10. The Last POST and my self evaluation

As it is obvious in the title this post is my last post for the ENG101 class. In this last post I will try to evaluate my performance in Eng101 class this year in a really honest manner. I am aware that I have not participated well enough for my knowledge of the subject and my ease in expressing myself during class discussions. I also took this kind of a response from my grade 12 teacher but recently I omit and isolate myself from the class seeming like I do not care about it. I am aware that I have not posted my blog posts in any kind of frequency(since doing my assignments in the last minute is my whorst habbit)
The most important fact that I faced while writing these posts was that writing them once a week was nothing so hard nor forcing and I would probably lose some remarkable points for not writing them.
Coming to my last sentence, I would really want to thank Sonja and my classmates for the colorful discussion sessions they made me experience throughout the year.

Mehmet

9. The Truman Show

As our Final Oral Presentation, our group presented the film "The Truman Show". Since this movie is honestly the best movie I have ever watched and I have watched it approximately 15 times before, it seemed as if it would be a piece of cake for me. Considering the feedbacks from our previous practice presentation, Mali and I changed our parts with Selen and Emin, also making a couple of slight changes to make each of the group members' work equal.
I personally think that our presentation was really fine and could not understand why the audience did not ask any questions nor start a discussion just as the practice presentation's end...

8. Pub Quiz

On the day which we had our Pub Quiz, I was so confident of my group member even if did not know much about them. After winning the first round of the quiz with a 2-point lead, my confidence grew more. Even though Sonja told us that we were responsible from all the class work, the assignment deadlines, work percenteges and guides, I personally did not study for them, not expecting a precise date or percent.
What happened afterwards made us wish we had the same performance as we had in the first round but unfortunately this did not happened and we had the lowest points. Although we were the last I want to thank my group members for their memorizations and studies for the quiz:)

7. About Tough Guise

Having focused on various themes and subject in elementary and highschool English lessons, I have never done the theme "gender" and doing it this year made me think that we should have done this theme before, not in elementary school but highschool possibly. Not doing these kinds of themes, I also have not seen documentary films such as the "Tough Guise" by Jackson Katz. Thinking that it is nonsense and a waste of time at first sight, the movie seemed reasonable afterwards. This movie helped me realize the secret sexist messages tried to be given to the viewers in many movies. These movies that were given as examples included many of them that I have watched and hav not noticed any strange thing. I did not know that the size and muscularity of the toys such as ActionMAN or many various hero's has increased whereas the size of Barbies and many other girl toys has decreased and they have gotten more fragile.

6. Practice Presentation

In this post I would like to talk about our oral practice presentation. We presented the short story"A Woman on a Roof" by Doris Lessing. After we were assigned this book, none of my group members, including me has read the story since ,to be honest, we were too lazy and thought that there were so much time ahead to pesent.I understood that this story was not that much boring after reading it when a couple of days were left to present.
It seemed as if there were no problems while presenting but after we go our feedbacks, we realized that we had made a miscalculation when dividing the work to the group members because the feedbacks said that me and Mali talked alot and Selen and Emin talked really less compared to us. Considering these feedbacks, a more equal division of work will be done in the final presentation.

5.Killing Us Softly 3

Trying to prepare our first practice presentation, watched the film "Killing Us Softly 3" by Jean Kilbourne. This documentary typed film made me realize the secret messages the media and advertisement companies are trying to give especially to women through the advertisements they post to magazines, newspapers and that air on TV. Naturally as a male person, I do not pay alot of attention when I see woman perfumes, clothes, cosmetics, kitchen furniture, etc. since these products are usually for the usage of women. When Jean Kilbourne emphasized these ads that showed the women obedient, quiet and only suitable for house work I was irritated. Apart from these the most shocking part was the ads showing the women as sexual objects; giving various of sexual poses, having most of their clothes of and some fully naked.
After watching the film, I realized that with these kind of sexist messages, these media organs and advertisement companies has killed my sense of precision softly

4.Azucena and the Swamp

Remembering the subjects we have done in the first couple of lessons, Isabel Allende's story "And of clay are we created" was the most remarkable upon other stories and photographs. In this post I want to focus on my worries on what really happened there when the little girl named Azucena was trapped in that swamp. I am not talking about the story part nor the emotional bond between the photographer and the little girl; I still can not understand why they could not take her out of there considering any kind of harm she could get. Remembering the discussion in the class, someone said that she would have lost her legs, somebody said her skin was falling off, someone said she had something wrong in her eyes...
Thinking of these responses on her and her tragic death, I am asking: What possible thing could have happened worse than her being dead?

3.REAL(?)ITY TV

As I mentioned on my previous blog, I am not a fan of any kind of media workers nor organisations. In fact, I bear a grudge against them for some unknown reasons:) In this post, I want to talk about Reality TV, the biggest worldwide feature of the popular media.
I admit that even though I say I do not like them, I watched the first reality TV program that was aired in Turkey, it was named "Biri Bizi Gözetliyor", the Turkish version of Big Brother. Thinking now, I realize that I had watched these not because of voyeurism or the fights and arguments inside but I watched them because it was something new to us and everybody was talking about it in those days.Naturally, a new program seemed really interesting to me and I tried to watch it whenever I could.
Watching the reality Tv programs nowadays make me wonder if anyone believes that the things shown are not script simulated but real, matching with the word "Reality"

2.Media Vultures

Thinking of the very first topics we have done in class, I remembered how angry I was to the any kind of media workers such as photographers, cameramen, paparazzis, news reporters, etc. I do not know the reason but it probably lies somewhere in my childhood watching any kind of TV programs that exposes the lives of Turkish or worldwide celebrities. Starting from childhood I do not like my personal life to be seen by others or asked questions about it, I know that it is silly saying this but I just wanted to tell you the reason why I am so prejudiced about them.
The photograph of the little boy and the vulture is one of the most shocking and effective photographs I have ever seen. I saw this photo 4 or 5 years ago and listened the story behind it: A photographer named Kevin Carter took this photo(which made him win a Pulitzer Prize afterwards) and he just chased the vulture afterwards, leaving the child behind(who probably died soon after the photo was taken).
Now I am asking, is this what wee call news photographing? Or Art?

1.Very Very Very late but better than nothing...

Hello Sonja, Hello my dear classmates, Hello everyone,
This very first blog post of mine could enter the Guiness Book of World Records for being the latest assignment ever done. As usual, I am doing it as we approach to the last turn of the term thinking that a couple of things written in my blog is better than a blank page...