entry numero tres

writing topic on page 263:




One experience that pressured me into acting like a complete mess was middle school. I know that I should narrow it down to one specific event, but the fact is that the two years I spent in middle school were one big mess of an experience. Going to a new school was always a tricky thing because you had to figure out how you would survive your first day and eventually make new friends. On my first day I met someone and we were best friends instantly, calling each other right when we got home from school, having sleepovers, ditching class together, and spending every minute together. However, I was never quite like her or the people she introduced me to. She and her friends were into smoking, sex, and alcohol. I had just transferred from a tiny hole in the wall Christian school, and was in no position to go with the flow. I had no idea what I should do; go along with their antics and survive, or go my own way and not have fun. Being stupid, I chose to try to mold myself into a girl that maybe she could have fun with. I never realized just how much pressure could destroy a person’s intelligence. I had always been a straight A student, but when I started trying to fit in with these losers I almost flunked out of the seventh grade. How I didn’t see that I was being a complete idiot is beyond me even still. It was the simple fact that I was never quite tough enough, was never willing to drink as much or smoke as much that sent me into the idiot phase of my life. Peer pressure can be as real or as insignificant as you want it to be, and I was too stupid to see the difference between having friends and hanging out with burnouts that to this day haven’t done jack with their lives. The one thing that bothers me most is that I let them change me and my standards. I don’t want to sound stuck up, but I was better than these people. I knew I wanted to graduate with a 4.0 and go to a university, while they just wanted to get high at lunch. It’s not pressure from friends, but all the people around you who make you feel like you should change yourself.
I think I may be missing the point a little on this topic, but when I really think about it, public pressure can be from your friends too and not just people in general. Everyone has suffered from pressure, and it has changed them all either for the good or the worse. I don’t believe it to necessarily be a horrible thing that happens to a person, I believe that it can be a wonderful thing. I think this because I have been changed for the better; I have become a strong person and learned to always listen to myself first.

responding to literature

Nothing beats the satisfaction you get from reading a good book. Not only do you feel a sense of accomplishment, but you also feel like you are broadening your understanding of literature. Well, that may not be the case for everyone who picks up a piece of literature, but for some people it can expand their knowledge. I think that people can respond to literature in many different ways, like crying at the end of a book, throwing the book across the room in frustration, or getting excited when something marvelous happens to one of the characters. However, not all people get fired up when reading a book. I just asked my mother how she responds to literature, and her reply was “with a yawn.” To some extent, I can completely relate to that. Sometimes, literature can be so utterly boring that you’d rather be “slapped for an hour” than read a crappy novel as my Psychology 101 teacher once said so truly. Forced reading has always been a pain in the neck for me because I’ve had such bad experiences with it (Paraclete’s idea of good literature is severely off key). Getting back to the topic; there are other ways of response to literature that are not physical reactions. One can emotionally respond to literature, be it a poem or a novel, by feeling what the character or the author feels; understanding the message hidden deep within the words and rhythm. Some people, when reading a book or poem, can get emotionally attached to the character or writer. This is a reaction that I am all too familiar with. As you know from reading my first entry, I love books more than air, and I know what it’s like to have such a deep understanding and passion for what you are reading. Literature provides us with fantasy, something we all know, love, and crave in our lives. Something as small as a romantic sonnet can send us reeling into a world of want; a desire for what the writer is conveying. By reading, we can expand our minds and open ourselves to new interpretations of the world. As English teachers in our past years of education have taught us, it is important to interpret and analyze what we are reading in order to fully understand it. In some ways, I do agree, but for the most part I find it to be a tedious task that only further confuses me; particularly when it comes to poetry. I think that if you don’t really understand or react to a poem, then you should just leave it be. Analyzing it can be so boring and I’d rather spend my time reading a poem that I understand and drawing some kind of emotion from it. Literature can change your perspective on life if you take it deeply into consideration. Books that make you think about yourself and how you react to the world around you are of the most important things we can learn from analyzing literature.

how literature has impacted me

When I hear the word “literature”, I tend to think of things like enormous text books filled with ordinary short stories and boring poetry. However, literature cannot be condensed into one giant text book sent by all English teachers to torture their students. Literature can be an amazing thing if you look in the right places. Whether it is in a simple poem that speaks to you every time you read it or in a series of large books that make you feel every part of it, literature speaks, in some way, to everyone. Throughout high school, I had a fairly good relationship with reading. I was always open to starting a new series or reading a five page poem. My English teacher sophomore year made English my favourite subject. Some of my peers hated her strict schedule and did not appreciate the method in which she taught us to love literature as she did. I was said to leave her class by the time junior year rolled around, and I was even more depressed when I found out just how one teacher could butcher a single subject. My last two years of high school English were more than enough to put an entire community to sleep. And when I say that this teacher completely ruined my love for literature, I mean it. Every day was the same old routine of reading poems and short stories that held no meaning. I never thought one semester could be so dull. Once I had finished high school, I was glad to be rid of the monotonous schedule of tending to poorly written….crap. I didn’t start really reading again until I went to work for my dad; the work load is pretty light and I often find myself with no papers to file or counters to clean. The days seemed endless with a touch of Facebook here and Myspace there. To backtrack a little bit, my cousin has been giving me books for Christmas for years now, and I had already read every single book known to my house, so I decided to dig into the pile of somewhat interesting looking books. To no avail, my search for a good book dwindled down to me reading a few pages in the middle to see if the book was any good. When I started reading a series of British books about a teenage girl, I was immediately hooked. The way the author wrote had me laughing at every sentence. You know that feeling when you change the channel, and on a commercial you suddenly realize that you are missing part of an awesome movie? That’s the best way I can describe my passion for reading. Nowadays, when I hear the word literature, I don’t think of crappy reading assignments from a stiff text book dirtied with doodles and the occasional ‘I hate poetry’ scrabbled next to a sonnet, I think of a giant novel filled with scenarios and passionate characters that I never want to stop reading. Literature is my escape when my own world is too boring. I fear that my life without a good book would be meaningless. I love literature (books in particular as you may have noticed). However, I still get the same feeling of satisfaction from reading a poem that makes me swoon. I hope that this class will teach me a greater appreciation for every type of literature, not just books; although I am not entirely spent on the idea of finding another amazing novel.