THE FINAL BLOG!!!!!!!!!

........As I was going back through my blogs, I noticed that I have less and less errors in my writing as the year progressed. I also noticed that my writing style has changed a little throughout the year.
........Blogging this year has been a very different, and fun, way to do homework. I sometimes lose track of due dates, so remembering to do the weekly blog was hard. Especially since it wasn't on paper. It was usually hard for me to come up with a response to what Mrs. Gilman had posted because I did it late-ish at night. This is probably the latest blog that I have posted all year because I've been sick and I couldn't get myself off of the couch to do it.
........William Shakespeare said, "My words fly up, my thoughts remain below; Words without thoughts never to heaven go." My writing in general tends to not show my full understanding or feeling towards the subject. But I thought that I did pretty well at showing my understanding of things on this blog. So, I guess that Shakespeare's quote more contradicts my point, but it describes my other writing.

____I would consider myself a more-accomplished essay writer than I was last year, but I'm not perfect. The literary analysis tools we have learned have helped me go beyond literal ideas and questions. I think literary analysis will help me write better-quality essays and reports on books in the future.

____I need to work on getting more commentary into my essays. I used to have a lot of commentary and not too many concrete details. I need to find a good balance without overloading one or the other. I think that my comma and general punctuation could use more work, even though the spell cheker can find some errors.

Summer Reading List!

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith.
It sounds like a good twist on the original.
1984 by George Orwell.
My mom liked it, and it sounds like 2012.

Theme and Motif: Fate

____I looked up the astrology for when I was born. I am a Gemini, but I already knew that. The sign for Gemini are twins. The symbol looks like II. I looked up something called a birth chart andI put in my birthday and time and place and it made a birth chart. The birth chart showed where the planets and sun were aligned when I was born. Gemini are supposed to be lively and free. They're supposed to be happy and creative. Gemini are known to live life to the fullest. I think that most of these traits are true for me. There are some traits that I know don't fit me like how Gemini are supposed to be religious.
____Romeo and Juliet talk about how the stars determine their fate, and how they were meant to be from the start. I found many things about Gemini that aren't true for me, but some of them are true. I think that Romeo and Juliet fell in love too quickly. They rely on the stars and fate too much. Silly things like how Gemini are supposed to favor the color green over other colors being true for me, might not be as life-changing as a true fate being wrong.

EXTRA CREDIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

At the beginning of the school year, I was really expecting a lot of creative writing, and a lot of reading. Yeah, the reading is not my favorite, but I can cope. I can also cope with no creative writing, since I do it on my own. I didn't expect so many essays, but once I get into them, I really get into them, so much that I have to have both my mom and dad go through it for mistakes, because I am really bad at catching my own mistakes.
I'd expected a lot more of "go home and do it on your own" kinds of things, but there's a lot of in-class group activities.
I learned that I don't know how to use commas properly most of the time, and that I use dash- or hyphens- or whatever they are way too often, just look back ten words, and there you go.
I didn't think that I would ever have a class in hall five, but I did, and it's really hard to push through the crowd to go up the stairs, but it's really easy to follow the natural flow of the people that are going down the stairs.

Skits

1) When Miss Havisham catches on fire.
-Miss Havisham, Pip,
-It's a good scene because it has a lot of action and it's funny.

2) When the police-ish people come to arrest the convicts.
-Two convicts, Pip, Joe, Mrs. Joe, police people,
-It's a good scene because it relates to other parts of the book and it has a lot of action in it.

3) When Pip gets caught by the convict.
-Pip, convict,
-It's a good scene because it starts the whole story and would be fun to act out.

Great Expectations

I don't understand who The Avenging Phantom is. Why does he/she/it keep appearing throughout the book? Why did he/she/it come into the story in the first place. Also, what does he/she/it do to help the story? Pip will just be thinking about something and then The Avenging Phantom will say something and then go away until he/she/it feels like coming back into the story.