I will miss the endless hours of sleeping without worry of being late. The lazy days are behind me, and so are the hours sitting in front of my computer. I won't be able to read for hours on end anymore, and I will be restlessly working. When school starts, I will have to wake up at seven thirty in the morning, from Monday to Friday and it won't be fun. Another aspect of school that makes school all the more hated is the homework. In fact, homework and waking up early are the only two reasons I really don't like school.
But school could also offer some relief from some parts of summer that don't live up to the summer hype. During summer, I don't get to see many people because I just stay at home, doing nothing but work and rest. During school, I get to see more friends and life won't be as lonely and monotonic as it is during summer. I will also get to meet many new teachers. One thing I'm really looking forward to is my geometry class. My math is one grade ahead of everyone else's, so I get to take geometry while still in middle school. It takes place at first period, and there are only nine people in my class. This will create a better leaning environment and well also allow for many more activities. One of those activities is eating breakfast every Friday morning.We rotate and take turns providing breakfast.
Summer is good at times, but bad at others.
Summer is good at times, but bad at others.
Hey Andy, just dropping by to say a little bit.
ReplyDeleteI think this post would have been better if you didn't have the last sentence at all. It's too blatantly redundant and unnecessary. You could replace it with a better closing paragraph, or simply just drop the entire thing.
"Another aspect of school that makes school all the more hated is the homework. In fact, homework and waking up early are the only two reasons I really don't like school." <--- "I also hate homework" or "And then there is the monstrous beast that is homework. It is the bane to my existence, the endless shuffling of papers that threatens my sanity." =)
Keep on writing - you're doing great!
The transition from cons to pros of school life could be better.
ReplyDeleteYou wrote: "In fact, homework and waking up early are the only two reasons I really don't like school."
I think it is too abrupt and the flow is broken. You start the article complaining about the school life. It leads me to think you hate school from almost every aspects. However, after the complains, all of a sudden, you say "are the only two reasons" you really don't like school.
I would reorganize the article as follows:
--- You start with the nostalgia of the summer life:
"I will miss the endless hours of sleeping without worry of being late. The lazy days are behind me, and so are the hours sitting in front of my computer. I won't be able to read for hours on end anymore, and I will be restlessly working."
-- Naturally, you write a topic sentence before talking about the school life:
"There are several things I don't like go to school. Two on the top of the list are the homework and early wake time"
-- Then you provide details on each of the two aspects you do not like school:
"When school starts, I will have to wake up at seven thirty in the morning, from Monday to Friday and it won't be fun."
--- Here, you could write more details, telling us why it won't be fund, something like, you have to rush your breakfast, you will be sleepy because of shortened sleep time..... After complete the first complain, you move to the second one:
"Another aspect of school that makes school all the more hated is the homework."
-- Again, put more details. Say something about the bad part of the homework. Something I would be interested to know is that: you do homework during the summer anyway, why you single out homework during school time ?
By the way, Andy, I know it's always tough to listen to parents. I know that whenever my parents tell me that some work of mine should be done this way or that, I have a natural urge to brush it off, to not even consider it.
ReplyDeleteIn this case though, listen to your dad a bit. You don't have to follow his suggestions - just consider them. It's always good to weigh in on other people's opinions, no matter what the circumstance.
How is school going? Anyway, your assignment tomorrow is to a passage that you really like, and explain why. The passage can come from anywhere - a book, a magazine, even something you wrote.
For example, Roger Ebert describes how he loves this bit from Huckleberry Finn.
"Pretty soon it darkened up, and begun to thunder and lighten; so the birds was right about it. Directly it begun to rain, and it rained like all fury, too, and I never see the wind blow so. It was one of these regular summer storms. It would get so dark that it looked all blue-black outside, and lovely; and the rain would thrash along by so thick that the trees off a little ways looked dim and spider-webby; and here would come a blast of wind that would bend the trees down and turn up the pale under-side of the leaves; and then a perfect ripper of a gust would follow along and set the branches to tossing their arms as if they was just wild; and next, when it was just about the bluest and blackest -- fst! it was as bright as glory, and you'd have a little glimpse of tree-tops a-plunging about away off yonder in the storm, hundreds of yards further than you could see before; dark as sin again in a second, and now you'd hear the thunder let go with an awful crash, and then go rumbling, grumbling, tumbling, down the sky towards the under side of the world, like rolling empty barrels down stairs -- where it's long stairs and they bounce a good deal, you know."
The long sentence isn't a stunt. Thunderstorms do seem to sustain themselves forever and then suddenly lull and regather. The flashes and claps punctuate the constant rolling uneasiness. I don't know if you can describe one in short sentences. That was the limitation of Hemingway's style. "Grumbling, rumbling, tumbling" when it comes is not an effect, but like all good descriptions simply the best way to say it, evoking the way storms wander away from us, still in turmoil. Look how he uses fst! to break the flow.
"Pretty soon it darkened up, and begun to thunder and lighten; so the birds was right about it." The word was throughout is always better than the word were, and keeps Huck's voice in view. The remarkable thing is that we accept this poetic evocation as the voice of an illiterate boy. "Darkened up" is better than "darken," and "darkened down" would be horrible. "Lighten" is the right word, perhaps never before used like this, allowing him to avoid the completely wrong "thunder and lightning," without having to write the pedestrian "and there was thunder and lightning." It keeps it in Huck's voice. An English teacher who corrects "lighten" should be teaching a language he doesn't know. And look at these words: "It would get so dark that it looked all blue-black outside, and lovely..." No, don't look at them. Get a musician to compose for it. Notice how "lovely" softens the "blue-black" and nods back to it soothingly.
The passage comes from:
http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2008/12/perform_a_concert_in_words.html
Go read it - you might find it a bit dry, but it's very good.
*your assignment tomorrow is to analyze/look at a passage that you really like
ReplyDelete