Jason’s English Blog

I continued my project about Guatemala. While looking at their traditional clothing, I liked the vibrant colors and patterns they would use while making their clothing. Also while looking into their food I saw a corn type drink that looks pretty good. If I had to chance I would try it. I also saw some chocolate covered plantains, so I would definitely like to try them. It has been interesting looking into another culture. I enjoy looking at how they dress the most because I just think they look cool. Looking at the food has been fun too.

 We wrote our essays on Fences  and my thesis was “Cory’s athleticism is a gift and a curse”. I came to class about 20 minutes late because I overslept and had to finish up writing it while going to my next class. Once I got into the flow though it was going quite smoothly, especially because I did the brainstorming paper that Mr. Reese gave us. Since this is the ending to unit one, I would say overall it was a good unit and wasn’t too difficult. The book was good and it wasn’t too hard to understand the symbolism and conflicts in the story. The only thing that I found difficult in these 9 weeks are the blogs. It’s easy to put it off to do later because it’s one of the most simple things to do, but once I put it off until later, they all start piling up and I find it hard to remember what exactly we did. I’m going to try and start making a habit of doing my blog right after class while it’s still fresh in my head.

We wrapped off unit 1 with a test on Fences . I pretty sure I did well on the multiple choice, but the constructive responses took me sometime to finish. Not that they were hard or anything but I just really had to think because some of the questions were asking him what are my thoughts/opinions on certain things, so I would have to sit there and think about what I thought about it rather than just putting an answer that’s objectively right based on the book. Also, my stomach was hurting like crazy so I had to take a couple of breaks before going onto the next response. I had my headphones on, but I sure at some points my stomach rumbled loud enough for people to hear it because that’s how bad it felt. But I pushed through the bowel issues and finished the test with like 15 or so minutes left in class. 

 Today in class we went over brainstorming techniques to use for our upcoming essay on Fences. Basically you write the main topic in the center and from there you break it up into smaller subcategories. For example, if I were writing about Atlanta some things I could put are: The Georgia Aquarium, The World of Coca-Cola, The Hartsfield-Jackson Airport, Zoo Atlanta. Those would be topics for body paragraphs and then, you would add to those topics information about those places. I like this method and I’m definitely going to use it because it’s quick and effective. Anything you think of you can write down and if it doesn’t work out, you still have multiple other options to pick from. I think with this way of brainstorming I’ll be able to complete the essay quite easily.

 We finished reading fences in class; it’s 7 years later at Troy’s funeral and we learn that Cory went into the Marines and Lyons is spending time in jail for cashing out other people’s checks and has 9 months remaining on his sentence. I think Cory joining the Marines was the only option he really had since he wouldn’t have a place to stay after being kicked out, but I think his potential was wasted because of his father. He made him quit the football team and kicked him out the house, pretty much forcing him to have a job like his own. In my opinion he should’ve let him try to pursue football and if it didn’t work then he could’ve went into a different field. And we find out in the story that Cory still holds some resentment towards his father for treating him in such a way and I believe it’s called for, but I still think he should attend his father’s funeral because at the end of the day that still was his dad and he didn’t necessarily do anything wrong to Cory so he should have...