16. Process Essay

I have totally finished my essay.
Eng 101 is really big challenge for the last two weeks.
First presentation and then process essay.
But especially writing an academic essay was really different thing for me.
Because i always write in exaggerated and fancy way. In academic essay there is no place for these.
So i was very funny situation while rewriting. I was writing something and then erasing, writing and erasing.
On the other hand, learning new thing is hard. So i am happy. And i feel i am improving.

Photo by timsamoff licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic.

15.Our Presentation

I am so relaxed now. I was anxious during this week about our presentation. How will it be? How will Sonja say? How will audience's reflects be?

I want to highlight that few friends in class, was listening me so carefully. I am so pleased. I always look into the speaker's eyes while he/she describing something. But i didn't know it is giving that much satisfaction and courage to the speaker.

I was so nervous when i started to talk but then when i saw people are listening to me , nodding their heads, thinking about what i said, it gave me courage to continiue. So thank you very much.

I think our presentation was nice. We met 4 times and sent mail ourselves 40 times :) So i think it worth =)

But to be honest, i found myself little bit deficient. I don't know, i think ,i couldn't put my own comment so much on presentation. I will think more deeply about myself and will try to do more properly on final.

• Elif's presentation was both enjoyable and profitable. It was profitable for understanding the story more deeply.

• Bahar's presentation was really detailed and i learnt lots of different things about it.

• Onur has got very interesting ideas about his titles.

So, i like my co workers ^^

On the other hand, i was hopeful about the theme of presentation. I found it from internet.

If you want to arrange presentations more figurative , you can use this adress.

http://www.templateswise.com/

1)All you have to do is click to the download.
2)There will come a ....zip document.
3)Open it with winrar,winzip or another programme for opening folders which zipped
4)and there will be .....pptx document.
4)Open this.
5)And put your texts and pictures into this theme.

It is free , so i think it is legal to use this themes.

Good luck on presentations!

14.Tomorrow is Big Day

Ohhhh!

Finally it finished.

We worked hard since last week on our presentation.

Especially i am very excited about presentation. Because i am being very excited while i am speaking English in front of people!!! For prevent the tragedy in the class ;):

I studied in front of the mirror.

And than i described to my room-mate.

I will practise 2-3 more times. I hope it will help.

So, tomorrow is the big day, i am looking forward to hearing comments!seeing reactions!
I will write tomorrow evening every detail of presentation!

Wish me well!

13. Tough Guys on Facebook

I observed something while i was looking my friends profile pictures in facebook. Well, this contains generalization but i am sure you will understand what i am trying to highlight.

In Boy's profile pictures , boys are usually not looking to camera and looking charismatic and some of them are looking very strict and tough.

And we are generally focusing to camera and smiling to look beatiful or always putting our smiling photos for collecting sympathy.

So what do you think about this?

12. Kabadayı

There is a movie called Kabadayı , directed by Ömer Vargı in 2007.

It is describing a story of bunch of "tough guise".

But in that movie there is nice detail. There is a man called "Sürmeli" (i think eye-lined in English).
He is homosexual. Everybody knows this. And nobody humiliating him.

But there is a guy called Murat. He is an illegal child. So they don't say his real father to him. He thought "Sürmeli" is his father until he is 15. In his 15, they explain that Sürmeli is homo-sexual and he hasn't got a father. And that day he ran away from house and starting to live in streets.

Years later, Sürmeli and Murat is meeting again. While they were talking, Sürmeli making a very effective speech . He is saying that he took care of Murat like his own children. He cried while he was singing a turkish song "My Mother , Lovely Mother, Take me on your arms." He said that to Murat that he didn't ran away because he was angry about Sürmeli and his mother, lied to him or he is upset about he hasn't got a father. He ran away because he were ashamed from "Sürmeli" . Ashamed from the truth that his father figure was homosexual. These shows the point of view of some people to the homo-sexuals in Turkey. It is very effective scene i think.

And there is more effective detail too. In the end of the movie. Everybody cheating to main chracter (kabadayı) . All these tough guys around the Kabadayı. But Sürmeli never cheats to him, always being loyal to him and maybe rescued Kabadayı's principles about being tough, strong, honest by helping him.

So this detail is describing the real toughness is not with violence or needs muscles it is related with character!

I highly recommend Kabadayı! It is really good movie!

11.Tough Guise 2

In second part i want to write about media effects on violence.

