Joe Lynn Turner

Being Brilliant has Become the New Average What is the true definition of intelligence? People talk of common sense, “street-smarts,” “book-smarts,” GPA, IQ test, and various other standardized tests to determine their intelligence. In the Oxford Dictionary intelligence is defined as “the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills.” Society has limited and labeled ourselves into groups based on a phrase or number and has greatly wounded our possibility for achieving great and limitless innovations. The “we are all winners” society had the unintended consequence of altering the purpose of schools; changing them from places of expression and finding yourself to a place void of individualism and forced perfection. In this paper, I will argue that the stunt on creativity has inflicted a debilitating sense of false pride and intelligence in our youth. First, I will focus on schooling. During a child’s developmental stages they spend about 50% of their time either at school or carrying out things for school. Somewhere in the recent past the idea of intelligence and creativity going hand-in-hand was lost in translation and the idea of striving for constant perfection became the new schooling system. “Does great innovation come from encouraging creativity in the classroom and hoping it will translate into creativity in the real world? Or does it come from rigorously training our best and brightest minds and then allowing them the freedom to innovate?” (Wai). In simpler…

Ruined is a play about the effects on women, specifically women living in a brothel outside of a small town, from the civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Each character in the play has their own objectives that help the story evolve and reach the climax. Elements of good and evil are expressed through the actions of the characters and because of this, the play is considered to be a melodrama. Along with being a melodrama, this play is a story and therefore illustrates multiple…

Lynn Nottage’s play Ruined takes place in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The play opens in a bar that is run by a woman named Mama. A man named Christian arrives, offering Mama several goods he has acquired. He also leaves Mama with two girls, Sophie and Salima. At first Mama refuses to take in Sophie because she has been sexually assaulted so many times that she is “ruined” (Nottage, 12). However, Christian pleads with her because Sophie is his niece. Sophie and Salima work at the bar, along…

Nat Turner's Confessions and Frederick Douglass' The Heroic Slave The names of Nat Turner and Frederick Douglass are remembered because of the fame that they earned as black Americans during pre-Civil War slave period. However, their names color the pages of history books for widely different reasons: Nat Turner led one of the greatest slave revolts in almost 150 years of slavery, while Frederick Douglass obtained his freedom and education, going on to become a renowned speaker, author, and…

The symbolic approach to ritual was first written about by Victor Turner (1920-1983), who studied the Ndembu tribe of Zambia, and studied their use of symbols in rituals and rites of passage. Clifford Geertz (1926-2006) was an American anthropologist whose largest and most important works were on the Balinese cockfights in Indonesia, and defined culture as a web of ideas expressed in symbols, that can have multiple meanings. Stanley Tambiah (1929-2014) was a Professor Emeritus at Harvard that…

Nat Turner was born a slave in a Virginia plantation owned by Benjamin Turner. He was very religious and believed that when he was little, he talked about events that had occurred before his birth. He claimed that he received divine visions and that god had spoken to him. According to Turner, the insurrection was god’s will that he was prophesized to carry out. These murders were carried out to terrorize whites, yet abolitionists still supported their actions, little did they know that the men…

“Do not give up, stay strong, keep your head up high, keep trying, work hard, you got this…” these are few of the many different phrases my best friend has said to me. These words demonstrate the motivation that all of us need in order to be strong and successful in this world. Although we all go through difficult situations in our lives, we learn how to deal with each and every one of them. In fact, we all have someone that we go to with our problems, that has greatly impacted our lives and/or…

Wrinkles start to show as early as age 35 and studies have shown that these wrinkles are not attributed to smoking or elevated UV levels from sun exposure[5]. Treatment options Height and other physical features like the webbed neck of individuals with Turner’s syndrome can affect how they feel about their self esteem and how they feel about their body image. This, in turn, can affect peer relationships. In a study done by Cragg and Lafreniere, participants were provided with a survey that…

Turner faces the most conflicts with his dad, Reverend Buckminster. It is hard enough being the minister's son but not being able to see his only friend because she's black. Being a Buckminster requires being a role model to the town of Phippsburg and to God himself. In “Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy” by Gary D. Schmidt, Turner is involved with a lot of person vs person conflicts. Turner gets in physical and emotional conflicts with his dad, Lizzie Bright, Mrs.Cobbs, Willis Hurd, and so…

"The Fires of Jubilee" occurred in Southampton, Virginia in the 1800's. The story comes to realization amid a period in which enslavement was the standard, particularly in the South. It depicts the battles and disorder of one such slave named Nat Turner in his journey to pick up his opportunity. It tells the story of a man destined to be a slave and his mission to amend his fate, which at last prompts to his sad demise. Nat Turner was not just a smart man, he knew how to read and compose;…