College: Game Over
College! The land of financial aid, first cars, and finally being considered an adult by your parents! Or at least, that’s what I had thought. My college experience and the things that I learned and lost throughout my journey through college can be related to a short story by Mark Twain titled, “Two Views of The Mississippi”. This is a short story detailing the author’s mental struggle as he realizes the gradual shift of his perspective from one of awe and wonder to one of a clinical and logical nature. In recognizing this shift he realizes that he had lost the passion he first held for this river and that his appreciation of it was fading. The traits that I have gained and lost while in college are similar to Twain’s gains
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He speaks of the irreplaceable knowledge that he has gained throughout his travels on this river stating, “The face of the water, in time, became a wonderful book‐‐a book that was a dead language to the uneducated passenger, but which told its mind to me without reserve”, but Twain laments over the clinical nature of his thoughts, stating “the romance and beauty were all gone from the river. All the value any feature of it had for me now was the amount of usefulness it could furnish toward compassing the safe piloting of a steamboat” and seems remorseful that his views of the river have changed. Maybe knowledge is a double edged sword. Throughout his writing Twain stresses that he has gained important knowledge, but he may have also been warning the reader that as he gained knowledge he lost something just as important. Twain’s story carries a solemn and bittersweet message when he states, “I had made a valuable acquisition. But I had lost something, too. I had lost something which could never be restored to me while I lived. […] a day came when I began to cease from noting the glories and the charms which the moon and the sun and the twilight wrought upon the river’s face; another day came when I ceased altogether to note them” Regretting the loss of his acknowledgement, Twain recognized that his increasing knowledge of the river was caused the river’s beauty to lose …show more content…
First attending college was similar to jumping to the extra hard difficulty on a game that I never tried to play seriously. The first few weeks weren’t tough at all, they were low level trolls and goblins that I, the 17 year old hung-over dark elf, could handle without any problems. The next few levels were oddly hard for me to keep up but I managed, and gradually it became difficult for me to keep up all together. Right when I felt like giving up; right when I thought I had enough; right when my health bars were reaching zero, I managed to defeat the rest of the low level goblins and take a much needed breather. Then WHAM! There’s a boss level monster called midterms! I wasn’t prepared for any of this! Not the homework or the bullshit system named MyMAthLab and definitely not the midterms! I ended up dropping the majority of my classes and barely passing the ones that I still kept. After a while, I started to view college as a reality, not just a game. It became more than just a place to work towards, it was a place to work past. College was eating breakfast in the car on the way to school, and living in the library between classes and falling asleep in your car. It was actually doing a foreign ritual called studying and humbling myself enough to ask for help. It wasn’t the fun, simplistic challenge that I had expected it would be, and quite frankly, college beat my ass until
The first half of Life on the Mississippi was ideally written and reading the extremely detailed and captivating account of Twain's apprenticeship was quite enjoyable. However, the second part of the book was not as fascinating. The short stories were frequently only two pages long and were not very well connected to be a clear read. Though a few of the characters Twain met on his journey were quite interesting, the majority of them merely served as an example of a certain characteristic which he wished to further discuss. This may be due to the fact that Twain was much older by the time he made the trip in the second half of the book, and he had grown aware of the various faults of humanity and thus wrote more analytically and critically than he did in the first half to reflect his change in character and the change of the times he lived in.
81). However, this reverent tone shifts as he mentions that he soon began to “...cease from noting the glories and charms which the moon and the sun and the twilight wrought upon the river’s face” (Fader/Rabinowitz pg. 81). The previously appreciative essay morphs by the third paragraph with the first sentence being “No, the romance and beauty were all gone from the river” (Fader/Rabinowitz pg. 81) Twain has clearly grown up, allowing his view of his environment to become sullied. The wonder of the world has been dulled with all of his experiences piling on top of one another. His attitude towards the river and everything he used to associate with it changed for a more pessimistic
“They won’t ever hunt the river for anything but my dead carcass. They’ll soon get tired of that, and won’t bother no more about me. All right; I can stop anywhere I want to. Jackson’s Island is good enough for me; I know that island pretty well, and nobody ever comes there” (Twain 34). “I lit out mighty quick, I tell you” (Twain 42).
At the end of his journey with the river, he reflects upon himself the way of the river by making the analogy of the knowledge he gained and a doctor. The “beauty’s cheek” (par.3) is to the doctor as the river is to Twain. He asks himself, “Does he ever see her beauty at all…” (par.3) meaning that as the doctor looks at someone with rosy cheeks, he looks at everything through the knowledge he’s learned as a doctor and does not look at it simply as rosy cheeks. This relates to Twain due to the fact that as he looks at the river, he does not look at it for all of its beauty, but looks at it through the knowledge he has gained about the river. At the very end of the piece, Twain asks the doctor if he “wonders whether he has gained most or lost most by learning his trade?” (par.3) but he is truly asking himself that question about the river. He believes that he has lost most because he now cannot look at the river for its original beauty because it is
College gives students endless opportunities. During this time, students are able to grow and develop academically and individually. It also provides students with
Coming to college as an adult, we have many expectations and preconceptions of what college will or will not be. The expectations we have can influence our college life for the better or the worse. My experience since starting college has been an interesting one. People have misconceptions about college because they do not know what to expect. After doing some research, I have concluded that there are three major factors that are often misunderstood about college life. The first is the financial aspect of college. Second, is the relationship between the professors and students. Third is time management. These three factors play an important role in why people are afraid to go down the path to college.
