Sunny Youth Journal

You’ve probably felt defensive many times in your life. This happens when you’re trying to cover up your fears of the event that is happening. However, being defensive means that it is much harder for you to make the right decision. To get out of a situation where you’re starting to be defensive, you need to acknowledge, slow down, check negative talk, take action step, and start over.

The first thing to stop defensiveness is acknowledging or knowing that you are. You could be breathing faster, confused, thinking obsessively, and many other things. For example, pretend that you are doing a project with your classmates but then you suddenly disagree on something. You argue until you start to notice that you are talking non stop because you want to think you’re right. That is a sign that you’re starting to be defensive, and acknowledging that is very important. Second thing you can do to not be defensive is to slow down. Many times, you are thinking a lot and you just need to take a breather. Step outside, take a deep breath. Third, check negative talk. Make sure that you’re not just talking about bad things. Try making it more positive. Fourth, which is one of the more important ones, take action step. You need to figure out something to stop yourself from being defensive. Lastly, you should.going over the situation again but in the right way

Stopping yourself from being defensive, in my opinion, is very important. This can stop me from being really angry and messing up something badly.

A Rose For Emily, written by William Faulkner, is a short story about very mysterious old woman named Emily Grierson. Emily lives on a very select street in a small town in Jefferson, Mississippi. Throughout her young life, her father constantly turned away many worthy suitors. When she grew older, she quickly falls in love with a foreman from a construction company named Homer Barron. After the traumatizing death of her father, Emily was worried that another loved one would leave her. To prevent being abandoned, Emily ends the relationship by poisoning Homer, so she could “be with him forever”. At Emily’s death, Homers decomposed body was found along with a strand of iron-gray hair. At first read, Emily seems to be a mysterious and cruel type of person. Throughout the entire story, William Faulkner included many hints of symbolism to prove that otherwise, and to intensify the dark and mysterious plot.

A major symbol in the story was Emily’s house. Emily Grierson went through some very similar changes to her house. Her house was described as “white, decorated with cupolas and spires and scrolled balconies in the heavily lightsome style of the seventies, set on what had once been our most select street.” Her new and beautiful house drastically turned into an old, smelly and foul home. Emily went through some related changes. Before her fathers death, Emily was a youthful and active person. When her father died, Emily refused to let go of the past, and declined the offer to bury her father. These events caused her to become unhinged, and she descends into a state of madness where she is never once seen leaving her house. Her insanity eventually led to her killing her husband. Just like her house, Emily started off as new, and nice, but slowly became deteriorated and ruined.

Although it may seem subtle, Emily’s hair was an example of her current well being, and the type of person she was. Throughout the story, Emily’s hair was constantly changing. After the death of her father, Emily was seen with her hair was cut short, making her look like “a girl, with a vague resemblance to those angels in colored church windows–sort of tragic and serene.” This could show that she was mentally unstable and going insane, causing her to chop off all of her hair. In the end, Homer’s body is found, along with a strand of Emily’s iron-gray hair. The grey hair meant that Emily was laying beside the dead corpse of his love for quite a long time. This allows the readers to conclude that Emily truly loved Homer, even though she was the one to take his life. It is safe to conclude that Emily did not have any malicious intent to hurt Homer, she was just bound by her fear of being abandoned. The strand on Emily’s pillow can show a lot of things about Emily’s personality and her true intent.

Although the story is called A Rose For Emily, the subject of a rose was never once mentioned in the story. Typically, a rose is a symbol of love and passion. In the story, the rose symbolized Emily’s love life. Emily never had many chances to have love. When she was younger, it was mentioned that her father would turn away any suitors for Emily, without her permission. Emily was not shown much love throughout her whole life. The only person who cared about her was her father, who eventually died. Emily felt as if her “rose” was taken from her. Emily finally recovered and found love with Homer Barron, and felt like her “rose was given back to her”. The relationship did not last because Emily was so afraid of being abandoned, or having her “rose” taken away from her, that she killed him. The rose in the title symbolized Emily’s love life.

In William Faulkner’s, A Rose for Emily, Emily is a mysterious person to the townsfolk and the readers. Many would conclude that Emily is an evil person who brutally murdered the one person she loved. To subtly prove these assumptions wrong, William includes many subtle symbols of Emily’s true personality and intent. Things like her old deteriorating house, her silver hair, and a rose all show Emily’s real self. These hidden symbols show that Emily never had malicious intent, and was only love deprived. Although indistinct, William Faulkner presented many hidden symbols of Emily.

