The Beginning of Frankenstein

I wasn't very excited to say the least to have to start reading a new book in AP. That class is already stressful enough, and adding another thing that is required for us to do does not help my situation out at all. AP this year is not as fun this year as I had thought it would be. 

   

   Starting Frankenstein was interesting to say the least. It had started out with these letters sent from some guy to his sister maybe? And then the main character of the novel and his story begins right after. It was all very confusing to me. After I had finished reading the part required, I thought that I had understood what was going on. Then we came into class and took the quiz that our teacher had made for us and I was so lost.... I had no idea what was going on. 

   Who writes a book with letters at the beginning that aren't even from main characters in the book? It doesn't make sense and I'm sure my grade showed that..     

"Not the Right Class"

      I worry a lot. Ask anyone that knows me well enough and they will tell you that I worry a lot and about the most unnecessary things that someone could worry about over 90% of the time. I have always been a worry wart and especially with having OCD it is more prevalent then it would be in a “normal” person. .

            Senior year isn’t helping me with trying to cut down on my worrying and that’s even more frustrating than anything else is right now…  I have a lot of large worries right now that I am not sure which one I need to deal with first to start to ease my mind.

            Yesterday in AP our teacher was talking about college and scholarships, so like  I said in my other blog post, I began to have a mini panic attack about all that I still need to do and then I began to zone out.  As I began to zone back in, I heard him talking about if we couldn’t handle what we were doing right now, that maybe we needed to not be in AP anymore and needed to find a way to get into a regular English class.

                Um, well that was annoying to me. Just because I was getting a little bit behind with turning in a few assignments that he had assigned us but never told us when they were due, does not mean I belong in regular English. I have never been in a regular English class and plan on never being in a regular English class. I’m sorry, but I respectfully disagree with your opinion. I am a smart individual and will always be smart. Quite frankly, if I'm not good enough to be in that class, I don't know how half of the people in my class are meant to be there either....

Ap Woes

            When I chose my classes last year for my last year of high school, I thought to myself, pick classes that are easy enough to pass but are still challenging enough that I don’t get bored with them. As well as having a schedule that I would enjoy and have classes that I actually wanted to have. So that’s what I did, I built my schedule for myself this year, not for college or for the counselors or my teachers, or my parents. I built it for how I wanted MY school year to go.

            I was almost 100% positive that my schedule would be manageable this year and it would be easy enough that I would be able to have free time and be able to prepare myself for college. I thought wrong I guess you could say. Very wrong…

            Yesterday while I was in my AP English class, our teacher was talking to us about scholarships and applying for schools. Whenever he talks about those things I have a mini panic attack because I think about all the things that I have to do and have done and by what dates they need to be done by. It’s overwhelming to me and I can tell it’s starting to take a toll on me because I’m getting stress sick. For me, that’s when I have too many things on my plate and I begin to have a messed up body. My stomach is the main contributor to that.

            Next, he started talking about the novel that we have begun reading in class and taking it home as well. We had to take a quiz on the chapters that we had previously read and I read the book and I had felt pretty confident in myself that I would do well on the quiz. I was wrong for that as well…. I was at a loss for words yesterday after I had finished taking the quiz. I knew I had failed the quiz, which had angered me even more than I already was and the day had just begun. I read the book, so how could I have failed the test? It was extremely disappointing that the test had gone the way it had. It makes me wonder if I had made the wrong choice in picking AP literature as my English class, maybe I should have done regular English and just been able to get an easy A and been done with this year.

205 Days to Go...

This past weekend when I was at Skills, I received an email to tell me of what score I got on my ACT. I was just a little disappointed when I looked online to see the score that I had gotten, I had wanted to get at least 5 more points, but that’s okay. The score that I received was pretty average, but I know I could have done better. I suppose the most disappointing thing about my score was that I had actually taken the time to study and to do well on this test and it didn’t really help me out in the end. I just hope that my SAT score is better than my ACT score was.    

