ohmygoshwearedone!

This blog has been time consuming, work, not fun, tiring, and annoying, but I am very glad we did it. Although it was not the most fun assignment, it helped analyze books, quotes, and compare the books we read to real life so that it did not seem like we were reading all of those books because we had nothing better to do.  It also improved not only mine, but everyone's writing skills.

From my previous blogs, which start from the end of January for me because I created a new blog due to technical difficulties, I learned not only literal things like Romeo and Juliet can be seen everywhere including the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding, but also interpretive meanings of seemingly meaningless quotes of Pip, from Great Expectations. One of my favorite assignments was actually one of the blog assignments, from the beginning of the year when we had to write an entire post in certain diction. Now I will never forget what diction is, even when I am 30 and am much more knowledgeable.  Writing about ideas from novels relating to pictures or other movies/books to just our impressions or thoughts, the blog has been almost like a refuge for our ideas that we did not say in class.  I have said a lot of things on my blog that I would not normally say out loud or in a discussion, like in the post about conflicts I said "standing up for what you believe in will mend any of the damage to society by people being robots and believing everything they hear and only following, weather it is right or wrong..." which I would not have said because it was about technology and if someone was really into technology I didn't want to offend them. But I also think that some of my best ideas originated from my blogs.

Reading other people's blogs and adding on to what they discussed or starting a new chain of ideas from their blog helped me a lot, and is possibly a reason for the blogs.  In general,  the point of doing all of the work that came with the blog was to get deeper into what we were doing in class that week and also to practice writing.  Not only did it do that, it was also a weekly assignment so we had to remember to do it every week, which is a skill we will need as an adult. With routine, comes improvement. My writing has improved tremendously since eighth grade, you being a good teacher a big factor, but also the continuous practice I got with my blog.   When you first announced at the beginning of the year that we would be doing one, I thought you were the meanest teacher, but thank you for doing that. It has helped me so much! When we first started doing them I didnt put much effort into it, and i wouldn't go very deep, but in the past few blogs I feel like I did a great job analyzing and thinking about what I was writing.  I think that the blog deserves a nice good bye, so thank you blog you should know that from the thoughts of Theodore Roosevelt, "Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing (quotelady.com)."

The most memorable assignment... :)

This year in general has been my most favorite year of all.  A lot of it has been about the new friends I have made and the fabulous teachers, but it is just the step above middle school that I needed. English has always been one of my favorite classes and I have enjoyed most of the projects we have done, but the one that I feel the most proud of is my Great Expectations essay.  I worked really hard and spent a lot of time making every sentence as good as I could get it.  All of that effort and relentless analyzing made me realize how good of a book Great Expectations is and how amazing a writer Charles Dickens is, even though I still don't like his style.  While reading Great Expectations, I really hated it and dreaded reading it every night, but after I finished it and wrote the essay on shame, it magically became better!

Besides all of the annotations, word power quizzes, discussion questions and other small assignments and quizzes, I got the best score on this than any thing else. I feel like I deserved it too because this essay came first before my social life when I was writing it, sad, I know. Writing it was really fun for me and I wish that the Romeo and Juliet essay was that fun to write, but it wasn't. It was probably the most boring classroom time in this class, but the best outside of class time (after we finished the book). Now we are doing poetry, which I don't want to do, but as Robert Frost would say, "nothing gold can stay..."

Poetry

My past experiences with poetry have been limited and truthfully, very boring , but in third grade I clearly remember keeping a journal with all of my poetry that I wrote and also some of my favorite poems by the famous poet, Shell Silverstein. I remember one of them being titled "I'm mad" which was all of my problems from that day including walking through a spider web and having my younger sister take my gardening shovel. I think that back in third grade poetry helped me relieve some of my elementary school stress, and if I started writing again, could be a good relaxation device.

Also at Lincoln elementary school, my teacher would let us pick our favorite poems that we wrote or that we read out of our poetry book and read them in our circle time.  I would always read poems by Shell Silverstein because his poems were simple yet pleasing and funny. His interesting and random content made poetry fun for us, but now that I look back on them they definitely say something else. His poem Where the Sidewalk Ends  for a child was about, literally, where the sidewalk ended and the world dropped off into nothing, but now it is about a place where everything is better, but to get there is a challenge but the chalk arrows will always give a comforting sense of direction.  I agree with all of the pleased kids, that he is a good poet and my favorite so far.

Whenever I think of poetry I dread it. Most likely because of my horrible job in the poetry out loud competition, I really don't like poetry.  Memorizing words is very difficult for me and that is what I think of when I think of poetry. Writing it is not bad, it is actually pretty fun, but reading and analyzing it seems to ruin it because it is suppose to be what you get out of it without going deep into it as a school assignment.  If we could just spend a class period where we get an object or an idea and write a poem of our choice about it, that would be good. Or if we go outside on a nice day... even if I don't like it I can still make it fun for myself.

