I almost forgot about this blogpost, with it being due on Wednesday and all. Well, here I am, last blogpost of the year, and I have no idea what I'm going to write.
I think I'll start with how weird it is to look over everything I wrote this year. It's mindnumbing to see how my writing improved with every blogpost. All my posts had a variety of vocabulary but when I looked closely, I noticed a lot of grammatic errors that I've overlooked. hehe.. Those posts don't mean much to me now that I've passed that part of the lesson plan in the year. However, it makes me laugh to see my New Years Resolution again, because I know that I already failed the resolution to read more books, but now looking back, I see the cause of it - Great Expectations. Anyways, I'm grateful to have these posts, because it's always fun to look back at what I complained about, and it's wonderful to have these concrete memories of the year. As I go through every single one of my 23 blog posts, I noticed that I complained a lot about things I hated, and wrote less sarcastically for things I liked. Consequently, posts about Great Expectations were a lot shorter than posts about reading (when I liked it). Also, I realize - through this blog - that my interests have seriously changed since the beginning of the school year, and that my personality might've even changed. And this idea makes me think about all the things I might've been concerned about 6 months ago, that might've affected my writing then, but now doesnt concern me at all. I feel that the meaning of this whole blog assignment is that we could respond to the homework assignments/ lesson plan/ and ask questions with free emotions to whatever we're saying, just like a regular blog, so we can learn English through our own personal style. Mainly, I realize now, that the blog was also a way to keep track of our progress and see how far we've come. To sum it all up, here is Bruce Barton to say, "Action and reaction, ebb and flow, trial and error, change - this is the rhythm of living. Out of our over-confidence, fear; out of our fear, clearer vision, fresh hope. And out of hope, progress." I really feel like that's what this year has been all about - change. English is always changing, the world is always changing, and the young generation; we are learning - we are changing.
We 9th graders are no longer frosh, and we are gonna become some amazing sophy English nerds. Thanks for a great year Gilman's 1st perioders!
Essays.. are not my strong point. If I'm given the choice between writing an essay, and shaving a hairy guy's back, I would choose the latter. (ew) Nonetheless, I wasn't given that choice, and so I've had to finish 2 essays this year, and one group essay. As you can see, I'm not an accomplished essayist, but I definitely would say that I've improved since the beginning of the year. At the most, I can say that I now know how to properly embed a quote! What I know about literary analysis, is that its very mind-numbing, and deep. Also, that I'm pretty sure even the authors didn't intend for us to learn about all this stuff as they were writing it. The challenge about literary analysis is that you have to actually believe in what you're writing in order to prove your point. However, when you trudge through the essay from start to finish (at midnight like me), it is very rewarding to press the print button at the end.
I don't think my Romeo and Juliet essay was necessarily my best work. I think there are too many things on the "'B' or lower grade" list that my essay falls under. Most likely, my whole essay just lacks in overall originality; chiefly in my thesis because I followed the prompt too closely. Also, I think I may have lost focus at times, mostly near the end, because as I read over it, I realized that my essay gets progressively worse at the end. This may be because I lose motivation, but also because I just don't focus well at midnight. Lastly, and especially why I'm worried about this essay is because I lack in the transitions; on the essay packet, there was nothing to tell me to write in transitions, so I guess I just didn't do it. Well that's about all I have left to talk about essays - I'm spent on all my literary analysis for the year..
Huhh.. Here we are, writing about reading, again. Anyways, summer is coming up and among the peaceful ideas of idle tanning and floating in a lake, the concrete reality of MORE learning is being forced into my mind. It's strange how in the beginning of the year, I was ignorant enough to believe that reading was fun, but then I got to reading Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens, and I've begun to understand how truly wrong I was. Reluctantly, I'm trying to accept books back into my life, after unremittingly avoiding reading for some time. It will be hard, but I think I'll start with reading some books by my favorite authors, such as Tamora Pierce and Madeleine L'Engle. These two authors have a commonality of writing many sequential series, and they are all consistently good books overall.
I plan on reading a series of Tamora Pierce books, that I haven't gotten around to reading which is the Beka Cooper series. Basically, the trilogy - set in Medieval times - is about a heroine named Beka, and she is a Provost's Guardfor Tortall, which is kind of like the police force of this fictional country. I'm interested to read this series because I liked Pierce's previous books for its romantic yet adventurous themes; of course, I'm not sure if this will have a romantic quality to it, but I have high expectations of Tamora Pierce, and I'm sure this will meet my standard.
After finishing that series, I'm not sure if I have time for another series of books, what with summer school and camps and such, but if I do, I definitely plan on reading Madeleine L'Engle's work. I've already read one of the books of her long series, but I believe I started at the wrong spot, so I will have to go to the very beginning of the series and start over. This particular series is called Chronos, but the first book which I will definitely try to read, is called Meet the Austins. It's a story about a girl named Vicky Austin, who's happy family is dirupted by the arrival of a troubled girl named Maggy. The whole story is built with increasing problematic incidents in each chapter, and though this sounds cliched and ordinary, I'm sure it's a book that is easy to be sucked into, because L'Engle has a classy way of writing that mkaes you want to continue reading.
