XNSPIRIT

1. My family has been preparing me to be a fair and good person even though they don’t know it. My parents are more religious than some and I grew up having to go to Bible class and Vietnamese Language classes at my church  Even though I have rebelled and dreaded everything they made me do, I had to suck it up ans accept my responsibilities.  Because of the benefits I’ve gained for listening to them, I choose not to ruin my life with sinful things and have become a person with good morals and fairness.

2. I have not accomplished things in my life that I had thought was impossible because I either have not accomplished them and/or the things I have accomplished I did not think was impossible. I have been told that I set my my goals way too high-therefore impossible.  Being the person I am, I can’t help but be picky and set my standards high for myself.  I don’t know if it’s the lack of confidence or too much confidence but that sense of accomplishment hasn’t come yet.  Of course I have felt like I’ve succeeded when I gained awards and honors but I did not think those were impossible.

3.  Many things in my future seem impossible for me right now.  Because I set my bar so high, my dreams feel so far away.  It seems impossible for me to ever become an idol- a singer, dancer, performer, role-model, actress, and host all in one.  Although I have confidence in myself, I look at all the idols of today and they have that radiance and talent I lack in.

4.  I look back into Junior year and I have to admit that all the depression and problems then were all my own fault.  After moping and wallowing in self-pity, I vowed to not make myself suffer anymore so Senior year came and I picked myself up.  I now boast a much higher GPA and my happiness is through-the-roof.  I do feel bad when I think about it but I turn it around and make it the opposite end of my goals.

5.  The beginning crack is Freshman year and the end crack is when students graduate in Senior year. In between is self-explanatory.  Between those cracks, students do what they need to proceed to the next crack and when they’re almost there (as in near graduation), they realize that these four years have gone by so quickly.  For some students, their quick experience seems pointless.  I believe most of us students feel like although these years are fast, the experience was one-of-a-kind.  Through school events and difficult exams, the times in in high school help build peoples characters and will affect them for the rest of their life.  There will be regrets like my bad mistakes but we look on it and learn from them.

6.  My next section in my sidewalk is college and work.  I’ll finally be given more freedom and real-life will hit me hard but college, work, and new relationships will come my way.

7.  I think I will feel the same way, if not more, about this next experience.  Problems will arise ten-fold and I know I’ll end up having regrets.  My time will be fleeting but I probably won’t recognize it until I face my next experience.

It’s finally the end of the year and Seniors only have five days left.  WHEW. CP English with Ziebarth has been a great experience for me since I haven’t experienced any classes like this.  The first semester was likeable and I adapted to it easier because it was more like other classes I’ve had.  This semester was so different! When I read that my schedule was changed and that I was transferred to a class that honestly gave me a bad impression, I was devastated.  Thank God I had the courage and strength to do what I could not have done before- I tried my hardest to get back into Mr. Ziebarth’s Period 2 CP English class.  Thanks to Mr. Ziebarth and my counselor, I finally transferred back. I was quite surprised to see the new organization of the desks and the whole new system.  Getting used to it was difficult.  Maybe because I came into the system late, but I still was confused with the objective of the system and what the packet given explained.  “What is the DIY about?”, “What’s the final project supposed to be?”,”Are there any instructions with this that I have to follow?” and a whole slew of other questions clouded my mind.  Even though I received answers a bunch of times, I ended up still confused and I wasn’t the only one.  Maybe if the instructions were clear cut but still vague enough to allow imagination to take part then the objective would have been met satisfyingly.  For example, the DIY project was supposed to be there to allow students to finally do something other than robotic paper and pencil work.  Students were encouraged to do whatever they wanted and post evidence on their Tumblrs.  OK.  We did that.  So some students practiced their baking and some still couldn’t choose.  I, for one, practiced dancing and focused on one particular song with choreography.  I thought that the final project was going to be the students showing off their newly-learned skill or whatever it was.  Unfortunately, something was wrong and the DIY project disappeared.  I believe that it would have been a success if the wanted end product was thoroughly explained.  It may have been explained well but the result didn’t show that.  If anything went satisfyingly well, it was the fourth quarter.  We had a list of things to post up and we did just that.  It would have been more amazing if we were able to do the DIY and tie it in with the Senior “What I Learned” project.  If we knew what we were looking for then it would have turned out amazingly.  It’s a lot better now than it was before although the whole year itself wasn’t all that bad.  It was a very interesting experience- sometimes frustrating but sometimes very fun.  I’ll miss this class, my classmates, and Mr. Z’s awesomeness a lot.

1. How does the narrator face his fears?

The narrator ends up not facing his fear because he didn’t have any fears in the beginning.  He actually gained a fear after seeing his own “reflection” although he felt like it was not his own reflection.  Because of the feeling the “reflection” gave him, he acted out and since then has been paranoid of mirrors.  He is willing to talk about his fear however and now kind of even adapting to his fear in the way that he has learned to live without the use of mirrors.

2. What were you afraid of when you started high school?

When I first started high school, I was afraid of the school work and teachers. I had a tough time in middle school and did not do well although I did get along with my classmates and teachers.  My sisters had gone to FVHS before I did and I’ve heard of many good and bad stories.  The fear came from my own insecurity.  My old school, Moiola, was not the best prep school for high school so going from one side of the school to the other and the whole of lockers was new to me (but not entirely).  I had no idea how I was going to study and be able to stand the lectures. I was afraid of how the teachers would grade and how difficult the material would be.

3. What are you afraid of now that you’re leaving high school?

Now that I’m leaving high school, I’m afraid of making mistakes especially being on my own and the same as before- the way that the school system works.  I know it’s not good but I feel like I still need a lot of guidance and while many other kids my age feel like they cannot wait until they gain much more freedom than they have now, I am not ready just yet.  I may be a late bloomer but I know I am the type that is usually too afraid to move on.  I’ve made bad mistakes in choosing my classes before and even though it’s not the end of the world, it’s effected me a lot.  I’m afraid of making more mistakes like it.

