um idk

I’ve had Mrs. Duke for a year now, so I’m kind of an expert.  I’m definitely not the ideal student, so do as I say, not as I do.

~ the way it’s organized is so that this many words in a blog doesn’t overwhelm you.  Personally, I get scared of a big mass of words on one page, so if you’re like me, this is hopefully broken down to where you read, learn, understand, and enjoy it!

FIRST OF ALL: LOSE THE RUMORS!

Don’t deny it, we’ve all heard them. “Mrs. Duke gives an unbearable amount of work.” “Mrs. Duke only appeals to creative students.” “You can only get an A if she likes you” (my personal favorite). First of all, Mrs. Duke likes everyone, and in the rare even that she doesn’t, you must have done something pretty terrible for her to feel this way.  Also, she is EXTREMELY FAIR! I cannot express how many times she has saved my life (my grade) when I have had so much going on I thought I was going to die or go completely crazy.  The point of this isn’t for me to sit here and say how much I love Mrs. Duke just so y’all will calm down.  First of all, I DO LOVE MRS. DUKE AND SHE KNOWS IT, but more importantly just trust me when I say calm down, don’t cry, and you CAN do it.

Homework: managing it-

 I used to be the spreader of rumors about it being farther than my ability and completely ridiculous.  The trick is, DO IT and stop complaining.  Sometimes, our eyes bigger than our stomach, in this case, our stomachs are bigger than our eyes.  I’ve read an assignment of hers and IMMEDIATELY said I can’t do it or it’s too much, which would then be ingrained in my head, which would cause me to procrastinate, which WOULD make it seem overly cumbersome, but I did that to myself.

START YOUR HOMEWORK WHEN IT IS ASSIGNED EVEN IF IT’S DUE A WEEK LATER.

START YOUR HOMEWORK WHEN IT IS ASSIGNED EVEN IF IT’S DUE A WEEK LATER.

START YOUR HOMEWORK WHEN IT IS ASSIGNED EVEN IF IT’S DUE A WEEK LATER.

START YOUR HOMEWORK WHEN IT IS ASSIGNED EVEN IF IT’S DUE A WEEK LATER.

START YOUR HOMEWORK WHEN IT IS ASSIGNED EVEN IF IT’S DUE A WEEK LATER.

Got it? Good.

Inspiration: Everyone is creative whether you think so or not.  We create every day because everything we do as we live our lives is the act of creating.  Yes, there are different levels of creating, but all Mrs. Dukes class asks of us as students is to think and to be original. We all know that no two people are alike, so being ourselves is being original.  Fancy that! Apply your personality and thoughts individual to YOU, and you are creative. 

Example: I can recall an assignment/ small project-type thing where were reinvented the physical features a book we read over the summer.  When I first heard what this assignment entailed, I thought I was going to fail because I wasn’t “creative.”  Having Mrs. Duke sophomore year as well helped me better succeed in her class as a junior, so I started this project almost right away.  There are so many reasons getting started early is beneficial, but specific to Mrs. Dukes class, starting an assignment early allows for more thinking time; more time to brainstorm.

We think we wont have good ideas, so we don’t let ourselves. We sit around waiting for the perfect idea to come to us, instead of putting a little effort to go to the perfect idea. Unique to me, I like to lay all possibilities in front of me and narrow them down.  Planning ahead for an assignment means more that jumping strait into it for the mere feeling of accomplishment; it means THINK!

RECAP: Is anyone noticing a pattern? The brain, which is something we happen to carry around everywhere we go, is the tool to success in this class.  That sounds vague, but what I mean is, instead of freaking out about everything and throwing a fit about how difficult or stressful something is going to be, THINK about what you will need to complete the assignment, THINK about what you already know that relates to this assignment, and do that portion first. 

