Strength Quests Creating My Future English Literature Essay

Strength Quests Creating My Future English Literature Essay Every person in this world has a set of themes that makes them who they are. Whether you choose to agree with the themes or strengths is entirely up to you. The fact of the matter is your life consists of these qualities. When I first looked at my five signature themes via Strengths Quest, I was unsure if some of the themes actually fit me. I saw some qualities in those themes that might fit me but the rest of the qualities I thought were nothing like me. It was not until I sat down and really thought to myself, maybe theyre right. My whole life flashed before my eyes. Who was I? I never really knew who exactly I was. I mean I had an assumption, but never really thought or cared enough about what my main strengths were. The program picked out five main themes for me, which were: futuristic, belief, adaptability, input and command. These were five broad themes that described my goals, my strengths and everything else inside my head. This described me. It is very important that I truly come to understand what each of these five quests mean to me because eventually I will need to use these in the future for a countless number of reasons that include relationships, friendships and my career. The career I want to pursue in my life is a history professor. I want to teach college students the last few hundred years of U.S. history. The objective of this paper is to explain how I am going to use these five quests towards my teaching career and the rest of my future because how I interpret these strengths will greatly affect the outcome of my life. It is my goal to understand me. Belief The most important strength that came about me was belief. To myself this is the most important aspect in my life and I truly agree with the fact that the program thinks its one of my main quests. It describes belief as having certain core values that are enduring. It also says it causes you to be family oriented, altruistic and even spiritual. (www.strengthquest.com). All of the above is full of so much truth. Out of those I really want to talk about my spiritual belief. I am a Christian and am very proud of it. God is the most important aspect in my life. In whatever I do in my future, I want to reflect my religion. This includes my future job. I want to show people how Christianity and peoples beliefs effected how our country was formed. Most people say their spiritual beliefs bring them closer to loved ones and they help them to solve problems in their life (Walsh, 2010). I truly believe that my belief and religion will help me solve my main personal problems. The results say tha t consistency is the foundation for all your relationships. My life is full of ups and downs, if I am not consistent with it. If I stop acting like a good Christian, I fall away from God. If I stop being good to my girlfriend, our relationship starts to crumble. These are many reasons why this one strength to me is the most important of them all. It affects my everyday life and will be the number one thing in my future even when I am dead. I know religion has had such a huge influence on this planets history and I want to tell the all the people about it and even relate it to how it influences todays society. This is how I will be able to relate belief into my future. Futuristic is another strength that came up and in a huge way, supports how I feel on life. No matter how much I dont want to admit it, I am always looking towards the future. Im not saying its a bad thing, I just sometimes think too far ahead. I have my future planned out in my head, not in black in white but in full color, almost like a painting on a wall. Its sort of funny because its written that futuristic people tend to have people look to them to describe their visions.(www.strengthquest.com) This happens to me all the time as people always want me to describe my strange, detailed descriptions of my future. People always tend to cling to me and follow what I want to do, because they realize that my thoughts are as real as it gets. The world has the resources to address its challenges (Docksai, 2010). What I get from this is, the world has the tools for me to succeed so I need to use them. Later on in my life, being futuristic can only be thought of as successful. It is said th at everything in life is considered the future and if that is true, how can I go wrong? If I am always looking towards my future, planning towards my future, and preparing for the future, nothing can stop me from doing what I want to do. Whether or not I like the fact that I am futuristic I have to embrace it. The more I think about it, the more I see it as an important strength for my future. Go figure. Command There was a strength that made the top five that I didnt necessarily agree with at first. And that was command. I never was the one to take charge or to lead other people. However I started looking into it more and it said things like you show no discomfort with