The countdown has begun for the class of 2014 to graduate. It’s pretty surreal to think that this is my last year in high school, the last year that I will maybe ever be able to see most of my friends again. 205 days is all the time left we have until we graduate. It’s scary. I start to dream of all the possibilities that I will have in my life and it really scares me.

No more high school. No more seeing all of my friends every day and being able to confide in them about the things that we are all going through. It scares me; it truly and honestly scares me. I can honestly say that high school has been one of the best experiences that I have been able to be a part of the last 18 years of my life.

I can’t even fathom words to put into how I feel. That’s pathetic… I still feel like 1996 was only ten years ago, when in reality it was 17. How has the time passed me by so quickly? My best friend turns 18 tomorrow and that freaks me out. I don’t know why, it just does. 205 days left of my childhood and being with my mom and dad 24/7, but it’s time for me to go and spread my wings. See where life will take me. I’m afraid to jump, because I don’t know where I will land. I will just have to trust that what happens will be what was meant to be. That’s all I can hope for.

The Eras

  While in AP literature, we are learning the different styles of writing of the English language from all eras right now. Our class has made I through the Anglo-Saxons era, the Middle ages era and now we are on to the Middle ages era. Our class has finally finished reading Hamlet and we are now moving on. We have moved on to a few different stories the first new story that we have read is the fall of Satan from Paradise Lost. To be quite honest, I skimmed through the story to find the answers to the questions that I needed. But the parts of the exert that I read were pretty interesting for the most part.

I’m not a religious person, so anything that has to do with religion is kind of annoying to me. But reading about the fall of Satan, it had some interesting parts and aspects to it. From a nonbiased point of view, what is being said makes sense to me. If I was a religious person and believed in God, I would say that I don’t like the devil for going against “God” in anyway, but I’m not so I won’t.

There were a few different quotes from Paradise Lost that had really resonated with me. Of course when I want to, I can’t find them, but I like how Satan described his rebellion against what God had wanted. The imagery of Hell and how it feels was immensely powerful and it was a bit frightening to be exact.

SkillsUSA

This past week I went to our SkillsUSA fall leadership conference, the last of my high school career. It was bittersweet in a way, because for the past four years Skills has been my life, my own sport that I am able to participate in. It has allowed me to grow as a person, as a leader, and just as an all-around person. It has allowed me to meet and make many new friends. It has allowed me to be more social able and has taught me how to be able to speak in front of a larger group of people.

I am very blessed to have been a part of leadership for four years consecutively. It’s an experience that I would have never expected in my life time. Before I had left for our trip, I had promised myself that I would make the trip the best that I could, meaning that I wouldn’t have any drama or if there was, I would stray from that. For the most part, I did just that. That was, up until the people from other schools on our bus started to say that our school sucked and theirs was so much better. I got angry that those morons had even said that to us. So I asked them why our school had won so many more gold medals then they had, that shut them up real fast.

All four of my best friends as well as myself had shared a hotel room when we were in Elk town, and boy was it crowded. Five girls with one bathroom and two beds, needless to say it was interesting, especially because we were all in such close quarters. We had drama as well, but we are a team and we always get through it somehow.

It was a great trip all in all and I’m glad that I was able to be a part of the trip.

Hamlet is OVER

  I can happily say that Hamlet is now O-V-E-R over and I couldn't be ore excited that after this week I wont have to worry about Hamlet until we take the AP test in May. It's not that I wasn't able to understand what was going on in Hamlet, because I was able to understand about 80% of the text. It was the fact that William Shakespeare is possibly the must dull author that I have read material from. All of his stories have almost the exact same plot and its boring to me. In almost all his plays, everyone dies. I'm sorry but his history seems to repeat itself. Excuse me if I see that as boring material.

  Yes, Mr.Burge I did understand the dense text of Hamlet and would be able to use it if and when need be. I had asked around to my friends in that class last week to see how they felt on the subject matter of how exciting Hamlet made them and I got about the same response from them that I thought I would. Conclusion, I wasn't the only one that didn't like Hamlet, I was just the only one that ever said anything about it. Everyone else would just sit there and take it, or there was that select few in class that actually enjoyed it. (Weirdo's! ;)) Just kidding!

