the lit eight lexicographer.

This week, for my lit eight post, my job is lexicographer. There is a cornucopia of words displayed, so feel free to knock yourself out.

precocity - having mature qualities at an unusually early age.

menagerie - a collection of live animals for study or display (a.k.a. a zoo)

derelict - worn and broken down by hard use

reticence - the trait of being non-communicative; not volunteering any more than necessary

deferential - courteously regarding others' feelings

contemptuous - express of an extreme lack or respect and a feeling of intense dislike

absolve - grant remission of a sin to; "let off the hook"

milieu - social and cultural surroundings or landscape of a particular area

egregious - bad, blatant, or ridiculous to an extreme degree.

he didnt want to practice writing essays, so instead he just SAT in the corner.

Another SAT practice essay I wrote in English. I have to say that I definitely liked my first one better. I give this one a 4. The other one a 6.

What do you stand for?

What is the most important thing to you in your life right now? What do you value most? What are you morals? What do you believe in? It is hard to state your morals when you don't really understand what they are. In many schools, morals are hardly discussed, and social issues scarcely brought up. If schools don't help students to decide what they stand for, how will they know what to do when they are faced with making important, moral-based decisions later on in life? This is why I think that moral choices and social issues should be discussed in schools.

I have been to a school that allows discussion of morals and social issues and a school that doesn't allow it. after looking back on challenges I have been faced with at each, I know that attending a school that makes moral discussion a part of their curriculum really helped me to make better decisions. For example, a couple of weeks ago, I visited the World Trade Center grounds in New York. After my visit, I was able to discuss the sacrifices made and all the feelings that must have been felt during the tragic event with my friends from school. I was also able to talk about what was happening now with the resulting war, and my moral standings on it. I felt proud that I knew where I stood with the social issues our world is confronted with.


At my previous school, when the September 11 tragedies occurred, all we got was information. We were never even presented with the idea of sharing our feelings or reflections on the event. I know that if I still attended that school today, I would not know where I stood or how I felt about September 11 or the war in Iraq.

On the other hand, education is important. If people did not have educations, how would jobs be determined? We need academics to help us advance on to the next level. But at the same time, academics cannot help us to determine what kind of world we live in and how we live in it. Thus, while academics are important, a moral education is absolutely necessary to lead a proper life.

analyzing a passage.

For this post I had to choose a passage from the "Judges" portion of Poisonwood Bible and analyze its meaning.

The passage:

All my life I've tried to set my shoes squarely into his footprints, believing if only I stayed close enough to him those same clean, simple laws would rule my life as well. That the Lord would see my goodness and fill me with light. Yet with each passing day I find myself farther away. There's a great holy war going on in my father's mind, in which we're meant to duck and run and obey orders and fight for all the right things, but I can't always make out the orders or even tell which side I am on exactly. I'm not even allowed to carry a gun. I'm a girl. He has no inkling.

Some background information:

In this passage, Leah is analyzing her father and her relationship with him after he has made the decision to stay in the Congo even with all the excitement and potential danger that is coming with the independence.

Analysis:

I think that this is a turning point, or a "center of gravity" quote for Leah because all this time, it has been as if she had set up a cover for her father that allowed her to see past his anger and imperfection as this perfect man of God and role-model. Some people call it "being blinded by love". But during this quote it seems like she is finally able to remove that cover and see her father as a real person, one who is not so perfect. She is able to finally see that he in reality is not a very good person or father, and starts to depend on herself and less on her father, which is good because it shows that she is starting to mature more.

Being able to see her father for what he really is allowed Leah to see that God and her father are two different things, and that she can depend on the Lord without depending on her father. It also allows her to be her own person, and to pursue the things she enjoys doing rather that restraining herself from them just because her father didn't do them.

Poisonwood Bible Lit Circle: name that song!

This cycle, my job for lit eights is song matcher. This means I have to identify a character's personality up to the point I've read up to and match it to a song. Pretty fun I must say.

Rachel



For Rachel, I chose "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" by Cyndi Lauper. To me, Rachel is the girl that basically well, wants to have fun. She does not like school, and seems to envy the people in the Congo who stop school at the age of 12. She also sneaks around behind her dad's back, seeing movies that she knows he would never approve of. I think that she hates being a preacher's daughter and longs to be a normal, social teenage girl, the one that goes out on weekends with her friends and dresses in the latest fashions, and that attitude totally matches with this song.


Leah





I chose two songs for Leah: one to describe her relationship with Pascal, her African playmate, and one to describe her relationship with her Father. The first one, "Who I am Hates Who I've Been" by Relient K, is to describe how she feels after establishing a friendship with Pascal. She is angry about the way she was raised when she is presented with the cultural barrier between her and Pascal's family. She feels as if she is cannot measure up to the amount of experience and knowledge Pascal and his family have obtained through living a poor life in the Congo. For instance, being able to build a house, or running a household. It is a turning point in the book because it is the first time ever that Leah has felt resentment towards her father.

