The Semester

The past 16 weeks have overall been pretty good for me I guess. I’m not going to say that AP English is my favorite class or that I look forward to it… because it’s definitely not (I don’t think any class is…I generally don’t like high school) but I didn’t dread it by any means. I enjoy class discussions and some of the stuff I read. There isn’t a whole lot that I disliked, except for blogging. It’s easily my least favorite part of the class and the part that annoys me the most. This is partly because it is every week and tends to get extremely repetitive, and I also forget to do it often. I find that I never really have anything important to say in blogs so I just talk about useless stuff and that doesn’t really bring joy into my life (not that it’s really supposed to) I assume that I have learned a lot from this class so far, but it’s hard for me to say because I never can tell. I don’t regret taking this class at all because even if it is a lot of work, it’s better than being in a class where I’m not challenged and get bored. 

Time is flying

For some reason this year the holidays are sneaking up on me and time feels like it’s flying by. It still doesn’t feel like Thanksgiving even happened and now Christmas is almost here and it just isn’t right. Maybe the lack of snow and cold air has something to do with it. Also the semester is almost over… pretty soon I will only have one semester left of high school and then I’ll be done. That is probably one of the best feelings ever because high school got really old really fast. Another thing that is sneaking up on me is my birthday. I’m going to be 18…it doesn’t feel right and I don’t know how to handle it. I am extremely excited because I now get to go skydiving because I don’t need my parents permission. Except I don’t know if I should wait until its warm out or not, I don’t know if that matters… I should probably figure that out. Anyways, time is flying by and I don’t really like it. Yes I want to move on to the next part of my life but it also means that I am moving closer to the end of my life. This is very depressing but it’s true. I know that I hopefully have a very long time until the end, but it still doesn’t seem long enough. I don’t want to get old.

Hamlet

Hamlet brought back lots of memories for me because my second grade class put on the play where I was Laertes. My teacher was kind of a big Shakespeare fan… I guess anyone who tries to teach it to second graders would have to be. Anyway, I loved it in second grade because I got to be in a sword fight and die. It was kind of a big deal. Because of this I was familiar with the basic plot of the play, so I knew what to expect while reading it this year. It was kind of cool to read it again because I actually remembered some of the lines that my teacher took out of the play (the simple ones that second graders could understand at least a little). Hamlet is actually one of Shakespeare’s stories that I like for some reason. I don’t know if it is just because I actually understand it, or if I’s because it brings back funny memories or what. However, if I hadn’t been familiar with the plot I don’t know if I would have liked it as much. I think this because it is a play that is supposed to be one of the best ever, and I think I would have been let down if I went in expecting this fabulous story. Don't get me wrong, it is a good story, just not as amazing as some people make it seem.

craziness

I’m not quite sure if Hamlet is actually crazy or if he is just acting. I think that if my father died I personally would go crazy. And then if my mother married his brother… I would be a little crazier. Then I’d find out that the mad she is married to my fathers killer…I would be insane at that point. Add on to it the fact that he is seeing a ghost that he doesn’t know whether to trust or not and everyone is acting weird because they think he is acting weird. So basically, his whole life has changed, and now he is responsible to avenge his father’s death. I think that if he isn’t actually crazy, he should be. However, what ever he is, it defiantly gets exaggerated when he is around people to make them very uncomfortable. Which brings up a question I have, why does he have to act crazy? If he wants people to believe him shouldn’t he act sane? If I was trying to prove a point I wouldn’t want people to think I was crazy, I would want to act mature and slowly get a few people on my side then just keep convincing people that I knew what I was talking about, and then by then you would have enough people to get done what needs to be done…without acting like a crazy person. 

stupid people

Banning “The Most Dangerous Game” would be very stupid in my opinion. In fact I think that most banning of books is ridiculous. Personally “The Most Dangerous Game” was my favorite story we read freshmen year because it was actually exciting. It did not make me want to go hunt people, and if parents are worried about there kids wanting to hunt people after reading this story, something must be wrong with there child other than reading the story. I think that there should be no line drawn for high schoolers, once you are in high school you need to start learning about the real world. Parents should not be overprotective of there children, especially over something like reading fiction, because when they get out into the real world there will be no one to protect them from reality. Obviously because of the reading level you have to pick out certain books for different grades but I think that if they are able to read and understand a story, then they should be mature enough to handle it. Especially in the case of an AP class, I think there is absolutely no line. I think anyone that is willing and able to take an AP class should be able to read anything that is out there.

I don't understand Virginia Woolf

I am reading To The Lighthouse for my outside reading book and I literally don’t understand 90% of what Virginia Woolf writes. She is very well known and supposedly amazing, but I honestly hate the way she writes. Hate is a strong word but in this case it is true. The first 124 pages are only 7 hours in the story and it drags on and on. If the characters were doing something interesting in those 7 hours maybe it would be okay, but nothing interesting happens. Also it is written as though you are reading the characters thoughts so it can be very random and (I don’t know what other word to say) annoying. Also, the way she writes, sometimes a whole paragraph is one sentence. I read something online that says one of the sentences is 101 words long…101 WORDS…that’s just not right. I can’t understand what she is talking about because of this, it all just runs together and makes no sense because it isn’t written normally. Because I hate the book so much it take so much effort to make myself sit down and read it, and the whole time I am reading it I’m thinking “oh my gosh how am I ever going to write an essay about this?” but seriously, how am I supposed to write an essay on a book that I have no clue what is happening while I’m reading. Oh well... Good luck to me.