As we mentioned media is in search of ratings. They want to make programmes which will get high rating from public.

For example while my brother started to watch cartoons. Mostly in all cartoons there are violence! They are fighting , punching, plunking each-other. We turned another channel for my brother to more peaceful cartoon for his health. But my brother didn't like this.I realised Harshness and noisy getting his attention and he is looking to the screen like hypnotized. This complicated cartoons are making childrens more addicted to TVs.

And maybe we can adapt it to adult's movie delectations.

We closed this cartoon-channels for my brother. But does everybody is realizing that will be harmful for their children?

My parents says there weren't cartoons like this in their childhoods. They were watching Heidi, Candy Candy , Pink Panther... And they were not always fighting. This is one of the things which i started to think about . What will be long-term effects of this media programmes on the society? What do you think about it?

10.Tough Guise 1

Generally i am not used to watching movies which includes lots of speech like in Tough Guise. Maybe it is my fault but i am generally feel bored.

However in Tough Guise, Jackson Katz explaining his ideas very fluently and he is mentioning lots of interesting point. So i watched it easily two times. I took notes. Discussed it with my mother. And tried to observe Katz's opinions in daily life.

Here are my observations.

Firstly i realized i totally accepted this motto in my daily life: " A real man must be tough, strong and serious."

But i am not sure that media injected this motto to me. I think it is coming from olds. You know from my blog, i like to make connections between courses and this time i want to use my SPS and biology knowledges :).

Man and woman created different i think. Brain types, body types are really different. For example: Man cannot carry his children in his body for 9 months and i think it brings clear differences between woman and man. Woman learn to be altruistic,clemency and detail-oriented. Being pregnant is just little example. Another example is about hormanal situations. We learnt couple of hormanes which is effecting gender specialities at biology. Estrojen,progestin,testosterone, LTH, LH.... This hormones are also effecting brain activities of human-beings.

To sum up, woman and man are not the SAME.
Women are more emotional,niggling and altruistic.

This maybe created the division of labour (SPS keyword :D). Testosterone made mans more musculer. So they went for hunt and women were at the shelter for organizing and work on the details.

But how this physical strongness of man turned to violence?

I have a thesis about this too. Man always excepted to go out, for work, hunt, however. So for protecting theirselves they put on "tough guise"...

For example, imagine a family who has got two childrens . One is boy and one is girl. They need to bread for dinner. But it is little bit late and it is dark outside. Will they send the boy or girl?

The boy. And the girl will expected to help to tidy up the table or help for meal.

Maybe, the boy will feel scared at outside, for example when he will see a dangerous stranger walking through to him. What he will do?

From this situations boys are learning to be look like tough,strong and self-confident for protecting theirselves.

And when i come to my question at first:
But how this physical strongness of man turned to violence?

I think it is coming from extra-ordinary situations in Turkey. Childrens who hasn't got a family, who have to live in streets . They turn this toughness, strengthness to violence for improving their skills to survive!

In Tough Guise they said not only not-educated and psycho types are commiting crime. Popular guys, succesful and happy guys are commiting crime too. But is it true to generalize? I think they are not deciding to use violence in one day. It must be past maybe not showed by newspapers. Can we discuss this? I am looking forward to hear your opinions. I am confused. Because i have never seen so much in newspapers in Turkey that happy guys commiting crime suddenly. There is always dark history of childhood or a part of life, back of violences.

Why people wants to commit a crime while everything is going well?

9. A list of what i learnt from ENG 101 with Sonja,

Before i start, i want to say something.

ENG 101 is my favorite lesson at this semester.

I really like English, but unfortunately ,thanks (!) to our education system, in my school, English was not an important lesson because there is no english question in Ö.S.S.- university entrance exam.
So i am very happy. And this English lessons are not based on memorizing something.
It is also about daily life. It is improved my cultural knowledge.

And it is indusputable that, i can feel strongly that Sonja is caring about ENG 101. When i feel that, my motivation reaching the peak.

So here is my list:

1)I get used to read long stories which lasted 10-20 pages.
2)I learnt literary terms like anti-hero,omniscient narration,dynamic character etc.
3)I get used to read serious articles about society's issues, in English.
(and i thought more deeply on photojournalism and reality shows)
4)I learnt "citation" and how to write academic articles in APA format.
5)I learnt how i must plan my article before writing it.
6)I learnt how to BLOG properly and continiously.( it is important step for me because it was one of my ambitions , and thanks to this blog i created my personal blog in Turkish. I realised it is a habit. And i gained it with my ENG 101 blog.)
7)I learnt how to use Creative Commons and learned a new adress for finding photos: Flickr.
8)I learnt how to find academic articles with Google Scholar. And how to find them in Sabanci's information center.