  It is my job as an active member of my class to have an opinion that matters and I wanted to share it when we were asked how we felt. Sorry Mr.Burge that it wasn't what you wanted to hear. Hopefully as the year progresses it will all get better and you wont have to worry about my controversial-ness. Until then, good luck!

Novembers prediction

    This last week I have been sick and quite frankly it sucks. I hate being sick and having that nasty sore throat and than the cough and bleh. It is just gross. Due to me being sick, I missed school on Monday. Which added more work to my already jam packed full plate. When I went to class on Wednesday and stayed after to ask my English Lit teacher what I had missed, he replied with not very much, watching hamlet scenes from different movies, reading hamlet and telling everyone that they are going to cry by the end of this month because of how stressed they are. When he told me that, I had to laugh. We were all going to cry? Really Burge, I hardly cry anymore. I figured that most people would cry, but I thought I wouldn't. I'm the type of person that needs lots of things going on in my life to function properly. And that's just what I had, lots of things going on in my life this past week. Not to mention quite a bit of homework. 
   
    On Thursday after work, I had signed up to go to a informative meeting on a college that I have been considering. That meeting started at 6:30, so my mom told me to be home by 6 so we could leave by 6:15 and get there on time. I said no problem, I should be out of work by 5:45. I jinxed myself when I told my mom that, because I wasn't able to leave work at the time I needed to. We had an emergency cat that came in and it's owner didn't leave until after we had been closed. Which messed up my shutting down routine for the night. Strike one. So I just started closing down what I could. Strike two. I have OCD so I always close down everything the same way every night and I couldn't do that on Thursday and it bothered me, a lot. Final straw, I asked my coworker if it was okay if I did all the cleaning every where but in the back and if she could do that so I could leave and get home to go to my meeting. She angrily said I guess to me. Strike three. The tears started to build in my eyes and I just thought to myself how angry I was that no one would help me. I hurry to finish the rest of my job so I could leave and go home before I had a melt down. I worked quietly so that I wouldn't be bothered. My other coworker asked me to show her how to shut something down, so I showed her. She asked me what was wrong and I replied nothing. Hoping she wouldn't keep asking, I contined to show her the steps to shutting down the machine. She said I know something's going on, what's up? I began to explain to her what was going on, and didn't get very far before I had started to let the tears fall. I was embarrassed. Work is a place of work, not tears and whining. I felt bad, I'm not a complainer. I'm a hard worker and always get my work done. 

    So I finished the closing for the night and asked if I could leave. I saw my coworker telling our superior what had gone on and I was even more embarrassed. So I left and went home to get ready in two minutes to go to my meeting with my parents. Luckily I made it to the meeting and all was good. My homework for this last week is a whole other story, for another time. 

Hamlet is almost over

    Reading Hamlet to me is like a never ending tilt-a-whirl. You just keep getting flung back and forth and you don’t understand why, and you just want to get off this stupid ride and put your feet on the ground for once and take a breath.   Oh how I wish that right now I could take a breather from having to read Hamlet. It sucks, royally. It’s such a pain in my butt. Not only do we have to read and annotate, one of my least favorite things to do, but we have to write chapter analysis’s and then write a one page analysis of a soliloquy in each Act. Very tedious and very frustrating.

   We just got done reading Scene 1 in Act 5, and it all made sense to me. There was not one part if that Scene that did not make sense to me. I was so very proud of myself. This last scene was in the graveyard as the grave diggers are getting Ophelia’s grave site ready for her burial. Hamlet and Horatio then come in and Hamlet is disgusted with how the grave diggers are treating Ophelia’s death, as if it’s a joke.

   Laertes and the rest of the people then come in and mourn over the loss of Ophelia. Hamlet and Laertes argue with each other about who loved Ophelia more as well as who should be buried alive with her. Laertes jumps into the grave and holds his dear sister one last time before her body is gone forever. It was sad to read and yet I was able to feel their pain.

  I am so very ready for Hamlet to be over and for us as a class to be able to move on to bigger and better subjects.