The End

       Blogging was not necessarily something I looked forward to, because on most occasions, I remember distinctly getting ready for bed and then realizing that there was a blog post due the following day, tonight is a good example.  I do remember that I enjoyed blogging when I remembered to, I found it fun, interesting, and a nice change from essays or DGP.  It was a much different way of expressing writing talent, and I enjoyed turning on a computer rather than say, writing on a sheet of paper.  The best thing about blogging for me was the fact that you had a choice on what to say for the prompts, it was mostly inferential, and I love to infer and write about something that isn't meant to be taken literally.  The blogs really cause the writer to dive deeper into that subject, to really think hard, and to express it in the most understandable way possible.  As more and more blog posts popped up on your blog, I noticed they were all so different and creative, and I can't imagine how much of a pain that would be to think of something dramatically different from the rest every single week, so I found myself marveling at that while attempting to decipher the prompt to come up with an answer.  On top of the blog posts themselves, I've learned that stronger study habits are required in this class.  Not doing something or not studying for something else will severely impact your grade, and when I got in-sync with completing these blogs, it got me on the track of studying Word Power, brainstorming essay ideas, and completing unfinished worksheets lying on the floor.  These blogs really were helpful to my study habits, because at the beginning of the year, these habits were practically non-existent.  
       Because of the enormous amount of blogs we have been required to complete this year, one of these assignments definately highlighted my "blogging" experience.  The "Thoughts On Reading" was my favorite blog mainly because you asked for our individual reactions to the book.  This inferential prompt was easily my favorite because it asked you to give your own opinion on the book while addressing key aspects of the novel as well.  Not only does this prompt require you to analyze the literature, but it requires you to go deeper than just what is written on the pages, it requires you to give your own, intuitive opinion on why or why not you liked the book, and back your explanation up not with quotes or page numbers, but with your brain, and it's interpretive skills.  This was by far my favorite blog of the year not just because it required creativity, but because it required you to go beyond just comprehension of the novel, but understand that more than that is required to comprehend a book, you have to think for yourself and realize that the words on the pages aren't the only thing you're going to be tested on.  
       I have learned a lot this year by blogging, and I appreciate that it was a requirement not because it was mildly entertaining, but because it was and will be useful in the long run.  I encountered not an unbelievable amount of stress this year but I did find myself frustrated and, on occasion, annoyed at myself for forgetting assignments and not saying a word in class discussions but I learned from those mistakes, and I know I will continue to grow and make more mistakes, and learn from those as well.  To wrap this abnormally long blog post up, all I can say is that I wholeheartedly agree with Thomas Edison when he quoted this such a long time ago; "Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration."
Signing off,
Sean

Favorite Assignment

       The most memorable assignment, for me, was when we selected a book at the beginning of the year and got to partner up with fellow readers of that same book to make a creative project.  My group and I made a movie/rap about Catcher In The Rye and it was a really fun experience, I learned a lot more about the book this way and how to work in a group even better and more efficiently than before.
       I loved reading The Catcher In The Rye, and I think all of he other books would have been just as great, but on top of that, being able to make a movie was amazing, and a whole new learning experience for me.  I had never done a movie before, and even if I didn't have a gigantic role in it, at least I was a part of it, and that gave me satisfaction.  I think the movies not only create humor and laughter in the classroom environment, but they create enjoyment and learning in the students, and isn't that what teaching is all about?

Experience With Poetry

       Im not exactly the biggest fan of poetry there is.  I don't revel at the mere mention of it, I don't read it in my free time, and I don't scream in delight when a teacher announces we will be reviewing poetry over the next six weeks (ahem).  I do, though, have a story where poetry did positively impact my perspective on this frustrating aspect of literature.
       When I was in 8th grade, I distinctly recall reading and reviewing the disturbingly genius poet Edgar Allen Poe.  We read many of his poems but I can remember reading "The Tell Tale Heart" the most.  It was such a fascinating story, and it was so dark and twisted, I couldn't possibly imagine that poetry (in my opinion) could be so immoral.  Basically, it being about a maniac who can't stand to look at a person's glass eye, and he kills him because of it, it showed me that meaning can be portrayed in other ways besides rhyming words together.  I actually remember the moral of that poem today (after one long year) that guilt will always get you in the end, and if that doesn't get you, your conscience definately will.  This poem gave  me a more positive outlook on poetry, and I now know that not all poetry has to be about plants and animals, and how pretty flowers are, etc.  I highly enjoyed Edgar Allen Poe and his dark perspective on life itself, and it helped me with poetry and how to understand it.  At least,for me, some poetry can be tolerated.