Example: You may be given 10 discussion questions on your least favorite book studied in class, or the book you read the least of, but read each question first and you will CERTAINLY find that not every question is about a specific fact in the book, in fact, it is likely that at LEAST half of them will relate more to the movement the text was written in than plot or characters.  There are very few instances where we learn from a powerpoint, but the 3 (maybe) times we did usually dealt with historical and cultural background on the text we were reading.  So pay close attention to important criteria like that in her class, and you’ve learned a great deal of what essay questions on a test, homework assignments, or large projects will require. 

Homework: Reading

If reading comprehension isn’t your thing, definitely work on it because sections of reading are generally big chunks of homework, but also work around it.  I don’t mean that in a slackerish way, I’m just saying that although we are in a literature class, there is so much more to it that reading books and takings tests on them.  We study culture, history, authors and their more than likely crazy lives, drama, and poetry.  There has to be something in that list you like, right!? Relating themes, movements, and what encouraged these background aspects of literature to the work being read is a major plus, and you’ll be amazed how easy these connections come if you discuss in class after a reading and if you pay attention and refer back to those powerpoints.  Take it slow, and YES this can be done if like EVERYTHING in this class, you start early and pace yourself.

RECAP: I’m sure the basic learning pattern in a number of English/ Literature classes is read a text, discuss its movement, plot, and characters, then take a test.  While this is the INCREDIBLY BASIC gist of Mrs. Duke’s class as well, make sure you don’t get overwhelmed by the extra, yet very important, information based on each text because she’s all about going beyond and digging much, much deeper below words on a page.  Don’t stress about the reading, because you wont have to know EVERYTHING next class.

…you better know by now, but THINK WHILE YOU READ! Do a little of the digging on your own because I promise the strong and mighty Duke will shovel to the core, and it’s a nice feeling to figure literary elements like themes, symbols, metaphors, or foreshadowing out when you’re reading without Mrs. Duke in class as a safety net. THINK, THINK, and THINK SOME MORE!

Example: At the beginning of the year, we read a few different articles that opened my eyes as a reader to specific, yet obvious detail within pieces of literature. Why does it make sense for this character to be by a lake, under a tree that is 100 years old, reading the newspaper, looking and an ant, and scratching his/her arm right now? If the author writes it, there’s a reason, and you’ll find it.  One article taught me that the landscape and surroundings in a setting matter a great deal and that the authors we study don’t just write for the heck of it, every detail is significant.  Many times we hope and pray that our favorite character wont die, or wont go crazy, or do anything bad or abnormal, but in “Why the Novel Matters” by D.H Lawrence, we learn that all characters must be alive, and only things that change and alter are alive.  I’m not always sure about some of the things we do or read in this class, but after THINKING about “Why the Novel Matters” as the end of the year has approached and I am getting old papers together to study, I realized that in English II and III at Episcopal, we read novels that Lawrence is talking about in his article.  – I’m sure y’all will read this article too, its INSANE!- I wont go into all his confusing detail, but basically, he writes that true novels make man alive.  Man alive is a whole, and not pieces.  He says poems and books on philosophy and science can make part of the body tremble, but only the novel is a “book-tremulation” on the WHOLE body, and even the air. I couldn’t tell you what, if any, awards each of the works we read have won, but specific to the novels we have read, they all meet Lawrence’s suggestion that a worthy novel appeals to all of the body, all of man alive.

READ/COMPLETE ITEMS THAT ARE ASSIGNED EVEN IF THEY SEEM IRRELEVANT, BECAUSE THEY ACTUALLY ARE RELEVANT BECAUSE MRS. DUKE KNOWS A LOT ABOUT A LOT AND IT’S SUPER COOL TO HAVE AN EPIPHANY LIKE I DID WHEN THE YEAR’S OVER!

Homework: Research Papers/ Essays-

If you take ONE thing from this extremely detailed and well thought out guide, please let it be the importance of beginning her work as soon as you can. It’s ALWAYS important to do, but ESPECIALLY when it comes to writing a paper.  Need we discuss confidence again? You ARE a fine writer! Think back on some essays you have written… What grade did you receive?… How much time did you spend writing it?…HOW MUCH TIME DID YOU SPEND PREPARING IT???!!! 

