michaeljamestom0901-blog

[michaeljamestom0901-blog]

Engineering: A short journal review.

According to the article written by Julius N. Leonen, 933 examinees out of 1,983 passed the February 2018 mechenical engineering licensure examinations, announced by the Professional Regulation Commission or the PRC last friday, March 2. It was great seeing examinees pass the exam to chase their dreams on becoming on of the greatest engineers born in our country. Sadly, majority of the examinees didn’t had the chance to pass the exam. I know they still have the chance to be a great engineer but first they have to get up, forget what happened, learn the lesson, and try until they succeed. I hope all of them will do everything they can to pass the exam.

The journalist also mentioned the student who got the highest grade out of the students, Kelvin Mendoza Macatangay of the Batangas State University-Alangilan topped the licensure exams after posting an amazing 88.75 percent rating. This man is showing everything he can to reach his dreams! Engineering is not a easy course but you have to give everything in your heart. You can’t just take the exams, you should have dedication on what you’re taking. Just like Kelvin, who topped the exams, give everything in his heart to get such high grade.

Another thing the journalist mentioned was the Batangas State University-Alangilan that dominated the list of top performing schools in the licensure exams, registering an 99.15 percent passing rate with 117 out of 118 successful examinees. It means that almost all of the examinees from Batangas State University-Alangilan passed the exam. They equipped their students with the drive to give everything in their heart. Again, Engineering is not an easy course to take, it needs full dedication but in the end, you can be a very successful person after graduating. You will have to build your own house, create your own home with you future family. You will give the world a better type of infrastructure.

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Mental Illness: a short introduction.

Mental illness refers to a wide range of mental health conditions or disorders that affect your mood, thinking or sometimes your behavior. Although the exact cause of most mental illnesses is not known, it is clear through research that many of these conditions are caused by a combination of genetic, biological, psychological, and environmental factors either not personal weakness or a character defect and recovery from a mental illness is not simply a matter of will and self-discipline. Heredity, some research studies believes that mental illness comes from the genes of their family. The also believed that mental illness was passed from generations to generations, from their ancestors. However, just because your mother or father or your ancestors may have or had a mental illness, it doesn't mean you’ll have one. Hereditary just means there’ll be higher possibilities or chance to have a certain condition than a family without having affected of the certain condition. Biology, some mental illnesses have been linked to an abnormal balance of brain chemicals called neurotransmitters. A neurotransmitter is a chemical that is released from a nerve cell which transmits an impulse from a nerve cell to another nerve, muscle, organ, or other tissue. It is also a messenger of neurologic information from one cell to another. Therefore, neurotransmitters help the nerve cells in the brain communicate with each other. If these chemicals are unbalanced or not working properly, there will be a malfunction and messages won’t reach through the brain correctly, leading to symptoms of mental illness. In addition, injury to certain areas of the brain also have been linked to some mental conditions and it will show some symptoms of mental illness. Psychological Trauma, some mental illnesses may be triggered by psychological trauma suffered as a child, such as severe emotional, physical, sexual abuse, a significant early loss, such as the loss of a parent, being neglect and etc. Lastly, Environmental stressors are one of the reasons of having a mental illness. These are for instance, death or divorce, a dysfunctional family life, changing jobs or schools, and abusing of substance or drugs can trigger a disorder in a person who may be at risk for developing a mental illness. Some examples of mental illness include depression, anxiety disorders, schizophrenia, eating disorders and addictive behaviors. These illnesses can be encountered by a person who experienced mentally or physically abused, certain medications, personal conflicts with family or friends or maybe by itself, death or loss of a very important person, genetics, major good events can also lead to mental illness when those events turn into downfall, personal problems such as isolation, having a serious illness, and substance abuse. These causes of mental illness can be experienced by all of the people around you, or maybe you. I suggest to help them if you noticed or encountered symptoms of mental illnesses.