Conflicts, conflicts, conflict

Throughout the entire play, The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, conflicts are apparent in the characters, but take many forms.  One of the most important conflicts is a the Person vs. person conflict between Romeo and Juliet's relationship, and their families. Because these families have been feuding for many many years, for their only direct offspring to fall in love with each other is unheard of and revolting. For example in act 2 scene 1 Romeo sneaks to the Capulet party and kisses Juliet, starting the illogical cycle of love between the two and the fury of their parents. This conflict escalates to suicidal thoughts and actions if they can not be together and creates death-like tones and portrays that love is up to the heart to decide and can not be swayed, even my death itself.

This idea is very prominent in society today, with all of the modern music about being in love, and more and more independence being shown though.  This independence and the following of the heart is very valuable to society today as we become more sucked into the world of technology and pop culture, being different and standing up for what you believe in will mend any of the damage done to society by people being robots and believing everything they hear and only following, whether it is right or wrong. This is important to my life as well as many others because doing what your heart tells you usually ends up good, and standing up and going a different way than others before you will make the world a more interesting and better place for everyone. A lot of this depends on personality, but can be acted upon by anyone, all it takes is a strong feeling and bravery.

Romeo and Juliet is everywhere!

My Big Fat Greek Wedding is very similar to Romeo and Juliet in the way that Toula, a Greek woman falls in love with Ian, a non-Greek school teacher, the way that Romeo falls in love with Juliet. Toula's family is strictly Greek and will only let her marry another Greek. Her father trys to set her up with men when he finds out about Ian, like Capulet did with Paris and Juliet. Toula's aunt very similarly resembles Juliets nurse because her aunt helps her go to college and be with Ian, two things that her father strongly disagreed with, like the nurse delivering messages to Romeo. Ians best friend is like Mercutio because he trys to get dates for him before he met Toula. Ians family and Toula's family are very different, but their love brought them together.

Romeo, Juliet and I

Romeo and Juliet has many very different characters who all act differently, which is why it is my favorite book we have read so far. Romeo's friends and cousins are all very supportive of his broken heart, where as the feuding family, the Capulets, treat their daughter Juliet more protectively than the Montegues.  Out of all of the characters in this book, I feel like Romeo is the least like me because he is mopey and dramatic about everything and always thinks that every girl he meets is love at first sight. Juliet is more like me in the way that she is quiet and obedient, but the character who I can relate to the most is Mercutio. He is Romeo's best friend and there for him when his heart is broken, but somehow makes him feel better by making fun of him. This is like me because I am a good friend but like to make fun of my best friends.  Mercutio is encouraging Romeo to go live a little and meet some pretty girls at the Capulet party, which is something that I would do for my friends. Mercutio and I are also similar because we both make up stories off of the tops of our heads, mine are usually embellishments on stories or excuses not to do chores, and his are random things to get depressing memories our of his mind. Mercutio is also my favorite character so I am happy to think that I am like him.

The first couple of nights reading, I was confused and didn't pick up on any puns or significant lines in the dialogue, but lately I can annotate for these things better.  Reading in class has helped me a lot and I am really glad that we are doing it. Plus it is fun. I haven't gone on spark notes or anything so what I have understood is purely my own thinking. Reading it twice has also helped in remembering who said what which is good for the tests and quizzes. In class I don't have much input on what we are discussing not because I didn't read but because I either didn't know what was going on in the book or wanted to hear what other people thought of what was happening. Doing group work is better for me because speaking in a smaller group is easier than in front of the class. I want to read more so next week I am going to. We should definitely keep talking in class and I am excited for our first discussion!

Dickens' message to the world!

In Great Expectations, the author Charles Dickens entwines many important life lessons into his seemingly boring book. The main theme that should be learned by reading this book is that no money or social status should take the place of family and friends. Money is a touchy subject to many people and when a lot of it is gained at one time it can be spent unwisely, so remembering the people who are less fortunate is another lesson to be gained from this book. Also, with money happiness is not guaranteed a place in your life. Even if you have what ever you needed you thought would make you happy does not have kind of happiness than the irreplaceable love that your friends and family provide for you. If it is thought about in the sense that money is only paper, worth nothing, that is traded for items or services, and people in your family are living organisms who have feelings and the ability to love, it makes money seem worthless and causes you to think that money can be replaced but you cant replace a person so you should not take them for granted. From the time when money was just and idea all the way up to today, this theme that Charles Dickens wrote about has always had an effect on people and always will because as long as humans have feelings and emotions they will abide by and deeply think about this moral.