Research Paper

Today we had to turn in our research paper and our notes. It was like a huge weight lifted from my shoulders to be done with it, haha. I definitely found this paper the most challenging I have ever had to do in my LIFE. I don’t know why it was so challenging, because it seemed easy and simple enough. I think it was the sources and how we had to apply them and what not. I had a lot of difficulty finding sources and then finding out how to use the limited ones I could find.

I tried to use sources by scholars that were about Happy Endings. I found three sources that were essays about the story, but none of them were scholarly sources. Then I tried using other scholarly sources where people were talking about other works of literature by her, but I wasn’t sure how to apply a sentence about one story and use it to another. So I ended up finding 25 page sources and searching for them until I found one line that I could use. So that was really time consuming. Because I ended up going through 98 pages of sources, and only finding a handful of lines I felt I could use. Then again, I skipped around a lot on the sources and just skimmed them over, so there was probably a few missed lines.

I do not feel confident about this paper.

Wow!

I have really fallen behind on these, so I’m going to attempt to think back and reflect on each week…but I may have my weeks messed up. I don’t know, but I’m going to try and catch up. Looks like I’m about five weeks behind…jeeeez.

Alright..well. Last week we did a lot of working on our research papers in class. Looking at other people’s papers. Getting some help from the teacher. It was a nice week. I think reading some other papers helped me grasp the whole paper a bit more. Because I was a bit lost on how to write my paper, so looking at other papers was definitely helpful, to see how they were doing it. It was also great to be able to go to the library during class and use those computers and printers, rather than my own. Because my printer at home is out of ink and I’ve been to lazy to remember to get ink each time I go to the store.

Last week was also nice to look at the works cited and the paranthetical citations, and get all of the notes we were given. I found it very helpful, although I already knew how to do a works cited page. But the first times I had to do paranthetical citation, we didn’t have to do it the official way. We just had to type the author’s last name in our citation and that was it, so learning the right ways to do it, were definitely nice.

A Doll’s House

This week in my group we had to answer questions on A Doll’s House, concerning various aspects of the characters and the story. It was pretty hard for me, because when I was reading it, I couldn’t focus on anything but how annoying I found Nora. I don’t know why I disliked her character so much, but from the very begining I didn’t like her, and it sort of ruined the whole story for me, which in the end sounded kind of scandalous and possibly a good read.  Plus, everytime I heard the name Nora, I thought Dora, and then that turned into me singing in the back of my head, “Do-do-do-do-Dora, Dora, Dora, Dore, the Explorer, Dora!” I don’t know if anyone else thought like that, but that’s what happened to me.

I enjoyed working in groups again because I really enjoy getting to work with other people and get to know who more of my classmates are. It’s pretty fun.

I really hope we get to finish our plays we were working on, because the end still needs to be finished in our’s and it’s a lot of fun to get to write a collaborative work like that.

 

 

 

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On a brighter, more fun for me note, I finished my Mudkip(Axolotl) tank. Just sayin’, I’m excited for my little guy to get here.

This Week, In English Class! dun dun dun duunnnn!

This week..well..more like..last week and today…in english class! I really enjoyed getting into drama. I liked getting to work with a group and write our own silly play. I guess I really like hands on things like that, it tends to give me a greater appreciation of whatever I am learning. Except for poetry, if I had had to write a poem, I would not have been a happy camper, at all. Anyways, though! I also enjoyed working with a group again to go through Othello and give details on him, and work with the teacher a bit to understand the characters more. With the English used at that period of it’s writing, I can understand it well, but it makes it hard for me to interpret it and fully grasp it, so having someone tell me more about the characters in a modern day language really helped me understand it more.

 

I also, extremely, liked getting to watch a modern day movie from something written hundreds of years ago. It brings it into something we can grasp better, using modern day reality to show it. However, that ending…it was kind of silly. I mean, I know Shakespear liked to have everyone die off in the end, but it was a bit silly with everyone just killing each other…it was silly.  But it really helped get me to understand the emotions of the characters.

America by Claude McKay

The look on my face when I won Britney Spears tickets!

