Coming of age

       From my novel I learned a lot about growing up. My character Craig was suffering from a lot of problems one example of his problems was depression. He was really depressed about school. He couldn't keep up with his classes and he felt like a failure. And his life flipped around around from there. He had to do a lot of things just so he could make things right. This book was like a guide for me. It showed different ways you can solve your own problems. That's one thing I've always struggled with. I was never really good at solving my own problems. But now I'm better at it and I can be more independent in my life. I would recommend this book to anyone. It's a good long read, it was funny and I can be sure you will relate to the book in someway. Overall this was a very interesting unit. It helped me find my self a little more.
     people should think more about there lives and how they can fix it. its all apart of growing up and finding yourself. it might take some time but it will eventually appear.

Its Kind Of A Funny Story by Ned Vizzini

       The book  Its Kind Of A Funny Story by Ned Vizzini is about a young boy named Craig that is really depressed. He doesn't really whats happening and doesn't believe in living anymore. One thing I've noticed about Craig is that he is just learning how to solve his own problems. He would just smoke pot and not eat thinking it was a solution...but that didnt really work out. Soon enough as a depressed teenager he started contemplating suicide. He just didn't want to live any longer.
       Thats just something i don't get. No matter what i dont think i'd be able to kill myself, no matter how depressed i was. Its like the human instinct the want to live. But before Craig could Jump of the Brooklyn Bridge and kill himself, he took a moment and thought about his family. He would think about how this would change their entire lives. So he ended up calling 1-800 SUICIDE  hoping they could help him. He couldn't put his family thru something so drastic.
Craig ended up making the decision to go to the hospital to get some help.
       Later when he called his mom she was so proud that he was able to make that sort of decision. This was really the first time that he was able to solve his OWN problem instead of relying on people to do it for him. That being said i feel like this is something you go through when your maturing. Not necessarily thinking about suicide but making decisions on your own.
think about it, your not always going to have someone to fix your problems. Craig always relied on his parents and therapists for everything. Not that asking for help is  bad thing, but to  relying is bad.  in order to keep moving on in life your going to need to do things on your own.
       What im trying to say is that making your own decisions is a key part of growing up.

Blog post on article (spring break HW)

The article pythons attack the everglades  by Stephanie Kraus really helped me understand how people are hurting the ecosystem  and the food chain even if it’s on intentional. People don’t even realize what they are doing is hurting the land and animals around them, it even affects them. People are releasing their pythons into the wild where they DON’T belong.

This article states that people are bringing Burmese Pythons into Florida and its hurting the ecosystem! The reptile trade as grown immensely over the past couple of years which of course includes snakes as stated in the article.  People buy these pets and don’t realize how big they will grow. Burmese Pythons can grow up to 19 feet. And that’s when people realize they can’t take care of them anymore so they release them into the wild. This is not the natural habitat for this large animal, so other animals don’t know how to respond to it. And as all animals do these snake needs to feed as well, and they feed on the native animals that live in the everglades such as raccoons, bobcats and opossums. And they are now wiping out these species and this is messing up the food chain because this is not naturally supposed to happen. The numbers of these animals have decreased drastically, affecting the other animals that revolve around them, such as over population in small rodents.

Another way that these snakes are creating havoc in the food chain and ecosystem is that they are now competing with the alligators that live there. The Burmese Pythons and the alligators have much of the same diet including fish, small mammals, raccoons and what not. But they are also feeding of each other. “We have documented pythons eating alligators, and alligators eating pythons,” he said. “It depends on who is biggest during the encounter.” As stated int the article.

Overall People are bringing Burmese Pythons into the state of Florida and then letting them free in the everglades which is not where they belong. The snakes are disrupting the food chain by eating certain animals like raccoons which are now low in numbers and creating competition with alligators. This is an issue that needs to be addressed more clearly and needs to be solved.  

Plagiarizing (Spring break HW)

1. What the student did wrong was that he took the material from another person and used it as his own without giving the author any credit. What he could have done was quote the site he got it from.