So thank you Sonja. I am lucky because i am in class C3 ^^

8. About image labelling =))

Figure 1. A joke picture about google (n.d.). Note: Copyright dullhunk. (made available under a Creative Commons License)

Firstly, i must confess something. Although this is my mid-term week, I can't stop playing this label game. That is both fun and profitable for improving vocabulary and intellectual knowledge. So thank you Sonja, for sharing it with us.

While Sonja was describing this game to us. I remembered one of my memories.

While i was visiting M.I.T at Boston 4 years ago, there were some students at the corner, doing something. While we were speaking Turkish, one of this students look at us and started to talk with us Turkish. He was also Turkish student at M.I.T and doing this project for gaining extra-credit.

Their project was this, and they were doing it with Google;

You are taking a picture and sending to Google. For example while you were walking around Sabancı University at first time and wondered about tower of our campus. You are sending it's picture to Google. They are describing

what is it?,
for what we are using it? ,
when did it build? etc.

And this students was the people who were writing this answers! In other words, they were labelling ^^

So this is another profitable kind of google image labelling! ^^

dullhunk (Photographer). (n.d.) [Google Classic], [Online
Image]. Retrieved November 11, 2009, from author’s Flickr page.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/14829735@N00/3389581452/

7. A new angle to reality TV, from Slumdog Millionaire movie.

While i was preparing our radio programme* i realized there is some conversation about reality TV(who wants to be a millionaire?) between Jamal and Latika in this movie.

Jamal: Why everybody watching that kind of programmes?
Latika: That is because it is some kind of escape. To a new world.

And another point is that:

In following parts, Jamal is joining to programme "Who wants to be a millionaire?". Actually he is not joining for a new life. He is joining because , Latika is watching that programme. And can find him from this, because he lost Latika.

While he was racing at this programme, he is doing so well and the directors of this programme is really being anxious(he is going to get the money!!!). And the announcer , trying to cheat. In one question, Jamal feeling confusion between two answer. The true answer is D. But announcer saying it is B in the advertisement-break. So that is another fact about reality-TV's. Their aim is not to make ordinary-people rich or famous. They are just puppets for them.

*We have a programme(called "İzlenen Nağmeler") at radyoSU on every Thursdays 21.00! We are selecting one movie and talking about it , commenting it deeply, and playing it's soundtrack with Eyüp Müslüm. I would be really happy if you want to listen. We are going to mention the movie: Slumdog Millionaire at this week.

(Dear Sonja, sorry for advertisement, because that is not directly connected with our blog's syllabus =))

6. Afgangirl

Afgangirl is my favorite photograph. Steve Mccury took it during the war in Afganistan.

That is my favorite, because when you look into her eyes, you can see the question : "Why me?, Why is my country?" She is not scared , she is angry. And this photo makes me really confused about this situation: "While i am sitting at my chair , peacefully, other people in the world are suffering. Why?"

Steve Mccurry, who took this photograph, Found this lady after 17 years. She is around her thirties now.

I found really nice webside for "Photos that changed the world."
You can click if you want to look.

And here is Steve Mccurry's personal photo-blog. I really liked , if you want to look this ,just click.

5. Photo-journalism

In this week we read and talked about photo-journalism.
The main question which we discussed about was this:

"Why that photographers prefer to take a picture rather than helping to this poor people?"

I think this is very shallow logic. Because maybe they are not helping for only one moment, but then when they took this photographs, millions of people thinking about this issues thanks to this photographs. Furthermore, this photographers are already taking high risks for taking that photos. So they are already trying to help to this people. And taking photographs takes really little time. I am sure that they are trying to help after taking photographes , if they are not in this "helping idea" they won't go to the most dangerous places for taking only just one photo.

source of photo: http://photosthatchangedtheworld.com/?p=369

4. History and Origin of Road-Watchers ^^

Actually TLL 101 and ENG 101 again mixed XD

While i am reading my TLL homework (It is book called "Taaşuk-ı Talat ve Fitnat", It is the first novel of Turkish Literature.)i realised there are descriptions about that era's relationships.

