Compare and Contrast Challenge

So, my friend Keyara and I are having a battle on creativity in writing. We are comparing and contrasting two absolutely random items you would never have thought to compare or contrast. My challenge from her is my big toe and a tree! It’s ON!

My big toe and a typical tree have a lot in common. They both have a tough exterior (the toe nail and the tree bark). They offer protection for the whole of the item. A lot of times, toes can get nasty parasites that cause them to get brown or yellow. Trees also have parasites like mistletoe which can cause harm to the organism. Trees and toes can both respond to stimuli but in different ways. Trees respond with different types of trophisms which affect the growth of the organism.

On another hand, they have worlds in between them for contrast. My big toe is attached to a whole organism where as the strong mighty tree stands up on it’s own and is its own organism. Most big toes are only different in terms of size, shape, and color where as trees can be so many different varieties of species and classifications. Although the skin on toes can get “ashy,” they don’t normally grow foliage nor flowers or fruit. One last thing is that there is a nervous system that operates in my toe which allows it to send signals to me to respond to stimuli or make it motile. Trees and toes can both respond to stimuli but in different ways. Trees respond with different types of trophisms which affect the growth of the organism.

Trees and big toes are completely different objects in normal, every-day thought. However, there are some similarities in structure and the roles of certain parts which aid in survival. It’s certainly not impossible to relate randomly selected objects. When you get to the building blocks of matter, everything in this universe was created from the same source.

Things I Love

My Clarinet- My freedom from day to day problems and worry. It’s my vicarious voice. I love my flute as well. I used it as an escape from clarinet to make sure that I NEVER tire of playing clarinet like I did when I was younger (and obviously less mature). I believe that escape is the key to appreciating one’s life. The same way music allows an escape from politics (and most often money), my love of flute reminds me that I’m not bound to any one thing. Never will I be limited for life because of a single decision. But as much as I like playing the flute, I love my clarinet ten-fold more. I love the dark yet brilliant quality of sound and how it’s so possible to combine such traits.

My Periodic Table of the Elements- Just like musical scales it’s so fascinating to observe how certain elements are more stable than others (like notes in a scale) and work well with others. Molecules are like chords. Periods work in the same way scales do with octets. Each group or family is like a specific pitch class. It’s so amazing how the number 8 has such a huge role in valency and musical pitch.

My book “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close”- My favorite book by the author Jonathan Safran Foer. The story is about a child who is on search to find out what a mysterious key left by his late father from 9-11 is all about. I really enjoy reading books about children because their lives tend to be so much more colorful and imaginative than adults’ lives. I realized this trend in a memoir by Oliver Sacks (“Uncle Tungsten”).

My Mollard “Lancio” Conducting Baton- My gold-anodized-handled ( I recently learned about the plating process, and it’s so cool how it works) wooden stick of musical POWER. I conducted and taught a piece of three movements (we only worked on the first and third) to a band at my high school and I knew at this time that I wanted to be a renowned conductor at some point in my life. Things may have changed but I know that the baton is about as magical as a magician’s wand. A good conductor has the ability to almost telepathically convey a world of emotions to an ensemble and almost create a set of “musical emotions” that one doesn’t normally feel on a normal day.

I love my books on sciences and philosophy (especially the ones that encorporate music), I love my friends (*winkwink* Ariel Wheelock!) my cat, my laptop no matter how much it messes up sometimes, my clothes, my sunglasses collection, my education especially. I love being at VCU in the department of music and the school of humanities and sciences. I like my pill book and my other reference books on physics and chemistry. I like observing the sabbath. I love my cell phone (HTC Hero). I like the movie “Up”… It’s so charming. In fact, I like everything Pixar puts out… (unfinished list). I love language (English, French, Arabic, proper Ebonics lol). I like my hair, even when I’m not happy with it. I just like having it and being able to do stuff with it. I like fried tofu with peanut sauce. I love DNA and RNA synthesis; I think it’s fascinating.

Indecisive

So, I believe it’s official that I am the most indecisive person I know. Here’s a perfect example: it took me over an hour of google searching and bing searching to figure out what I wanted to have as my blog background image. This is very normal for me but it’s really starting to affect my life.

Degree Program(s): I’m an ex-trombonist who plays multiple instruments pretty well. I finally managed to switch over to clarinet by re-auditioning at VCU. I thought I FINALLY made up my mind about something. Well…, I’m double-majoring in music education and psychology with the pre-med concentration. Music ED because I will have lots of back-up in music and pre-med because I don’t know if I want to go to grad school or med school. (Apparently there IS a difference between Neurology and Neuroscience). I really like studying the brain, which is partly what makes me like education.

Shopping: I have spent so much money on jeans (money that I barely had) and other items simply because I couldn’t make up my mind on what I wanted. “Oh no… what if I want jeans with holes on some days but on other days I just want regular bootcut jeans….” My shopping strategy has always been “If I can’t pick one, I’ll pick BOTH.”

Selling things: Well, I haven’t really sold anything yet because everything I’ve always come up with some sort of reason to keep everything I own. I wanted to sell my trombone, but in the back of my mind I’m thinking “Maybe ONE day I’ll want to play it again and I spent so much time with it I can’t simply just sell it.”

When people say “it’s up to you” to me: THE WORST THING TO EVER SAY TO ME… Number 1) I’m wondering what would be nice for BOTH of us, and Number 2) I can’t decide what I would want to do MYSELF

But I’d have to say that the degree program section is the part that’s troubling me the most. I’m never going to be successful unless I either PICK ONE… or figure out a way to be successful combining BOTH which would be one plan. We all have to have a focus in our lives. No one wants to look at a photo where the background is just as clear as the foreground.