4. What scares you about yourself?

What scares me about myself is that I can be very moody sometimes.  I get effected by things around me very easily…I guess that means I am sensitive but rather in the way that when I am sleeping in the morning and someone wakes me up for a stupid reason, I get very, very angry and the whole becomes ruined.  Sometimes I would snap at people without being aware of sounding so mean until they react in a different way than I expect.  It scares me to know that I am able to hurt others.  Even though I am aware of that, it still becomes uncontrollable sometimes.

5. How do/will you face your fears?

How I will face my fears is by telling my sisters and others around me that I don’t really mean to be mean sometimes.  I know I will still have to go through anger spasms but I if I apologize to others afterwards then it should not be that bad.  Other fears like death and the process of blood test/transfusions/giving/etc. , I will have to go through them because they are inevitable.  They scare me a lot but I would have to breathe and accept them or something in order to live without being paranoid.

1. Narrator, “Our mother”, Mrs. Cuts, “My brother”, “Our father”, & Uncle Trash

2. The narrator is responsible, older than the brother, and is still a child.  ”My brother” is innocent, younger than the narrator, and likes the stray dogs and wants to keep them.  Uncle Trash is an alcoholic, loves to gamble, and is irresponsible.  ”Our mother” leaves the family, leaves again after coming back, ans still loves the children because she kept their Easter drawings.  ”Our father” wants his wife back, became angry at Uncle Trash after the house burnt down, and is impulsive since he chased after his wife right away.  Mrs. Cuts somewhat cares for the kids, is a clean-freak, and is very aggressive.

3. Mostly through their actions.  We know that the narrator is responsible because when no one was there to care for them, the narrator still knew how to take care of his/her brother and even Uncle Trash when he was hurt without freaking out.

4. “The touch of the match covers her like a blue-flame sweater.  She’s a fireball shooting beneath the house.” is the sentence that stood out the most to me.  It doesn’t directly tell the reader but we know that the dog has been lit on fire with the match and the bug spray.  We also can assume that the house would catch on fire because of the dog.  I like the “blue-sweater” because the imagery was vivid and the comparison was spot-on.

5. “I am burning hot…” is the most important part because it’s the turning point of the story.  He’she finally shows the anger bottled up after having to deal with everything.  Within the couple of sentences mentioning the “I am burning hot”, he’she sums the story up with how he/she is angry at his/her parents and Uncle Trash.  The narrator still has that innocence in which he/she hasn’t experienced anger so it’s used with a child-like description.

6. Motifs: fire (“burning hot”,”don’t ya’ll…”), crops (as the time, “July corn”, “twisted corn”), dog (“stray dogs…”, “strays beneath the bed boards”)

7. Literally: Mother runs away, father chases after her, Uncle takes care of the children, and because of his irresponsibility, the house burns down.

Figuratively: The story is told through the eyes of the child and is written using the style of the child.

Thematically: The constant foreshadowing of the house burning down ultimately results the story in that happening.  The motifs repeated throughout the story tie together in the end to finish it off with the burnt house, the stray dog causing the fire,and the mother running away into the corn field.

1.  Mr. Arnold’s presentation thoroughly impressed me because of his passion he showed us.  Before I even read the Invisible Man, I was grumbling because like many other seniors I just wanted to go home and not have to work.  The Invisible Man excerpt has effected me deeply; It’s not just the plot and style of the story but also how it was taught and how finally I was happy to annotate something.  This was the first time i was actually excited to annotate rip a piece apart-trying to find the profound meaning between the lines.  I really liked Mr. Arnold’s enthusiasm and the in-your-face talks he gave especially because he did literally stare straight in my face from a foot away from my desk and yell towards me.  His intention was not to yell at me because I did nothing wrong but to be as an example to show the feelings conveyed and make a point.

2a.  The veil has been lifted off me through my teachers.  There are many teachers, like Mr. Arnold or Mr. Gonzalez who have bluntly told of the real-life problems of life and the horrible world we have to face.  They don’t fluff up our minds with flowery success stories but rather the issues that we face and the corruption within our society.  One would feel the veil lifting because the veil is pretty see through but we choose to make up excuses and ignore the real problems that are there.

2b. The veil has been lowered on us through the lies given to us from ever since we have been born.  “”Follow your heart and your dreams will come true” is definitely motivational and people hear it everywhere but happy endings are not always tangible.  All teachers are part of a system that lowers the veil so even if we point them out for spoon-feeding us all the information and forcing us to regurgitate it, we can’t always blame them.  I’m not saying that the information we learn is all useless but a lot of it is.  I’ve been learning Pre-calculus and I know it may be crucial for some jobs but not as much as Statistics is.  Even so, we have to learn it in order to “get anywhere in life” or rather anywhere in school.

3.  It’s difficult to keep the veil from being lowered onto me because in order to succeed in society, I have to conform and allow the veil to be lowered and ignore some truths and allow some people to step over me.  I can try and be my own boss and try to not trust everyone around me wholly.  Learning of new perspectives of things and not submitting to one way of thinking would definitely help me from being submerged in darkness and become blinded.

4.  Strays lifted the veil from me by setting up a new perspective through the narration of the innocent child we all once were or maybe even are now.  The author makes a heart-breaking comparison between the children and the stray dogs.  At such a young age, they have to face the abandonment of their parents and the other problems that escalate afterward including their Uncle Trash and his alcoholism and gambling addiction.  Through their eyes and experience with the poverty and deprivation of love, readers are able to understand the horrible world and the new perspective helps the veil to be lifted.