36. EXTRA CREDIT post #10

WOOT! This is the last one! But once again, I can't think of anything else to talk about. So here's another poem:

My lord and m' lady, I’m terribly sorry,
But I have to continue my marvelous story:

There once was a lady riding the trail,
Wearing fine jewels and dress –
But how a baker cracks an egg,
Her horse broke a leg
And everything made a big mess!

A man came along to deliver the mail
When he spotted the lady with heed.
Her skirts in one hand, a ready pistol in the other,
She took aim for the man on the steed -

He took off his hat,
And to her he hailed
For he was none other
Than her brother!

She asked for a ride
But he sadly refused, saying:
“This pony was bred for just one, not two.”

“Though it is getting late,” he added with care
And served her some bread, cheese, and more.
But soon after she fed,
She cut off his head,
Which fell on the damp forest floor.

I don't even know why I wrote this. It's untitled, but by the beginning, I think it was meant to be a monologue or something for one of the stories I was writing. I found this on a random piece of paper about a year ago, but I'm pretty sure I wrote this a long time before that, probably when I was around 9 or something. The ending must make me sound like quite the cynical 9-year-old. I don't know, murders have always seemed to fascinate me.. I'm not a sadist I swear.

35. EXTRA CREDIT post #9

So close to finishing! I really hope these count as quality posts, but I feel like I've been rambling again. Oh well, might as well just include another poem. For some reason this is one of my favorites that I've written. I think it was one of my first, too:

The Ocean

I love to be by the ocean
where the blue of the sky
meets the blue of the sea
I see not a cloud,
and hear only the sounds
of waves crashing upon sandy shores
and the seagulls flying
-shouting,
-screeching,
yelling for fish all the more!
And then comes the sunset,
the only one brave enough,
-bold enough,
to separate the wonders blue
with its bright and daring orange hue
And I watch the beauty of the sun
laying itself down to sleep
only to rise again in the morn
to continue its dauntless duty
But alas! - the beach is now plunged into
darkness,
a deep and dangerous darkness,
a soft and beautiful darkness,
where the glimmer of the tide
mimics the twinkling of the stars,
where all the fishes go to bed,
and every creature rests its head,
And the ocean is now at ease-
the deep and dangerous ocean,
the soft and beautiful ocean,
where the blue of the sky
meets the blue of the sea
In my sight, not a cloud,
I hear only the sound
of waves crashing upon sandy shores
And I return on the morrow
with all my joy and all my sorrow
To gaze upon those sandy shores
and listen to the seagulls flying,
-howling,
-yowling,
bawling for fish all the more!

34. EXTRA CREDIT post #8

Now I REALLY can't think of anything else to write about. So I'm just going to put down a poem I wrote last year. It was part of my poetry project for English, and it was the only project I ever got an A on in that class. My only other A on a major assignment was my short story. Anyway, here it is:

Curious

Ladies, gentlemen, people of all kinds:
The story I share, 'twill surely blow minds!
A curious incident, what happened long ago,
So pay close attention for I won't tell it slow.

Awoken with fright one cold winter night,
I sleepily climbed out of bed.
Paying heed to a call, I walked up to the wall
Still wondering why I had been led.

Staring straight at a painting for quite a long while,
A Georges Seurat in Impressionist style:
Sunday Afternoon on the Isle of La Grande Jatte-
How I've longed to be in a place such as that!

And as you can imagine, to my great surprise,
Each and every figure, though they had no eyes,
All turned to face me with a plan they devised
And pulled me into their world - Oh, what a prize!

At a quarter to ten, among high-class men,
Moonlight Sonata could faintly be heard.
I turned around then and Ludwig van Beethoven
Was playing piano! I uttered no word.

Soon I spotted Mister Edgar Allan Poe,
A crowd surrounding him, enjoying the show:
The Raven, The Bells, and Annabel Lee,
Reciting these poems under the shade of a tree.

Suddenly the Lost Boys came flying by
With Peter Pan behind them, doing tricks in the sky!
And there was J.M. Barrie, on a hill with his wife
And the script to the play that makes these characters come to life.

My adventure, now over, was a memorable one;
The dream within a dream in finally done.
Time to go, my day's just begun,
And like Alice in Wonderland, out the door I run!

Tada! Am I a loser for actually memorizing this?

