Brain Dump

At the beginning of the year, we started out with some tough reading. We read excerpts of the Debating the Canon. I have never read something quite that challenging before in my life. It took us days to read because of constant analysis that we did in order to understand what was going on. A canon a collection of books that is necessary to be read in order to gain a full understanding of the topic at hand. Our entire year so far has been spent reading canonical books from British literature, in order to help us gain a solid understanding of what British literature really is.

            The first book that we read was the dystopian novel, 1984 by George Orwell. Orwell was writing in 1948 during the aftermath of World War II. Europe during this time was in shambles. Country borders were being re-drawn, and the entire place was in poverty. In this novel he shows us the value of being mindful and how important language really is. In the novel, there were two main concepts that I applied to real life. There was Newspeak, where they basically took all the meaning out of words. They did this in order to remove all thought from everything, which leads to the next concept of “thoughtcrime”. Thoughtcrime is the idea of all thought contrary to exactly what the Party wanted you to think being illegal.  And this was enforced by the party being able read you thoughts through telescreens. The reason that they had newspeak was to remove all thought from speaking and basically living in order to make thoughtcrime impossible. I related this all to real life through connecting this to what the status of freedom of speech in America is like and sort of talking about it in relation to the conditions described in 1984 through a project. From here we moved to the Medieval Ages.

            The Medieval ages were a mess. It was a dangerous time full of monotony and repetition. People lived under the feudal system where there was a king, but he did not directly rule the people. They ruled the lords, the lords ruled people that ruled people that ruled them. The literature back then was broken up into a few categories. There were no novels however. In the Canterbury tales it provides the most accurate description of life in the late middle ages in a piece out of that time. Many stories were told orally therefore the written version sounds a little odd. Life was dangerous and it was risky to travel. But people found things to do. They told stories that were very entertaining to them. 

Jeremyt the BOXER

Jeremy Hyde: The Legend of a Champion

Prolouge:  Jeremy is 5’6 at a shaky 100 pounds. He has always dreamt of being a professional boxer; however his body and his cowardice have disallowed him from doing so. Jeremy is from Billings, Montana, and is the youngest in a family of 5. Throughout Jeremy’s entire life, he has been mentally and physically beaten down by his family due to his physical stature and his submissive personality.  His mother and father are raging alcoholics and are in and out of jail.  His older brother Jeremiah has always been the favorite child and has always been supported by the rest of the family. He was the star athlete at Billings High, and has always been a stud. His younger sister, Alison is a princess. Her each and every wish was granted as a kid simply because she asked for them to be. Jeremy on the other hand is afraid to ask for a new pair of shoes before his current ones literally fall apart. It has turned her into a rather atrocious adult. Jeremy had suffered abuse from his entire family in different ways. The only thing that kept Jeremy going through all of this was his dream and his idol, Pernell Whitaker, who in 1990 became the undisputed lightweight champion of the world. His dream was to one day claim this title, and he intended to get there.

When Jeremy was a kid, he always took crap from everybody because there was nothing that he could do about it. The constant beatings and emotional harassment that he suffers from his family has decimated his ability to stand up for himself. But Jeremy does have an unnatural amount of determination. Almost anything that Jeremy sets his mind to he can achieve.

One hot summer day, Jeremy was on his bicycle that he had built one day out of scraps that he found while digging around the junkyard by his school. Jeremy had been around enjoying the peaceful countryside and when he returned home his brother was furious. Like always he had refused to explain himself, and as Jeremy was parking his bike in the garage, Jeremiah, as if he appeared from thin air, struck Jeremy in a way that was all too familiar with him. He fell to the ground and let out a grunt of pain.  The next thing that Jeremy noticed was Jeremiah taking out his remaining rage on the bicycle that Jeremy oh so treasured.  Before Jeremy could rise his bike had been nearly destroyed. Full of an emotion that he had never felt before Jeremy, without thinking, took up the makeshift handlebars that he had fashioned out of a couple pieces of steel pipe and struck Jeremiah with such force that it knocked him to the ground. He stayed there for a few seconds, partially of awe, and partially out of pain. He then rose and returned the same brute force back to Jeremy in the form of a strike to the face. Despite the rather brutal nature of the beating Jeremy suffered later that day, he knew on the inside that he had won the fight, his family treated him differently from then on.

