Mentor Out of Town

School commenced today, however, Dr. Bellis was out of town so we will be having our meeting next week 1/16.

For the missing week, Dr. Bellis has assigned me to new assignments:
"I've added a ``Third Exercise" to our shared Google Folder. I've given you a small assignment as a Part 1 on the document. I've also assigned some reading in Part 2, as well as an additional challenge *only* if you have the time. This second part is a bit harder, so feel free to wait until we get together to tackle it. I think you can do Part 1 next Wed, during your research time, even if you are at Emma Willard and I am not around. "

I'll be doing them later this week. :)

During break I learned another new concept called Mirror Stage by Jacques Lacan (a French psychoanalyst) through a novel that I was reading (I was sick for the first week of break, so other than doing college apps I had a lot of free time). The concept became really fascinating as I did some research to understand it more. It states that Mirror stage is a stage in infancy (around one and a half years old) when babies become able to recognized the image in the mirror as themselves, which sets up their 'ego' and their understanding of 'I'. Before then, they think that the their image in the mirror is an ordinary object. The image in the mirror helps babies to acknowledge their existence, however, according to Lacan, their understanding of self is often twisted by the interaction with other people. The image they see in the mirror is shaped in the way they think other people view themselves, or it can also be the idealized version of what we want to look like. At times when we are confident and successful, the image of ourself in the mirror is often prettier/more handsome than before. And at times we are down, we see a worse looking self in the mirror. :)

A picture of Santa Barbara Beach (LA) that I took while we were drive.