and the death of her adoptive mother, Beth reaches a low in this episode, letting go of important things in her life and turning to alcohol. I was happy to see Harry come to help her with chess and help her work through this time emotionally and be someone to support her. Ultimately though, Harry couldn’t give Beth all that she needed for support or for chess. Beth needed to be able to work through her issues by focusing on herself, but also by taking on new challenges that push her to be better and accept that defeat is part of the road to success. She finds that in Benny, who whoops her butt repeated in speed chess and is one of the only people who has ever actually challenged Beth in chess. Ultimately, this seemed to help as she was able to beat Benny in the tournament. She also made a new friend to help her on the road to beating Borgov.

I liked this episode and watching Beth learn to let people help her and being forced out of her comfort zone in many different ways. I hope that in the end, she is able to use these hardships, experiences, and friends to achieve her final goal of beating Borgov.

Fun Painting

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I wouldn’t really consider myself a good artist so I don’t do things like painting or drawing often but I had a lot of fun with this event. It was good to actually get to attend a scholar event in person and get to meet some of the other people in living in Rose. I was also happy to be outside and take some time to destress at the end of a a very stressful semester. I think that my tree kind of ended up looking like a monster so I can’t say that I’m totally satisfied with what I made during this session, but I enjoyed talking with people and there were some very talented artists here and I’m glad I got to see their work.

Kiki’s Delivery Service

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I always will enjoy a Ghibli film. They have such great stories filled with enchanting character, interesting concepts, and themes of adventure, imagination, and growing up. Kiki’s Delivery Service was the first Studio Ghibli film I saw as a kid so I definitely have fond memories of it. Revisiting it now as an adult, the movie still help up to my memory of it. This film was so great and I love Kiki’s story as she tries to grow up and find her place in a new city and find her purpose and role as a witch. Ultimately, Kiki is a person who wants to help people and will go to extremes to do so. She will ride through the rain to deliver a birthday gift, she’ll search through the woods to find a toy she dropped, she’ll even fly through the air with a borrowed broom and damaged powers to save her friend in a pinch. One of the most distressing parts of the film is when Kiki can’t talk to her cat anymore and realizes that her powers are fading. This worried me so much because it seemed like she was losing her purpose and what made her herself. It was also hard to see her struggle through this. In the end though, it was inspiring to see her overcome this and truly discover herself and find her purpose as a witch and as a friend.

Faubourg Treme

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I have visited New Orleans in the past, so I knew that there was a rich history in the area with a lot of different people and cultural influences, but still, I did not know the history that was taught in this film. When we are taught about history through textbooks or guided tours, we often get a very polished, simplistic telling of the history of a place. Things are segmented, simplified, and told usually from one perspective. We don’t learn about the dynamic, and ever evolving nature of a neighborhood like Faubourg Treme. In most history books, black history is brushed over and seen as a side story to European history, like the French settlers of New Orleans. I was glad to watch this film and learn more deeply about the local history of New Orleans and how a black neighborhood has developed into such a unique community and culture with a history that is dynamic and ongoing even today.

Chess and Pills

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Before watching this show, I didn’t know anything about chess and after watching the first episode, I can confidently say that I still know nothing about chess except that there is a strategy called “The Queen’s Gambit.” I do know, however, that this was a super interesting episode. I didn’t know much about the show before watching it and I was surprised to find out about the varying hardships Beth went through as a child, from losing her parents, ending up in an orphanage, and developing a pill addiction as a child in a place that is supposed to care for her, the first episode was darker than I expected. Although Beth was going through a lot of troubles at the time, when she first started playing chess, she picked it up very quickly and it became a source of joy and clarity for her. It was interesting to see how her chess abilities and addiction grew throughout the episode. She was able to easily beat experienced chess players and her skill grew rapidly, but at the same time, she was abusing the pills given to her and even went to the point to steal the pills once she wasn’t given them anymore. I think there was also a correlation between how the pills helped her visualize the game and play better and how she wanted to keep that up, which drew her back to the pills because those both served as an escape for her from the sadness of her life. Overall, it was a good episode and maybe I’ll give chess a go.