The second song, "Confessions of a Broken Heart" by Lindsay Lohan, was chosen because it is a song that expresses the hurt of a daughter being neglected by a father, and the longing of the daughter for a caring father. I truly think that all Leah wants is to be loved and cared for by her father, but she is feeling the same hurt inside that this song displays because she is being rejected. In relation to the first idea, this hurt could grow into anger, which could, along with the resentment, cause a rebellion towards her father.

Rachel. Not the one from Friends!

In English, we took a fifteen minute walk around campus. In that fifteen minutes, we were to observe our school and think about how it would be described in the voice of a Poisonwood Bible character. The character assigned to me was Rachel, the oldest of four sisters. I used her love of fashion and use of fake big words to better interpret her personal voice. Here it is:

Boy oh boy was I wrong when I though I was finally gonna get a break. I thought that by moving to Hawaii we would enter civilization and leave the outdoors prison of the Congo. But of course I made an error, as the school that I now attend requires me to constantly be outdoors in order to get from class to class. My only relief is finally trudging into class to feel the cool air streamulating through the air conditioners. But other than that, this place is like a giant sauna, even when the sky is gray and clouds look plumb filled with water. How can anyone expect me to be presentable if the humidacity of this "paradise" island is causing my hair to resemble a giant bail of straw?

But unlike the Congo, the hair is the least of my worries. There are girls here with the exact same color hair as mine (minus the frizz), so my hair is almost unnoticeable. However, in comparison to what some of the gals wear here, my favorite green suit feels like a collection of rags, and I mighty stick out like a sore, green thumb. Our Father would hardly be calling me a slave to fashion and pop culture if he saw this school. But despite his opinion (which did not seem all that important in the Congo), I think I could learn to like the fashions of theswe girls, and I think that I can finally start to be a normal human being again.

the secret.

Yesterday, I watched this documentary called The Secret, and it literally changed my entire outlook on life. I highly recommend it for everyone.

In my previous post, I stated that life was suffering. But I've realized that life does not have to include suffering at all. The secret to everything -- success, happiness, love, wealth, everything -- is this thing called the "Law of Attraction." We attract everything that comes into our lives through our thoughts and feelings. The reason that sorrow comes into our lives is because we concentrate on how much we do not want it. Whether you want something or not, the universe corresponds to our thoughts and brings them to us. Thoughts become things. If you say, "I don't want to get sick" instead of, "I want great health," sickness will come upon you because you keep thinking about it. So, instead of being anti-war, be pro-peace. Instead of expecting bills in the mail, expect checks. We should not be contumatious towards great things happening in our lives.

I also learned how important it is to be grateful for everything that you already have. If we keep focusing on the things we don't have, we will never get them. Instead, visualize how great you feel with the things you already have. Then, visualize how great you'll feel with the things that you want as if you already have them, and they will come to you. This happened for one of the commentors in the documentary, Jack Canfield, the author of Chicken Soup for the Soul. He envisioned himself making $100,000 a year by making himself a $100,000 bill and putting it on the ceiling so that he would see it every morning when he woke up. He didn't know how he'd reach his goal, but every day when he woke up in the morning he envisioned himself living his $100,000 lifestyle. At the end of the year, he made $92,000 dollars through his book, which just sprung on him as an idea one day in the shower. After seeing how living "the secret" changed his life, his new goal became $1,000,000. Today, he is a best-selling author and lives in a 4.5 million dollar mansion with his wife who he claims is "to die for." This and many other stories featured in the documentary moved me to the point of becoming a believer.

After watching this movie, I truly believe that anything I want will come to me if I believe that it will come with my whole heart, if every day I can visualize myself having what it is that I want without it ever being a chore. I truly believe that the universe can be like my catalog, and I can choose whatever I want from within it.

"Take the first step in faith. You don't even have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step." -Martin Luther King Jr.

Poisonwood Bible Art part ll

So I realized that this tracking down art thing is a lot harder than I thought. Oh well.

Ruth May



I chose this painting by Leonardo Da Vinci for Ruth May because it seems like she's a lot smarter than everyone thinks, and is also very contumacious towards being the youngest. Being the baby of the family, she is also probably seen as no threat because they think she's too young to understand things. For example, on page 31, Ruth May says, "They won't talk about the bad things in front of my sisters, but me I can listen all the livelong day..." She realizes that what her mother and Mama Tataba talk about isn't meant for hearing, and she takes advantage of her youth because she knows she can. Mona Lisa looks like a plain woman. But when you look at her smile, you know that she has a world of
secrets safely hidden inside of her.

