Liza J: Q4 Week 5 - hits and misses
Savannah Y: Anticipating Our Next Book
Thursday, April 27, 2017
Sunday, April 23, 2017
Thought Provoking Statements
The first statement I am tackling is, "everyone is capable of lying, betrayal, and violence, which are basic parts of human nature." I would strongly agree with this statement. In my life I have lied plenty of time. Too many times to count. My brother, my mother, and my father have all lied to me about minor things, but it is still lying. My brother and I get into fights all the time, wether it is physical or not. That satisfies both betrayal and violence. My friends have all lied to me before, all be it, very tiny, white lies. My life might be a special case, but I would say that since everybody does it then it is human nature.
My second arguable statement of the post will be, "women are more compassionate and less violent than men." I would neither agree or disagree with this statement. I have seen men that have no compassion and are very violent. I see men with one or the other. I see many violent women that can be compassionate. I see some women that are very compassionate and not violent at all. I think some people are compassionate and some are not. The same goes for the issue of violence. This is consistent across all sexes. For example, I am not too violent and very compassionate. My mother is not that violent, but can be compassionate to some and very harsh to others. From my observation of random sets of personalities, I conclude that it is and equal chance of men being less violent and more compassionate or women being less violent and more compassionate.
My second arguable statement of the post will be, "women are more compassionate and less violent than men." I would neither agree or disagree with this statement. I have seen men that have no compassion and are very violent. I see men with one or the other. I see many violent women that can be compassionate. I see some women that are very compassionate and not violent at all. I think some people are compassionate and some are not. The same goes for the issue of violence. This is consistent across all sexes. For example, I am not too violent and very compassionate. My mother is not that violent, but can be compassionate to some and very harsh to others. From my observation of random sets of personalities, I conclude that it is and equal chance of men being less violent and more compassionate or women being less violent and more compassionate.
Hits and Misses
I think I have grown significantly in English throughout the course of the year. The one thing that I improved on the most was my papers that I have done. The first major piece of writing of the year was the Bean Trees Essay. This piece of writing was graded more on knowledge and was used as a baseline for our improvement in writing. I had many errors in that essay and Dr. D pointed them out. I worked on improving them and the problems started to disappear after my next three papers. The most recent paper that I had written in English was the Research Paper. This was hard for many students and it was also challenging for me too. I had to work very hard on that paper and my grade showed it. I had improved on many of the things I had gotten wrong in my first two papers and I think Dr. D appreciated that.
There are many pieces of writing that I do not like. The reoccurring English writing assignment know as blog post are one of the thing that I feel does not help me as much as I would like. I feel like they are just busy work and I would love an explanation on why they help me. If I could understand then I may be able to get more out of them. The second thing that I struggle with is the process of making a paper. For me, the work done before the actual paper is written is very hard and time consuming. It takes me about 3-4 hours to knock up a decent paper that needs tweaking, but it takes me about twice as long to do the outline, annotated bibliography, and so on. It is the worst part about writing a paper and the most time consuming. Although I understand the benefit of the pre-writing, it does not make it any easier.
Thursday, April 13, 2017
Sunday, April 9, 2017
Dealing with Purple Hibiscus
I am glad to say that Purple Hibiscus is a very good book and I am enjoying it very much. It is a very challenging book and it takes up a lot of my time, especially since I have baseball everyday after school. The main challenge that I am having is that it takes up some much of my time. I am reading about an hour a day and on top of my other school work it gets to be pretty intense. The main way I am coping is by dedicating my study hall to reading Purple Hibiscus for the next night. This allows me to get my reading out of the way so I can do other work later. The other hard part of this book is understanding it fully. They way I deal with this problem is through my annotations. I get to look in-depth at the book while I am reading it and it seems to help me understand it. From my understanding that is what the Bread and Butter assignments are supposed to accomplish.
Another challenge that I am facing with this book is the choice of the Post Colonial Menu provided by Dr. D. Many of the choices look appetizing and I can only chose one. I could do more of the options, but Baseball is cutting into my time at home so that throws extra assignments for fun out the window. The final challenge I am facing is suppressing the stereotypes of African society. I have so many preconceived notions about Africa and a lot of the contradict what I am seeing from the novel. One example is I though most everybody in Africa was very very poor. We see Kambili and Jaja living a rich life style and we see Aunty Ifeoma's family having electricity and running water, all be it only in the morning. All pos these challenges are welcome in my mind because if I am not being challenged then I am not learning anything and I am learning a lot for Purple Hibiscus.
Another challenge that I am facing with this book is the choice of the Post Colonial Menu provided by Dr. D. Many of the choices look appetizing and I can only chose one. I could do more of the options, but Baseball is cutting into my time at home so that throws extra assignments for fun out the window. The final challenge I am facing is suppressing the stereotypes of African society. I have so many preconceived notions about Africa and a lot of the contradict what I am seeing from the novel. One example is I though most everybody in Africa was very very poor. We see Kambili and Jaja living a rich life style and we see Aunty Ifeoma's family having electricity and running water, all be it only in the morning. All pos these challenges are welcome in my mind because if I am not being challenged then I am not learning anything and I am learning a lot for Purple Hibiscus.
Advice for Middle School and 9th Grade
I am almost finished with 9th grade. It seems like I just started high school a few weeks ago and it is almost over already. I have a lot of advice for kids going into middle school and some advice for 9th grade. Middle school can be really easy for some and really hard for others. This tip is just a generally good thing to do. The tip is to study. I do not mean study for 15 minutes and say you studied. You need to study for a few reasons. The first is that if you study and learn the material now, then exams will be so much easier. The second reason is that you think you know the information, but then you take the test and do not know anything. Do not just assume you know everything you need to know for a test, be safe and take the time to study.
This next tips are for the rising 9th graders out there. You will find that you will have a lot of homework for all of your classes. I was very surprised of how much of it there was. The first week of school all of my classes had assigned me homework and it took 3 hours to do it. That is on the shorter end of the scale. Sometimes homework takes even longer, especially on the weekends. The tip is to use your tutorial and study hall times wisely, especially if you have after school activities. If you use you time wisely then your homework load at home will decrease dramatically. The second tip that I have is to plan out your night so that it is possible to get all of your work done and still have some free time. The third tip is not to procrastinate. You can get a lot of homework done on the weekend for the week ahead and this is especially helpful if you have after school activities. All of these tips should help you manage your work in a way that it is not overwhelming and you can still have some free time on the side.
Prompt: Coming of Age #19
This next tips are for the rising 9th graders out there. You will find that you will have a lot of homework for all of your classes. I was very surprised of how much of it there was. The first week of school all of my classes had assigned me homework and it took 3 hours to do it. That is on the shorter end of the scale. Sometimes homework takes even longer, especially on the weekends. The tip is to use your tutorial and study hall times wisely, especially if you have after school activities. If you use you time wisely then your homework load at home will decrease dramatically. The second tip that I have is to plan out your night so that it is possible to get all of your work done and still have some free time. The third tip is not to procrastinate. You can get a lot of homework done on the weekend for the week ahead and this is especially helpful if you have after school activities. All of these tips should help you manage your work in a way that it is not overwhelming and you can still have some free time on the side.
Prompt: Coming of Age #19
Wednesday, March 29, 2017
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)