Wake Up Call

Today as I drag myself through the door to English class after practice, I am greeted with this my poetry essay from uhh what was it two weeks ago or last week? apparently time flies when your having fun. so anyway I get my paper back and look at the grade and am stopped in my tracks.  After I recoved from my initial shock of my grade not looking so hot I, being the competitor that I am, started looking around at the papers of other near me and was astounded by how it seemed that everyone did not quite write up to their ability.  I mean last year when we would do AP writings all that I basically felt that I ever did was try to be straight forward and simply answer the question and would get a 7 or 8, and that's what I felt that I accomplished  on the poetry essay as well, but I guess I was sadly mistaken. After reading the samples, I realized that this year in order to succeed, it is going to take a greater deal of depth that demonstrates an understanding of more than words and devices but the entire landscape  that the words and devices create.  Today even though it was not the most exciting thing that we could have done, I welcomed the HUGE wake up call to what it will take to get to the next level this year.  

Another Day, Another Dollar

OK so let me start off by saying that Senior Days are totally awesome!!!!!!! and now on to the stuff that may be at least a little more relevant....
During our silent reading day on Friday, I noticed that quite a few members of our class  were not taking advantage of the free time that was given to us.  While sitting there attempting to read Crime and Punishment I could not help but feel that some of the people that were not using that time to read, would be the ones later that have either not finished what they were assigned. By not finishing the reading, they are either gonna end up trying to fudge their way through the timed writing we are given or if they do not get part one of Crime and Punishment  read they will not be able to add to the class discussion on the book. So they will not only be hurting themselves but also the rest of the class because of the loss of another peers perspective that could have helped us all understand a very (in my opinion) complicated book. So i hope this is not what ends up happening, but i needed some material to post so sorry if I just criticized someone unfairly. 


p.s. I actually thought that the class discussion going on during our silent reading was quite entertaining, so i have no real beef with what was going on.

Crazy Comparisons

OK so for my outside reading I chose to read An Arsonist Guide to Writers' Houses in New England (omg that is a mouth full) and thanks to not having much homework lately, I have been able to read the first hundred pages of the novel and am thoroughly enjoying it. When we received our copies of Crime and Punishment on Monday, I started to read it during my off period and I could hardly keep the books separate in my mind because of how similar they are.  First of both main characters are a bit deranged and outcast of society, they are also both males wondering around not knowing what to do in life that are scared of interacting with the rest of the world. There are so many other comparisons that I could make, but i would probably confuse myself even more so I will just say that the only difference i have really found so far is that Crime and Punishment is much much much harder to read and understand because of the prolonged descriptions. So I hope these books begin to differ soon because if not I am gonna be doomed when we take a test over Crime and Punishment.

Another One Bites the Dust

With another week of school finally in the record books it is time again to give my view on a topic.  The assignment that we got to work on in class this week in groups that involved looking at how authors deviated from the "norm" was very insightful and fun to me.  Having to look closely at every detail of the sentences in order to find the deviance's did much more than make me take more time to read.  It helped me see more of the imagery and connotations in the words that the author used, thus giving me a better feeling of the tone and meaning of the passages that we read.  The assignment was also fun because we got to create our own version of what the authors said, which allowed us to use some of our own creativity and also see the creativity in our groups members that we may not have known about. So even though there was quite a few passages to work on, the work was well worth the insight into literature and our classmates.