Jeff Welch UNIV 112 Spring 2015 SEMANTICS and SYNTAX REVISION Semantics in yellow with labels in [bold italics] Syntax in blue with original sentence in italics and explanations in grey Did you know Marie Curie killed herself? Well not exactly in a suicidal manner however over many years of handling radioactive particles, Marie Curie actually brought her death upon herself a lot faster then it probably should have. Her death came a lot faster than she had hoped because of something pushing her to reach her goals. A large motivational push is what was pointing her to her grave. Because of her obvious motivations in life, she passed away much earlier than anyone had ever expected. I pretty much changed this whole sentence around because the other one just was good in my opinion. With every goal we set our minds to, negatives will step [1. verb] in the way, however it is up to us to prove to ourselves what kind of person we really are and how we are going to handle the negatives on our way to our goal. Through experience of pursuits throughout college, I realize that we will always come across negatives. I have come to realize through personal experience that negatives are bound to happen and only the best will make it through. The original sentence was repetitive and bland. It was kind of stupid to even have it in the essay. Marie Curie shows us a perfect example of integrity and dedication [2. Adjective] to make it through different struggles and we can all find comparison in that. Marie Curie had absolutely been one of the most influential people in the science world over the past few centuries. Most of her scientific discoveries were conducted through hard work and dedication in the lab. With such an incredibly “passionate pursuit”, Marie Curie found [3. verb] many positives in her life that are still well recognized to this day. One of the most obvious positive consequences resulting from her hard work was the discovery of radium. In the book Radioactive, Marie Curie is quoted speaking about the day she finally achieved her goals. “I shall never be able to express the joy of the untroubled quietness of this atmosphere of research and the excitement of actual progress.”(Page 57) She also came across many other positive consequences in her life like receiving two Noble Peace Prize’s as well as becoming the first woman to win a Noble Peace Prize (page 73). Throughout her life, Marie found many other positives such as receiving two separate Noble Prize awards as well as becoming the first woman to win the Noble Prize. Even though I didn’t shorten up the sentence I made a few slight changes that I think helped the flow of the sentence. However, the ultimate positive consequence resulting [4. verb] from her passion for science was something that she never got the chance to see before she passed away. Because of her discoveries through radium, now large amounts of people are cancer survivors every year. Mammograms are very popular procedures in which it looks into the breast in order to find cancerous tumors. Mammograms, a procedure created in order to find tumors in the breast, are now possible because of Marie Curie and her work she had done in the lab. The original sentence was very random and didn’t have much meaning to it so I tried to make changes to that. Without the help of Marie Curie, there would be an enormous [5. Adjective] increase in deaths from breast cancer. Also because of Marie Curie’s dedication, x-rays are available to our world and they end up saving lives every year. Marie Curie has created the ultimate positive consequence based on her actions: happiness for the rest of our world to come. Our medical world would be on a completely different scale without the dedication and sacrifices that Marie Curie went through in her lifetime. Marie Curie was a brilliant [6. Adjective] lady, however her dedication in the lab brought a few negative consequences, specifically to her health. After spending decades in the lab with radium, as well as other highly radioactive elements, her body began to wear out on her. (Page 74) Due to such a large amount of exposure to radioactive elements, her body quickly began to wither. I shortened down the sentence and took out wasteful words. Ultimately, her death was resulted as an overdose of unhealthy levels of radioactivity in which she had handled throughout her life. Ultimately, her cause of death was declared to be the unhealthy levels of radioactivity in which she was exposed to throughout her life. I shortened the sentence slightly and changed a few key words to make it more interesting. “Years of radiation exposure had ravaged Marie’s Health. Her fingers were barnacled with fibrous lesions from handling radium.”(Page 169) Even towards the beginning of her research, she was seeing her body change and become more and more affected by the radioactivity. “…were steadily corroding their bones, straining their breathing, burning their skin. Their entire lab was toxic. ‘Dust, the air of the room, and one’s clothes, all became radioactive…’ Radioactivity had made the Curie’s immortal, now it was killing them.” (Page 74) She made the ultimate sacrifice by putting herself through this danger to discover something that would save people’s lives for centuries ahead. The death of Marie Curie doesn’t compare to many of the negatives faced in specific pursuits, a lot of negatives can be very small, but can still play a huge effect on your health or your life. Not many people will face such a harsh negative consequence throughout their pursuit. However at any point a negative can turn from small to big or vice-versa, you always have to be prepared. I didn’t really like this sentence to begin with so I rewrote it to change the repetitive feeling. As a freshman student-athlete here at VCU, I have faced many positive and negative consequences in only 5 months here on campus. With the schedule in which I endure every day of the week, there are many negatives that I come across. From injuries and sickness, to just pure exhaustion every day there are many days where I am falling asleep on five-minute car rides down the street. On top of baseball and class every day, I spend extra time working out or studying calculus at the Cabell [7. Noun] library. Many of my nights don’t