Other Reading

I was thinking over what other readings I had done in other classes and besides stuff in our textbooks, I really hadn't at all this semester! At least not any that you could think very critically about.

However, I actually ended up reading one today for my British Literature class. We got done reading 'Twelfth Night' and I had chosen to do my final paper on the play. If you aren't familiar with it, the play is basically about a bunch of people running around and getting all confused with gender and sexuality because one woman dresses up like a man and fools a whole bunch of people. You may have seen the movie 'She's the Man' with Amanda Bynes, which is basicallly a modern version of this play.

So I did some research into gender and sexuality in 'Twelfth Night' to help support my paper. One of the sources I found ended up just restating what I had already figured out and helped me add to my paper. Overall, the play messes around with people's perceptions of gender and sexuality and although the ending is a bit ridiculous and doesn't actually address any of the issues brought up in the play, it leaves plenty open for speculation, which is what this article - and many others like it - delve into.

This was definitely an article that helped my think critically about the play. It examined the deeper issues brought up that aren't actually really discussed in detail in the play, but allows the reader to reflect on. Gender and sexuality are complex issues in themselves and it's always interesting to examine them, and having characters that are dealing with those same issues helps to do this as well.

This is one thing that I like about Shakespeare - even when he's writing what seem like silly and funny plays without much depth, he seems to inject deeper issues and topics in there that may take a little digging to get at, but can be worth hours of discussion afterwards.

Thanksgiving

Yeah, I know I talked about holidays in my last post but it's what's on my mind right now so I figured I'd keep going.

While Thanksgiving is a great to spend quality time with your family and eat lots of great food, I think that most people actually don't stop to think about what they're thankful for.

Since I'll probably be so busy on the actual day, I wanted to talk about what I'm truly thankful for.

I'm thankful for my health, and the health of my family members. You have to remember that life is precious and can be gone so quickly. I love spending time with my family and appreciate that I have such an amazing support system of people who love and care about me.

I'm thankful for being able to be at college and get the education that I'm getting. I know many people don't have this opportunity and I never want to take it for granted. It's a blessing that I get to go here and even though I've complained a lot about the amount of homework I have, I know it's helpful in the long run.

I'm thankful that I live in a country where I have plenty of opportunities. In other countries I might not be able to go to college or live the life I live for either financial reasons or even because I'm female. We have so many freedoms and opportunities here and I'm definitely glad that I'm blessed with that.

I'm thankful that I have a job right now, and one that I enjoy. I know it's difficult to find one, let alone one that you like, and I know that I definitely got lucky when I was offered this one.

And lastly, I'm very thankful that there are only a few days left until break because I seriously need one right now!

Holidays are Coming

I sat and thought for about ten minutes about what I wanted to talk about in this post and ended up staring out the window at the rain and wishing it would turn into snow.

Yeah, I'm that person.

I know the holidays have become pretty commercialized and it's all about the stuff and not the actual sentiment of the holiday itself, but I still love them. Because despite how much I complain about them, I actually do love my family and holidays are always pretty fun.

It's the coziness of everyone sitting around at Thanksgiving and just talking and eating together. (The food's not too bad either). It's putting up the Christmas decorations and tree (a task which I have designated myself as the leader of). It's going Christmas shopping for other people and I'm finally at the age where it's more fun to give than it is to get. It's listening to Christmas music while making and decorating cookies (and maybe I've been listening to Christmas music since October but I regret nothing). It's waiting for the first snowfall, which I sincerely hope happens soon. And it's our annual family Christmas party which usually culminates in an epic wrapping paper fight which is lead by my uncles who are twice as old as us kids.

I actually think that I like the time before the holidays better than the actual day itself. I mean, after you open the presents on Christmas morning, there's not much else to do. Maybe we'll pop in 'It's A Wonderful Life' but there's always that feeling of sadness that it's all over.

That's why I love the anticipation of the event better. It's spending time with family, preparing for the big day, and enjoying the fact that I have a month off of school. This year will be a little bit more difficult since it's the one year anniversary of my grandmother's death (around Thanksgiving time) but I'll just appreciate the fact that I'm able to be with my family and loved ones so much more.

