VIP Class Notes (Nicholas)

Homework

Read any article on the recent Harvard admission discrimination case — give me your thoughts in a paragraph or a few.

Vocabulary

Wide breadth: defn: vast, very large, big and deep; a wide ranging variety of choices.

e.g. He was such an intelligent person because he read from such a wide breadth of sources.

A watershed moment: def: a defining, critically important event that changed all history afterward.

e.g. World War II was the watershed moment of the 20th century and thereafter.

“…in the first camp”: an interesting way of using the word “camp”; referring to people of a particular opinion; if you are part of a “camp” it means you share similar ideas and opinions of people in that same camp.

e.g. After 4 years of intense university study, we found ourselves all in the same camp: broke and looking for a job.

Retain (保留): defn: to keep; to keep even if other things go away

e.g.While my grandmother had not visited Italy since she was a little girl, she still retained an Italian accent from her upbringing.

Superiority Complex: a mental illness or overconfidence in oneself or one’s abilities that make you look down on other people as inferior.

e.g. His superiority complex made it impossible for him to make friends with people he viewed as “lower” than himself.

Longing: a hopeful desire, a wanting, a wishing and desire for.

e.g. Young women are often longing for that Chinese Prince Charming to marry them and raise a family.

“…the attitude persists”: when something persists it means that it still exists; its stubborn and won’t go away.

e.g. Even after I punished my child several times, his addiction to thumb sucking persisted.

“Throw under the bus”: an informal, slang term meaning “to blame someone else in order to protect yourself from being blamed”.

e.g. “Wow, Leigh, you really threw me under the buss back in that sales meeting.”

Contentious: a very tense situation that could break out into a fight at any moment.

e.g. I remember the first time my girlfriend met my mother. They didn’t like each other and it made for the most contentious dinner conversation.

Multicultaralism: a worldview or a political philosophy that believes and hopes for a world where society is made up of many different cultures living peacefully among each other in the same country.

e.g. China and Japan may not share Europe and America’s goals of multiculturalism. Perhaps they prefer a more homogenous society.

Triggered: slang term meaning “to be offended” or “to be offended easily”.

e.g. I’m usually not offended by immature insults, but if someone makes fun of a family member, I’m triggered quickly.

Grammar

I like all sorts of different stuffs stuff.

Winners write the history.

Knowledge is power.

I knew a lot of German many Germans who did not share this view on refugees.

Many person people in Germany society prefer Richard Wagner to the English composer Edward Elgar.