Lessons from Divergent

In my book, Divergent, you can learn various lessons from the actions of the characters.  Characters such as Tris and 4 make acts of courageousness and bravery.  The book teaches us that we cant choos to only become either selfless, brave, smart, honest, or peaceful.  You want to be like Tris and 4 and become a little bit of every characteristic.  You have to be brave, peaceful, selfless, courageous, and smart.  I believe that this is the moral of the novel.

How would YOU change the book? (SPOILER)

In Divergent, she makes a choice between 5 factions. SPOILER ALERT! If you have not read the first 50 pages of the book, she chooses to join the Dauntless. But how else could the book go if she chose to transfer in one of the other 3 factions or to stay in abnegation? Could there even be a book if she chose another faction.  If she chose Euridite, would she fight against them or would she join their cause? If she stayed in abnegation she would most likely not be able to revolt because she has not been trained.  If she was in either of the other two factions. She would not have known about the revolution.  So what other stories can be made if she chose different factions.

Final Blog Assessment- English 1B

So far I have read just about 100 pages in my book "Outliers". And this blog is going to be about what I have learned throughout the first 1/3 of this novel. (If you haven't figured that out from the title yet)
The first part of this book talks bout how you need not only talent, but you need lots of practice and opportunities. For an example of an opportunity, The Beatles, they are the most well known band across the world. They had a great opportunity to preform at Hamburg--although they did not preform here because of the high pay there or the conditions. In fact they were not great. But they practiced here because of the amount of time they get to preform on stage. They would preform almost 8 hours a day on a daily basis. This was an ideal opportunity for the Beatles and was a big key to there success as a band. Malcolm Gladwell states, "The Beatles ended up traveling to Hamburg 5 times between 1960 and 1962. On the first trip they played 106 nights, 5 or more hours a night. On their second trip, they played 92 times. On their third trip, they played 48 times, for a total of 172 hours on stage. The last two hamburg gigs, in November and December of 1962,involved another 90 hours of performing." Malcolm uses an anaphora in a way. He repeats "on the _____ trip". He uses this example to show the reader how much the Beatles played and practiced untill their first hit. In the picture below, the Beatles are in front of their stage that they preformed on for the beginning of their careers.

This is the club where The Beatles performed at in Hamburg, Germany

The second part of the book is the 10,000 hour rule that Malcolm Gladwell came up with. After much researching he noticed a pattern between various people or groups that became successful. After 10,000 hours of practicing they would become "a master" at whatever they practiced. For example Bill Joy, creator of Java, he spent 8 hours a day writing code and programming computers. He spent more time in Michigan's computer center than he did all of his classes. In the picture below is an example of code that Bill would have written.  He spent 8 hurs a day writing this code.

Example of Java Code

He described himself as "obsessed with programming". His opportunity was to work at the computer center as much as he wanted. This was Joy's Hamburg. After 10,000 hours of practice, he was one of the best programmers if not the best. After that he wrote all of the code for Java. He wrote this 35 years ago and we still use this program today. (Even though we recieve 'Java Updates' every day).  The only way he would have achieved this is by having the opportunity to work at the computer center and practicing for those 10,000 hours. Joy actually practiced well over 10,000 hours and therefore became successful.
These are the two main topics within the first 100 pages of "Outliers". To become successful at your profession/passion... you need talent and oppurtunity and 1000's of hours of practice and a legacy and timing.

Conversations with Tris

If I were able to talk to one character from my book, Divergent, I would talk to Tris. She is the main character and there are many things you could ask her.  The first question that comes to my mind is, How hard was it to leave your family and go to Dauntless?   Even right after her brother left to become Erudite. Can you all imagine spending your whole childhood with your family and then one day you are living somewhere else? I would want to know exactly how she felt having that happen to her.  Also one another question I would ask is, "When dauntless told all of the transfers that half of them would be cut and become factionless, how were you so confident that you would not be cut? These two questions are something that I really wish I could ask.

New book

I am about to start  reading Divergent because of everyone talking about how good it is and how it competes with The Hunger Games. I have seen many blog posts talking about how they really enjoyed the book and would highly recommend it to anyone.  I want to read the book before I see the movie which I also heard was really good.  I have just started and have learned about 5 factions and being able to choose which faction you want to be a part of for the rest of your life.

Book recommendations

Outliers is a great book that can be read by anybody which makes it great read.  For younger people it might be a bit harder to understand who they are talking about cause they reference older bands and teams.  But it would still prove there point that success = Skill + Opportunity.  Anyone/everyone should read this book because it will help them with their success in their passion.  I am very happy that I read this book. It really was a eye opener in a way. Everyone would tell me that you need skill to succeed if I asked them how to be successful but very few would talk about opportunity.