(Also McDonald's comes out with their eggnog shakes which are right below Pumpkin Spice Lattes on the delicious scale).

Controversy

I know we spent a lot of time talking about shooting incidents and gun control in class and this is kind of similar to that topic.

The topic that I want to talk about is bomb threats in schools. Just like school shootings, it's becoming an increasingly large issue in our society. While there aren't many cases of bombs being actually found, the threats keep adding up and it's gotten a bit ridiculous.

I was at my field experience earlier in October over at Fond lu Lac High School when the principal came over the loudspeaker to let everyone know that they had found a note in one of the bathrooms. Later that same week, there was a bomb threat at my old high school. The year before I started high school and the year after I left there were additional threats at my old school.

After getting back from Fondy High, I checked Twitter just to see if anyone had mentioned it (as is a common thing to do nowadays). Not only were there some tweets from people at Fondy, but multiple other schools from all over the country.

The fact that there were so many in just one day was beyond ridiculous. When did it become the cool thing to threaten to blow up the school? Is it our generation's equivalent of setting off the fire alarm? I know that the threat that happened the year before I started high school was just some kids who wanted a day off of classes. They're now serving in jail for a very long time.

It's a pretty serious issue; I could possibly understand somebody wanting to go to that extreme if they had been bullied very badly and had reason to not like the people in the school. But people seem to be doing it just for fun; not realizing the amount of time and money lost and the amount of stress and worry that is caused by this stunt. We have to come up with something to get through to kids that this isn't a joke or a lighthearted matter.

Politics

...a word that I'm sure most of the country is sick of right now. I know I am, which just goes to show. This is the first year I ever get to vote in a presidential election, which is pretty exciting. To be honest, I wasn't really interested in politics until a couple years ago. Even though I now have opinions on the issues that affect us and the country, I'm easily reminded why I didn't pay attention to politics in the past.

It's gotten to the point where I'm seriously considering tossing the television out the window because I'm sick of hearing all the political ads every other commercial. Apparently, 90% of the ads put on in this election have been negative ones - bashing the other guy and not actually stating what they are going to do if they are elected. And to be honest, a large part of the time, running the ads is just a big waste of time and money since people are going to vote for their party, no matter what.

That's one thing that I never understood about politics. We get two people to choose from; one of them is on this side of the issues while the other is on the complete opposite side. There's no in-between and no room for compromise. People also tend to vote blindly; they don't consider the other side because they're from "that other party." There's no way they could possibly be right.

I will vote for one of the major candidates, because unfortunately giving my vote to someone else won't change anything. I'll vote for whoever I believe will do the best for the country. However, I don't think I'll ever subscribe to a particular political party because frankly there isn't one that's in the right while the other is in the wrong. And I think I speak for everyone when I say that I can't wait for November 6th to come so that we can, if anything, get rid of all the annoying commercials.

FRIENDS

When it comes to TV, I tend to gravitate toward plot-heavy shows, rather than sitcoms or comedies. However, one of my all-time favorite shows is definitely FRIENDS.

For those unfamiliar with it, the show follows the lives of six friends living in New York. There's nothing particularly special or important about them - they're just normal people who have jobs, relationships, families, friends, and all the normal issues that come with those things.

However, it's the cast that really makes this show so great. They fully embrace their characters and flesh them out into real people, not just shallow stereotypes. You want them to succeed, you want to find out what's going to happen in their lives next, and you laugh and cry alongside them. My favorite character is definitely Chandler. For one reason, I have a rather sarcastic sense of humor, so he always makes me laugh. He just seems like someone you would know in real life and would get along with.

This show never fails to make me laugh, whether it's Phoebe saying something that makes everyone do a double take, Chandler and Joey getting into shenanigans in their apartment, or Janice making a guest appearance with her trademark "Oh. My. God." It was on the air for ten years, showing how beloved it was with fans. And it's definitely the only television show where the final episode had me absolutely cracking up while tears were running down my face.