Example: When we’re being assigned a paper, we receive a piece of paper explaining the entire thing.  How can I write a paper that comes with an entire page of directions!? That was certainly my first reaction, but that piece of paper should become a part of your body at that moment, because I SWEAR if you use it as a checklist and apply every element asked, the only result is a good grade!  Annotate the page: this means read the page and make comments in the margins and all over it… the point of this is to put Mrs. Dukes directions and expectations for the paper in your own words so you know EXACTLY how to write what she wants. REMEMBER, it’s not about who has the best vocabulary and topic, it’s about putting YOUR personality into what you write, everything else is just decoration. Be yourself because Mrs. Duke will see your real self enough in class to know if your papers reflect that honest personality or not.  It feels weird at first, but take this blog for example, I’m getting a crazy big grade on it, and I’m talking to y’all like I would if you were in my face.

Final RECAP: Seriously, I don’t have any “shows” that I watch during the week because I don’t have time.  Granted I’m a very busy person, so my “free time” during the week has to be spent on homework.  Develop the habit early because it’s easier to start off the year working hard than to slack at the beginning of the year while things are easy and have to break that lazy habit. Turn off the tube, get off facebook, go on ehsbr.org and check your homework soon after you get home, do it, and THEN if there’s time do other fun stuff.  If you get homework done early, you will literally feel like a new person, I can’t even describe how rare it was that I was in bed before 11pm this year because I waited until after dinner to do homework. 

For those of you who think you’re all busy and important, I UNDERSTAND! I do something extra- curricular after school every day of the week, so suck it up RIGHT NOW and learn to give up a few crazy nights with your friends and TV shows that have no nutritional value in the first place.  The year goes by so fast, not fast enough, but fast.  So do your work and come out strong

~aside from English, PLEASE use these words of wisdom: Junior year is the primary deciding factor of where you go to college.  Set some goals, make the grades, don’t cheat, and feel better about yourself.

START YOUR HOMEWORK WHEN IT IS ASSIGNED EVEN IF IT’S DUE A WEEK LATER.

DUDES! when you think you have no homework one night, here’s what you’re going to do:

1. slap yourself across the face
2. repeat three times: MUST BLOG, MUST BLOG, MUST BLOG
3. look at Mrs. Dukes webpage and check “long-term assignments”
4. make yourself do SOMETHING English III related
5. IF you do all of the following and still have nothing to do, your next course of action is…get on your knees and thank the good Lord for allowing you this peaceful time to SLEEP

That’s the last thing I wanted to say… value your sleep this summer because it’s soon going to be taken by the evil spirits called junior year.

Still not liking much about this book, still wondering why we’re reading it.  I guess it’s just to read something postmodern finaly, since we haven’t done anything like that since the Eyre Affair.  In this reading, R & G become more aware of everything around them.  They watch the Tragedians play, and predict what will happen accurately. 

It’s ironic because although this play (R&G) is a comedy, it also could be considered a tragedy since both of the main characters die at the end.  But anyway, the awareness of R&G to know that they are in a tragedy themselves brings them to the realization that they will probably end up dyiong soon.  They know that they are good guys and according to the player, “The bad end unhappily, the good end unluckily.  That is what tragedy means.”

If someone had described this book to me before I started reading it, I would have expected to like reading it.  Unfortunately, that is not the case.  While typically I like reading silly babbling, I don’t fancy Tom Stoppard’s techniques.  The silly rambling isn’t funny!  It’s just an annoyance to read, because you want to get through those parts to get back to the story, but then you remember that basically the whole play is silly like that.

I’m convinced that the reason I don’t find any of these dumb arguments funny is because we’re not watching the play, but instead reading it.  If we were able to view actors performing these outrageous arguments, then it’s very plausible that we would find ourselves loling or at least having a harty chuckle.  Unfortunately, no actors can enhance this play for me, and every time I’m assigned another act of this play I’m forced to deal with the question: to read or not to read.