imposing your views on others. I realized I really dont, and I looked even farther down and realized I really do and wouldnt mind taking command in a lot of situations. I always feel that if I get an opinion set in my mind, I have to share it with everyone around me. As time goes on, I found that your speech and actions will say a lot about you and how you treat others (Rivera, 2009). This is the honest to god truth. You can tell what a person is like based on what they do and the way they talk. Having command as a part of your self-being can never be a bad thing in my eyes. It shows you have initiative and are ready to take the next big leap. When looking for a teaching job, this can be a huge deciding factor whether you get the job. Whenever someone around me is in command, I always look up to them. I look up to them as being special or I think highly of them. People really do look up to people with command. This is what I want in my life because I want to be regarded in a special manner and be treated differently than my peers because it shows that people who have take command, gain much more respect. Adaptability Adaptability is a very important way of thinking. Basically, you live in the moment. Honestly, this ties in a little with futuristic. Thats why I wasnt surprised when this showed up on the list. Youre not seeing the future as a fixed destination but a place you create with the choices you make in current times. The biggest aspect that adaptability affects in your life is stress. Stress, in my mind, is ranked as one of the top killers among humans in the world. The way it affects the brain is terrifying. A lot of times when people worry about the choices they are going to make in the future, it tends to stress them out and worries them. If you were to just focus on the decisions you have to make now, the present times and the future will not be such a worry. Its always good to look towards the future, but dont worry about your decision making for your future right now, worry about your decision making for this time period. A month or two ago, I was somewhat worried about which college s were hiring history professors, which college would give me the best education to major in history and so forth. Then I realized, things will work out as long as I just focus on the schooling Im getting now and just taking my time. I became a much happier person when I finally discovered how to fully embrace adaptability. Input It is to my understanding that everyone in life has something that they collect, whether it is a certain item, words, facts or thoughts. This is what is called having input. I am inquisitive. The reason I collect the things I do is because it is interesting to me. I have many things in my life that I collect, which include things like memories, music, and photographs. Do I keep a lot of the things that I collect because I am too afraid to throw them away or let them go? That could be true, but I have this feeling in the back of my ahead that one day these things might become valuable one day but they are still valuable to me right now. A big reason why I keep some of my world war II memorabilia and not sell it is because one day I could possibly bring these into my classroom when were studying about the Germans and their equipment during WWII. I can tell you that when I look in the through my old wooden chest that I do revisit the event or evening, recalling the birthday party or the carnival ride (Greenman, 2005). I love this quote because the same goes for me. When I look back at everything I collected, for the most part I can remember the story that goes along with it. Later on in life, they could really come in handy. For example, those photographs that I could never just give or throw away could be sought after by a huge graphic designing company for a commercial or a billboard. You really just dont know what the things you collect mean to others. What I do collect I do because it gives me a special feeling that reminds me of my childhood and gives me a sort of fresh feeling. Having input has helped me save some of my precious items that I really could use to show examples in my future classroom and I plan on continuing to use the theme to help me collect materials for my future classes. Conclusion When I was first asked to take the test that would decide my five Strength Quests, I cannot lie, I was skeptical. I thought it was just going to be another one of those tests that tried to figure out who I was and would not have any sort of effect on me. Never did I think that self realization would come into play and a review of my whole life come crashing down. The test really did explain me on a piece of paper printed out. I must have looked at the results over nine thousand times. Every single strength described who I was and gave me a new sense of how to portray my future. With these being my strengths, the smartest thing I can do is to use them to my best ability and be the best professor I can be. This world needs to be ready for the next great history professor.