Later in Jeremy’s life, the determination paid off. Jeremy had made something of himself. Although alone because of his submissive nature, he had money, and the means to stop working and pick up a hobby. He then decided that it was the perfect time to pursue his dream. He started to take boxing classes for a start. It turned out that he had talent; he quickly advanced and began serious training. His trainer’s name was Phillip. Jeremy had only made it this fat because he was able to out maneuver his opponents and strike them before they could really lay a hand on him. Phillip explained to him however that he would have to learn to take a hit to make it in the big leagues. Therefore, one of the main exercises that Phillip put together for Jeremy was the “Punching Bag”. It consisted of Jeremy, without moving, taking a punch of Phillips choice directly to the face and then immediately after defending another random punch. Jeremy had trouble with this, but it didn't seem to affect his winning capabilities. In fact, after years of winning he made it all the way to the lightweight championship of the world without successfully completing this exercise.  The last training session that he had before his big fight that would ultimately allow him to accomplish his lifelong goal; he remembered something whenever it came time for the “Punching Bag”. He remembered the way that he felt whenever he had struck his brother for the first time, he remembered what it felt like to stand up for himself and fight back after getting knocked down. As he was preparing for the hit, he closed his eyes. When they opened a thunderous right hook jolted him in the face, he instantly re-opened his eyes and he batted away the following left jab and returned with a left uppercut that would bring Phillip to ground. He was ready.

The day of the fight, Jeremy had never felt more confident about anything in his life. He knew exactly what he needed to do in order to defeat the reigning lightweight champion of the world and he knew how to do it.

As the final ding of the bell rang to start the fight Jeremy was excited. He stepped into his first punch and it was successful in making the Russian stagger backwards. Jeremy stepped in for another punch but received a quick series of jabs to the stomach that made him back off. Jeremy knew he had to end the fight fast or he would simply be outlasted. He waited for a perfect opportunity which came early in the second round. Vladimir stepped in with a powerful right hook that ended up in Jeremy’s face, but instantly, as if he had prepared for this specific situation, he blocked the next attempt by Vladimir and returned the most powerful uppercut that he had ever dished out. It hit Vladimir and was seemingly ineffective. Jeremy then began delivering a barrage of punches that he thought would assert his dominance in the fight. But in the midst of an almost blind attack on his opponent he received a shot to the jaw that would knock him out. He had lost the fight due to a KO. When he awoke the hospital room was empty, except for Phillip and a TV that was covering the fight, and he had heard a mention of his name shortly followed by the description of a sack of potatoes falling to the ground. When his coach noticed that he had awoke, he cut off the TV and asked Jeremy, “So how does it feel”? He said that he wasn’t in pain. Phillip then corrected him and said, “No how does the win feel”? Jeremy was confused, he was sure that he lost and he was correct. Phillip then told him that he had won, but what he had won was not what he had dreamt of. Jeremy found his courage; he found it in himself once again to fight back. This time however, it had a much more permanent effect, although his dream was never accomplished, he had won. 

Free Post 2:7

So this week, I have decided to write my free post about my poor writing skills. The thing that i am going to work on in these posts is my word choice. I tend to use too many words whenever I'm writing and it is a problem because it makes my writing sound unintelligent and that is damaging to the grades that i receive for the writing. I wish to improve on not only my word choice but also on the flow of my sentences. My sentences do not go together very well and i repeat information too often. Really i shouldn't be doing it at all. Those are the two qualities of my writing that i feel lack the most, and that i wish to improve on.

I do have a plan to remedy this situation. So over the summer and throughout the Fall, i participated in a SAT prep class that was offered to my by the school. During the class i received a binder with pages and pages full of vocabulary. I am going to try and learn a few of these words a week and that should really help out my word choice problem. It will help because my lack of vocabulary accounts for most of the word choice errors that i make. And the way to improve my sentence fluency is to just keep writing. All i have to do is just keep writing, writing anything, an it will improve.