33. EXTRA CREDIT post #7

I cannot think of anything else to talk about. At the moment, I don't have a reading/writing life. I don't even have a life. I recently got obsessed with this one band and now they're all I think about. This is getting kind of personal so I'll stop there.. but if any teachers have been wondering why I zone out so much during class, that's why. I'M ALWAYS DAYDREAMING. Then when I actually fall asleep in class, I DREAM. And I have such wonderful dreams.. My friends are even thinking about writing a fanfiction sometime (I guess this has to do with writing). Goodness gracious, we're such fangirls. Anyway, to keep this more on topic, I will admit that I have been reading fanfictions. I HOLD NO SHAME, NO REGRETS. 

32. EXTRA CREDIT post #6

I really wish Winter Break was longer! I have so much to do.. and we only have two weeks! The first week includes Christmas in the first few days, then I'm going to Reno, then coming back for more partying on New Year's Eve. Then for the second week, I'm planning do that SAT online practice stuff. BUT THERE'S SO MUCH TO DO! Like I said in the last post, I really want to read my books.. I also want to finally get back to this story I've been writing! I started it about two years ago I think, and it's far from finished. But I'm not even sure how far I'm planning to go with it.. For all I know, it might even turn out to be an entire novel someday. IF I ever do get the time to work on it. Besides that story, there's so many others that I have in my head that I just need to write down before I forget them! But when I write stories, I always want them to be as detailed as possible. I can never leave them at their simplest. So of course, even the shortest story I write will be pretty long.

31. EXTRA CREDIT post #5

Okay, I give up on trying to write about writing in all my classes. I said that before I realized that we only do math in math class, and that most of my previous posts are already about writing in English. So, what else have I done? I still never got around to finishing those books I promised to read over the summer. I got a new bookshelf and everything, but my books seem to be there just for display.. Such a shame, really. I got most of them years ago and they still haven't been opened. I feel bad for neglecting my books like this! I used to be such an avid reader..Before high school, I would go to the library almost every week during my summers, borrow the maximum number of books, read all of them, then return them to get more. I love reading so much, but I hate how I don't have the time.

30. EXTRA CREDIT post #4

So what can I say about AP Bio.. We don't do much writing; the essays only come around every so often. And they're not too hard to write either. You don't really need a defined structure in a Bio essay. All you need to do is answer all the questions in the prompt. No extra stuff at all. AT ALL. In English and history essays, you usually want to add some.. RAZZLE DAZZLE to make it sound better, but for Bio, they really just want you to be blunt. State the facts, and that's it. So yes, overall, they're easy to write. As long as you remember the information. That's the only thing.

29. EXTRA CREDIT post #3

French III! So in French, we don't do THAT much writing, but we do significantly more than we did last year. We have to write journal entires in French, which is pretty difficult! I'm not very good with grammar. It's so hard to remember everything I've learned throughout the past three years! AND I'VE LEARNED A LOT. There's so much to know.. Whenever we do those journals, I never get a completely perfect score. I always make some mistakes about conjugations, or tenses, or agreement.. MUCH TOO MUCH TO KNOW! But I can only imagine what it's like for people trying to learn English. I heard English is one of the most difficult languages to learn. And it seems to be, because there is so much MORE to know when you really think about it and compare it to other languages.

28. EXTRA CREDIT post #2

Hmm, what can I say about Photo II that pertains to writing.. Well, for that class, we have to take notes on Youtube about photography. At first, we just took notes of tutorials, which was pretty easy. But nowadays we have to take notes on slideshows and write more about how the photos evoke emotions. It's kind of difficult sometimes, becuase usually the videos are really short and I don't have much to say. And usually, they're not really photos that interest me in the first place. But I do my best to write enough.

27. EXTRA CREDIT post #1

I hope we don't need creative titles for our blog posts.. anyway, today I shall talk about what I've been doing for the past few months (that's associated to reading/writing). I think in 6 of these 10 posts, I'll talk about each of my classes. So.. I've been getting better at history essays! I think I actually have a chance at the APUSH exam.. That's the one I'm MOST hoping to pass, because I'm actually doing pretty well in history. I actually got an 8 on one of my essays. MY FIRST 8 IN ANY ESSAY EVER. That was such an exciting moment! DBQs aren't really my thing, but I really hope I improve by May. I NEED TO PASS THAT TEST. I got a 2 on my APWH exam last May and I felt like I wasted a year of my life struggling in a college class, because now I have to take it again in college.