Article

An interesting article that I found was talking about Web 2.0 tools in education.

The three main types of Web 2.0 that the article discusses are wikis, blogs, and podcasts. I've had experiences with all three, but not necessarily in school.

I've used wikis in classes before; in one class we had to collaborate in groups to create a wiki page on a particular subject. In another class, we created a wiki page in place of writing a paper. While wikis can definitely be useful, it's quite a bit of work to create one for just one topic. Unless it's a big project, I don't really see it being that useful in classes on a regular basis. Some teachers use it to share information with their students, which might be the most useful. While wikis are supposed to encourage collaboration, only one person can edit it at once, where something like Google Docs allows everyone to participate at once.

Blogs were the next item discussed. This is obviously relevant here since we're utilizing Blogger. I think blogs can be useful in classes, depending on a subject. For an English class, it's definitely a nice tool. Students could even post papers or writings that they had to do and get feedback from classmates. It definitely can be used in certain classes and is a nice way for students to get feedback from others.

Podcasts were the last tool talked about. I've listened to podcasts in my spare time, but they generally were about topics that weren't related to school, but some of my outside interests. I have used Grammar Girl once in a while, but it's not something I've ever subscribed to. I think that podcasts are something that might become more popular in the future, as far as education is concerned. It could essentially be a lecture from a professor or teacher in the form of an mp3 file. Possibly, this could even be used for online classes where students don't meet face to face.

Find Another Blog

I had a little trouble finding another blog to connect to at first; Blogger isn't very good at giving you opportunities to search for blogs that are just based around a topic. But then I stumbled across the PostSecret blog.

I first learned about PostSecret when I was a freshman in high school. My teacher had some books that had collections of the secrets, and our school even had a display set up where students could submit their own secrets. I think there's something liberating about being able to tell a secret to the world; and nobody ever has to know that it's you.

The blog in question has the secrets in a queue and they get updated every so often. And while the secrets themselves might not be relatable to me (I don't have an eating disorder and I never found God at an AA meeting) but they are always fascinating to read. Sometimes if you're having a rough time, it's nice to know that you're not the only one with problems - and sometimes your problems seem quite small when you see other peoples' as well.

I thought it was neat that these were in blog format and having a collection of them in a book wasn't necessary - just another example of the internet being awesome.

Movie

To be quite honest, I'm not much of a movie person. Now TV, that's an entirely different story. I like it when there are short bursts of a story that have a follow-up every week. And I tend to be pretty picky when it comes to movies; in fact the last movie that I actually went to see in theaters was the last Harry Potter movie.

I could probably wax on about how much I love Harry Potter and how sad I was that it was ending, but I doubt anyone would care. From a movie standpoint, I thought it was quite good. I feel like the Harry Potter series always did a pretty good job of translating the story from book to movie. Of course as a hardcore fan, I was constantly nitpicking about the fact that they left out a certain scene or line, but I still feel the movies are a great representation of the books.

It was a bit odd having the seventh movie split into two parts, and the wait in between was almost unbearable. However, it was definitely worth the wait. From what I remember from my first viewing experience, it started off slowly then took off with a bang and didn't slow down until the end. It was an excellent tribute to the story that millions have grown to love and cherish. I will admit that I cried at the end when that iconic music started playing and the screen faded to black for the last time.

One interesting experience that I had was taking my little brother to see it. Up until that point, he hadn't really been into the series; he had seen most of the movies but was more of a very casual fan. Reading the books definitely helps understand the movies, and since he hadn't done so, he was asking me questions throughout the entire film (which got quite irritating). However, he's reading the books now, so my job is done. I think it's interesting that a lot of people have trouble understanding what's going on unless they've seen the books. While the movies do represent the books well, they do miss details that can be found in the books.

It was a fantastic movie and an unforgettable experience -  not just the last movie but the entire series. And I'm pretty sure I spent more time talking about the books than the actual movie in this post.

Writing Process

Writing the memoir wasn't as difficult as I thought it was. Coming up with the topic was the hardest part, but once I got that chosen, it was pretty easy from there.

