One Excellent Experience

In my opinion the blogs were a great experience, they provide another means of discussing points from the book, something I often have trouble with during class as I dislike interupting people. Not only that but it provided an outlook for people to give their more embarassing points, points they would not bring up in class because of utter embarassment. I for one seriously enjoyed the blogs, I loved reading others points and stories, the blogs were an excellent opportunity for creative writing which we do not always get the opportunity to write during class. I feel the blogs were an excellent addition to our English class and that they are worth keeping around for another semester.

Fear of Failure and Judgement

Another Quarter has gone by and yet again I find myself confronting my least favorite part of the year, a practice AP English multiple choice test. These tests have always been my weak point, in math there is no best answer, just a right and a wrong answer, it is when you take out that definite portion and suddenly everything falls apart for me. I always get to that spot where I have got two answers and I can not decide between the two, and it seems like I always pick the wrong one, but more than anything is my missing of seemingly obvious tones which I just seem to overlook while taking the test. However it is not actually the test itself that I fear, but the multiple choice game that follows. Do not get me wrong, I have loads of fun playing the game and watching as our scores fluctuate leading us to discover who wins those precious extra credit points, but while we are deciding on our answers I watch as my answers seem to never match up with anyone else, and slowly die a little inside as I see all the simple ideas I missed. Alas I slowly watch as my test falls apart right before my eyes, and I lose all faith in my abilities to comprehend English properly. Although I know that when I get my test back my score will most likely be significantly higher than I expected it to be, I always confront these same fears before taking the next test.

Another Book Bites the Dust

Tonight as I have worked on my Data Sheet I realized something, I am honestly going to miss working with this book. Although I never noticed it before, I actually enjoyed reading it. I enjoyed trying to guess what may happen next in the novel and I enjoyed connecting with the characters and discovering my own bits of insanity. I also enjoyed the discussions, trying to decide what was wrong with the characters and why they acted the way they did. However, more than anything I will miss the anticipation and enjoyment of watching Shutter Island. Since we got the calender at the beginning of December which told us we would watch Shutter Island after reading the novel I got completely psyched, and the movie delivered. I am not sure I have ever had my mind quite so blown, never did I suspect that Leonardo was actually crazy and had been a patient on the Island all along. I can only hope that the next book we read will be just as entertaining and that if a movie accompanies it, it will be excellent as well. I really will miss reading this book.

Teamwork: An essential ingredient to success

Tonight as I mourn the knowledge that tomorrow I will return to school, I go through the long list of reasons why school may not prepare us as well for the future as it seems. However, tonight one idea keeps resurfacing; does school prepare us well enough to work in teams? Throughout history teamwork has likely led to more success than any other tactic. Whether it be the amassing of armies to conquer inferior civilizations, the groups of pioneers who worked together to settle in the west, or the teams today which man the space shuttles which have taken us to the new frontier, teamwork almost always seems to lead to success.

So I must ask the question, before heading off to college, are students even close to being prepared to work in teams, I do not think we are. Sure we all have the basic ideas of how to work as a team, but I feel that most students are nowhere near being prepared to work as a team effectively, most likely we would tear it apart as we struggled to take the leadership role. I feel like any other one of the many subjects we study in school, team work must be learned as well, an although learning is generally best done through experience, I feel more often than not that we are not getting that real experience of working as a team in high school. Sure we have a few projects here and there where we work as teams, but we always just team up with our friends and goof around a strong majority of the time, and how is that preparing us for the teams we will have to work in in our careers. I feel teamwork needs to be threaded into school curriculums, whether it be through multiple coordinated projects which teach us teamwork, or inventive classes which effectively teach us how to work efficiently in a team. in order to properly prepare us for our futures we need to learn how to work as a team, but does school really do that for us right now?

The Changing of the Times

This New Year’s Eve my family watched a Twilight Zone marathon, and watching this television show of another generation seemed a perfect example of how people's demands in entertainment have changed in recent years. These days we all look for colorful special effects, and realistic costumes and such, so it seems preposterous that people could be satisfied with the portrayal of aliens using humans with simple antennas coming out of their ears, or for some random box to have the ability to reveal the future. It seems ridiculous that people could be so easily entertained, yet what I feel stands out even more it how the plots have changed since then. These days almost any successful television show has twists and turns, keeping the plot hidden and unknown. However, thus far these plots have been rather simple and ordinary. I can easily ascertain what will happen next in the story. As entertainment standards grow, older shows become humorous, as the plots and technology seem so simple and lack the complexity we look for in today’s entertainment. So I am left to wonder what our future holds for entertainment, and what technological advances will leave our current entertainment seeming pathetic and uninteresting.