26. Rememory

I think rememory means... remembering a memory. Like, remembering a memory you forgot. Something like that. You know when you see or hear something that suddenly reminds you of a memory you've forgotten? I'm guessing that's what rememory is. I always have specific memories of almost every person I know, and if I see or hear their names, I'll instantly think of that memory. I have this one friend who I went to Disneyland with two years ago. I remember we were by the California Screamin' and he was eating a chimichanga. I wasn't paying attention to what he was talking about, but for some reason I noticed when he said the word "chimichanga." So now whenever I hear his name I think of that time he said "chimichanga." How weird.

25. Style Analysis Essay

I seriously think my style analysis was one of the worst essays I've ever written. Do they have to write those in AP Lit? I really hope not. I hope the only other times I ever have to write one is for the final and the AP test. This one took me forever though so I'm pretty sure if I have to write one with a time limit it'll be even worse. It's so difficult for me to write.. ALL the paragraphs. I just don't understand rhetorical devices. I don't understand rhetoric. I wish I could just enjoy reading.

24. Rhetoric

I always thought rhetoric was meant to confuse you.. it's weird how it actually means something else. So it's like persuasive writing, right? Meant to "appeal to an audience"... I don't know, that's just what the book said. Oh by the way, that was on.. pages 1 to 6. Anyway, I guess rhetoric itself is different from rhetorical questions? Why do you even need a word for this? "Rhetoric.." It just sounds so intimidating to me. I don't like using it. Too bad I'll have to for the rest of the year. Sorry if this was off topic.

23. Types of Writing...

So we had to read some pages in the book.. The first part was about NARRATION. I think narration is pretty easy to write because you just talk about everything that happened in chronological order and stuff like that. DESCRIPTION: Description is weird because all you do is.. describe something. Well I guess it's useful but if you wrote an entire essay just describing something I think I would get bored of it.. PROCESS ANALYSIS: So this is like writing instruction on how to do something. Easy peasy. EXEMPLIFICATION: I didn't really understand this one.. but the section talked about induction a little, which reminded me of Sherlock Holmes. I love Sherlock Holmes. COMPARISON AND CONTRAST: Comparing and contrasting confuse me sometimes. I used to think they were the same thing for some reason.. CLASSIFICATION AND DIVISION: The name of this category reminds me of taxonomy, the study of classifying and dividing in biology. DEFINITION: Writing an entire essay defining one word was funny. CAUSE AND EFFECT: I hate these. They make me think of World History. I hated World History.

22. GRADING ESSAYS

I've never really enjoyed grading other students' essay because I feel like I'm not a very good grader. Even though the rubrics tell me what I should be looking for, it's kind of hard for me to follow. I can never tell exactly if they got the points or not, and I just think I’m an unfair grader. So that’s why I get worried about grading papers. I always feel like I’m doing it inaccurately. But I was actually pretty proud of myself today! I gave that essay a four, and so did those professional people who score AP tests! Pretty impressive, eh? I feel like such a pro.

21. (does this have to be numbered?) WRITING ABOUT WRITING

So today I had to write about my "skills" as a writer. I'm not a very good writer, so obviously that essay was difficult for me to write. What I really hated was how much I had to use the word "write" and all other forms of it. It made the whole thing sound so repetitive. That essay forced me to overuse the word so don't blame me for not being able to find a proper synonym. Anyway, I GUESS I wrote about my "strength and weaknesses," but honestly I feel like I was just rambling on about my narcissism and fail skills as a writer. So I just spent a minute counting the words, and before this sentence I had 106. I hope this blog doesn’t have to be “quality writing,” because I feel like being too serious and academic would ruin the nature of blogs. They’re supposed to be fun, right? Or at least a bit enjoyable, for the reader AND the writer. But hey, that’s just my opinion.