Leah



I chose this painting by Pierre Bonnard to represent Leah because it is a painting of nature, which seems to be where Leah likes to be. Leah also seems to crave attention from her father ("I know that someday...I will have his whole-hearted approval"), just like the painting, which uses bright, eye-catching colors in hopes of grabbing the attention of its viewers.

Poisonwood Bible Art

In our literature circles for Poisonwood Bible, I am the artist, meaning I find what kinds of art can best represent what I've read. So I decided to pick art based on what I think of each of the sisters, kind of like a character analysis, so it's like a 2-for-1 deal!

Adah



I chose this painting by Georges Seurat to represent Adah. In my opinion, Adah is extremely intelligent, with her abilities to read books backwards and create unbelievably long palindromes. But on the exterior she seems ordinary, if not less because of her handicap. She is very much like this painting. From far away, it seems ordinary, nothing special. But if you take a look closer, you see that it is amazing with its complexity and detail, being constructed entirely of little dots.

Rachel



I chose this piece of pop art by Andy Warhol to represent Rachel because to me, Rachel seems like the type of person who makes things bigger than they actually are to either sound more intelligent (like adding different endings to words to make them longer and seem more complex) or to be a drama queen (like always fussing about what she wants to wear). We all know that a can of tomato soup is nothing out of the ordinary. But Andy Warhol makes it seem bigger than it actually is by making it the main focus of his picture.

adressing essential questions

After reflecting on my posts, I've come to the conclusion that our world is many different types of things. Our world has become so different than it could've been. Instead of being laid back and forgiving of mistakes, our world is fast-paced and harsh. If you so much as slip just once, it is very easy for you to get left behind and fail because we live in a place where everyone moves on from thing to thing so fast. You could be famous one day and forgotten the next. We tend to think about where we're going before analyzing where we've come from, which is why we are so fast. What if the world was like love -- patient and kind? Would more people be able to excel? Or would we be so slow that all the great things being achieved today would never even be thought of?

In connection to my post about working hard for my goals, our world is the same. It seems like the only way to succeed is first to suffer. To impute Buddha for the wise phrase, "life is suffering and we must accept that". But wouldn't it be great if the world just allowed us to do the things we loved to do and succeed at them? More Asian History for you: like Confucianism, our world is filled with superior and inferior relationships. If there were no poor people, there would be no rich people. If there were no such think as chores, play would be no fun. But I think it is good that these things are not permanent. Nothing in this world seems to be permanent. There's always something you can do about it. Like giving to those in need.

We also choose to live unsatisfied in this world. It seems like no one is content. Ever. We are always striving for something we don't already have, like that $500 dress or that hot red sportscar. With so many temptations in this world, it is hard to truly love only what we have. But I really do think that if people did, the world on a whole would be a lot happier. And less jealous.

So basically, our world has imperfecions, as do all the people who live in it. But I've come to see that being perfect is overrated, that sometimes it is imperfection that makes a person beautiful. And despite our imperfection, I do think that our world, or my world at least, for the most part, is well, beautiful.

SAT.

After having to read my classmates' practice SAT writings in such a limited amount of time, it has helped me even more to determine that the entire SAT writing portion process is difficult and stressworthy. For one, everything is so based around time, which is really bad because when you are pressured to do something, your performance usually weakens. For instance, when I play basketball and have to shoot, if I rush my shot rather than taking the time to square up to the basket, I usually miss. In the essay, it's the same. It is really hard to think of good examples to use on the spot. It is also hard to write in your style of writing because you probably feel that your style is not what the judges want to read. And if you don't get to incorporate yourself it sucks because your essay becomes kind of generic. Someone could be a phenomenol and still do horribly because they might take a long time to write. I think that the national average would not be so low if we had as much time as we needed to write our essay because I don't think that a timed essay showcases a person's true writing skills.

Another difficult aspect of the SAT writing portion is the judging. From the way Mr. Watson, our English teacher, described it, it seems as if the judges are already uncomfortable when they get to the judging room. And three minutes per essay? I think that's ridiculous, and a horrible ratio of time. We spend 25 minutes on the essay and they take 3 minutes to read it? What if they get the wrong impression from the paper than intended? What if they skim to fast and miss the parts of the essay that make it great? I think it would make much more sense to just get more judges so that they have less essays to judge and more time to judge them.

Although I don't really like this system, I think that it's good that we are introduced to it so early in our high school careers. It helps us understand the whole process so that we may adapt to it (even though I hate it, I know it's not going to change) and know what to write and how to write it. It's a great advantage, but for $15,000 a year, I think we deserve it.