Jean-Paul Sartre Essay

Existentialism is a philosophy about life that says being is more important than the indispensable everyday occurrences. It acknowledges an individuals freedom to choose and says with this knowing there comes an immense sense of responsibility. Despair, hopelessness and anxiety are characteristic of a person struggling with existential thoughts. Nihilism sums up this condition by stating that all values are baseless, nothing is foreseeable and that life itself is meaningless. The characters in A Clean Well Lighted Place and A Day’s Wait show signs of being both aware and unaware of these elements of existentialism. In the first story, A Clean Well Lighted Place, the old drunk man represents someone who realizes he has no actual plan or fate. His despair is over the realization that theoretically the afterlife does not exist. The drunken man and older waiter share this despair not only because they both realize a man’s need for a clean, well-lighted place but also because they both struggle to fill a void. The older waiter’s acknowledgement of nothingness in life is evident when he recites the prayer but fills in the perceived nouns God and heaven with nada or nothing. He feels a void with this realization that keeps him awake at night. His assumption that others share his insomnia is somewhat correct but what they, the drunken man and the waiter, actually share is a void. The young waiter has a wife to go home to and a bed, the old drunken man has a bed to go to and a niece that looks after him. However, the young waiter has a connection with his wife, a perceived similar view of life while the old drunk bares his anxious perception of the world alone because he is well aware that no one can share his world with him. His peculiarity reinforces his aloneness because the more he tries to understand himself and his own choices the farther out of reach he is from another person. The old drunken man serves as a catalyst for the older waiter, who himself is also alone in his thoughts. The young waiter cannot understand why the old man feels despair if he has wealth. He is not aware of the statement that existence precedes essence. To him having money and all the other propaganda of a well-lived life are what is important not mere existence itself. The two older characters seem aware of this notion, yet they seem to struggle because they are uneasy with the void felt after having life’s propaganda and no meaning. The young waiter’s daily disturbances block him from reaching this realization because he does not have the secured survival that would leave him to question existence. People who have their food, shelter and clothing taken care of like say the elite are able to delve into more thought concerning the afterlife and life’s meaning. Edna, our character in The Awakening, never worked nor worried about survival and so faced existential anxiety. Children, usually the more sensitive and observant types, may find the time amidst their carefree playing to wonder why they are here and what may come afterwards. The boy, in A Day’s Wait, becomes ill and he takes the illness as a threat to his immortality. He seems upset yet oddly mature about this perceived fate. His mature handle on the possibility that he might die is, in my opinion, a sign that he has thought about the afterlife. His maturity is obvious when he tells his father he does not mind if he leaves the room and when he would not allow anyone to come near him for fear that the illness will spread. The boy has little fight in him and he seems aware that dying is out of his control. His morbid attitude affects his father who shares his son’s anguish over the acknowledgement that afterwards there is nothingness. The father laughs at his son’s misconception about the temperature but in his walk, I sense he knows what his son is dealing with. When he is pleased to find the covey near the house after killing two birds, I think Hemmingway is hinting towards the father’s sensitive mood. The boy may not exactly coin his thoughts as â€Å"existential†, though he more or less may have an instinctual knowing of the meaninglessness in existential thought.

