Blogging to the End

I remember the first time we were told we were going to have a blog for assignments. My first thought was that I would never remember to do the assigned blogs each week. Another thought I had was that I could write really cool things and people would like what I said.

 Looking back at my very first blog, Giselle’s intro, you can tell I was just trying to add more than I really wanted to say. I tried to make my first blog post look impressive so classmates might be interested to read my blog.

Some of my earlier blogs I always felt the need to check about books before I wrote them because I wasn’t completely sure of a point I was trying to prove in a piece of writing. Reading my blogs in order, you can see the total difference in tone. From my blog post, My writing My way.. (Extra Credit!), you can read that I have more of an opinion on things, and I have fun writing it. The blog posts from then on sounded more like how I would explain topics like the poem “Lobsters”. What I learned is that I just need to write what I think with supportive evidence, and I shouldn’t babble on something that I don’t know about.

“ But these are flowers that fly and all but sing: And now from having ridden out desire” This quote is from the poem, “Blue-Butterfly Day” by Robert Frost. I really like this quote from his poem because not only does it talk about the nature of butterflies, but talks about children. I think these lines represent how I have the knowledge to put the correct answers but I don’t and I am “ridden out desire”, meaning that I wished I would want to include more in my blog. When I do my blogs I second guess what I wrote worried if I will sound stupid or something is inaccurate or wrong. 

My favorite blog posts are ones that we did reading Great Expectations. We made many references to different literature writing, and objects. Mainly we did the important metaphors to enhance a certain theme. I really enjoyed reading my, GE Photo Post, about comparing Pip to a flower. Here is some analysis I did on Pip and the flower on that blog, “I compared Pip to a flower because he was a daisy in spring, healthy and full. As time goes on flower petals fall off, the events happening to Pip makes indecisive. The flower cannot restore it's petal in one day, the daisy will come back in spring and repeat the process. Pip is loosing all his petals, he isn't becoming his true self.” I think if I wrote like this for majority of my blogs, it would enjoy writing blogs more because it is fun to make comparisons and your originally viewpoint on something.My other Great Expectations post I liked was, Making Connects with GE. I connected the story to Edgar Allen Poe's The Tell Tale Heart I liked it because I connected the stories and it wasn't as difficult as other posts were.

Honors English this year was very fun! We got to practice our essay writing skills and improve our vocabulary with some help of word power. We also got to experience routine blogging on the internet. Quite a year it has been; and there will always been at least one great highlight each day in English!

So long Freshman Year!

-Giselle

Memorable Assignments

     Thinking back through assignments and projects brings back good and bad memories. The most memorable project was Poetry Out Loud. when we started to memorize "Fire and Ice" it was oddly fun using hand motions to remember what the next line was. I got "Part for the Whole" by Robert Francis. Before memorizing the poem, we did a class analysis of our poem, and I was confident that I understood the poets message.I started the technique when I first got my poem, it worked very well. I usually practiced my poem at night so no one could hear me. Now that I look back, it's really funny how frustrated I was when I messed up, I had to start from the beginning until I got it right. When I memorized halfway through the poem I stopped the hand signs and started memorizing anywhere I went. My friends usually were my audience hearing my practice and practice and practice.
     I got my poem memorized about a week until the class competition. No doubt I was nervous the day of the competition. The main thing I was afraid of losing points was how dramatic I told the poem. I did a surprisingly good job! Got tied for second place and went to the school competition. This was the most memorable because it was hard but fun, and it really felt like exercising an important skill. 

My Experiences with Poetry

      I personally like poetry, it is a gateway for emotions but not always sad, sappy poems. There are types of poems that people don't know about and I think everybody will like some type of poetry. when I was younger my parents didn't really introduced me to poems, but many nursery rhymes. I just remember reading Shel Silverstein poems in his "large" books and showing how funny the type of writing was.

     First time I worked on poetry thoroughly was when I made multiple haiku's in 5th grade. Mine mostly consisted of bugs and nature.In middle school I really got to work with poetry and making my own original poems. In my 8th grade language arts class we made a poetry book including 2 poems by known poets and 10 poems made by me. As I'm looking at one of the poems I wrote, I remembered sitting at the front of the classroom thinking of what to write then, I saw the buses enter, the trees, the sun reflecting off of everything and started writing. Looking back on that, I realize it is simple to be motivated if you really wanted to. when my 8th grade teacher graded my poetry book, she added that I had "great imagery throughout" . I think I just loved to describe things I see, hear, touch, feel, and smell it's very easy but the way you describe something is interesting. 

     Ninth grade, our class started analyzing poetry, and I have notice that I chosen Emily Dickinson in middle school and my second choice for reciting poetry. I did poetry out loud, my class and school recitation was "part for the whole" by Robert Francis. It was fun learning different ways to express my poem and make certain parts of it more dramatic.

     Poetry is representing something and looking at something in a different direction, then you might see in person. I like deciphering poems and looking over different styles of poets. when I heard we were doing poetry, I was kind of happy. However, I don't think from the poems we read in class are going to motivating or going to move someone.