20. I'M SO SORRY

I swear I'm not trying to do this last minute, I'm just.. well yeah I guess I am. But only so my last post (of the "summer") was posted on the last day. My blog's super cool like that. So anyway, I'm gonna talk about On Writing. I learned that the passive voice is unnecessary. I do agree that sometimes sentences sound weird when you rearrange them and stuff, but sometimes it sounds prettybfancy, which I actually like. Oh by the way, Stephen King must be a pretty intense writer to be "convinced that fear is at the root of most bad writing." Is he saying he's scared of bad writing? After all the horrible stuff that happened in his childhood, it's almost suprising that this is what he's afraid of. Another thing, I am with him 100% when he says that informal essays are a huge waste of time. Because they are. No need to elaborate. Well, that's all on this book for now. Sorry to be the disappointment that I am. And I'm sorry to have put you through this the entire summer. But now I apologize for having to continue my ramblings throughout the school year. I hope you make it out alive!

19. SAVE ME

I sometimes (but not always) feel pretty bad that I could probably be a world champion procrastinator. I'm a horrible person. My friend told me this joke about procrastination that's super inappropriate and that's why it's hilarious. There's another type of humor I love but it's also pretty inappropriate so obviously I'm not gonna post the details or anything. Again, I am a horrible person. Anyway, this will be my last blog post about Into the Wild. I finally finished today! WHAT AN ACCOMPLISHMENT. And I must say, I'm pretty darn proud of myself. So here's just some stuff I'd like to say about the last few (hundred) pages of this book. There's quite a lot that happened, but I'll try to keep this short. Concerning the parts comparing Chris to all those other people who tried to survive in the wild: I couldn't believe there were so many of them! I never would've thought that there were others like Alexander Supertamp. And in my opinion, they're all pretty crazy. Now the part about his family was really sad. Like how his childhood was kind of messed up.. It was ESPECIALLY sad when they found out about his death! His sister was just washing the dog when she got the news. That just.. really sucks. Sorry, I can't relate. I've never really experienced death before. That's probably why I can't see Thestrals.. Okay, I'm just gonna skip to the end now. Considering how frustrated I was at Chris McCandless throughout the entire book, I was pretty.. distressed. And I thought it was especially heartwrenching near the end, when he realized that "happiness is only real when shared." And the whole description of how and when he died.. I was truly sorry that this had to happen to him. RIP CHRIS MCCANDLESS AKA ALEXANDER SUPERTRAMP

18. CHOCOLATE? DID YOU SAY.. CHOCOLATE?

I am so hungry right now but it's 11 pm and I can't go and get food. I need to start storing candy in my room again. Anyway, I'm back to reading How to Read Literature Like a Professor. And I'm almost done, I swear I am THIS close! So today, I learned that geography and seasons and pretty important in literature. I understood how "geography matters" but it's weird how even the HEIGHT of geographical features have some hidden meaning! And apparently, the south is pretty crazy because characters only go there so crazy things can happen. I wonder how Southerners feel about that.. Anywho, seasons play an important role in stories and poems by giving them a setting. It's pretty much the same as weather though, right? Well for the most part. And now, I shall end this post on the Interlude. Didn't he already say something about that "one story" stuff? How very repetitive. I got a little frustrated again. Alrighty then, well this is the last you're ever going to see of me blogging about this book. I'm going to finish it tonight, though! I've already promised myself. So I would just like to apologize for not being able to lead you through my triumphant conclusion of How to Read Literature Like a Professor. But have no doubts on the incredibility of my ending; it's gonna be A-MAZING!

17. OH, HOW I'VE MISSED YOU

So I've decided to get back to reading On Writing. It's my favorite of the three, and I really missed it. As of now, I am officially at the part where Stephen King actually talks about WRITING. (I'm not saying I didn't like his mini autobiography; I really enjoyed it!) I haven't read a lot yet, but I learned some pretty intersting stuff. Writing/reading is like telepathy: from the author to the reader. At first I didn't get it, but the concept was very thoroughly explained and it actually makes sense. I also learned that writers should have some kind of "toolbox." I didn't really understand this metaphor too well either, but I get it now. Here's some of the "tools" I've read about so far: 1) Vocabulary. Don't write long sentences if you can write short ones. Don't use big words if you can use something smaller. This really helped me because I tend to write some pretty long sentences. But it's hard for me not to! I guess I'll try to stop. 2) Grammar. You have to know the parts of speech and what makes up a sentence. That's easy enough to remember, but I've always been horrible at grammar. So I hope I learn some helpful stuff this year! I wrote a lot more than I was planning to. Darn.