"Mark Twain, which is a pseudonym for Samuel Langhorne Clemens, was born in 1835, and died in 1910. He was an american writer and humorist. Maybe one of the reasons Twain will be remembered is because his writings contained morals and positive views. Because Twain's writing is so descriptive, people look to his books for realistic interpretations of places, for his memorable characters, and his ability to describe his hatred for hypocrisy and oppression. HE believed he could write. Most authors relied on other people and what they said, but because Twain was so solitary, he made himself so successful. 1"
Set in the Antebellum South, Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn documents a landscape that differs greatly from the poised and picturesque scene associated with the contemporary South. Today’s South is synonymous with with ice cold pitchers of tea, ceaseless etiquette exuded on wraparound porches, and seemingly romantic drawls. However, the South that Huck resides in, tells a different story. Specifically, his South is a place where suitable behavior is associated with the acceptance of slavery, and racist slurs pepper every sentence. As a result, any deviation from these behaviors leaves an individual ironically branded with a connotation of being uncivilized. Due to this distorted view of ethics, any character with even a shred
Nelson Mandela once said, “ Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” As the world grew, Mark Twain and Langston Hughes became writers, poets, and so on. With the knowledge that Hughes and Twain had, they made impacts on the world. However, the ability that these two men had allowed them to be motivational historical figures. Still today, their works and ideas for writing are still helpful to other writers. As writers, these two had fluent and intellectual minds, they did not give up. So therefore, with Twain and Hughes being such prominent figures with immaculate writing capabilities, their masterpieces can be compared.
In this passage, Twain changed his way of seeing a river after he mastered a steamboating. When he was first steamboating, he was engulfed by the beauty of river, sunset, and scenery. He said, “I stood like one bewitched. I drank it in, in a speechless rapture.”
Samuel Clemens was born on November 30, 1835 in Florida, Missouri, the sixth of seven children. At the age of four, Sam and his family moved to the small frontier town of Hannibal, Missouri on the banks of the Mississippi River. Missouri, at the time, was a fairly new state (it had gained statehood in 1820) and comprised part of the country's western border. It was also a slave state. Sam's father owned one slave and his uncle owned several. In fact, it was on his uncle's farm that Sam spent many boyhood summers playing in the slave quarters, listening to tall tales and the slave spirituals that he would enjoy throughout his life.
He explains that the bubbling in the river he had previously described as opal-like was actually caused by the shifting of sands under the water. He also reveals a dangerous side to the beauty, “ the lines and circles in the slick water over yonder are a warning that the troublesome place is shoaling up dangerously.” Twain included this in order to explain the pros and cons of learning nature's secrets. Because he was able to recall the meaning of the lines he did not ram his boat into shallow water, although it was at the expense of the childlike wonder present in the first
Thus, Twain’s early experiences in life helped him to flesh out a well-rounded vocabulary and sparked his interests in adventure and traveling. Twain spent his boyhood in the riverside town of Hannibal, Missouri where he, “experienced the excitement of the colorful steamboats that docked at the town wharf, bringing comedians, singers, gamblers, swindlers, slave dealers, and assorted other river travelers” (Gribben). His exposure to much of the world at a young age opened his eyes to people groups, travel, and differences in dialect that would all become subject matter of his later writing. Twain wrote in Life on the Mississippi that he became acquainted with all the “different types of human nature that are to be found in fiction, biography, or history” while he worked as a steamboat apprentice (128). The diverse people and places he met during his time on the river all became awe-inspiring to him and served as the foundation for his works to come. Countless
"All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure" (Twain). This quote is from Mark Twain. He is a very famous author who has written such classics as The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Mark Twain’s real name is Samuel Clemens, and was known to have experienced different many things in his lifetime. He has worked as a miner, printer, river pilot, and more (www.cmgww.com). This tells us that he must have known many things, and possibly how he came up with this quote.
Education may be conveyed in many formats, such as classrooms, laboratories, and books. Teachers instruct within the classroom, while researchers and scientist utilize a laboratory setting for instruction and education, while other forms of education derive from authors who communicate by the written word. One well known author and educator is Samuel L. Clemens, more commonly known as Mark Twain. Twain was born in Florida, Missouri on November 30, 1835 and utilized his childhood and adolescent experiences as a method of education. Mark Twain is powerfully depicted as an unconventional educator through his books, literature, and personal quotes.