Collaborating can take place in group projects where you cooperate with different students and present your project. During the making of this process, you will need to communicate with each other. Communicating can be shown by personality. When shown by personality there are two. The first one is the one willing to contribute to the project without any problems with the team members. The other one, is being rude to the members and not cooperating.

Farmers conducted and experiment on putting different chickens together and seeing how they will react. Once this experiment was done, they noticed that there were two different teams, the red team and the green team. The green team is the team of chickens that don’t attack each other and seem to be cooperating in making eggs for the farmers. The second team, the red team, is the group of chickens that don’t seem to be cooperating with each other and peck the other members. They peck off their feathers and turn out to be a bald chicken in the result.

This experiment can tall us not to be so defensive because being defensive would only make it worse and you won’t get anything done. If we work together as a team, benefits will come with a better presentation, better things to say, and better things to entertain the people you are presenting to. In this essay, you are being taught to cooperate with your team members properly without getting sidetracked and argue about unnecessary things.

In “A Rose for Emily”, the rose is a symbol that acts as a replacement for all the tragedies and negative things that have happened in her life. Her father died and the one person she loved left her to rot. Emily didn’t have anyone to help her and eventually became very depressed. Faulkner states,” That was two years after her father’s death and a short time after her sweetheart–the one we believed would marry her –had deserted her. After her father’s death she went out very little; after her sweetheart went away, people hardly saw her at all.” As the story progresses, Emily’s situation gradually becomes more difficult to climb out of. She has even been seen buying heavy drugs from the drug store and the people are assuming that she is going to kill herself. Faulkner states,”SO THE NEXT day we all said, “She will kill herself”; and we said it would be the best thing.”This is where Faulkner introduces the rose because Emily has gotten her heart broken and has gone through so many things the rose would give her a sense of hope(sadly this did not happen in reality).

One way to be more compatible and work with people in better ways is to watch for when you start to get defensive. There will be many warning signs that you are getting defensive, but these warning signs are unique to all people and they are hard to recognize, as they happen subconsciously. Being able to recognize when you are starting to become defensive will allow you to create a way to calm down, and there are many ways to find out what happens.

Probably the most obvious way is asking someone such as family, as they spend the most time with you and will know what happens when you get defensive. Another way is to find instances where you know that you were defensive, locate the reason why, and how you reacted. This would be a good way to find your own warning signs if you do not have anybody to talk to. This method could be flawed, as relying on your own memory might not help, as the peoples memories are not perfect.

One other way to recognize when you are becoming defensive is to know what you think about others, for example, if you think that someone is lower than you, you are probably going to be defensive if they try to give you feedback about some things. Something else that one could do is to look the setting of the place. If you are uncomfortable in an area, you are more likely to e defensive and not trust people. Knowing this can help you recognize when you are more likely to become defensive.

Finding out when you are being defensive would be beneficial in how you work with others, and doing so is would benefit others too, as if you are less likely to become defensive, they are less likely to become defensive.

It was a few years since my father died, and my sweetheart had just deserted me. I just wanted to stay home, to get everything back. To have all my loved ones together with me again, but, I supposed, that is not possible anymore.

I haven’t left the house in months, but it is the only thing I have left, the only thing that keeps me connected to my family. Even if I went outside, there won’t be anyone there for me anyways; I was never close to my cousins or relatives, or anyone outside.

The scent in my house was becoming quite bad, why didn’t the Nergo man clean it properly? Now people outside are complaining about the smell that developed around my house. I knew that they were upset, but why should I care about them? In the end, they will find a solution to it; they had four men cross my lawn and sprinkle lime in all the outbuildings. After a week, the scent was gone, and more people started talking behind my back.

After a while, I got sick. I knew this would happen at one point, but it unexpectedly lasted for a long time. It was painful just to get up in the morning, and it was hard to fall asleep. I decided to cut my hair after the sickness; it grew too long.

When I saw the town again, a construction company came to pave the sidewalks. There I saw a big dark man, with a big voice and light eyes. His name was Homer Barron. He seemed like a nice person, and so I began to talk to him. We would drive in the yellow-wheeled buggy every Sunday. Those were the good days, before I visited the druggist, before they started disapproving my relationship with Homer.