Romeo & Juliet Conflict

A prevailing conflict in Romeo & Juliet is the Capulet & Montague feud. This interpersonal relationship illustrates many happenings throughout the book, and is undoubtedly the cause of Romeo & Juliet's untimely demises. This conflict also creates other miniature conflicts as well. For example, Tybalt and Mercutio both lost their lives thanks to the two families hostility and Paris would not have been slain by Romeo if not for this.

I think this conflict relates to everyday life with people with their parents divorced. I dont have this relation from personal experience but I know people with divorced Parents and it's always an uphill battle. While I think this is a bad comparison,conflict does give meaning to life as well. It keeps a person fighting, understanding the meaning of life, and that's one of the reasons Romeo & Juliet kept fighting. I deal with conflict by realizing that it's a natural part of life and everybody has to deal with it.

Romeo & Juliet Everywhere

       A song that I thought related to Romeo & Juliet is called Romeo & Juliet by The Killers not just because of its name, but because the lyrics relate so much to what the book is like.  I really enjoyed the song years ago, and it instantly came to mind when this blog was posted.  The entire premise of the song is refreshing, and the relations from the book to the present creates a cool new aspect of the novel, and the song as well.  I definately recommend the song to anyone who enjoys rock with a good beat.

Connecting with Romeo and Juliet

       The first act of Romeo and Juliet was more entertaining for me than I had expected it to be.  Right when I read the first part of Act One, I could relate to it from my everyday life at home.  When the Prince tells the Capulets and Montagues to put down their weapons and just get it together, I feel like the Prince when my mom and my sister argue all the time.  I always feel like I have to get involved and break things up, and the arguments are usually over relatively unimportant things anyways, like television, waking up for school, and getting to bed.  The Prince was mentioned in the first act and has yet to be seen, but I know he will be back to break things up again, I know I always am.
       When I'm reading at home, I get the basic idea of what's going on, and I can comprehend the basic storyline of the characters.  What I don't get at home is all of the similes, metaphors, figurative language, etc. that we review when we read it in class.  Reading in class helps me personally, and I'm sure others as well tremendously, because we're gaining a better perception of the novel, new outlooks, a better insight, and a greater overall understanding of what's going on.  I know its not just me who benefits from reviewing Romeo and Juliet, and I definately want to continue doing so.

Wrapping Up Great Expectations

       Great Expectations was a huge book, full of different themes that could be percieved, but the iverall theme that stood out for me was that you don't need all the riches in the world, unlimited wealth, and to have the highest social status to be happy and content with yourself.  I think the story is really about Pip as someone who starts off not knowing what he truly wants to be, so he lets society and misconceptions overwhelm him, causing him to cave in, after Estella's blatent insults, to be a gentleman.  This is what Pip thinks he wants, but its not, and he never feels completely happy, he still has a place in his heart for his hometown and Joe.  When he returns at the end of the novel, every possible weight off his shoulders, including Estella, Pip feels happy for once, and he learns that going through all of that wasn't at all necessary for him to feel like relieved.  I think this book is relevant to people because everyone has a dream of becoming something more than we already are. 

Thoughts On Reading

       My personal reaction to the book was a relatively positive one.  It was an intuitive, relatively understandable, and even a little humorous at parts novel.  I thought the story ended on a pretty bad note, what with Estella leaving Pip and Joe leaving Pip and Biddy leaving Pip and even Pip losing all his money.  But when I got over that fact, I realized Pip was content and happy being just the way he was before being a gentleman, he didn't need all of that money, wealth, and status, he just needed to be okay with himself.  I didn't particularly enjoy Dicken's as an author not only becasue his books are just way too long, it's because the language he uses occasionally is just wierd and a bit misunderstandable.  Other than that, he's the best author of the century I guess.  I didn't sympathize with Pip basically becasue he was such a jerk to everyone but I did like Herbert a lot becasue of his likeable, funny outlook towards life.  I also enjoyed Estella near the beginning after reading the ending, basically because she thought she was all that, when she was just a poor bum of a baby sent out on her butt.  Slightly cynical, I know, but painfully true.  A mystery i could solve from the beginning was that Magwitch was going to be the benefactor of Pip.  It was just so obvious, and in a way, that man was the only person Pip really helped out, ever. Overall, the book wasn't the most fantastical experience in the whole world, but I guess it was better than staring at my Iphone for 12 hours a day.                
       Great Expectations was a relatively annoying book that had to be constantly read every night.  That was my first reaction to the book when I picked it out of my dusty bookshelf and cracked it open.  It was honestly worse than the Chinese Water Torture reading the first 100 pages but when I got to the second act of the book, I noticed it was getting even more boring than before and I was falling behind.  A week ago, I read about 150 pages of the book to catch up and I had never felt so confident before, staying ahead of the game, being an overachiever, how you feel when you have everything done, content.  Then Tuesday came...

