Singing Our Lives Away

Coming back to the new semester brought much foreshadowing of eventual demise for the use of brain power for seniors.  Yet, for me, I continue to power through and worry more about the new schedule than any sort of lack of motivation.  The first day (or two...or three) of the new semester bring stresses, but I never could guess how apprehensive my fellow students would become over the smallest of things.

You would think the stresses of picking up a new class at the semester or the continual arduous work our teachers demand that we do would stress my students the most.  But this is an entirely false claim.  The gossip of the day includes the fact that we must sing in front of our entire English class.  Being an AP course, we have been reared to react intelligently to prompts and other tasks that catch us off guard.  I saw a completely different reaction to this singing task.  Now, my voice is no gem, but I believe that people should feel less stressed about this than they do.  In our lives we will have to deal with much more difficult and serious requests than singing a tune in front of our peers.

Bloggin' 'Bout Bloggin'

Overall, I feel that I've had a positive experience from this project.  I've had two small complaints, but I'll get to that in one moment.  I really enjoyed reading other people's writing styles and how they do or do not let their own voice shine through their work.  Also, I felt I was able to pull more creative things from my mind than I ever have in the past.  I know this helped me become a better writer because, for all the writing we do for the class, it has been more systematic than anything else.  I feel much more confident about writing as I make my next step in life and head to college.  One thing I would like to change is how familiar I am with the website.  I know, Ms. Serensky, you can do nothing to change this, but I know I had some really creative ideas as gadgets, but I did not really know how to put them down in the website with the choices they provided us.  Also, I wish we did not have to think of an official title until the very end, as we do when we write our papers.  I feel that, if we had a chance to develop our blog with a cohesive theme, we could come up with a creative name by the end that would envelop the main idea of our blog.  Other than these two small glitches, I've really enjoyed the project as a whole.

Is It Wrong or Is It...Left?

As I debated what to write for my blog, I yearned for something creative to display, and hopefully show off in front of the class on Thursday.  I've always felt that my creativity in this project has seriously lacked, at least compared to my classmates.  Then, I questioned why, which got me thinking about whether or not I am "Right-Brained" or "Left Brained," and how this helps me in English.  I've never known for sure, because I love math and science, but I also love to read and draw.  For those of you who do not know the difference, the right brain is visual and processes information in an intuitive and simultaneous way, looking first at the whole picture then the details.  The left brain is verbal and processes information in an analytical and sequential way, looking first at the pieces then putting them together to get the whole.

I took a quiz, hoping that it would clear things up for me.  I am going to college next year and love my classes too much to decide which one I would like to pursue as a career.  Of course, after answering a few "yes-or-no" questions, the quiz came to the same conclusion I have: I am dead center.  I know extremes in life are never good, but maybe it is easier and more productive to be decided about a trait of ourselves than to be unsure, which has never been the case in my life.  So, what are you--left- or right-brained? Take the quiz on the URL to find out!
http://www.intelliscript.net/test_area/questionnaire/questionnaire.cgi

My Own Personal Nurse Ratched

As I worked on my data sheet earlier today, I went to scroll from my audience and purpose section up to the date, due to some sort of panic attack that I typed the wrong date.  Apparently, my panic attack was too much for the computer to handle, because in my panic to scroll from the very bottom to the very top, my computer froze and I had to restart so that the machine would not fry.

This caused me to draw parallels between my life and Bromden's.  I feel like we both have some sort of extreme fear of machines, but is it truly irrational?  I don't know about anyone else, but, on average, I save my data sheet about every thirty seconds.  That may be irrational, because I can easily remember what I wrote thirty seconds ago, and if the computer were to crash, it would do an "auto-save" of my document.  But, I always have a nagging fear that my computer would lock down and keep my data sheet from me like Nurse Ratched kept toothpaste from McMurphy.  I even keep an updated version on my data sheet on a flash drive, even though I have no intention of working on it at school.  This, of course, is because I am afraid it will not save and I will have to start from the place I began previously (which has happened before).

It is my own Nurse Ratched because I fear it, yet am still a slave to it.  Not only in school, but I look to the internet for my connections to the outside world.  Just as the patients hate Nurse Ratched, they look to her for support and decision-making.  Maybe machines control our world after all, just like Bromden believes.

Will Power?

We all know the Christmas season is full of eggnog, cookies, and other wonderfully fattening dishes that we would like to indulge in, but the thing that has always frustrated me is the flaky, unrealistic goals that each New Year brings.  As I spent all of December indoors to work out due to an unfortunate stress fracture, I watched the number of people at my work out facility dwindle as the month went on.  This did not surprise me, but it disappointed me.  If AP English has taught me anything (which, of course, it has), it taught me perseverance and the fact that we must work for what we gain.  I knew that, the split second it became January 1, 2011, many Americans would "turn a leaf" and begin their diets and work out plans all over again.  But how true is this "leaf?"  Now, I do not condemn these people for wanting a fresh start, but I learned through AP English that we must persevere through the difficult times, as the holidays may be for these people.  Also, I learned that one cannot start at the end.  We would not be where we are today as writers and students if it weren't for those multiple unfinished essays and the scary grouped up desks and the violent graded discussions.  Those who have a New Year's Resolution to be fit and active must take a realistic approach and not bog down the work out facility if they can't work the machines there.  Thankfully, I have persevered through my doctor-ordered 4 weeks off of running and am able to avoid the work out facility as much as possible.

Christmas Analysis

A few days before Christmas, during our annual baking of pies and cookies, my mother and I watched a classic Christmas movie, The Polar Express.  (SPOILER ALERT) For those of you who do not know the movie, the main character travels to the North Pole on a magical train and Santa Claus gives him the First Gift of Christmas.  He asks for a bell, which symbolizes his belief in Santa Claus and the spirit of Christmas.  Yet, due to a hole in his pocket, he loses the bell, which brings him great despair.  The movie continues to show him feeling the hole in his pocket long after he loses the bell.  In response to this, my mother exclaimed, "Do they think we're that dumb that they have to show us that stupid hole every two seconds?"  I responded, "Mom, the repetition of the hole being shown aahhh-bviously is to evoke pathos from the audience."  Then I thought to myself, did I really just say that out-loud?  That scared me a little bit.  What scared me even more is that my mother did not even give me a second glance.  She just turned back to the pie crust, humming along to the movie's soundtrack, as though I said nothing out of the ordinary.  Although English only lasts two years, this memory of Christmas Analysis will always stick in my mind.  It made me realize how second nature analysis has become.  Also, I am sure that, in future Christmases, I will analyze Christmas movies just as well as if I were still in the class like today.