Dear Anne,

    I don’t think holding in your opinions is the best idea in the world. Why should you care if other people think your opinions are stupid when it could help them? Exactly, you shouldn’t. You have to be heard, you have to make them know your opinions aren’t worthless, because you and I both know that you’re opinions are important. I’m not saying rush over to them and scream in their faces. This could take some time. Take time explaining everything, and do it in the most mature manner you can. They may still not believe you, but that doesn’t mean you should hold it all in again. Make every opinion mature and worthwhile and then they’ll begin to get the idea that you’re more than a “child”. Listen to me Anne, even if they never believe you and they condemn you for life, never stop giving out your opinions. You’ll hurt yourself in more ways than you can imagine. If you hold it in, you’re going to seriously limit the amount of human interaction you have, and that can just lead to depression. Other peoples live’s may be at stake as well. If you know what they’re doing isn’t such a good idea and you don’t say anything, they may get hurt…badly. If you stop speaking out you opinions, then pretty soon you won’t be speaking at all. It will drive you crazy. Just remember this Anne, no matter what people say, you opinions are important.

Yours truly,

Nick C.

Supposedly, I’m going to have to persuade you now into thinking that my opinions aren’t stupid (maybe silly at times, but not stupid) and why I refuse to keep them to myself. Here I go:

  I think of it like this: every action has a reaction. My actions are my words, your reaction is how you heed it. Unless I do it on purpose, my opinions are never stupid and should never be ignored. What I say makes sense, it has a purpose, and most importantly, it’s useful. Why should I keep opinions to myself when they may help other people, or more importantly, me? I believe that a person can only hold in opinions for so long before he or she instantaneously combusts (hence instanteneous human combustion), and honestly, I don’t want to explode into a firery mass of burnt flesh and body organs. In fact, I want my opinions to be heard so that people don’t think I’m timid and scared, because they would sure get a surprise later on. Opinions are an important thing in this world, and should be regarded in calm silence, not raw anger or jublilant happiness, and I intend to be heard.

On March 19, 2003, George W. Bush announced to the world that as he spoke on national television, America had begun a war against Iraq. The purpose of this war was to disarm Iraq, free its people and defend the world from grave danger from Saddam Hussein. Bush gave a short speech describing how ruthless Saddam Hussein was and how he believed the people there needed their help. He also said that they respected the Iraqi citizens, their culture and their religious practices and were going to try their best to avoid civilian casualties. More than 35 countries are giving crucial support through any means necessary, he said and they have begun bombing what America hopes will weaken Saddam Hussein. His final words were “May God bless our country and all who defend her” 

To see the full article and speech, click here.

What exactly is love? Is it that fleeting moment of joy when you kiss someone, that feeling of floating above the world and seeing everything fall perfectly into place? Mabye. Mabye it’s something deeper, something that can only be felt in two people who were born to be together, something that goes beyond reasoning and explaination. Love isn’t something that happens once, it’s something that lives on forever, something that never dies. It isn’t one of those baby crushes you have in the fourth grade. Love is so profound and deep that it reaches both mind and soul. But love is a strange word. A word we use commonly, almost unconsciously. But the feeling is even stranger, sometimes the strangest for the people who are experiencing it. But how do you know when you’re in love? Mabye it’s the butterflies you have in your stomach everytime you see the person you long to be with, the joy it brings you to see that person smiling. Like I said, love is a strange thing. I can’t tell you how or when to love, I can’t even tell you if you’ll ever feel it, but let me reassure you…you’ll know when you’ve fallen in love.

Our English techer asked to write a short post explaining what we would take (and why) if our parents asked to pack a small bag but didn’t tell us where we were going or for how long. Here I go:

 If my parents told me this, my first reaction would probably be “Why?” I would probably keep saying the same thing for so long, my parents would have to render me unconsious and drag me away.  Anyway, if I was forced to pack my tiny bag no matter what, I would have to bring (dramatic pause) books. No, I’m not saying this to get on the better side of my English teacher (although it is an advantage), but because books are an important part of our culture. Although I wouldn’t exactly bring books like the bible, bringing you’re average book could still prove worthwhile. If a massive war began and the world fell into an almost irreversible choas, then we would still have some piece of it perserved in writing. The words of great authors of our time (at least they’re the greatest authors to me) would still be in our hands, not to mention they’d be a great way to pass the time. I’m not saying this would be the most practical thing to bring, but it is important.

What is courage to me? Well, I think that most people think of courage as the act of doing something other people wouldn’t normally do, because they would be scared, but I think slightly differently. For me, courage means being able to push your physical and mental boundaries to limits you have never explored, to do something that you feel is extraordinary considering your fears and physical limits. Walking across two 50ft buildings along a narrow plank of wood without any type of safety at all may seem extremely easy for one person, and therefore makes it just another ordinary stunt, not a courageous stunt, but for a person that is afraid of heights and has insecurity issues, it may just be the most terrifying ordeal that person has ever had to perform. That is courage, that is pushing your boundaries. But being courageous doesn’t always involve life-threatening danger, though. An act of courage can also be a small thing, like asking someone out or standing up to the school bully (well, that is quite life-threatening.) Just as long as you go out of your comfort zone and go beyond your self-induced limits (because really we have none), you’ll know that you were showing what courage really is. Like this guy

The Lord of the Flies is an enticing and suspenseful book full of twist and turns, fear and sorrow, and good and evil. That was the book we read inside Mr.R’s darkened classroom, with flickering candle light illuminating our way throughout the rest of the quarter. A book like the Lord of the Flies is something that you don’t find too often these days. It’s one of those books that make you think about what our future is coming to and how we’ll avoid it. It’s an allegory of civilization against savagery and the true identity of man, but I don’t think you’d be able to figure that out without looking into a moldy textbook first. The book itself was quite challenging to understand at first, but slowly things began to unravel and the book suddenly became very clear, along with the message that it brought: inside, we are all savage. But I’m not going to get into that right now, instead you’ll read a bit about what I got done  while reading the Lord of the Flies. I’m going to combine the ESLR’s (Expected School Wide Learning Results) with Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy of cognitive objectives (another fancy way of saying the six stages of thinking.)

