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Showing posts from June, 2017

Course Improvement

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Overall, this English course has been one of my favorite English classes over my entire schooling career. With that being said, Mr. Currin has also become one of my favorite teachers as well. I don't have a lot of complaints about anything, but...I suppose I can find some. I enjoyed most of the units we did in this class, but as a senior, units that require the least amount of work are my favorite. This is why the Survival unit was one of my favorites. It was a lot of reading, but that was easy work, and we also got to watch (FULL!!) episodes of Survivorman. Who can complain about that? Les Stroud is pretty dope. My least favorite unit, in my opinion, would be the...well honestly I don't really know. For the most part, everything is this class wasn't too bad. I remember we watched a story about some hunter or something, that was pretty lame. Besides that, everything else was alright to work with. I think that this course could use maybe one or two more Socratic Semin...

Survival

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The Survival unit was interesting, I suppose. I mean, it definitely was interesting, but it was a stretch I think when it comes to how we function in our every day life. For example, we watched several Survival Man episodes, in which Les Stroud would go from land to land, and all bizarre climates to survive for 7 days. It was an entertaining unit, but I don't see how it relate to anything that we'll need to know, unless we're going to be facing some sort of situation like that one day. It doesn't quite make sense to watch a man use a sharpened stick to break a coconut, if the most survival I'll need is talking to a person I'm intimidated by. Nonetheless, I appreciated what the unit was trying to teach, and I do understand how I can loosely use some of these survival principles I've learned to get through my daily life, encountering situations in which I'll need to act accordingly. In my opinion, the most powerful and useful survival trait is knowledge...

Speak Truth To Power

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The Speak Truth to Power had a different type of feel to it, and I enjoyed the production it required. Most projects like this are similar. You pick a topic, research it, then write a lame essay or make a cheesy Powerpoint that's been made dozens of times over. It was refreshing to bring the project to life, which is something my partner, Matt Marle, and I were able to accomplish, my conducting an interview, making it seem like it was on the radio. I would say our video was produced well and really captured the spirit and idea of Anonymous. Our defender is Anonymous, which was formerly a group who helped defend women's rights in 3rd world countries back in the 90's. In the 2000s, the age of the internet, the group resurfaced with millions of new members, and became a "Hacktivist group." The group would DDOS webpages, hack into files, corrupt data, etc. They performed these tasks to organizations who had racist, sexist, or terribly wrong ideals. To this day, ...

Veterans Project

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The Veteran's History Project was definitely one of my favorites. It's still a project that I think about time to time to this day, and I try to take what I've learned from it and apply it to my daily life. My veteran, in his interview, truly spoke to me, and many of his words still run through my mind when I'm in certain situations. After this project, I have the utmost respect for our veterans and what they've done for us. My veteran was James Starkey. He was born in 1977, and joined the U.S. Army. He was upset over what he was doing with his life, bouncing job to job, really not getting too far. One morning, he woke up and decided "Hey, I'm going to go join the military." He stated that he was going to whichever recruiter approached him first. In this case, it was the Army. Alexis Marx, Hannah Kelley and I all interviewed him, and learned a lot about him. He had seen plenty of awful things in his time in the military, and it sounded as if he ha...

Goals

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The goals unit was, in my opinion, a fitting way to start off the year. Senior year is truly the year where everything gets lined up for your future and it's our job to line it up. Without goals, you have nothing to work towards or nothing to try and earn. I remember we had to set a list of goals at the beginning of the year. I believe I said something about having a car, having a different job, etc. Well, I did achieve one of those goals. Finally, after some months of saving, I was able to purchase my first car...all by myself. I was excited to say the least. It was a a strong sense of accomplishment I had started to feel for myself. I dropped off though when my car's transmission blew up after a month and a half...yes...that really happened. So, despite the fact that I achieved my goal, it was ripped right away from me. That's life though unfortunately.  RIP  Cierra the Civic. " It's not whether you get knocked down, it's whether you get up." -Vi...

9-12

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This is going to be the most cliche thing I'll probably ever say, but only because it's true. High school is the fastest 4 years of your life. The only reason why anyone says this, I've realized, is because it is true. It's one of the truest things I'll ever hear. It feels like just 6 months ago, I came walking into my first ever high school class. It was English class with Ms. Weisbeck. Now, it seems like over the course of just a few months I'm a graduating senior. I don't have too many memories from 9th grade, but I know that's when the fun all started for me. James Macey, the kid from my last blog, turned it around and we actually became like brothers. Most of our time in 9th grade was spent hanging out, watching Youtube videos, and going to Darien Lake. Darien Lake...those were the good ol' days. A lot of stuff went down there, kinda...I mean we tried to act like we were cool, and we tried hanging out with a lot of people, but nothing ever rea...

6-8

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Ahhh, the middle school days. These few years were not only the most awkward, but were the lowest mental years for me (as low as a dramatic middle school kid can be). I remember the music I started listening to, the trends I tried to follow, the friends and girls I tried to get with, etc. It wasn’t pretty. 6 th grade was where that all started. 6 th grade, chubby me got my brand new pair of glasses, so I thought it would be a good idea to give myself a makeover. I remember the black skinny jeans, baggy shirts, the backwards hat. I now am starting to realize why I didn’t have many friends. The middle school fun nights were never fun for me, as I again, was always overdramatic and was bummed out about being a loner (even though people tried to reach out to me, idiot). I remember my best friend through the middle school years, Tyler Chislett. We did everything together. We shared as many laughs as you can imagine, hung out way too much, and told each other basically everything. It...

K-5

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Kindergarten through 5 th grade…those were the days. Simpler times, simpler issues, a whole lot of fun (for the most part). The memories are blurry, but it’s the ones that do stand out that are the most important. I remember all my childhood obsessions, StarWars from Kindergarten-2 nd grade. Then the WWE from 3 rd grade to 5 th . Legos followed from 5 th to about 7 th . Finally, I found videogames and then sports. The first memory I can ever say I truly had about my schooling, was when I met my best friend, Corey Lucas, in Mrs. Abrams kindergarten class (RIP Mrs. Abrams). The sappiness is real, I know. We were sitting at our table, and it all started with a simple “hey.” It grew and kept growing, year by year, to where we are now. I also remember my first ever crush. Apparently kindergarten me was a psycho, because I had a box dedicated to this girl. The box included drawings, poems and pictures. Boy oh boy, was I creepy. Moving on, I also remember the bad times like getting “r...