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