Question: When asked to define ourselves we often use broad brushstrokes. Without thinking we consult our internal list of “things that make me, ME” and find ourselves recalling words like “creative, outgoing, photography, guitar” before we’ve even had a chance to fully process the question. But how much does this internal list define us? I believed that my internal list was the best representation of myself until I read a quote by Annie Dillard that states: “How we spend our days, is of course, how we spend our lives”. This quote hit me like a punch in the gut, it’s blatant truth so indisputable; how I spent my days, regardless of what I told myself about myself, was ultimately who I was. Or at the very least would be how I had spent my life. This is why, when completing my self portrait, I decided to focus on the everyday. Within my self portrait I wanted to present the viewer with a familiar yet abstract sense of reality through which we get to see amalgamated glimpses of the everyday acts that define me, rather than a linear narrative or a simple re-telling of ‘a day in the life’. Thus combining to create a picture of: my daily life, through an abstracted version of ‘the everyday’. To create a sense of ‘the day’ or linear progression of time I segmented my video with four still images of the sky in various stages of daylight (morning, midday, afternoon, evening) that match the lighting seen in each concurrent video segment. The everyday acts that define me were presented in a series of short video segments that include scenes of me catching the tram, recording music and riding my bike. To disrupt the sense of linear narrative the visual segments are bluntly edited together, with nothing linking the sequential shots and a quite abrupt ending. I also attempted to create an overall sense of confounded time and space by overlaying audio from certain video segments onto others. Long, singular focus, handheld shots were also used to enhance the sense of voyeuristic glimpses. Why did the narrator think an internal list did not define her? Pick the correct answer from the following options: - Because she true - Because she thought she had it figured out - not enough information - Because she read a quote by Annie Dillard
Answer: Because she read a quote by Annie Dillard

Question: The U.S. has long had the unenviable distinction of holding the world's largest prison population, in part because of tough-on-crime policies enacted in the 1990s. But sentencing reforms passed in recent years appear to have made a dent, leading to declines in the population over the past eight years. A criminal justice reform organization reported Friday that in 2017, the U.S. prison population dropped below 1.5 million for the first time in more than a decade. The decline, according to the Washington-based Vera Institute for Justice, was driven by a sharp decrease in the number of inmates in federal prisons and decreases in several states with large prison populations. Total U.S. prison population dropped to 1,486,000 last year, a decline of nearly 16,000. The number of federal prisoners fell to 183,000, and the number of inmates in state prisons declined to 1.3 million, according to the report. (The overall figure does not include the more than 600,000 defendants held in local, state and federal jails.) The decline extended an eight-year downward trend in U.S. prison population that has been driven by federal and state sentencing reforms enacted over the past decade. But the Vera institute cautioned that it was unclear whether the trend would continue. "Whether criminal justice reform can continue to fuel this sustained decline in the prison population remains to be seen," said Jacob Kang-Brown, senior research associate at Vera. "We must continue to do the hard work, as advocates and agents of change, to ensure that all our communities feel the relief of decarceration." The report came as President Donald Trump called on Congress to pass legislation to help former inmates reintegrate into society and avoid going back to prison, as many do. "We want former inmates to find a path to success so they can support their families and support their communities," Trump said at a White House summit on prison reform attended by two state governors and Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law, who is spearheading... Who wants former inmates to find a path to success? Pick the correct answer from the following options: - President Donald Trump - Jacob Kang-Brown - not enough information - Jared Kushner
Answer: President Donald Trump

Question: My partner’s parents decided to help with all the planning and set up for his sister’s wedding. I am sure part of the reason was because they had offered to foot part of the expenses. There came a point in the planning, when his mom seemed to sort of run-amok with her ideas. His sister ended up accepting some plans for her wedding that I don’t think she was really that fond of, but she went along with them anyways. One of the things that stands out the most to me, was this idea that they would make a large wooden box with a hole in it, and people would smash their dinner plates into the box. Then the fragments of the broken plates would be put into metal keepsake tins for the guests to take home. (The tins were cute, the trash inside seemed very weird to me.) So imagine it’s the evening of your wedding reception, and people are in a corner of the room smashing their plates into a box. And then part of your wedding party is supposed to go in the back and fix up the tins of broken ceramic ware. It was like an exercise in how to needlessly generate extra stress hormones in a large room full of people. My partner’s sister looked like she cringed every time someone threw a plate in the box. It is weird (and wasteful) to propose to break brand new plates for a tradition that isn’t even part of your ancestry. It’s weird to railroad the people getting married into accepting to do things they don’t really want. Soon after that, my partner’s mother offered that she would be happy to help us plan and throw our wedding too, just like they did for his sister. I think the experience made us both content to elope. Who made the wooden box? Pick the correct answer from the following options: - My partner's parents - not enough information - The wedding party - My partner's sister
Answer:
My partner's parents