end until 12 or 1 and most of my mornings begin around 7. On top of that, at least once a week I am up at 5 a.m. for weightlifting. One of my first months here, I was up until 3:30 a.m. one morning working on Engineering homework and then had to be up an hour and a half later for morning weightlifting. By the end of the day, I was falling asleep in my Physics [8. noun]class and woke up the next morning with a runny nose and sore throat that took over a week to go away. Not to mention the achy pain in my legs from practicing 5 hours a day. Even though my life is passionately directed towards baseball, there have been plenty of negative consequences towards my health. Through all of the small nagging injuries and sickness I go through, I would go through it over and over again because of how much the positive consequences override it. Because of the hard work and dedication I have put into my schoolwork and baseball practice, I was blessed with reaching my goal of playing baseball [9. Noun] for a Division I University. So far in my first semester, I have reached many of my small goals such as academic honors, as well as excelling on the baseball field in my fall season. Because of the time I have spent working hard [10. Adjective] in the classroom, I have the opportunity to be commemorated [11.verb] with a group of other VCU athletes [12. Noun] at one of the men’s basketball games at the Siegal center [13. Noun] this year. I am very blessed and thankful for my ability to devote time and hard work towards my grades. Another positive consequence, in which I have just recently realized about myself, is that due to the chaotic lifestyle in which I live, I have learned to manage my time a lot better. I have also matured dramatically [14. Adjective] as a person, which has led to stronger relationships with my friends and my family, and I am most grateful for that. Because of my most important passionate pursuit, my life has been changing day by day and I could not be more thankful for it. As I become more and more mature, I start to notice how important the little things have become in my life. Marie Curie was a very caring lady herself, which is one of few things that we personally have in common. The comparison between Marie Currie and myself can be debated over and over as to how closely we come in common. With the work that she went through, I personally don’t think our work ethic can compare, but I think our passionate pursuit can. Marie Curie spent all of her passion focused on what actually brought in money and what made a living for her family. However my passionate pursuit is based simply on a hobby that I choose to do every day. Marie has also spent much more time passionately pursuing her science career in relation to the time I have spent pursuing my baseball career. Beginning around the age of 18, she spent every year leading up to the day that she died, studying different fields of science (page 21, 169). Leading up to the day of her death, she spent almost every waking minutes studying different fields of science. The original sentence was not attractive and didn’t have much strength. I switched around the sentence and changed a few words to help that. Her commitment for her pursuit sent her almost straight to her deathbed, however it changed the life for generations ahead. Unlike myself, her commitment has helped change the lives of so many other people and my commitment has helped changed the life of one person, and that is myself. Even in the midst of complete opposites, I still believe there are many subtle [15. Adjective] similarities between Marie and I. The passion in which we both present was displayed at an early age and continued on throughout both of our lives. Because of death, Marie’s passion fell short and just like her, I will continue my passion until I physically cannot. Our focus was improved and became more and more impressive throughout our years of pursuing and we can both give credit from our positive consequences to many other people. I can give unbelievable amounts [16. pronoun] of credit to my parents who have provided transportation and money for years and years and Marie can give credit to her husband Pierre for helping her in the lab over the years. “For his wife’s work, Pierre provided Marie with tools and a technique he had developed with his brother years earlier.” (Page 44) The commitment shown by our family is equally impressive as the commitment shown by us through our years of pursuit. Commitment itself can give you a complete example as to why most passionate pursuits are very similar to each other. Giving the example, we can make the educated assumption that passionate pursuits do have a strong [17. Adjective] nature of their own and negativity is a huge part of it. Not very often do you come across someone who puts in work and dedication and takes a smooth road all the way to success. Most of the time they will cross bumps in the road that may begin to affect the outcome. However in order to prove your passion, you must find ways to get across those bumps. Luckily, most of these bumps can show relation to positive consequences. Marie Currie went through tons of these bumps herself. “It was exhausting work to move the containers about, transfer the liquids, and to stir for hours at a time…” “After 4 years of steady labor, they managed to extract one tenth of a gram of radium chloride.” (Page 56-57) By showing hard work in tough negative times, you will realize the positives that will come out in the end. As a person who has gone through and set many high goals and pursuits, if people were to focus on the little things more during their pursuit they would come to realize how many more positives you come across compared to negatives. Passionate pursuits are completely [18.adverb] directed to bring out positives for one however it is an opinion on what those positives are. If we can change our views and be grateful [19.pronoun] and focused on the positives, we will realize how often the positives will come out. By fully committing ourselves to something we are passionate about, we can change our lives, our families lives and even someone you don’t knows life. Pursuits can change you into an incredible [20. Adjective] person you never thought you could become.