Alankar's Blogs

  The process has begun A myriad of experiences I must write The process has begun The various contrasts shouldn’t seem to fight   The deadline fast approaches Procrastination – my strongest quality – fails to receive any mention The deadline fast approaches Sometimes after reading what I’ve wrote, I realize how I ignored the prompt, paralleling the Geneva Convention, you know, by making it nothing more than a suggestion*   I finally submit Waiting is all I can now do I finally submit Farewell sleepless nights energized by some coffee brew   It is inevitable The day will soon come It is inevitable To know if I have lost or have won   The future is yet to come Will I experience the internal storm “Storm Warnings” refers to?   The future is yet to come Regardless, the results I must not eschew *this is a joke

  The Hero’s Journey is something that we have all probably heard before, and something that may even seem instinctual when we see it in practice. Though, some parts of it are just really boring. For instance, in my book club group, we are reading Purple Hibiscus , and to be fair, there are some fascinating ideas – the effects of being very religious, devotion to parents, stepping into a different realm and seeing new perspectives – but ultimately, the interest sort of fades away with all the details of, what I would consider to be, unnecessary dialogue and events. There’s one other place that I’ve seen this type of occurrence regarding the Hero’s Journey: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1. There is a film critic who explains it very well (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeP42zUIF-c), but to quickly summarize, the Hero’s Journey is cut into half, and that first half is the first of the two Deathly Hallows movies. We see the literal journey of Harry, but we don’t see any...

  Are mentors always good? For so long, I probably would have answered ‘yes,’ as would many other people. But now, I’m starting to see that this is not necessarily the case. A mentor is just someone who guides you: it does not have to be positive guidance though. Luckily, the mentors I have had so far have been greatly beneficial not just to realize my own interests, but also to see possible career paths. However, mentors are not always so beneficial. In Purple Hibiscus , as of how far my group has read, it seems like the father is the mentor to his daughter as she is essentially being “guided” by his expectations. But these expectations create an artificial sense of what is right and wrong in his daughter. For instance, she understands that, according to her father, religion is important, but she does not truly grasp its implications in her own life. Simply put, she is just being conditioned to do what her father thinks is appropriate without any individual thinking, as individual...