Journal #41 - PPHS in Greek Mythology

The school of Pleasant Plains High School is a very homely place to go to school. You could almost compare our school to Mount Olympus. We have a variation of good role models who lead our school. The head of the school, Principal Ward, is probably like Zeus. He runs everything that goes on and make sure there is no funny business happening. The office helpers are a lot like Hermes, because they are the carriers of messages to people all through our little Mount Olympus. Ares, the God of War, would most clearly descrbe Mr. Peterson. This is because of the job that he must preform as the disciplinarian of the building. Mr. Conklin would take the place of Apollo, the sun God. This is because he is the closest to the sun. This is probably a poor way to compare two people, but this is my blog and I say how it is done! Posiedon is a tough one to compare to a person at Plains, but my vote is for Mr. Langley. Mostly because he is awesome and has to sit through these boring and nonsensical blogs. I also just thought I would get some extra points for sucking up. Back to the main point of this blog, the position of hades will not be appointed because that could be a sign of disrespect. Therefore, I award this position to Mr. Langley's Curious George doll. I do realize that in doing this i will probably have lost my extra credit points that I have recently gained from the sucking up earlier in this passage. But I respectful allow Curious George to be apart of my blog, that is how nice I am. Anywho, Mrs. Williams will be given the role of Athena in our little Mount Olympus for her great array of wisdom that she has shown through her teaching. After some thought, I realized that Plains is actually not anything like Mount Olympus because of the fact that none of us are Gods. Therefore, you may omit everything you have read in this blog. Except for George being Hades, that may be true for all we know...

Journal #40 - Important Decisions

I use the d-e-c-i-d-e process every time that I make an important decision. We learned this process in my freshman health class. This is a very important thing to learn because as we get older, we begin to make more important decisions that dictate what kind of life we will live. The D of the decide process stands for determine problem. This is probably the easiest part of the decide process because problems typically present themselves somewhat easily. The E stands for explore alternatives. This part of the decide process will take some time because you must think about different solutions to solve your problem. The C stands for consider the consequences. This is what makes and breaks your decision that you make because it is the outcome of each situation that you will be looking at. The I stands for identify values. This is when you find the personal meaning of what you want decide on. The D stands for decide/act. This is where you actually make your decision. The final E stands for evaluate results. This is where you determine if the decision that you made was the correct decision. Lets take for instance you have to decide on a car that you want to buy. THe first thing I would do is realize that I need to buy a car. The next thing I would do was think that I could buy a big car, small car, based on gas mileage vs. safety. I would then consider that having good gas mileage would save me money or I could pay a little more for some safety. Then I would identify which one is more important to me, which would be gas mileage because I am a safe driver. Then I would decide by buying the smaller car that has better gas mileage. Then I would evaluate my decision as I drive off saving more money than ever. This is a simple concept and can be done in seconds if the decision is very easy. This is why the decide process is a very great tool to have.

Journal #39 - Multi-tasking

I personally think that I am a horrible multi-tasker. Every night when I work on homework I always work on it at my computer desk. This causes many distractions and somehow I still get my homework done. I typically open itunes when I sign on to my home computer. After doing so I put my library of music on shuffle and continue to listen to music until I am done with all of my homework. However, whenever I do this (which is every night) I find that the homework that I am doing takes sometimes up to three times longer than it really should. One time I was working on some physics homework that was not very hard and should have only taken me like ten minutes. It was just using an equation that he had given us and plugging in the numbers from the word problem. It took me about forty-five minutes because I would stop to change the song that was playing after each sentence I read. I could not focus for more than about thirty seconds at a time. This would be frustrating to some, but it makes working on homework for me somewhat enjoyable. I usually sing to the songs that are playing on my computer, which intereferes with my thinking process. I dare you to try to think about something mathematical while singing every song lyric to a five minute song. It takes talent, but regardless of what you think, singing slows down your thinking process and makes it so that you will take longer in any task that you attempt. I think that considering the circumstances, I do pretty well at multi-tasking on homework. But it doesn't matter how much I try, multi tasking slows down the tasks that you are trying to complete. I would not suggest multi tasking when you do something that is important because not only does it slow the time it should take to complete, but it also lowers the comprehension on the subject you are trying to work on. Luckily when I work on homework like this I usually already understand what I am doing, so it is typically just a mind numbingly boring process in the first place. But I try to not multitask when I am working on something that actually requires focus, like a reflection or a project.

