Conclusion

Wow, that was the fastest year ever. Freshman year went by so quickly. It saddens me to leave my teachers and my classes, but on the other hand I finally have no more homework and no more school!...Well, at least till September. As I read through my blogs, I got pretty much a summary of my year as a student in Honors English 9.

Reading over my blogs, I have come to see that in many of my blogs I have reflected on what I had recently learned. I have also seen that as I progressed through my blogs, they have had more content and details. I progressively got more ideas and more things to write about in my blog. My way of thinking has also improved. At the start of the year it was hard for me to formulate really good ideas, but now they come to me so easily, so my blogs don’t take too long. I also noticed that my perception on this blog has changed. As a writer, I have learned lots of things including diction, point of view, quality research, formulating ideas, text analyzing, creating high-quality annotations, and more. At the start of the year, I approached every blog as an assignment, but now, I see it as a learning opportunity to reflect on what I have learned over the past week or so. My work nowadays seems to come to me more easily due to the facts that I can now analyze text quicker, and still get high quality ideas. Before this year, I barely knew what any of these literary elements were, but now not only do I know what they are, but I can pick them out of any writing piece and analyze to an extent. Reading books like Animal Farm helped me practice analyzing text to get a sense why the author used the things he/she used, the way he/she did. At the start of the year when we did a few annotations in Romeo and Juliet, I wasn’t able to fully grasp onto changing from what to why, but as we practiced through the year, I was able to easily change from what to why while reading Animal Farm.

Over the course of the year, I have also grown as a person and as a student. I’ve joined new clubs, played sports, met new people, and developed into a better person. FBLA has taught me to persevere and stay determined towards my goals. I have developed into a leader and as a better speaker gaining confidence within myself. One major thing I have learned this year is also time management. With school, basketball, FBLA, extracurricular activities, and having fun, I have had lots of practice with finding ways to fit everything in my schedule without being too stressed. Learning new things has helped me add to my character to make me develop into a better person, and as Gandhi once said, “Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.” 

Thinking about Literature

         Before this class, I have never read a book and noticed so many little details. I've learned to not only automatically look for literary device that the author uses, but why the author has used it, and how it adds to the meaning of the book. I think that Animal Farm is a great book to practice noticing author's craft and understanding why the author wrote it the way he did. Over the course of the year my thinking has changed to understand the true meaning of the author's decision. My annotations now analyze much deeper and more thought proking questions.
          An example of this, is shown in Animal addressing why Orwell chose to use the pigs as the main characters in the book. Why were they the leaders of the group, and shown as the ones that are mean and overpowering. Thinking deeper, I noticed that Orwell chose to use pigs to represent overpowering leaders because in real life they are very lazy, and mostly seen as a negative connotation. This shows why Orwell chose to use pigs as the overpowering leaders.

Freshman Year: The Path of Trials

          Oh wow. Freshman year is already almost over. It seems like just last week we started started school. Freshman year has been fun. Before Nova, I went to Tumwater Hill Elementary so coming into Olympia High School, I didn't really know anyone except from a few people, but slowly I met a lot of new people. I met a lot of my new friends from basketball, shared classes, and from FBLA. I will definitely keep in touch with these people, and hopefully meet more new people next year.
          Over the couse of this year, I learned a lot of new skills both academically and socially. I've learned a lot of public speaking skills from FBLA. I've also learned a lot of basketball skills over this past year from the coaches. But I've learned the most new skills this year from classes like English (Creative Thinking and Text Analysing), Math (How to approach questions), and many other classes.
          I didn't have too many challenges this year except for procrastination, I would almost always procrastinate on doing homework at the start of the year, but slowly I changed, and finished my homework right when I got home, and found that it was much better when I finished my homework earlier.