1. Exigence — What needs doing at this point? In other words, what is compelling Hamlet to speak at this moment in the play?

Hamlet is dealing with a lot of stress, due mostly to the murder of his father and the marriage of his uncle to his mom.  Also, the plan that he has been trying to carry out is making him lose his love, Ophelia.

2. Audience – The audience is comprised of people who can in some way act on this exigence. Who is Hamlet’s primary audience and how does that influence his choices? Who is Hamlet’s secondary audience and how does that influence his choices? [Hint: they are not on the stage] His primary audience is his conscious, and it’s telling him that he should keep living because of human nature.  His secondary audience is God, who also wants Hamlet to live.  If not for Hamlet’s conscience and religion, he would probably kill himself.

3. purpose What is the purpose of Hamlet’s speech?  To bring about the ultimate question: what is the reason for life?

4. Appeals: Which appeal(s) does Hamlet use to convince and/or motivate his audience? Reference specific lines.

Ethos: Appeal to the character of the speaker

Pathos: Appeal to the emotions or interest of the audience

Logos: Appeal to logic

Hamlet uses Pathos and only Pathos.  “Thus conscience makes cowards of us all.”  “For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,”

5. Figures of speech, imagery, diction, syntax: What literary devices does Hamlet employ? Where do you see him making comparisons?  Which tropes–similes, metaphors, personification, hyperbole, etc. does he use? How do these comparisons relate to his rhetorical purpose? What particularly vivid images stand out? What effect do these images have on Hamlet’s rhetorical purpose? He uses rhetorical questions. everywhere. none.  i’m tired of this.  he wants to die but his conscience wont let him.  they make the audience ponder the ultimate question, to be or not to be.  it probably depresses them.

6. How do you respond to Hamlet’s soliloquy? In other words, what do you think of him right now? I think he’s overly depressed.  Don’t worry so much, just live life and be happy!  If you don’t let anything bother you, then your life will be stress-free and you will have reached nirvana, like me!

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
To live or not to live: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
Whether it's braver to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
The unfortunate things that happen

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
Or to fight against our troubles,

And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
And actually end them? To die: to sleep;

No more; and by a sleep to say we end
Nothing else; and by sleep I mean it's done

The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
The stress and pain

That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
That we're bound to feel consumes us

Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
to want to wish.  To die, to sleep;

To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
To sleep: or possibly dream: that's the thing;

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
Because when we're dead, what dreams will come

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
When we've stopped living

Must give us pause: there's the respect
Must make us stop: there's the respect

That makes calamity of so long life;
That makes life last so long;

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
Because who would be able to stand all the bad things that happen to us in our life,

The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud dude's swagger,

The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The pain of love, the delay of law

The insolence of office and the spurns
The bad part of office and the spurns

That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
Of luck that unworthy people have

When he himself might his quietus make
When he himself my end his life

With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
With a simple knife? who could bear it,

To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
To work hard in a depressing life,

But that the dread of something after death,
But dread what happens after death,

The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
The place where no one's been

No traveller returns, puzzles the will
No one returns, confuses the mind

And makes us rather bear those ills we have
And makes us prefer dealing with our problems

Than fly to others that we know not of?
Instead of leaving them and getting unknown new ones?

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
So conscience makes us all wimps;

And thus the native hue of resolution
And so the natural instinct

Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
Is turned sick with boring thought,

And enterprises of great pith and moment
And great moments of power

With this regard their currents turn awry,
Are turned into lesser moments,

And lose the name of action.--Soft you now!
And lost their significane. -- whoa!

The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
It's Ophelia! Who I think is sexy

Be all my sins remember'd.
Let all my wrongs be remembered.

