Comments Week 25

Jack - Hits and Misses

Kaelyn - anticipating our next book

1. Ambition is a positive, desirable trait in a person. 2. If you are in a position of power, you are happy.

      I agree with the first statement. Ambition is the force that drives us to continue what we are doing and eventually achieve different things. It fuels us to try new things and to aim your goals higher each time you succeed at something. If people lack ambition, they will continue to do the same things that they think is capable of them, and will not strive to improve on themselves and achieve higher goals. Also, ambition is capable of producing brilliant leaders that can improve the world, like Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr. However, too much ambition can have a negative affect. Ambition can also teach us that greed is good. This shows us that even though ambition can propel us forward, it can also propel us towards a bad direction.
      I disagree with the second statement. While gaining power can seem like gaining happiness, it is ultimately not. One reason is that if you rise to power, you will eventually fall from power, like most leaders of the world. Also, being in a position of power can put people under extreme emotional stress from the expectations of the people around you that look up to you. Being in a position of power can also lead to people turning against you. There is never a leader who only has supporters- he or she will always have opposers alongside them. Having opposers provides more stress to a person in power. This is why I think that being in power does not necessarily grant that person happiness.

Hits and Misses

      We are almost done with our first year of English class in high school. This means that we have worked on a number of writing assignments, such as a literary analysis, personal narrative, self-evaluation, etc. Out of those, I would have to say that the easiest assignment for me was the personal narrative. When I write a personal narrative, I can choose whatever moment in my life that fits the prompt of the essay, and I do not have to analyze anything, as all I need to do is to write down what happened and how I felt. 

      The hardest essay for me to write during this year has to be the research paper. Not only was it linked to our history class, therefore adding pressure to that class as well, but we were introduced to rules of writing, such as how to correctly cite sources. Also, this paper put more emphasis on the MLA format of writing, and on top of all that, we had to get it approved by both our English teacher and our History teacher. This is why I believe that this paper was the hardest paper to write during this year. 

Comments Week 24

Ian - Purple hibiscus strategies

Lathan - New York Times Post

Reading Strategies

      Recently in class, we have been reading a book called Purple Hibiscus written by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. The story revolves around a 15-year old girl named Kambili, who lives in Nigeria during a period of British colonialism. Now, this book is on a more advanced reading level than the books we have read previously in English 1, such as The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, so there is obviously a deeper level of thinking required to fully understand the book.
      One method of reading that has helped me understand this book better is to read through the chapters first, and then go back and reread it while underlining and annotating the important information. Since it requires you reading the book twice, it can take some time, but it can definitely help you spot the information important to the story if you put enough time into it. However, this can be a difficulty for some people, as they might not have enough time on their hands to reread the book twice. For those people, I would recommend reading the book much more thoroughly once, so that they do not have to go and reread the book in order to find the important facts within the book.

Personal Writing Prompts

      For my prompt, I decided to choose prompt number 337: Where do I want to go to college? I have thought about the matter even back in middle school, and I considered several factors that would decide where I choose to go in the future. After thinking for a long time, I think that I would like to go to Japan for college.
      The reason that I want to go to Japan to study is because of my dream. I hope to go into engineering or technology when I go into college, since I am interested in robotics, computer coding, game development, and hardware/ software development. Japan, among with the United States and Germany, is one of the best technologically developed country in the world. Another reason that I want to go to Japan is because it is very close to my home country, South Korea. I would like to be able to visit home regularly when I get a job in the future, and an airplane trip from South Korea to Japan takes only about an hour. These are the reasons I have decided that I want to attend college in Japan.

Comments Week 23

Sarah - political post-human trafficking

Sophia - Political Post