Thoughts on the Poetry Project

  I don’t know about anyone else but I am surely enjoying the change of pace that the poetry project has brought to class. Its very refreshing to have a somewhat more laid back class every day. I also find it interesting how the groups thus far have led class in very different and unique ways. Both groups that have gone in third period were quite entertaining. I especially liked the self proclaimed “Dream Team’s” game, even though my comment landed my team out of the game first. I thought it was hilarious having to make Ms. Serensky decide which group she though made the worst comment. I certainly look forward to what the upcoming groups have to offer. Although this poetry project has literally brought some fun and games to the class, I think it really does help us. Having to read a variety of poems written by very different authors and at different times will surely make us ready for whatever the AP test throws our way. I also think the nightly soapstones help get jumpstarted into thinking in depth about the poem. I have found myself each of the past three nights feeling ready to write a poetry paper after completing the soapstone. We have written so many poetry papers after writing spoapstones that it feels natural to get geared up to write a poetry paper following the completion of a soapstone. That is where I think the genius lies in the project. By writing a soapstone, we naturally get in the zone to write a poetry paper, which means that we are probably thinking deeply about the poem. The poetry project enables us to think deeply about many poems without having to spend the many hours constructing a lot of poetry papers. I feel that this project is a very efficient use of our time while still providing us with deep insight into many poems.

 

Paper Covers...Data Sheet

Paper takes less time, Very Nice!

A Most Surprising Juxtaposition

            The Cavs, oh the Cavs. As most everyone knows, the Cleveland Cavaliers now own the record for the most consecutive losses in NBA history. It makes me very sad every time I see another “Cavs Fall Again” headline in the Plain Dealer. It’s really quite unbelievable how much of a 180 the Cavs managed to pull off. They had the best regular season record in the NBA just last season and now, less than a year later, they are arguably the worst team in NBA history, if not sports history. Murphy’s Law began its chokehold on the Cavaliers as soon as LeBron James announced that he would take his talents to South Beach. Although all us Cleveland fans worried about the future of the Cavs, no one could have imagined that we would be this bad. Injuries to key players like Anderson Varejao and Mo Williams combined with the loss of big-men Zydrunas Ilgauskus and Shaquelle O’Neil factored in to the Cavs’s ineptness this season. So, a bunch of NBA backups playing in the aftermath of losing the best player in the NBA losing 26 games in a row should not come as too much of a surprise. The part I hate most about the losing streak is that it makes LeBron look like some sort of basketball god. To the casual fan it looks like the Cavs were the best team in the NBA with him and are the worst team in the NBA without him. Although LeBron’s departure has made the Cavs into below average team, all the injuries, Byron Scott’s new system and the departure of other players have made the Cavs the worst team in league. It really saddens me to think that without LeBron, Cleveland sports are in absolute ruin. 

Cowardice

 

            Come on Clive. Really? Write down the sound a bird makes instead of help a woman getting beat up by a shady looking guy in the middle of the forest? It’s kind of pathetic if you ask me. He needed to go down that hill and help out the woman in need. Especially considering he felt “that there was not really so much physical difference between him and his thirty-year-old self” (88). His cowardice does not shock me though. I feel like characters wimping out in the face of adversity is a fairly common theme in movies and books. Take the movie Saving Private Ryan for example. Toward the end of the film, during a major battle scene, the young inexperienced private Upham tries to deliver much needed ammunition to his fellow soldiers. But as he walks up the stairs to the building his comrades are in, he hears a brawl going on in the building. He hears a German soldier and one of his fellow American soldiers engaged in fierce hand-to-hand combat. Upham freezes up on the stairs, unable to move into the room and help his buddy. In the end, the German soldier wins the battle and excruciatingly kills the American soldier. He then walks down the stairs, sees Upham harmlessly cowering in fear, and moves on without hurting him. Upham’s failure to act closely resembles Clive’s failure to act. Although we do not know what happened to the girl and the shady guy, it would seem that it did not end well for the girl. Both Clive’s and Upham’s failure to act in the face of adversity show their cowardice and selfishness. Deep down, the reason each did not act certainly centered on the fact that they did not want to hurt themselves in the process. I find it hard to read/watch such cowardice knowing that others could have been helped.  