Photo Connection

I think this picture represents a lot of Pip's actions that have been happening lately in Great Expectations.  I know its not the greatest picture but it signifies Pip's growing ignorance towards his close friends in the beginning of his life, Biddy and Joe.  His expectations are ridiculously unrealistic and for some reason he thinks he is better than everyone else based on his good fortune and coincidence.  I have not been impressed with Pip lately, and I don't think he's going to change either.

Making Connections

       A few months ago, I read a fascinating novel entitled "Life of Pi" and I found it to be a unique, one of a kind story unlike any other.  After reading almost two-thirds of Great Expectations, I seem to have found these two stories to be so interlaced and so similar that I almost immediately knew the relation after reading a good 30 or so pages.
       Life of Pi starts out a lot like Great Expectations, there are three sections, and in the first, the protagonist, Pi, remembers his childhood and reminisces, talking about the good and the bad events he experienced.  When Pi was born, he was born a Hindu (religion has a huge correlation with Great Expectations and Pip's expectations), but he begins to understand and follow Christianity and Islam as well.  This has a huge relation to Pip and his expectations because him and Pi both want more out of life than they can really get.  Three religions seems like a lot, but Pi benefits from each one, seeing different aspects of life and overall, understanding that God is different in each one.  God is really Pi's expectations.
       Not only is that just a fraction of the book, I found the relevancy of Great Expectations and Life of Pi to be tremendous, and I thought they related to each other so much, because our expectations are always so high for ourselves.  It shows in other books as well, this was just the only book I've read in the past few months.
             :)

Second Stage

       Throughout the second stage of Great Expectations, its really shocking how much Pip has changed since the beginning.  He's almost the complete opposite of that poor, innocent, boy we were so kindly introduced to a couple weeks ago.  Now, he's an almost sad, unrelenting shell of the boy he used to be and has changed to a greedy, high and mighty "gentleman".  In Chapter 24, when Pip asks Mr. Jaggers for some money and Mr. Jaggers offers 50 pounds, Pip asks for less, but when Jaggers says 5 pounds, which is (was) a ton of money, Pip asks for more.  

       For example, this shows not only his ever increasing greediness, but his ignorance of how lucky he is.  He spends all his time moping about and worrying about things but if he really wanted to be a gentleman, he'd do it without being such a pain.

       

Pip's Quote

       I think Pip is trying to state in this confusing sentence if you remember a day in your life when you did something, and you were bound to it, there was nothing you could do to get out of it, you were trapped.  Pip is obviously referring to his apprenticeship to Joe, and how he felt right after it was given to him, shameful and indecisive.  His attitude towards the apprenticeship is a drastic change from the first half of the first act to the second part.  From Chapters 1-9, he imagines being a blacksmith a wonderfully glorious thing, something admirable, thanks to Joe.  Pip's judgement towards Joe really decided his wanting to become a blacksmith because he was the one person that was a real friend to him.  In Chapters 10-16, Pip's frequent visits to Miss Havisham's cloud his judgement towards becoming a blacksmith and he feels ashamed, thanks to Estella's cruelly judgmental remarks.  He wants to become a gentleman in these chapters, and I think that its totally ridiculous he does.  He expects that he deserves something better than everyone else, but that's not how life works, Pip doesn't realize that yet.
       A life altering day for me was when i joined the crew team I guess.  It was over three years ago and the first time I got out on the water I got an ejector and I flew out of the boat in the water.  It was pretty scary at the time but my friends still make fun of me still about it.  Anyways, I've been doing it for a while now, and not only is it a hard sport, but I'm committed, and it definately has lead to a chain of events throughout my life.

Great Expectations

There are a ton of spots in the novel that just didn't make sense to me but I came across something a little weird. When the two convicts are found and arrested in Chapter 5, I really don't get why they yell at each other and try to put the blame on each other's shoulders.  They know they've been caught and I don't get why the book spends 2 pages just describing the two screaming "Liar!" and "Murderer!" at each other.  Any ideas?