You are an Epic Hero

          Reading through the first few scenes of The Odyssey, I can understand that Odysseus is a very intelligent, risky, and courageous man. He is put into many circumstances that require him to use his wits to survive. Such as when they went into Polyphemus's cave, they didn't know how to get out, but Odysseus found a way to do so using his brains. One of Odysseus's flaws is that he is too cocky. We know that he is smart and courageous, but is the exact opposite of humble. Once he escapes from Polyphemus and gets onto his ship, he yells back at Polythemus telling him that his name is actually Odysseus and not Nohbdy, which was unnecessary.
          Vin, the indian boy who was on a mission to kill a monster, had lost his Chinese friend to the monster in the cave BUK, and was in deep sorrow. He was as sad as a boy who found out that his "mother" was his grandfather, and his "father" was his grandmother, but his they weren't his actual grandparents, which meant he had no parents. As Vin walked through the cave of BUK, he noticed the green eyed monster running. He tried to follow the monster but he had no luck. Then he saw the monster eat something, and all he could hear was "Bwlack bwack munchmunch munch" That was it, his Chinese sidekick was gone, eaten up. He decided to go teach the monster a lesson about Indians. He ran after the green eyed monster, and tackled him. Then he yelled at the monster "Eat me boy!" The monster stared at him dumbfounded. Slowly, the monster picked Vin up and right before it was about to eat him, Vin took out his SriRacha hot chili sauce, and poured it into his mouth, along with a couple of spicy peppers. Immediatly, the monster started choking, and its eyes turned really red. It dropped to its knees, threw up, and then died. As he was vomitting, Lau, came out whole from the monster's mouth. Lau thanked Vin, and they both went off to their next mission. Vin had saved the day, and couldn't have done it without his weapon, the bottle of SriRacha hot chili sauce.

Reading Great Expectations

     Great Expecations was one of the most challenging books that I have thus far in my life. It took a lot more than just skimming over the chapters to understand it. I had to slowly read each paragraph, sometimes even had to re-read it, to understand the point it was trying to get across. I would read almost every day, but a few times during stage 2, I just skimmed over the chapter and then read sparknotes because it got really boring. Reading this book was a good challenge for me. To help me understand each section after reading it once, I either re-read it, read sparknotes, or even listened to the chapter on youtube (but not often because each chapter was like 20 minutes).

     The part that I liked the most about this book, was when all the truths were revealed and Pip finally understood who were fake and who were true to him. Rather than that, Pip just made me mad throughout the book due to his decisions, so I wasn't to fond of seeing what mistakes he would make next. Thanksfully, I was able to hang in and stay till all of the truths were uncovered. I didn't really like this book to much due to the amount of boring content in the middle of the book, but the first few chapters of the book and stage 3 were pretty interesting. This has been a new experience for me because usually when I read a book I have a full opinion on the book, but Great Expectations is different, I have a mixed opinion on it.

Writing about Great Expectations

          From when we first started working on our thesises to now, I have really improved on finding a thought-provoking idea. At the beginning of these thesises, my ideas were very obvious and my thesis would sound more like plot summary. Now, my thesises aren't exceptional, but instead of them being based on a obvious topic, they are focused on specific motifs represented throughout the book. I started off with the big idea of Pip's perspective on the world changing, but later realized that this big idea was very obvious and not very unique. Then I slowly started changing my focus to the relationship between Pip and Joe, and how it has been affected by other characters in the book.
          "In Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, Pip's opinion of Joe becomes more complex when his perspective on life changes as a result of his awareness of his family's status." I think that this is my best thesis so far because it is focused on a specific motif in the book rather than the whole plot. The idea of Pip and Joe's relationship is the part of this book that I find the most interesting because as Pip changes, Joe's perspective on Pip changes, and that was exactly what Pip didn't want to happen at the start of the book when he helped the convict. This sentence skillfully places together my most interesting idea with the reason why it occured. This thesis allowed my following sentences to flow more smoothly creating a better overall paragraph.

Great Expectations: How's it Going?

          So far the reading is going okay, i'm able to understand most of the book after the first read, but I only get the whole picture after rereading the important parts of the book. Going over the parts of the book that we read in class also helps me understand the chapter. I'm able to understand the connection bewteen characters like Joe and Pip because I either have those connections in my life or have read books with similar connections. This helps me understand the feelings of guilt that Pip has felt through the book for not telling Joe about his thievery. Some parts of the book have been a little hard to understand, so I would have to reread those parts, and specifically look at each sentence to see the true meaing behind the words. This has made me better understand the book, and has made me a better reader.
          I have been reading the book everyday before I sleep in my room on my bed. Now, I know that at first look, it doesn't seem like a good idea, but all throughout middle school I have been reading the assigned book before I sleep on my bed, and it has worked great. My room is probably the best environment for me to read in my house because it is the quitest place in the house. Reading in my bed is really comfortable for me and allows me to just concentrate on the book. If I was sitting on a chair or even on the sofa, I would be fidgeting alot to find a comfortable position which wouldn't allow me to concentrate on the book, so my bed is the best option. The best and most effective strategy that I use is rereading. Sentences, paragraphs, or sometimes the whole chapter, I will reread it to help me understand each line more than I did before.