Digestion and Important Functions

Anatomy &  Physiology Digestion is the process by which food is broken down into smaller pieces so that the  body can use them to build and  nourish cells and to provide energy. Digestion involves the mixing of food, its movement through the  digestive tract (also known as the alimentary canal), and  the chemical breakdown of larger molecules into  smaller molecules. Every  piece of food we eat has to  be broken down into smaller nutrients that the body can absorb, which is why it takes hours to fully digest food. The digestive system is made up of the digestive tract.This consists of a long  tube of  organs that runs from the mouth to the anus and includes the esophagus, stomach, small intestine, and large intestine, together with the liver  , gall  bladder  , and  pancreas, which  produce important secretions for digestion that drain into the small intestine. The digestive tract in an adult is about 30  feet long. Mouth and Salivary Glands Digestion – begins in  the mouth, where chemical and mechanical digestion occurs. Saliva or spit, produced  by the salivary glands (located under  the tongue and near the lower  Ã‚  jaw), is released into the mouth.Saliva begins to break down the food, moistening it and making it easier to  swallow. A digestive enzyme(called amylase) in the saliva begins to break  down the carbohydrates(starches and sugars). One of the most important functions of the mouth is  chewing. Chewing allows food to be mashed into a soft mass that is easier to swallow and digest later. Esophagus – Once food is swallowed, it enters the esophagus, a muscular tube that is about10 inches long. The esophagus is located between the throat and the stomach. Muscular  wavelike contractions known as peristalsis push the food down through  the esophagus to the stomach.A muscular ring (called the cardiac sphincter) at the end of the esophagus allows food to enter the stomach, and, then, it  sque ezes shut to prevent food and fluid from going back up the esophagus. Stomach – a J-shaped organt hat lies between the esophagus and the small intestine in the upper  abdomen. The stomach has 3 main functions: to  store the swallowed food and liquid; to mix up the food,  liquid, and digestive juices produced by the stomach; and to slowly empty its contents into the  small intestine. Small Intestine – Most digestion and absorption of food occurs in the small intestine.The small intestine is a narrow,  twisting tube that occupies most of  the lower abdomen between the stomach and the beginning of the large  intestine. It extends about 20 feet in length. The small intestine consists of 3 parts: the duodenum (the C-shaped part), the  jejunum  (the coiled midsection), and the ileum(the last section). The small  intestine has 2 important functions. First, the digestive process is completed here  by enzymes and other substances made by intestinal cells, the pancreas, and  the liver. Glands in the  intestine walls secrete enzymes that breakdown starches and sugars.The pancreas secretes enzymes into the  small intestine that help  breakdown carbohydrates, fats, and proteins. The liver produces  bile, which is stored in the gallbladder. Bile helps to make fat molecules (which otherwise arenot soluble in water) soluble, so they can be absorbed by  the body. Second, the small intestine absorbs the nutrients from the digestive process. The inner wall of the small lintestine is covered by millions of  tiny fingerlike projections called villi. The villi are covered with even tinier projections called microvilli.The  combination of villi and microvilli increase the surface area of  the small intestine greatly, allowing absorption of  nutrients to occur. Undigested material travels next  to the large intestine. Large intestine – forms an upside down U over  the coiled small intestine. It begins at the lower rig ht-hand side of the body and ends  on the lower left-hand side. The large intestine is about 5-6 feet long. It  has 3 parts: the cecum, the colon, and the rectum. The cecum is a  pouch at the beginning of the  large intestine. This area allows food to pass from the small intestine to the large intestine.The colon is where fluids and salts are absorbed and extends from the cecum to the rectum. The  last part of the large intestine is the rectum, which is where feces(waste material) is stored before leaving the body through the anus. The main  job of the large intestine is to  remove water and salts (electrolytes) from the undigested material and to form solid waste that can be excreted. Bacteria in the large intestine help to  break down the  undigested materials. The remaining contents of the  large intestine are moved toward the rectum, where feces are stored until they leave the body through the anus as a  bowel movement.

Finding Magic Within The Wild - 1394 Words

Finding Magic Within the Wild To McCandless and many others that share the same love for nature, it plays a very important role in several choices made by him throughout the film. In retrospect, the same can be applied to SpongeBob SquarePants on an easier to understand level. Now, SpongeBob doesn’t leave his wealth and his family to live on his own, but he does have magic in the wild, just like the magic bus Chris McCandless used as shelter throughout the weeks. This was called the magic conch and it gave SpongeBob and his acquaintance Patrick much needed things whilst being stranded in the wild. Now, the magic bus did not provide much for Christopher as he hunted primarily on his own, but it did provide shelter and as long as it†¦show more content†¦The magic bus was located up a hiking trail in Alaska which most people would presumably call it â€Å"bumblef—k†. Yes, it is located in the middle of nowhere much like the magic conch’s usage in the middle of nowhere. The magic bus had a different type of magic as compared to the magic conch. The magic bus could be said to have symbolized good fortune and search for solitude. The good fortune is described as â€Å"That he stumbles upon the old Fairbanks City bus in the middle of Alaskan bush is an amazing stroke of luck that not only helps Chris to survive in the wild for 113 days, but also gives him a place to contemplate his life and beliefs, as the philosophical inscriptions he writes on the bus’s walls reiterate† (Litcharts, 1). Christopher was given this place to help gather his thoughts and fully look through his idea of parting off into the wild. This bus was â€Å"magic† also in the sense that without this bus, his death may have occurred a lot earlier and he wouldn’t have survived the 113 days that he did. There are plenty of animals that the bus could have possibly protected him from. With the bus symbolizing the luck and good fortune, it is seemingly lucky that acros s he ventures in Alaska on his own, he comes across an abandoned bus. This is luck because how many abandoned buses are you going to come across if you are exploring the wild like Christopher had? Well, to most people, the answer is very little if any at all. The magic that the bus provided differed from the