When I did, I asked for some poison, the best the druggist had. I got some arsenic; it would kill anything up to an elephant. However, he asked me what I would do with the poison. I didn’t answer, but I was sure they already could guess what I was going to use it for. They thought I would kill myself.

I knew everyone was gossiping about me, talking about me behind my back. They were probably thinking I would kill myself, but, they were wrong. I just wanted to make sure that no one would leave me anymore. I didn’t want to be deserted again, like I was long ago.

After a while, when Homer came back, I used the arsenic. I kept him with me, and stayed with him, every day.

Being defensive may not be a bad thing, but when we become too defensive, it may cause lots arguments and may also trigger defensiveness in other people. Jim Tamm compares humans to chickens. There is the easy going batch of chickens, or the green zone chickens, and there is the mean and evil looking red zone chicken.

The green zone chickens were nice to each other. They also did not have a “star performer chicken”. A star perfomer is basically the chicken that produces the most eggs and makes a big deal out of it. The star performers also tend to be more aggressive. This makes a healthy environment for the chickens to thrive and produce eggs. At the end of one year, these chickens were healthy looking and productive.

On the other hand, there were the red zone chickens. They were aggressive and there was a star performer, only the star performer was good because it broke all the other chickens’ eggs. At the end of the year, these violent chickens had dramatically less eggs, and less chicken. These chickens ended up murdering each other because of the hostile environment.

This just shows even being aggressive or thin-skinned can even cause conflicts within chickens. Being defensive in people can cause other people to become defensive as well, like a chain reaction. One key of being less defensive is recognizing the signs before it happens. Jim Tamm suggests that people come up with a counter plan to stop it before it even shows.

The short story, “Rose for Emily,” by William Faulkner is about a lady named Emily. She was a very lonely and sad person. The narrator described her as a fallen monument. Colonel Sartoris(old mayor) said that she didn’t need to pay taxes, but some years later when a new mayor took over, he gave he a tax bill.

She did not respond, so the mayor sent some people to her house. The smell around her house was very stinky, so they used lemons to make it smell better. Homer Barron, a yankee, arrives in summer. He and Emily took rides together.

A little more than a year later, Homer Barron went to Emily’s house and was never seen again. Some people saw Emily buying a poison and thought she was going to kill herself. But she actually killed Homer Barron with it. She did this because she loved him, but he did not want to marry her. So she poisoned him and locked him in her room so he will always be with her.

I think the theme of the story is the difference between past and present. The first time the author shows this theme through is how Emily’s Old South house has turned into one of the last.

A Rose for Emily

She married and unmarried, but never had love,

She wanted to buy arsenic

To decimate the rats

She married another man

Whom she actually pretty loved

But in the end, the man died smiling

With her strand of hair besides

She died a mysterious death, but there was no rats in her house

She probably used the arsenic to try to end HER LIFE

But that ain’t the case, since the villagers proved it

So instead we worship Emily because she died a great death.

On the Ted talk, I think what the person was trying to say, was that the most productive ‘green’ chickens did it by laying the most eggs, and the most productive ‘red’ chickens laid the most eggs by sabotaging other hens so they wouldn’t lay as many eggs. I think this kind of relates to what businesses do to their opponents. For example, some businesses try to make their business so good, that the other business can’t compete with their’s, (green chickens) and some businesses that try to sabotage the other businesses so they seem bad. Also, I think that when defensiveness is triggered, like if someone is insulting you or is blaming you, you just try to defend yourself, with not really any other thoughts in mind, so you might not think about the consequences of what you say, and you might say mean things. I also agree about the ‘green’ workspace and the ‘red’ workspace. For example, if you and another person are both trying to get the same promotion, the ‘red’ way is to try to sabotage them to make sure they won’t get it, and the more ‘green’ way is to work hard and prove that you should get it. Another thing about the ‘green’ workspace and the ‘red’ workspace, he is right that it is more productive in a green workspace than a red workspace, but he said that a ‘green’ workspace can change to a ‘red’ workspace in seconds, but I think it has to happen over time, and it doesn’t happen that fast. For example, it you and a friend are trying to get the same promotion, you don’t immediately become enemies and try to sabotage each other,but it might happen over time, in the conversations that you and the friend have, when you are both trying to get the promotion.