Thanks,

Sean

Group Essay

Zach and Katie, I haven't changed much since Friday, I am still using the three quotes we talked about Friday for the pursuit of pleasure in marriage, "The only way to behave to a woman is to make love to her if she is pretty and to someone else if she is plain", "No married man is ever attractive to his wife", and the altered quote from "Oh!  I killed Bunbury this afternoon.  I mean poor Bunbury died this afternoon" to "Three is company, two is none."  What do you guys think of these quotes?  Also, I had a question about my concluding paragraph.  I feel like because its the first one of the three, I have to make it so it doesn't make the essay seem like its finished.  How do I make my concluding paragraph end things well just with the pursuit of pleasure and not the whole broad topic of marriage being satirized?
Thanks,
Sean

Dishonesty in Earnest

       Oscar Wilde uses many versions of literary enlightenment to describe not only the humor, but the truth in what happened back then.  Firstly, dishonesty relates to epigrams in a particularly humorous way because every time an epigram is used, it is either immediately contradicted or just instantaneously forgotten.  On the subject of satire towards social institutions, it's satirical because Wilde ostentatiously portrays the rich as obnoxious people that only care about themselves.  He also portrays them as being able to lie and get away with pretty much anything, therefore relating to the aforementioned, dishonesty.  Also, there is an obvious dishonesty relation to Ernest because he lied about his name to stay with Gwendolen.  The same goes for Algernon using the name Ernest.  Obviously, both Cecily and Gwendolen are being unfairly ridiculous in saying that they would only stay with Jack and Algernon if their name was Ernest and not only does it explain that it describes the pursuit of pleasure as well.  This pokes fun at many things, but the ending of the book, when Jack discovers his name was Ernest all along, I got a real kick out of that. 
       I think Wilde is trying to say that lying is everywhere.  I noticed that nearly every character had their own dark secrets.  For example, at the end of the book, when Miss Prism admits that she had left Jack at a train station as an infant and Lady Bracknell, being the obnoxious woman that she is, was not born wealthy.  I also think Wilde was trying to say that lying will get you caught in the end, no matter how elaborate the lie is.  It happened for Algernon and Jack, but while it turned out for the better for them, I think he was trying to say that not all lies turn out like it did in the play.
      

AF Project Evaluation

Dan Mongovin:
(Comic Strip)
Dan's comic strip was good, it showed a lot of visual realization of the book, but it looked like it took like 2 minutes to make.

Will/Paul
(Comic Strip)
This is a really good timeline and shows a lot of the main events in the story.  My recommendation is to show maybe some symbolism and what you guys found interesting and added that too.

Sherwin, Ketl, Chase, Zach
(Song, Video)
This video underlined a key part of the story and it was well played out.  It showed that the animals rights were being stripped away and its was shown exactly how I imagined it while reading the book.  Good singing and piano playing, guys.

Blog of the swimmer
(Poem)
This poem shows the tyranny of the pigs and how they eventually take complete control.  It was also really creative how they included tyranny in the poem.  Good job.

Kamron
(Artwork)
This drawing explains a lot of the main events throughout the story.  My advice, show more than just the main events.  For example, the pigs trading with the humans, or the pigs getting drunk.  Its ok to stray from the main storyline.

Sarah, Molly, Grace, Kady
(Movie)
The movie really expressed how the animals felt and showed their lifestyle and cruddy environment they lived in before the revolution.  An overall great job.  Also, the Farmer Jones part was pretty funny.

Matt
(Artwork)
Matt's picture was really good, it introduced a lot of main characters and even showed what Animal Farm could look like.  It was pretty convincing and I thought he did a great job.

Emery
(Video)
Emery described the characters very well and also proved his understanding of the book.  Its really good and it explains almost all of the characters in the book.

Rachel
(Game)
Rachel made a creative game that looked like it took quite a long time to make.  It's really cool and I enjoyed seeing it last week in class.  It looks like a game I'd want to play in the future.

Poop
(Artwork)
This is a wierd, cool picture of the farm getting rained on or something.  Not really sure what's going on in the picture but its cool anyways.

I think my project matched my classmates projects because I noticed a lot of Comic Lifes and they were pretty similar to mine so I think I did just fine.

New Year's Resolution Extra Credit

       A new year's resolution that would definately benefit me this year is waking up on time.  Last year, I always woke up around 7 and I barely had time to get to the bus so now I'm going to attempt to wake up at 6:30 each school day.  It'll give me more time to get ready and I won't be so rushed.  I could even finish the homework I didn't do the night before while I'm eating breakfast.  Not only is this a good idea but my sister, who's still sleeping will be waken up by my beeping alarm clock and she'll be forced to get up too!  I think this resolution will benefit the whole house, and I don't mind a few grumpy complaints from my mom and sister.  And besides, I can catch up on sleep while I'm riding the bus.

Animal Farm Project