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Feminist Literary Criticism

Feminist Literary Criticism is like the Marxism Literary Criticism, but feminist focuses more on gender inequality between men and women or called Patriarchy. Feminist literary criticism can be traced back to medieval times. But as time goes by, Feminist criticism was developed by Helene Cixous and Judith Butler. Feminist criticism is literary analysis that arises from the viewpoint of feminism, feminist theory and/or feminist politics. Some basic methods of feminist literary criticism include identifying with female characters which means how the female character challenge the male-centered outlook of the authors, and Reevaluating literature and the world in which literature is read which means that society should also value woman authors and their literary works. Feminist criticism can be applied to some movies, commercials and on some environmental issues like politics. Through Feminist criticism, we are going to analyze the movie "Minions" wherein the antagonist, Scarlet Overkill, is a female villain. The Despicable Me movies are iconic. We love them for the Minions, for Gru, and for Agnes' super fluffy unicorn. But the whole Despicable Me story is all about villains, who wants to be the greatest super villain of all time. Gru wanted to be the best but before he was born, a girl named Scarlet Overkill was ruling the villain world. Scarlet Overkill was a poor girl when she was young. Nobody loves her and all wanted to hurt her. But when she grew up, she became the most bad women super villain of all time. Guy villains love her, adore her. Even macho villains want to be just her henchmen. Using feminist criticism, we can see that girls can do anything just like men. We can see that Scarlet Overkill do things that men can do. She can do criminal things that other men cannot do. We also can see the equality that the director wants us to see in feminist perspective, that women isn't weak like what we are thinking. Women can do all things like us men, that women can make a living with their own hands. Scarlet is a witty, humorous, and domineering person, and the story about how she became a villain inspired many people to follow in her footsteps. One of the characters in the movie said that Scarlet's story was inspiring, "She started out as your average little girl; braces, pigtails. But by the time she was thirteen, she built a criminal empire" (Tina Nelson, from Minions). Scarlet even knows how to kung Fu and martial arts, she can fight men and make their bones break. She has heavy rocket dress, and a lava lamp that can melt metal. Through Feminist criticism, we can see that Scarlet is really showing equality that women can do such things that men can do also. Women can do martial arts and kung Fu, can carry a ton load of heavy rocket dress, and can use a lava lamp that can melt all kinds of metal. Women can fight men regardless of its muscles and its body shapes. She can break every men's bones that can be seen when the guy villains tried to steal the ruby crystal out of Scarlet's hand. Scarlet's career began to fall after when she hired the most childish henchmen's in the world, the minions. At least, she has the power to find a guy henchman and to serve her. In the part where Scarlet shows her stolen loots out of all of her criminal deeds, we can see that girls can really do anything. In other words, men and women should be equal. Patriarchal must be deleted in our society so equality can take place. She ordered the minions to steal the queen of England's crown and to give it to her as a gift. But we all know the minions, yes, they stole the crown but eventually, Bob became the king. Scarlet, feeling betrayed, immediately goes to the Buckingham Palace to threaten them. Bob gave his crown to Scarlet, because she's the boss. She hated the minions because she felt betrayed after they stole the crown, so Scarlet ordered her husband to torture the minions. In literary criticism of Feminist, we can see that women has the power to order everyone and they can be the boss even if society sees that they are just nothing. Scarlet Overkill is one good role model for Feminism because she promotes equality, that women can do things like men does. In conclusion, I support Feminism because woman has the rights to everything they need and wants to do. Gender equality must be promoted worldwide for them to prove that they are worthy. Like in the movie Minions, Scarlet Overkill can live all by herself but the minions just ruined her entire career and life. She can live alone just life every woman out there in the real world. Always think about equality, because they really wanted something to happen to our society. In the cartoons, Scarlet can commit crimes with her own bare hands and with the help of his assistant/husband Herb Overkill. It doesn’t say that woman need to commit crime in order to get the equality they’ve always wanted, it means that the society need to adapt what is the true meaning of equality, gender equality to be exact. Our society is slowly degrading and it is not what we all wanted. Feminist/Feminism is a good idea to represent the women but it is not just for women, everyone is called to respect and treat equally every women.

[michaeljamestom0901-blog]

Manuel L. Quezon’s speech: A reflection paper.