In this parts of book, we understand in that times, womans don't usually went outside and they sat next to the window and watched the road! Their best entertainment was this.

And there were some special times, which ladies dressed up nice and went to the outside with cars. And then mans were watching this ladies along the road, and if they like one, they are going to her father and want her from him.

Like Elif, i am finding myself while i am looking to the road without thinking something, sometimes.

So i think this tradition, is coming very deep deep inside from Turkish people :D

3. About Reality-Shows

Usually , as we highlighted at Rushdie's , Poniewozik's and Peters's article, reality shows is sum of Media's getting attention trials without caring people who they are using in this programmes.

Unfortunately , real aim is not educating or informing society, media-workers, only thinks about " How can i get attention from public?".

But there is something gladsome in Turkey. When we look at Turkey's reality shows, there are not very catastrophic reality show history. That is because Turkey's social culture can't accept extreme attidutes. Like, using drugs ,making love , being drunk on the live broadcast. If they put this on tv. They can't get rating. This dogmatic style of us, accidentally, prevented the crazy- reality shows.

Most of reality-shows in Turkey, based on making competitions. I don't support shows like "Yemekteyiz" or "Desti İzdivaç" but i really like talent shows.Like "Dansa Var Mısın?", "Popstar", because i think, they are giving courage to the public like "Hey, he is like me , and he has got confident about showing him abilities, so i can show it to other people too."

And this thinking little bit prevents exponentialy growing anti-social idea. And somewhat destines people to the real life from television life.

2. TLL 101 and ENG 101 got mixed!!!

Today, we were discussing about articles which take place at our literature anthology.

We talked about Reorganization Era's author's mission.

Their common mission was "educating society". They were writing to their books and to newspapers for making the Ottoman Society more qualified and some of them wanted to awake them from their "wrong life".

(we can except 200 years ago their "Media" was books and newspaper, not television , not internet.)

The authors were calling themselves "Father". They thought they must educate the people who has got lower chances for improving themselves.

So, i want to take your attention to our era. Namık Kemal, who was one the pioneer of this self denying trend made a wish in one of his articles. In this wish he expected two century later-he means at 21. century- our country's situation will be better.

Okey, almost in every way we imroved a lot. But in the Media?
200 years ago , there were people like this, who is trying to utilize the media.

However, I think in our days, media is not thinks a lot, except earning money.

I will write more about articles which we discussed in at second week soon.

1. Deeply Looking at the Story: Enormous Radio, and Adapting it to our Real Life

This week we read the Enormous radio, and had class discussion about it.

And here are my personal thoughts which i composed after reading the enormous radio:

Everybody has him/her own tragedies. (some has got bigger, some has got smaller)

Individual's personal life can't contain only one color. In other words, we can't create to ourself only a pink life where everything is going perfect, we are the best featured etc. Or it can't be a completely black life where everything is going bad , everybody hate us etc.

At this story , our characters are trying to create a pink life. They are trying for cover their mistakes, and bad experiences. But they are forgetting this "hiding efforts" are like wood in the water. Let me explain. Remember, when you want to sink the wood ground while it is swimming, you must push it hard. And always must stay your hand like this, for prevent surface. And when you a bit forget to push, it will want to surface again. And if you forget to push, it will come to surface stronger and faster. It shows we can't hide our wicknesses until eternal. The better way to forget them is trying to fix them. It will give less pain.

And we must learn to live with bad news, quarells, illnesses. Actually, without them we can't realise the value of what we have got.

Another point i wanted to highlight is answer of this question:

"Does possession of the radio give the Westcotts any advantage over their
neighbors? Disadvantage? Explain."

By listening only a little part of conversation, Irene can't decide what kind of people they are.

For example:

Lady who shout to her children:
Maybe she was telling always properly her children to go to school until that day. But the children didn't understand it and she decided to be more strict.
Husband who quarrel with him wife for not playing piano:
Maybe the lady who plays the piano was really sellfish and doing nothing for her family. That's why her husband was quarrelling with her.

In my opinion the main mistake was in this story their motto's was "there must be no roughness , for a happy life". But this is not true, sometimes happiest people come from the worst places for living.

I want to give an example from one of my favorite movie: Slumdog Millionaire.
Remember the two brother. They were living the worst life for a little children. Although their tragedies, they can be happy and OK.They were happy while watching operas,while watching Tac Mahal, while travelling by train.