Dirty Dancing

During this week forty six years ago in 1968, my grandfather was in the same position I am currently in today. He was in his beginning weeks of college at Illinois State University. Everything was new to him; new people, a new school, and a new place where he would live for the next four years. He lived in a dormitory, however the building he was originally supposed to stay in was under construction when it came to the start of the school year. He was temporarily put in a double room that housed…

1. The Walls Children are greatly more responsible than average children of an equal age. They are expected to take care of themselves and each other; even a new born baby is thrown into the mix. However the Walls children should not be emancipated from their parents at this age even if they are very responsible. The children still need their parents, “I crawled along the railroad embankment to the road and sat down to wait for Mom and Dad…” (Walls 30), Jeanette would have sat on the side of the…

while drinking mulled wine and Whams! Last Christmas is playing for the fifths time. The main lecture hall is dipped in red and fairy lights glimmer. Alcohol for those above 18, teachers have glowing cheeks like girls, and some of the girls are dancing. Glitter falls from the wrapping. Black Dior eye shadow. Thank you so much! Calvin Klein’s Eternity. We hug. After the second mulled wine…

I suppose I should start this by addressing the Elephant in the room. It’s your Birthday! The day where you celebrate another year in your life, and another day I am blessed to have you. But something else is unique about today. I am going to do what I should have done a long time ago, and tell you exactly how blessed I am to have you in my life. I know this is cliché but I honestly don’t know where to start. I suppose I’ll just jump in to it. We met nearly a year ago; at a time when neither…

“A hero is someone who had given his or her life to something bigger than oneself” - Joseph Campbell (bigthink.com). In other words it means you do something that changes someone else's life positively. Within these heroes there is sometimes a Heroic Journey. The Heroic Journey is the basic path a hero takes to become a hero. Recently I read The Hobbit and watched the film Moana. These two stories have a hero who goes on a Heroic Journey. The Hobbit when compared to Moana has a better/stronger…

tried to block everything out and imagine my grandma in the stands smiling. But before the music started, I closed my eyes and bowed my head to say a quick prayer . I took a deep breath and released everything that worried me. Next thing I knew I was dancing swiftly and smoothly with my legs kicking gracefully in the air as if I was a ballerina. My pom poms glistening in the bright spotlight that shined on me as If were a star. I felt so relieved from everything and free as If I was born to do…

Cryptosporidium amongst many possible others (Reyes, 2012), (Johnson, 2011), (Men’s fitness magazine, 2016). Fortunately a majority of pathogens is prevented from being transmitted with the use of disinfectant on touched surfaces, the proper separation of dirty linens from clean with the use of designated bins, proper maintenance of chlorine levels in the pool, and properly cleaning the facility. The rest of prevention is up to the member to ensure that they wash their hands, wear flip flops in…

considered weird, and weird was not what I wanted to be. After learning the term ‘blue collar’ I realized that my dad’s profession separated my family from other families and I was not proud of it. In my town, manual labor is seen as trashy or even dirty work for immigrants. I knew that my dad works hard for my family and is very successful, but the separation I felt stuck in my head. In order to mask the inferior appearance I thought I possessed, I made sure I dressed as similar as possible…

1. The definition of character as it relates to literature is a person, animal or creature that takes part in the action of a story, play or other literary work. To demonstrate I chose the movie The Blind Side and the main character Michael Oher. After completing the descriptions of the types of characters listed I had to go back and add more to Michael's character. When I first wrote the paper all I saw was that Michael was the main character in the story, he is the character the story is…

a “beast”. When Peter just found out the pub where he met with Kemble, the author marks the pub sign “showed a donkey and was indeed remarkably dirty”(2). The pub gave Peter a terrible feeling at the beginning. However, after he met with Kemble a few times, he thought that the sign looked more like “a pale horse” (7), rather than “a dirty donkey”. A dirty donkey always leaves people a terrible impression, while a pale horse symbolizes brilliance. Peter’s feeling to the sign tells reader that…