Nationality becomes the weakness of the nation if we don’t know who we are, we won’t know what our purpose is in our land. Manuel L. Quezon once stated in his speech that “The Filipino of today is soft, easy - going”, it just simply means we still haven’t fully attained our freedom against the colonial mentality that was given to us by the colonization of the different countries. Just look at the time when Manuel L. Quezon delivered his speech, I believe it was also the time when the Americans keep colonizing our country. It also means that Manuel’s vision is seeing things that makes our nationality fall or disintegrate. He also mentioned that the weaknesses of a nation is its failings, and its strengths are its powers. One nation needs to have citizenry, to build up a nation it needs loyalty. Without loyalty, we cannot build a nation that can withstand any trials that we encounter. Loyalty is one of the main key to a successful nation because it is a strength that can withstand any trials that out nation will encounter. Manuel L. Quezon wanted a nation that will never be forgotten and will live forever, he wanted to have our own nation without being forgotten by time. A nation needs to be victorious against all of the trials and all of the sufferings that they’ll encounter. Manuel also mentioned that nationality is imbued with patriotism and sense of righteousness, it basically means that a nation needs all of the support from its different kinds of roots in order to function better for the country. Manuel wanted us to engage into an epic task of building our own nation in order to have our own identity as a Filipino. To be honest, we have to fix our mindset in order to build our own identity. We cannot build a nation without fixing the mindset of every one of us if we are used to it. I mean, you have to ask yourself if having a colonial mentality helps our nation improve or does it make our nation being forgotten? You need to ask yourself. A nation is said to exist when it could trace its origins, but after colonization we can’t trace back our origins and histories. The word “nation” is derived from the Latin term Natus which means born. So it simply means group of people with the same racial origin, it was built by our ancestors. But after the colonialism, we lost our origin and identity because we embraced the colonial life that they gave to us. Manuel simply wants our identity back, although he did not clearly mentioned our origin, but he mentioned the regeneration of the Filipinos. He clearly wanted to have our identity back. The idea of nation was slowly deleted and misleading because there’s no nation in the world that still have their racial origin and identity. According to J. K. Bluntschli- “Nation is a union of people bound together by language and customs in a common civilisation which gives them a sense of unity and distinction from all foreigners.” Manuel also mentioned in his speech that the Filipinos lacks earnestness. Filipinos are not sincere on regaining their own civilisation and we keep making things that can make our identity lost. Manuel also mentioned that Nationality includes politics. Disagreements, however, tend to arise in the political community over the definition of nation. As a conclusion, I therefore say that Manuel’s claim about Nationality in his speech was clearly inspirational. Although some Filipinos embraced the colonial life and get used to it, he stated that many Filipinos still have patriotism in their skins. They still need to learn on how to externalize their patriotism and being a nationalist. But Manuel said “Filipinos are inconstant; we lack of perseverance and we easily admits defeat”. How can we improve if we lack of perseverance? How can we be proud of our nation if we are inconstant to our nation? How can we build a nation if we easily admits defeat? Manuel also mentioned that the Filipinos greatest fear is not to do wrong, but of being caught doing wrong. We Filipinos need to learn on how to engage nationalism. A solid and true nation needs to have pride, wisdom, self - interest, mankind, freedom, citizens that have the characteristics such as bravery, vigorous, self - reliant, sturdy individuals, industrious and courteous as Manuel said. Our nation is composed of 7,107 islands, 3 major islands, located in the south east of the continent of asia in the western pacific, known as the pearl of the orient. Philippines is our nation, and we Filipinos are the citizen of our nation. Manuel believes that the Filipinos of today is soft, easy - going, but he also believes that the future of our nation is at the hands of the new generation. All we have to do is to free from the chains that the foreign bounded us. Freedom is all we need to create a better nation, freedom has come to us, as a gift of heaven.

[michaeljamestom0901-blog]

The Best day of my Life.

Let me introduce myself first, Hi I’m Michael James Tom, Grade 11 student, my section is Our Lady of Fatima, I was born on Antipolo, but for now I live in Cainta, somewhere in Cainta. I love to play ball, Basketball to be specific. My Father is half chinese and my mother is a quarter american. So overall, I’m a quarter chinese and half quarter american. I still have Filipino blood in my veins. Best day, best day, best day, you want to talk about my best day? I have several best days in my life including when I understand every topics in english, when I’m able to speak english fluently, when I’m able to understand english without the dictionary’s help, surprising a beautiful girl on her birthday, and everytime I perfect a quiz without reviewing anything or passing an exam without reviewing. Of course if I have best days, I also have Worst days including when I’m not able to understand english, when I can’t relate to the topics in english, when I can’t speak in english fluently, when my parents forced me to go to a cementery, everytime when I hold a exam paper and I have no clue what to answer, and more. But I like to talk about the worst day and my best day of my life in just one scenario. Last year Grade 10, it was second trime exam, that was the last day of exam I believe. My friends looked for calculator all over the campus, they asked me if I have one, I said I have one with confidence. Before the exam I looked for my calculator. “Eto na yung calculator kong malupet” I shouted. “Perfect tong exam ko sigurado ako dahil dito sa calculator ko!” I added. Our proctor, Miss Angelica, gave us our test papers and we started answering it. After answering the first part, I shouted “Sus basic!”. I was on the last part of the exam when I felt drowsy and when I looked at the time, there was still a lot of time so I decided to sleep for a while. Then I woke up and noticed that it was almost time. So I decided to answer the last part, rushed it. While I was solving the last part, my calculator ran out of battery! “PATAY!” I murmured. I tried to get the calculator of my seatmate but Ms. Angelica saw it and she didn’t liked what I’ve did so I decided to solve the problems mentally. It was clearly one of the worst days of my life. After a week, we checked the exam papers in math. Ms. Celine said that the exam papers were arranged from highest to lowest. So I didn’t assumed that I was on the top because of my calculator! So she gave the papers to my classmates, and everyone received their exam papers except me. “MISS BAGSAK AKO?!?” I shouted. Miss Celine looked at me, smiled and then called my name to give my exam paper. She folded it so I cannot see the score. I was so nervous when I touched my exam paper. “Ibagsak na lahat ng subject wag lang math” I cried. After a minute of silence, I started to unfold my exam paper, looked at the top right side of the paper and then boom. “Calculator? Kailangan pa ba ng calculator dito?!?” I shouted again. 97/100, the only three mistakes that I saw was the true or false, the part when I wrote all “true” as an answer. It was one of the best days of my life. Taking a Math exam, with calculator but without battery! The moral lesson of the story is, bring a calculator with a full battery so that you won’t solve a long math exam with time pressure mentally.