This week we worked on our "This I believe" videos. We spent Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday working on them, and then Thursday and Friday we watched the videos from first and second hour. It was really inspiring seeing everyone tell such personal stories, and see the hard work everyone put into their videos. I honestly enjoyed every single one. If a person makes themselves vulnerable through an art form, or even in general, it's really hard to go wrong.
The night I finished my video, I went up to my mom and said "Hooray! I'm finished and it's not awful!" She of course, being a mom, insisted on seeing it. She ended up crying and showing it to all her friends, work colleagues, and all our family. They all loved it and left comments on the video saying how inspirational it was, one of my mom's work friends even commented saying that she was going to show it to her children that are in middle school and high school. It was a really great feeling, being that successful and feeling that good about something that I did by myself. Despite the fact that my video was about self love and self acceptance, oftentimes, I struggle with that when it comes to projects, papers, or any such thing. I love writing more than anything, and it stinks when you don't feel like you're good anymore at something that you used to be constantly praised for. This video has also inspired me to want to begin doing short films. I've always been interested in such things. In sixth grade I made a music video to "Come Together" by The Beatles, and I'm honestly still really proud of it. Out of all the projects we've done thus far in this class, heck, maybe in my high school career, I think this is the one that has had the biggest impact on me. I think that it should definitely be kept around for years to come, because it could really help a lot of high schoolers out. In high school, you go through so many changes, and it is nice to know that you believe in something.
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This week we worked on our "This I Believe" projects. It's refreshing being able to write a piece where I don't have to feel like a pompous jerk. Essays are fine and dandy, but I do find them unrealistic and insincere because not many people actually talk like they do in their papers. I sure don't. With this project, I feel like I can express myself 100% truthfully, which is very important to me.
I'm nearly finished with my rough draft, but there is just something off about it. I am not quite sure what it is, but I intend on figuring it out. I plan on finishing it up this weekend, and then recording me saying it. I'm not so excited about that because like most people, I am very self conscious about my voice. Not only am I uncomfortable with my voice, I also say a few words differently than other people, and that is somewhat embarrassing as well. However, I am super stoked about making the video. When I was in sixth grade I made a music video for "Come Together" by The Beatles, and it was a blast. I am excited to make this one because I am older, and have better technology. Filmmaking has also always fascinated me, and this is a nice way to get my toes in the water. This week was our first week back from break. The first week back is always hard, because everyone is always a little sleepy and a lot grumpy. our groups focused on our projects. We thought a lot about Lady Macbeth, and who she is as a person -- or rather, was. We also began to think about who she was, is, and who she wants to be. We began to find music and art to describe her, and it is a ton of fun. I love music, and my favorite part is the lyrics, and so this was really interesting to me.
Another thing we did this week was read our SSR books. I think I'll be able to finish my book for this six weeks. I hadn't read it all break, because I was working on reading a Johnny Cash biography, so I had a little bit of a hard time remembering what was going on in "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas". As far as it relates to my project, I don't know how well it relates to my theme of growth via road trips. As of now, the book has just been a bunch of drug fueled misadventures. I have about seventy pages left though, so there's still hope. This week. my group's main focus was to watch MacBeth, and make our attempts at deciphering it. I understand the overall vibe of what's going on, but the little things are going completely over my head. Shakespeare has always alluded me, and this play is surely no exception. I'd like to get to a point where I understand what's going on in a Shakespeare play without having to scour the internet for a translation. As of this moment in time though, it is what I must do. My group is definitely finding data for our topic, which is feminism. The witches who are in utter control of the situation, and are feared by all, are also female, which is quite interesting. There is also Lady MacBeth, who is the mastermind behind the murders.
We have also been reading our SSR books that will be the basis for our SSR project. I am about 1/3 through "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas", and truth be told, I have no idea what is going on. Most events that have occurred so far are just drug fueled imaginations had by the main character and his attorney. I suppose that's what I should expect from Hunter S. Thompson, but I am eager to read more, and see if the other adventures that are had in this crazy novel. I am also very excited to begin reading "On the Road", and to begin comparing and contrasting the two. This work we worked with our group is on our projects. My group is doing ours about feminism in MacBeth, which I am very excited about. It is a topic that is near and dear to me, so I think I will be able to write about it in a clear and concise manner.
We also read two poems this week, instead of our usual one poem. I enjoyed reading more poetry and critically thinking about it, but the action of writing about two pieces of poetry made me slightly apprehensive. Having to write about fine pieces of writing makes me extra critical of my own, but I suppose that is part of the growing process. I also began reading one of my books, On the Road. So far, I really like it. The version that I am reading has a section in the beginning of the story that talks about Jack Kerouac, which was very interesting and also very informative. Due to the book being semi-autographical, learning things about his life will allow me to delve deeper into the story and get more out of it. This week was the first of this trimester. I now have first hour, which I think I may actually prefer. I like starting my morning with poetry and deeper thinking. I think that having this class in the morning before I'm fully awake could change the vibe of my creative writing, which is interesting to think about. I'm excited to see what this trimester brings in terms of creative growth. It's also interesting to have new people in this class, and I'm interested to see if that affects anything as well.
