Thanksgiving

As much as everyone loves Thanksgiving break, it can be a stressful time for students because we begin to slack off and not think about school for 5 days. It can be a stressful time at this point of the semester because we only have 2 weeks of school left, plus finals. There's so much work to be done, and so little time to do it. I guess all the advice I can give to everyone, and especially myself (I should really pay attention to this) is that take advantage of any free time you have to work on school. It's really lame, but I think in the end we will all feel good if we used our free time on school work.

THis week

This week has been just exahusting with work I have to do before Thanksgiving break. ENG 101 I find the work to just be difficult in the sense of just changing and adding my papers. I think it's a bit hard to add points in the paper, because everything else has to reflect off of that in a way. I just find it a little frustraiting, but I feel good in the end cause I think (and I hope) my papers become better from that.

TImed Writing

Friday we had our timed writing essay. The subject was community, what does community mean to us? Are we part of the community at Ball State? Thinking about the question what quite difficult, what exactly is a community? Many people have their own definitions of what a community is. I didn't know how to define a community, at least in my own words. Also it didn't help to have the fire alarm go off near the end, so I'm sure the readers will be totally confused on what I'm trying to talk about.

I thought I would be a bit happy that I had an excuse to not finish my essay, I was a bit frustrated because I wanted to try and finish putting my thoughts together, however I didn't have enough time to do so

Invisible Children

When I thought about the question for this week from the Beah reading..I remembered that one of my dreams is to go to Africa. I want to go to to Africa and help children out, it's one of my goals in life.

There are many countries that are in need of all sorts of help, not all countries are dealing with war. Many are dealing with health problems or poverty. War is just one of the problems countries in Africa are dealing with. I want to go to Africa to help out children that are dealing with poverty or health issues. The problem is that I need a college degree to go over with a program to help countries, so that's one of my goals after I graduate.

St. Lawrence and Beah

This thought didn't come to me until the weekend, but I saw a connection between the painting in the art museum about St. Lawrence and a piece from Beah's work

This past week we talked about two passages, one was about how Beah was at a cemetary mourning over the dead, especially his friend who recently passed away. I found a connection between this and the painting of St. Lawrence.

In the painting, there is darkness all around St. Lawrence. The darkness brings a gloomy, depressing mood over the painting, and the only light shown is from the heavens, by an angel. In Beah's book. The setting in Sierra Leone is depressing, it's gloomy from all the fighting and in the passage I read, it seemed the only light came from the afterlife. The dead had nothing to fear anymore, since they were finally gone from all the violence.

Beah Speaking to Ball State

This week I went to Beah's talk about his life as a child soldier.

To be honost, I found him summarizing the story a bit boring. I read the book, so I knew what happened. But I understood why he summarized his life. However what I did enjoy was why he wrote the book, and the process of him giving the book to the editors and publishers.

I remember a particular part where the publishers or editors asked why Beah didn't just write about the violence. Beah replied that he needed to talk about life before, during, and after the war for us to understand.

This reminds me, oddly, of Shakespeare's play, Macbeth. There is a short scene where it introduces a mother and son who are about to be killed. I remember learning that these characters are not important to the story, Shakespeare could've just said in a line that a family was killed by some soldiers. However he wrote this small scene so the readers would get an understanding of the family, to have a connection before they died. Basically the point of the scene was so that the viewers would have empathy towards the family.

I think Beah wrote his life before the war to make us feel saddness. Would you be as shocked or depressed if Beah wrote at the very beginning him becoming a soldier? I do not think I would. By reading about his relationship with his family, I could have a connection with him. We all have relationships with families, and we could empathize with him when he was seperated from them.

College life so far

As I end my 3rd week of College, i'm beginning to get acustomed to college life and out of high school life.

In a way I find college easier. Why I find it easier is that I no longer go to school for 7 hours a day, have homework in each class that's due tomorrow. I go to class for about 2-3 hours a day, and have the rest of the time to do my homework. I don't find the homework load heavy, but it can really cause trouble if you fall behind and stop working.

I think the main point of college is time management. You have start managing your time with friends, work and sleep.

What I find difficult with college is scheduling. I'm on my own, and I have to make my own decisions, which I have no problem of doing. However what I find frustrating is that my teachers (particularly one) doesn't seem to take into account that I have other things to do other than stuff for his class. I can only imagine what parents have to go through when they have kids that have activities to go to, plus other things for themselves.

Other than that I'm loving college!

Inglorious Bastards

Yesterday I watched Inglorious Bastards, a movie that takes place during World War II. Though it was a Quentin Tarotino film, I saw a connection of the beginning of the movie and Beah's life. If you plan on seeing this movie and don't want it spoiled I suggest you don't read the next part.






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The movie starts off in France, a French dairy farmer, Perrier LaPadite, is outside working when he sees Nazi troops driving towards his house. The Nazi troops come up and introduce themselves, led by Hans Landa, a Nazi detective. Landa and Perrier enter their house and have small talk in French, then Landa switches to English. In English, he explains why he is here. Landa has aquired the nickname, "The Jew Hunter" and is investigating a rumor that LaPadite is hiding Jews in his home.

During their conversation, the camera pans downwards below the floorboards of where the men are sitting to show that the Jews are conceling themselves below the floorboards. Unknowingly to the people, Landa knows that they are hiding and tells LaPadite that he will get his troops to come in and kill them. The soldiers come and start firing at the floor, killing all of them except for one girl, who manages to escape. Landa aims his gun at the girl, but spares her life.



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I found this interesting because we've been talking about Beah running away and about what we would do in such a situation. The girl in the movie is shown throughout the movie hiding her identity as a Jew to the Nazis. Beah hides himself from the Rebels, hoping to not get captured or get killed. It's a shame that decades after World War II, people are still hunting down others and killing them for no reason. In this generation we hear stories about child soldiers, or those who ran away from wars in Africa, it's almost like the holocaust of our time.

Reading Beah's book is scary in the fact that his experience happened recently, and people are going through what he went through today.

My Goals for Eng 101

I should begin by saying that I'm taking two English courses this semester because of my choice of major, English Education. I suppose I'll tell you my goals in a thesis-like statement. I view my current and future English courses to help me make sense of what I need to know so I can teach my future students.

My specific goals I believe are harder to explain. I don't think my goal is to learn new content, but to make myself write about subjects that I am passionate about. I can honestly say that my favorite essays and papers were on subjects that I had an interest about. For my junior English term paper, I wrote about Queen Elizabeth I. I had an interest in her reign. You don't read about too many powerful women in old history, and this woman brought a golden age to England.

I lost track for a second there, but another goal for me is to work on run on sentences. I've been taught about run on sentences since almost birth I believe, but I feel like I could learn about how not to write them.

Finally another goal I hope to show to others is that writing isn't that bad. I hear people say, "I don't like English, I hate writing!" Yes, people hate writing about the theme of a chapter in The Iliad, but people enjoy writing more when it's on a subject someone is passionate about. My goal is to show that writing isn't a boring, waste of time thing, it is a way of expressing an opinion. Everyone has an opinion, and everyone should share it.