America by Claude McKay

Although she feeds me bread of bitterness,
  And sinks into my throat her tiger’s tooth,
  Stealing my breath of life, I will confess
  I love this cultured hell that tests my youth!
  Her vigor flows like tides into my blood,
  Giving me strength erect against her hate.
  Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood.
  Yet as a rebel fronts a king in state,
  I stand within her walls with not a shred
  Of terror, malice, not a word of jeer.
  Darkly I gaze into the days ahead,
  And see her might and granite wonders there,
  Beneath the touch of Time’s unerring hand,
  Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand.

 

Link: http://oldpoetry.com/opoem/4452-Claude-McKay-America

My response to this poem is that I didn’t really like it. I guess I didn’t get much of the language and what exactly he was trying to get at. I kind of felt that way for all of the poems that were listed. But this one seemed to stick out to me. I mean, I understand that this is a poem about his love and dislike towards America. How on one hand, he loves this country, but on the other he dislikes it and wishes to rebel against it.

If you look back at the time he wrote this, there was still a LOT of hate towards African Americans. So I can see why he would think America is hateful. But at the same time, he says that that hate fuels him to want to fight back, which makes him love it, too, it gives him that fuel to rebel. He says it feeds him hate and basically kills him. But at the same time, it is forcing him to grow out of his youthful ways, so he loves it.  He says that he also loves America because of the feeling it gives him just by living there. He says, “Her vigor flows like tides into my blood,”, which is what is giving him his strength. The strength America has, is rubbing off onto him and giving him that strength and fuel to rebel against the hate she spreads. I like the poem, but at the same time, I felt some of it just didn’t fit together and it made it hard for me to really understand.

 

 

P.S. I FREAKIN’ WON BRITNEY SPEARS TICKETS ON HOT 95.7 TONIGHT!!!!!!!

Essay Poem

Maybe the Mermariel isn't so alone?

 

Alone by Maya Angelou

Lying, thinking
Last night
How to find my soul a home
Where water is not thirsty
And bread loaf is not stone

I came up with one thing
And I don’t believe I’m wrong
That nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

There are some millionaires
With money they can’t use
Their wives run round like banshees
Their children sing the blues
They’ve got expensive doctors
To cure their hearts of stone.
But nobody
No, nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Now if you listen closely
I’ll tell you what I know
Storm clouds are gathering
The wind is gonna blow
The race of man is suffering
And I can hear the moan,
‘Cause nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Link to poem: http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/alone-6/

Youtube video of a woman named ‘Karin’ reading it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pOV8qFlx-s

So, I’m picking another Maya Angelou poem. I thought it’d be easy to pick a poem, but I went through about 30 poems and none of them really struck me as good. Until I decided to head back to her and read this one. I really liked it.

I like how she painted a picture in my head. I don’t know if it was a picture she had in mind, but when I read this poem, I had an image in my head of someone in the middle of nowhere on a windy, stormy day with water and hard bread, sitting in agony of having no one around. They couldn’t eat their bread because it was too hard. And they only had a glass of water, but no amount of water could satisfy their thirst.

That was the image put in my head. I’m not sure exactly what the poem is about. I know it’s about being alone. But I can’t decide in my head if she means alone, like, without a lover. Or if she means alone without friends. Or if she means alone without a religious diety.

Poem

Me rising, a normal Mermariel activity.

Still I Rise – Maya Angelou

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
‘Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I’ll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops.
Weakened by my soulful cries.

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don’t you take it awful hard
‘Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines
Diggin’ in my own back yard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I’ve got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.

Link: http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/maya_angelou/poems/482

Here’s also a really good reading that Maya Angelou did of the poem. She kind of starts off talking about the poem, but she doesn’t start it right away. Anyways, here’s the youtube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqOqo50LSZ0

Believe it or not, I have known a few quotes from this poem, or kinda quotes, but I never actually read the poem until a few moments ago. It is now one of the best poems I have ever read, no wonder everyone likes her poems.

I really like this poem because it’s about not letting anyone get you down. It’s about being proud of who you are, in her case, she is a proud, free, black woman.

I love this poem because she throws it out there, she is proud of herself, and she is almost suprised at anyone who should think she isn’t. She grew up in a time where there was still plenty of inequality and where blacks and whites used seperate drinking fountains. But she lets you know that that doesn’t get down. She is still proud of who she is. And I think everyone should be this way. So it really spoke to me, because I am proud of who I am. I think a lot more people should think like her.

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