2. "There is a peaceful essence flowing from the structures. Perhaps the cool dark colors and the fiery windows spark memories of our own warm childhood years filled with imagination of what exists in the night and dark starry skies. The center point of the town is the tall steeple of the church, reigning largely over the smaller buildings. This steeple casts down a sense of stability onto the town, and also creates a sense of size and seclusion.To the left of the painting there is a massive dark structure that develops an even greater sense of size and isolation." as stated in the article A Brief Understanding of the Starry Night Paintings.
http://www.vangoghgallery.com/painting/starryindex.html


3. To avoid plagiarizing you can 1. site your source 2. paraphrase it 3. write in your own words 4. quote

My thoughts on reading responses (Spring Break HW)

I really like Joyce’s blog about how Peeta and Gale are different and Aiden’s blog about being ‘unwound’ and all the characters different opinions about it.

One reason I liked Joyce’s article is because she kind of gives her own opinion about it. She states “I have fallen for Peeta ever since I read about him”. Basically she stating if she were Katniss she would go for Peeta instead of Gale. I like that she did that because if make the audience reading her blog get more into it and sparks ideas in their head about the same things.                                                          
 I also like how she gave reasons why she liked Peeta better then she liked Gale. She also made it really brief getting right to the point which is something I love about blog posts.

I really liked Aiden’s blog post because I could tell he put a lot of time into it. The wording was clear and to the point. He also explained what the story was about. It was really helpful and gave me a clear understanding of what his blog was based on. 
“In the book Unwind by Neal Shusterman, abortion is illegal until the age of thirteen and cannot be performed after eighteen. When they kill the child, they use its organs to give to others in need, so they are "technically alive". This is called being unwound. In this book, three characters called unwinds because they are about to be unwound. Even though the three unwinds have the same fate, they all think of it differently.  Connor is determined to get out of his situation, Risa wants to run away but first feels hopeless about it, and Lev is a tithe; born and raised to be unwound.  Lev feels it is his divine duty to be unwound.” is what Aiden stated.
Overall I really liked Joyce and Aiden’s blog because they both were clear and I feel I could do some of the same things as they did by giving background information like Aiden did or/and add my own opinion like Joyce did.

Much to do about nothing review and thoughts

I recently saw the play much to do about nothing with my class 810. One thing I really liked about the Shakespearian play is that the stage was small and close. it was like I (and the audience) were just spying on the lives of the people in the play. I felt really connected to the play and the characters. Plus you really got to see the facial expressions of the actors and it was really good.

I also noticed that the setting in the play was different then I original because in Shakespeare it usually takes place way back but in this play it took place in the 20's. You could tell by the music, the costumes, props, and dances. I also think the story line of the play was in a way really confusing. At some parts I was literary lost and found myself asking a lot of questions about what was happening in the play. But i did get the overall sense of the story, partly because the two guys came into our class and told a us a little about what the play was about, before we went to see it.

Overall I think this was a good decent play that was funny at some parts and confusing at others. But I would like to see it again to get a better understanding of it.

Mockingjay; reading response

This is the second time ive read mockingjay and i chose to read it again because of the moviewe are going to see and ive noticed a lot more. In Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins, I think Gale is heartless towards Katniss, although he acts all fuzzy and warm. I think he says he loves Katniss, but at the end of the book, I think we have enough reasons to think that he is heartless.
For one thing, when Katniss and the Rebels attack the capitol with bombs, and Katniss’s sister Primrose dies, it is most likely although he says it isn’t, the bomb that he and Beetee, another engineer, were working on to destroy the capitol.
Another reason is because at the very end of the book, he leaves to go to District Two, and Katniss assumes that he’s in love with some one else, even though he was the one competing with Peeta for her love, and he was the one who said that she would choose the person who she couldn’t survive without.
I wonder what happened when he supposedly dropped that bomb on Prim and the other Rebel medics. He was the one who promised to take care of Prim when Katniss went off to her first Hunger Games. And the Rebel medics and medics-in-training were on his side! So wat could have happened to the feelings inside of Gale. His bomb destroyed thousands of allies and the most important and loved person in Katniss’s mind. He must have known that Katniss would be angry with him if he used his bomb on people that included Prim. I know I was angry with him.
In conclusion, I thought that Gale was very heartless at the end of the book. He acted like he didn’t even love Katniss anymore. Very heartless.