While reading the book, I hit one of the ESLR’s called the Self-Directed Learner ESLR. I’m sorry to say that you’ll see this word often throughout this journal. This means I was able to set goals for myself, manage my time carefully, use my organizational skills and accept responsibility for my own learning. In other words, I took the time to organize my goals in a way that I could easily complete at any time. In any case, the only goals I had were reading the number of chapters I was assigned each night, so that wasn’t too hard to do, organized or not. I know I accepted the responsibility for my own learning because at any given time, I could have left the book to rot on my bedside table and copy off information from Spark Notes, but I didn’t. I think that by demonstrating these skills, it helped me become a better Academic Achiever as well because by setting goals, organizing myself, managing my time and accepting responsibility for my own learning, it also showed that I was able to work collaboratively and independently, a skill for being an Academic Achiever. Even though I did most of the skills needed to be a Self-Directed Learner, there was still room for improvement. An area I could have really improved on was monitoring, adjusting and documenting my work in progress, which is something that would have been useful as well. I did occasionally write notes about the book, but it’s not like I came home, read the book and wrote a twenty paragraph essay on the monstrosity of human nature. I came home, read the book and expected my memory to remember everything I read that day, even if it was three chapters, which now I know was wrong to do. I know I could have improved by using sticky notes to write down important information or I could have kept a journal or log and write something down on it everyday. In whole, I think I did a pretty good job on this ESLR because I followed many of the skills that make up this ESLR and I followed them well.

  Moving on to the next ESLR I think I achieved while reading the book is the Critical Thinker (believe me when I say you don’t have to think too hard to do this one.) I know I hit the Critical Thinker ESLR because a skill I definitely accomplished was building meaning and understanding using prior and new information. To put it in another way, I was able to understand the knowledge given to me and build on that knowledge to understand it better. I think that by building on this knowledge, it also helped me become a more Effective Communicator because this shows that I’m able to understand and convey written, oral and visual information using the right media (in other words the book.) I honestly don’t think that I didn’t do any of the skills required to be a Critical Thinker, but I could have unquestionably done better on them. Take this one for example: gathering, analyzing and processing information from a variety of sources. I know I did that, but there were so many more ways I could have done it. I could have asked my parents, my English teacher, a friend, I could have looked on the internet, looked in an atlas or even looked in the auto-biographical section of the library to see if William Golding had published a book about his life and possibly learn more about the book while reading it (up till now I still haven’t figured out if he has or not.) I admit that most of them I didn’t even bother considering and that was my mistake. Overall, if I could give myself a letter grade, I would give myself a B+, mostly for not putting in enough effort in achieving this ESLR.

  Now it’s time to move on to the next ESLR, and what else could it be other than the Effective Communicator ESLR? I achieved this ESLR (I think the count so far for saying the word ‘ESLR’ is now eleven, wait, that’s twelve) by listening respectfully and asking questions to facilitate my understanding of the book and achieve insight at the same time. That is to say that I listened to other people with respect and asked question in order to gain a further understanding of the book. I think that by doing these things, it also helped me be a better Self-Directed Learner because by listening with respect and asking questions, I accepted the responsibility for my own learning. I accepted this responsibility because I could have simply saved myself the trouble of asking people and assumed things myself, but I didn’t. I think that a skill I could have undertaken next time would have been incorporating technology as a tool for communication because even though nowadays we use MSN and SMS to talk to everyone, I can’t say that I used these ‘tools’ of technology to communicate with people about the book over the time that I read the Lord of the Flies. In general, I felt that I did a pretty decent job on this, and if I was to give myself a letter grade, I would give myself an A-.

  The final (isn’t it nice to hear those words?) ESLR I achieved while reading the gripping novel was the Academic Achiever ESLR. I accomplished this ESLR by demonstrating technological literacy and the use of technology as a tool for the efficient and creative completion of the project. In other words, I used the internet to help me understand what I was reading in the book, for example, SparkNotes, CliffNotes, online dictionaries, online atlases and countless other websites (though I did not copy off them). I think that by demonstrating this skill, it also helped me become a better Self-Directed Learner because once again I accepted the responsibility of my own learning. A skill I could have improved on was accessing information from a variety of sources. I feel I did a moderately good job and I think I would deserve a B+ on this ESLR.I really have to say that I’ve learned an enormous amount from this book. Not just about humanity and our true nature, but about myself as well. I know now what my limits are and how I can improve on the things I can achieve. I think that if I just tried to reach a bit higher, strive a little harder and show efficiency and effort throughout all my work, I know I would have reached my goal.

Hey there people! You’ve just entered my blog which is stuffed (soon anyway) full of work. I plan on putting journals, poems and some other stuff. I’m really excited about making this blog because it’s my first ever! I really hope you enjoy reading this blog as much as I have. If you want to see my friends blogs, just click here. Enjoy!