 

Conflicts in R&J

     The obvious conflict is the two families, the Montague's and the Capulet's, their own child has married their enemy's child. when things got really drastic was when Tybalt killed Mercutio and Romeo was angry then killed Tybalt. Prince declared the result of Tybalt's death was to banish Romeo from Verona. This also meant that he had to be separate from his love of his life, Juliet Capulet. We were introduced to the hatred of these families at Capulet’s party in Act 1. Romeo comes uninvited to the party and Tybalt was enraged, “It fits when such a villain is a guest. I’ll not endure him.” (1.5.84-85). This starts the man vs. man conflict between Romeo and Tybalt. An act later it’s the romance between Romeo and Juliet, which Tybalt utterly disliked. He challenged Romeo to a duel and Romeo almost got killed. Instead of Romeo dying his best friend ended up with an injury. While Mercutio is dying  he said, "A plague o' both your houses! They have made worms' meat of me, I have it, and soundly, too. Your houses!" (3.2. 111-113). Romeo and Tybalt fighting and representing  their families had caused Mercutio’s death. Mercutio sensed that Romeo changed for the worse, the fight didn’t do good for him. Romeo couldn't think for a better solution for the fighting between families.  He missed that he wasn’t droven crazy over girls, Mercutio saw his friend change before his death. 

In present time we don't duel out each other when something is wrong, well not the way they do it. Everyone has moral conflict to improve something about themselves. Romance stories are more interesting/ noticeable for a character's controversy between choices. In reality it is at work, home, anywhere; this decision could be based on the better health or educational purposes. About a month ago I had to decide if I wanted to pick this subject in honors or regular, I made a pro's and con's list to help think about the factors that are included with this class. And I couldn't choose what was best for me or my education track.What people usually do is they think of it briefly, go home and sleep on the idea. Then they ask the opinions of their friends to help them decide.

Seeing Romeo and Juliet Everywhere

Romeo and Juliet has a big impact on modern culture such as songs. I've been listening to the same song over and over again cause I really like this song. It is Somewhere Only we Know by Keane. while listening to this song I think of Romeo's perspective, how he feels about not seeing Juliet. Second verse is saying that he is ready to be committed, but committed to only one girl he truly loves. I think the "fallen tree" represents him, he's looking at himself. He wants to go to the place where he knew he loved her, and try and get those memories and feelings back. If Romeo and Juliet went to "somewhere only they knew" meaning forgetting the familiy feuds, then that is a place without any problems just for them two to love. Saying "this could be the end of everything", Romeo wants to be together but there are too many reasons why they shouldn't be together. He just wants to be in a relationship with Juliet, and forgets his other choices.

This is the Glee shortened version of this song.

I walked across an empty land
I knew the pathway like the back of my hand
I felt the earth beneath my feet
Sat by the river and it made me complete

Oh simple thing where have you gone
I'm getting old and I need something to rely on
So tell me when you're gonna let me in
I'm getting tired and I need somewhere to begin

I came across a fallen tree
I felt the branches of it looking at me
Is this the place we used to love?
Is this the place that I've been dreaming of?

Oh simple thing where have you gone
I'm getting old and I need something to rely on
So tell me when you're gonna let me in
I'm getting tired and I need somewhere to begin

And if you have a minute why don't we go
Talk about it somewhere only we know?
This could be the end of everything
So why don't we go
Somewhere only we know?

Oh simple thing where have you gone
I'm getting old and I need something to rely on
So tell me when you're gonna let me in
I'm getting tired and I need somewhere to begin

So if you have a minute why don't we go
Talk about it somewhere only we know?
This could be the end of everything
So why don't we go
So why don't we go

This could be the end of everything
So why don't we go
Somewhere only we know? 

Connecting with Romeo and Juliet

      Reading at home I get original ideas of what's going to happen and how I interpret the lines.  In Act 1 Scene 1, Benvolio and Tybalt interrupt the servants fighting; this is showing that there will always be a peacemaker and an over-prided person in a situation. These two men also foreshadows the relationship between them, and there will most likely be another situation like this further in the play and the reactions may be different. The nurse in the Capulet family is more of a mother to Juliet than Lady Capulet is. The show case mom, Lady Capulet, is very egotistical and her comments are going to be hateful but satirical. I think her lines we could usually find a pun in. In Act 1 Scene 4 Romeo's character is firstly introduced. when Romeo is talking to Benevolio we sense Romeo's personality easily. I think Romeo will be fun to read, he will be saying romantic lines with many metaphors.

      Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare has truly interest me. All the general plot summary just sounds like a sappy love story but Shakespeare's language and the way he tells the story is hard and interesting to decipher at times. When I read at home, I usually keep track of character personalities, relationships, and motifs. During class while reading I usually notice puns and metaphors whether a classmate points it out or re-reading it just made the lines more clear. It's easy to keep up with the reading assignments, there aren't many pages we have to read each night. I can usually decipher what the general idea of the whole page, but in class I learn more in depth of the lines I missed. Sometimes I look up words up in the dictionary and try to decipher the lines. Reading aloud in class does help me, what I think I read, is further in depth in literary devices than I thought.

    

wrapping up Great Expectations

Morals and themes are easily found in Great Expectations, but is it easy to tell the specifics of the universal meaning? Guilt goes hand in hand between the different linked relationships through characters. Also, feeling guilty comes in a package deal with always striving to self improve. In real life it is like constructive criticism; lets say a journalist is writing a big news story, and the editor in chief told the journalist that he/she forgot to interview the main person who it's about. The journalist feels guilty for forgetting such a silly mistake and wants to show his/her boss an excellent story next time. My example I just showed you really demonstrated that there are steps to guilt, I think that's why Charles Dickens wanted to include the dishonoring of characters. Everyone experiences feeling bad what they have done. It is also important to know Dickens intention for the guilt factor, it shows that having a satisfactory life is worth more than living a high financial life because you miss out on friendships and family.