I'm sure I had other defining moments in my life, but the one I chose stood out. For one thing, it did happen rather recently, and I had a lot of emotions behind it, so I knew it would be easy to churn out a lot of writing. Although I knew the emotions behind it could possibly hinder my writing of it, I decided I would try to go for it and really try to reflect on the events, rather than let my emotions rule the writing.

As far as the writing process itself went, it wasn't very hard at all. Once I got started, it was kind of hard to stop. Part of the reason was that I hadn't really written anything about the experience and so it all came pouring out. However, I was able to go back in and really look at certain events and reflect on how they affected me. I went back over parts and elaborated on my feelings and how it related to me in general now.

While it was difficult at times to keep writing, due to the emotions that were brought to the surface, it was good for me to get out of my system and it forced me to take a step away from the situation and really focus on what was important. And to be honest, that's the fastest I've ever written four pages of a paper before.

Childhood Memory

It's hard to pick out just one childhood memory for a couple of reasons. For one thing, most of them come in little pieces; it's hard to remember all the details. A lot of the events tend to merge into one. Another reason is that there is so much to choose from, and trying to sort out what is most important to you.

Being an English nerd, a lot of my favorite childhood memories involve me reading books or playing pretend and making up my own stories. There is one of those memories that will always stand out to me though.

In the summer before I started third grade, I accomplished something that made me very proud. It was a summer evening, the kind that made you nostalgic for your younger days when looking back. I had spent a lot of time reading that day, but I always went out at dusk, which was my favorite part of the day. However, that day I was outside in order to get my mom to come back in so I could tell her something.

I remember standing in the kitchen while the sun slowly made its way below the horizon, its last few rays peeking through the window and highlighting the room. I held up a very heavy book and proudly proclaimed that I had finished reading it. It was the fourth Harry Potter book, with a whopping 400-500 pages in it. At eight years old, that was the biggest book I had ever read on my own. Not only was I proud that I had finished it, but I had finally made it through all the books that currently existed in the series.

This memory stands out for a couple of reasons. In my class at school, I was known as the best reader in the class, so this was something to add to my repetoire. For another, I had started the series only a few months earlier and it had captured my attention very strongly in that time period, so I was glad to be caught up.

It also stands out, especially now, since I know how the series impacted my life and my childhood. I spent days longing for my letter to Hogwarts and dreaming of casting spells and sending letter by owl. It wasn't the first time that I fell in love with a book series, but it was the one that would hold onto me for a very long time to come. So even now, when I think about summer days in the past, that one will always be one of the first to jump into my mind.

Book Reflection

A book that I read recently was Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. It was a book I had heard much about and had always wanted to read. Thanks to finals and my very busy summer job, it took me a while to finish, but I enjoyed the entire thing.

Before reading the book, I knew it was one of the classics and generally considered a very popular book. I had also heard that the main character was a strong female character, which definitely caught my attention. I was a little worried that it would be difficult to read, being written in an older time, but it turned out my worries were pointless.

Overall, I greatly enjoyed the book. I've always loved reading about people growing up in different time periods, and learning about the culture and ways of life back then are always interesting to me. Jane Eyre is a fascinating character and it's neat to see how she changes over the course of the novel. Her life is anything but easy, but she shines as a very strong character, as she makes her way through life and overcomes challenges.

Throughout the novel, she is presented with obstacle after obstacle, many times with things that make her life very difficult. She stays true to herself and her values, even when this means she is driven into destitution and forced to beg for food and work. She's not afraid to work her way through life, and never depends on anyone but herself. Jane makes her own decisions when it comes to love and what she's going to do with her life. She knows who she is and never pretends otherwise.

My attention was always captured by this book and the plot kept me intrigued. Jane is definitely a strong character and although romance was a large aspect of this book, it wasn't the only focus. Jane's character is explored and developed very deeply. She stood up for herself, handled things on her own, and made her own life and future. I can definitely see why this is such a popular and well-loved book. My only regret is that I hadn't read it any sooner.

First Post

Obligatory first post on the blog to test it out.