We also worked on our reading proposal, which I am way excited about. I am very excited to read the books that I've selected. I am also excited about the presentation that goes along with the reading assignments, although I am pretty nervous about it. While I have improved at presenting, it is still not what I am best at. Although, I suppose that means I should continue working on it until it is one of the things I am skilled at. Especially since I'm in the market to be a teacher, as I've said before.It will also allow me to take a giant leap out of my comfort zone, which is something I seldom do on my own. We also took the AP multiple choice test for practice this week. It was difficult, but less difficult than I would have thought initially. This week, the class mostly worked on finishing things up. I, however, was only at school for three days this week, so my experience may have been a little different than others. Being sick as a dog is not a helpful thing when trying to get loose ends caught up, and in all honestly, it makes me stressed beyond all belief. The ending of this trimester is definitely causing me to reevaluate my approach to this class. I definitely will need to work on staying on top of things, so I will not fall behind. Time management is not one of my strongest qualities, and it is definitely something I strive to become better at.
As I look back on this trimester, there are definitely things that I need to work on. I need to work on being less of a procrastinator, learning how to work better in group projects, and how to be more of a confident public speaker. These are all skills that I worked on this trimester, but they all could use more improvement. My goal for the trimesters to follow is to work heavily on improving with these skills, and in general just feeling more confident with myself and my abilities. This week we continued to read tragedy pieces to add to our knowledge about the concept of tragedy. I really enjoy that we are reading all these different articles and are watching all these TED Talks about tragedy. It's interesting having all these different people's opinions on the topic, and being able to pick and choose from them to choose your own definition of tragedy. I'm not quite sure what I think it means right now, but I think I'm beginning to get a better understanding of it. I'm quite excited to put all the pieces together, and come to a final answer.
We also worked on explicating the poem "Barbie Doll". I really enjoyed explicating it and also discussing with the class the terrible sexism that women face in their day to day life. It sort of reminded me how important it is to be passionate about what you speak about. So often when we are told to write about something, we have to put ourselves in a frame of mind where we can pretend to be passionate about it. It's refreshing when I get to talk and write about topics I actually am passionate about, and it certainly helps me in my writing. This week, we added more to our tragedy knowledge by reading Oedipus. It was a very interesting piece to read. I really enjoyed being able to read the piece as if we were doing a play. I think that whenever my class has done that, I've always felt like I've absorbed the story and information better. I think that I'm going to begin to read aloud more often, even if I'm by myself, I think it really helps me hold on to the information, and analyze it a little bit better. I'm a pretty fast reader, so I sometimes have the bad habit of speeding through the text without thinking about it at all. I feel like when I read aloud though, I have to be slow enough for my ears to understand what my mouth is saying. As a result, I often get a better understanding of the text when I'm forced to read it slower. Another thing that I need to work on more is being up to date with these blog posts. If I don't do them on time, they don't cause me to actually reflect on the week in a thoughtful manner. I'll just end up doing them at a later date, and not really remember any revelations I had. As this marking period and trimester begin to wind down, I'm starting to think more about what I want to be doing differently next trimester. Working harder on keeping on top of everything is the biggest thing. Time management is something I struggle greatly with. I always procrastinate and procrastinate, and then life happens, and I'm left with a lot of work to do, and little time and energy to do it. It's not my best quality, that's for sure. This week we began to work on our tragedy unit. I found a lot of the media we have used so far very interesting. I especially enjoyed the Ted Talk that we watched this week, I feel like it greatly helped me with beginning to think about the topic at hand. I'm already beginning to see tragedy in a different light. Before we started discussing it, I had thought of it as merely an unfortunate event, but now I see that there is much, much more involved in it. I learned that as humans, we are drawn to tragedy now, as we were drawn to it years and years ago. Tragedy can often be somewhat comforting, because you feel as if you're not alone in woes and hard times.
I'm excited to read more pieces about tragedy in order to gain more knowledge about the concept. It's an interesting thing to learn about, especially since many of the pieces explain how we, as humans, are outgrowing tragedy in its original state, and moving on. I think this mostly is a result of the fact that we use humans as our role models, and people don't believe in the Gods or God having control over what happens to us. As a result, many a times we don't view things as tragedies, we view them as the result of human stupidity. Which from a literature standpoint, makes writing pieces less magical, in my opinion. |
Mattie BarberAP Lit student. |