Creating personal mission statements

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Initially, I was unsure about this seminar because I don’t often do self reflective activities like drafting personal mission statements. However, when we got in to it, this ended up being one of my favorite events this semester. We started small by thinking about some of our past accomplishments and then finding themes among those. Then we identified values that we held after reflecting on what we valued in our past accomplishments. From this, we were able to discuss and think more about what our personal goals were and what our mission was as we moved through school and life. I thought this was a super effective approach, taking things one step at a time and it helped me really reflect on what values I truly hold and how this shaped my future goals. The small group discussion was also helpful in working through my own thoughts and hearing other peoples values and perspectives. This did help me realign my goals and motivation for what I am doing right now and I think I will use this method again in the future when I feel I have lost my way or I can’t remember what I am working towards.

Are Chick Flicks Feminist?

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In this Table Talk, we discussed “chick flicks” also known as romantic comedies. This is one of my favorite movie genres and includes most of the movies I watched growing. The media we consume has a big effect on our personality and world views, so reflecting on how I watched mostly this genre of movies growing up, I hope they would demonstrate good messages for girls to learn from. When we talked about this as a group, I don’t think we ever came to a consensus on whether chick flicks are actually feminist. They often center around female characters, but often, these characters are unsure of themselves of have character flaws that aren’t solved until a man come along to fix their issues. Most older movies in the genre are like this, which isn’t exactly feminist or setting a great example. However, a lot of newer movies in this genre break these clichés, displaying stronger and more exemplary main characters, more realistic relationships, and different types of love, like the movie Love Simon which is one of the first rom coms to feature a gay couple. Though many of the older chick flicks were great examples for feminist women, they are definitely still super entertaining and fun watches and I think I had enough good influences in my childhood that I didn’t turn out like a useless female lead waiting for a man to solve y problems anyways.

One Health Discussion

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The Table Talk about One Health and Zoonotic diseases was super interesting and informative, especially in the present time. I did not know about One Health before this discussion, but I learned that it is an approach to health that considers the interconnection between humans, animals, and the environment as how these affect each other, and how each aspects’ health depends on this interconnection. This was very interesting to learn about especially during a pandemic. Now, I feel that everyone is becoming more conscious of our health and also the interconnection between people and the environment as being an important aspect in health.  Especially as the climate is changing and the world is becoming more and more industrialized, many new illnesses have spread from animals to humans, humans to animals, and this also affects the environment. We need to consider these interactions when attempting to take a wholistic approach to healthcare. If we want a healthy society and healthy globe, we need to understand the connections between these different aspects. We talked about zoonotic diseases, which are diseases that can be spread from animals to people, like salmonella. There are many examples of these diseases that have spread to humans. Instead of waiting to cure the disease, we should address how to prevent this by keeping our animals and globe healthy in the first place and keeping human resources separate from potential disease birthplaces.

Bridgerton Discussion

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I attended the table talk “Breaking Down Bridgerton” to have a discussion with my peers about the show after binging it over the winter. It was interesting to hear others’ thoughts on the show in its unique approach to the period drama. Some of the most interesting things to me were about how they portrayed race and sexuality in the show. We talked a bit about the seemingly colorblind casting, but others, similar to myself, took issue with the cheap way the show tried to explain this casting to the audience. It was also interesting how they portrayed sexuality for women in the show as compared to other period dramas like Downton Abbey and Pride and Prejudice. We talked about whether this portrayal was realistic and how modern influence played into its portrayal in the show. Many thought it seemed accurate as to how this would have been in real life in that time period. I’m not sure if it was entirely accurate but I also don’t know much about that time period. Overall, the show was very entertaining and it was nice to talk about with other people who also binged the show over the break.