Second Semester Senior is Bliss

Upon the completion of the last high school midterm exams of our lives, I felt a great calmness come over my life. All the hard work and time put into to school for the past 11.5 years now seems undoubtedly worth it. All of us seniors have put ourselves into a position where we can tone down our stress levels and relax for one more semester together. My dad recently told me that I should make the best of my next seven months before college because it will be one of the only times in my life where I can feel comfortable about the stability of the few years ahead of me. Once out of college we will all experience the anxiety of not having concrete immediate future jobs or feel the pressure of having to excel at our job or else be at risk of losing it. We should feel very fortunate to find ourselves in such a favorable stage of life. It feels so good to go school and not feel the stress of having to attain a particular grade or to get a certain GPA anymore. One result of this relative relaxed state revolves around the fact that we perform better in some aspects of school. Take toady’s in-class writing for example. I did not feel the usual jitters upon flipping over the question sheet and I did not feel overwhelmed by deciding what to write about. Without stressing about our grades I feel that our AP English grades will go up as oddly as it may sound. I truly believe that writing in a more relaxed and stress free state fosters creative and deep ideas. Overall, this whole second semester senior thing has been going pretty well. School without having to stress isn’t half bad.

The Beauty of the Blog

 

            As I sit here on my computer with football on in the background I begin to realize the beauty of our blog assignment. Honestly, what could be better than doing a semester exam for a difficult AP class in the luxury of one’s own home? I have sincerely enjoyed having the ability to relax and blog on my own rather than having to stress over a 90 minute essay worth 20% of my grade. Also, I feel like we have written about much broader subjects in our blogs than we would have done in a semester exam essay. We had the chance to express our creativity in ways that wecould not have done otherwise. I feel like it got our brains working in a different way. Instead of doing typical “cookie cutter” essays which have not changed much since last year we could freely and more effectively express our thoughts.

            Another aspect of the blog project I really enjoyed was reading other student’s blogs. Like seriously I actually liked reading them. For one, they are mind expanding and thought provoking. They’re also often hilarious and really fun to read. Getting to see another side of many of my companions makes me feel very confident that CFHS has prepared us well for life in the real world.

            Overall, the blog project rocked. It provides the perfect amount of low stress and work for a final exam.

Learning How to Ski, Kind of Like Learning How to AP English

            This past Friday, I decided to go skiing for the first time in my life. I discovered that my experience mimicked my experience in AP English in a way. As I held on to the towrope taking me up to the top of the bunny hill, I thought, “how hard can this be.” I felt a similar way over a year and a half ago doing my first ever AP English assignment, which consisted of me describing something I did on the last day of summer. Once I got to the top of the hill, my buddies taught me some of the basics of skiing, like how to stop and turn so I don’t kill any unsuspecting five year olds. As I dug my poles into the ground and pushed myself forward I began to think I was in some trouble. I recall feeling the same sort of dread moments before my first in class writing junior year. I felt all of my aforementioned confidence slip away. I went tearing down the bunny at what seemed like a hundred miles per hour; my attempts to stop failed and I found myself quickly on my rear with my skies unattached to my feet and my poles ten yards above me on the hill. Walking out the classroom after getting a three rubric score on that first in class writing made me feel the exact same. Even with my extreme failure, I kept on trying. I fell fewer and fewer times until I could go down the bunny hill without a hitch. Similarly, my rubric grades slowly but surely went up from a 3+ to a 4- to even a 5- at my best. After dominating the bunny hill, I decided to test my newly honed talents to the blue square hill. After my maiden voyage on the chairlift I went down the blue square after falling only once, or maybe twice. It certainly got my confidence up and I started to really enjoy skiing sort of like how I enjoy AP English now. It may have taken just a bit shorter to get the hang of skiing than AP English but both show that if you keep working at something, you will eventually succeed.