I liked our second reading of R&G much better than the first reading we did.  Finally, a plot is emerging, and we can identify a conflict.  Before, the play was going on, but without direction.  It was almost like we started viewing R&G too soon, and we should have began watching at the beginning of this second reading.

Either way, I still find it odd that R&G havent developed any major differences between each other.  Basically, they are two people acting as one character.  They are interchangeable, and to me that’s not a good thing at all.  By interchangeable, I mean that if you just switched the lines of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern halfway through the play so that they were saying the other character’s lines, probably not a single person would notice.  They are that much alike.

I have never been in a play aside from drama class 1st semester as a sophomore, and drama class in 7th? 8th? grade.  Either way, nothing major, and that probably puts me at a disadvantage about drama knowledge.  However, I’m in luck because the play we did in middle school was Hamlet!  I don’t really remember all the details about the plot, but that nearly everybody dies at the end, and that the only time comedy is really involved is whenever the gaurds are on stage.

I was King Claudius, and I was (fittingly) a villain.  In the end, I die from drinking poison.  I realllllly dislike reading shakespeare.  I’d rather chew on all the toes of my feet until the bones show than read a shakespeare play.  Unfortunately, chewing on feet is not an assignment mrs. duke has posted (yet), so I will have to deal with william again instead.

Ok, so it’s 10:40 am on a thursday right now and I’m anxious.  That’s because in 20 minutes I will be leaving school and going 2 and a half hours away to a place called Kinder to play Episcopal’s first playoff game of the season.  There’s been a lot of pressure on us this year, and it’s definitely a correct assessment to say that our team has underachieved.  Our team’s talent as a whole would probably put us in the top 10 of 2a this year.  But for some reason, something never clicked, and we’ve going 14-15 and placed 4th in district, and are seeded at 21st in the brackets. 

We’ve really only played at our best maybe 3 times this year.  We’ve lost to many teams with less talent than us, because of stupid mental errors and sometimes questionable strategy.  But if we play to our potential in this upcoming game, Kinder will be in for a surprise.  All we have to do is win 5 games and we’re state champions. 

We only have 2 seniors this year, and our team is very strong with juniors.  Next year is looking good.  But first let’s see how we do now.

nahhhhh, impossible! well i finally decided on a topic for my paper today.  but the problem is, i dont see how it could be any different from all of the other papers we’ve written.  seems the same to me..  but yeah um im going to be talking about bragging in beowulf, and the role it plays in the story.  i will be doing a marxist criticism, and talk about how bragging effects leadership roles and how only respected people can brag without being frowned upon during that time.

i guess it’s different in that i am doing a marxist criticism which is new to me.  i’ll need to really work hard the next couple of days to put out a top notch rough draft.  so i think ill stop typing this and start my paper now.  gbye <3

So, this post, really, isn,t about freedom, it,s just that I wanted, to call, it that, hah.  And okay, annoying already? Fine I’ll stop.  It turns out that from the last blog I used up all of my commas for the month.  I even used up my rollover commas from the previous month.  So much for being “just as good as the new ones.”  They’re definitely not.  So that mom on the Cingular commercials or whatever can shut her mouth because rollover anythings SUCK.

On to a different topic; music!  (Semicolons don’t count as commas.  Nor do apostraphes.  It’s in the contract)  I feel like a straight up gangster right now because of my music.  I am the seventh letter of the alphabet.  That’s how #@&*%^’ cool I am right now.  My recently added playlist has a total of 336 songs.  These songs’ artists consists of (but is not limited to) (in backwards alphabetical order) Young Jeezy & The White Stripes & Three 6 Mafia & Stone Temple Pilots & Silversun Pickups & Radiohead & Puscifer & Pink Floyd & Passion Pit & Nine Inch Nails & Nelly & Max Minelli & Lil Boosie & Led Zeppelin & Kid Cudi & Kevin Gates & DJ Mangoo & Caribou & Bloodhound Gang & Bloc Party & Angels & Airwaves.  Get ready baseball locker rooms