Journal #38 - Valentine's Day Origin

Valentine's Day is a day that was created long ago. It all started when this boy was born. But when this boy was born, he was born with a bow and an arrow in his hand. This boy upon looking at him could fix any relationship known to man. But eventually his power wore off and his was only able to affect people by shooting them in the posterior end with a heart shaped arrow. This baby was obviously not any ordinary baby, but with these powers he became known as cupid. Some wonder how the baby came to being this way. And that is what this story is about.
The baby named cupid was an unordinary boy who had a strong affection for the ladies. But then right after he was born, he was biten by a radioactive married man. This baby began to immediately feel the effects of his cells mutating. His love muscle great ten times. He became an extraordinary baby. That is really the extent of what happened to the baby to become who we all know now as cupid. But some may ask how is this connected to valentines day. We see, this baby was Saint Valentines son. This baby was important because Saint Valentine was an important figure. What happened to this was that his son had fixed his marriage by shooting his in the hind end with an arrow. This is why Saint Valentine's Day is all about love, because this was the day that his marriage was fixed. And Cupid is the symbol for such an ocassion because he is the person who fixed everything with this marriage. This is an important day to reflect on what one has and what one wants. This day is needed so that people can remember what it is to love and also to help people realize how important love really is. Cupid is a good symbol for this because he keeps people together and helps people realize who they really love.

Journal #37 - Favorite Meal

There is one meal that I think of when someone asks me what my favorite meal is. I love Thanksgiving and everything that revolves around it. I love the food, I love the family, and I love the birthday gifts (my birthday falls on thanksgiving every few years). But this meal on thanksgiving day is a blessing from the heavens above. We start off with some turkey, or course. We have assortments of mashed potatoes, the family pink jello, pretzal salad, corn, fruits, salad, and all kinds off holiday feating foods. I look forward to this meal all year round and I love to take naps afterwards to digest the large portions of food that I have eaten. THe turkey is always mouth wateringly juicy, mostly because my mom is secrety a master chef, but somehow she pulls out an amazing turkey every year. I do not understand how she makes it more perfect every year. There has literally never been a bad turkey in the history of the Tomaw holidays. The mashed potatoes are specially made by my grandma from scratch. As you wait in line to get your food you can hear the sizzling freshness baked in each scoop of the potatoes. The smell traveling across the kitchen during this time is magical, and can only be described by someone who has sen heaven before. THe mixing smells of the turkey, potatoes, and everything else hot compliments the theme of feasting for the day. As you touch the fresh rolls you get a sense of urgency to get back to your seat as quickly as possible to eat. They feel so soft, yet crisp at the same time. When walking up to the line of food, my eyes begin to shed tears of joy from seeing such an amazing feast before me. I wish every day could be like this day, because I love food like the way my family cooks it. I am infact already in preparation for next year.

Journal #36 - Preparing for the ACT

There are many preparations that one should do to prepare for the ACT exam. The night before the exam is a critical time to do a lot of preparing. You should always try to find and sharpen some number two pencils the night before. You should also go ahead and get your calculator ready as well as your admission ticket. The less stress that you have in the morning the better off you will be. Also make sure that you have a calculator that will be legal to use on the test. If your calculator is taken away from you before the test, this may fluster some people and will affect the performance that some may have on the test. Another good way to prepare for the test is to eat a well balanced breakfast in the morning that you take the test. If you do this, your brain will have enough food to do well on the test. I think that you should also make sure you have an alarm set to wake yourself up plenty early for the test. The longer you have to wake up before the test, the more alert you will be on the test thus making you a much more effective test taker. Also, arrive plenty early to your test site so that you are not walking in the room right before they take the test. Running late again will cause confusing and may also fluster a person on the test. The english test may be tough for someone like this because you might be unfocused. Focus is the key thing on the test. You have to put in your mind that the test is the most important thing at hand. Even if you had just had a family member died, if you want to do well you will have to drop that thought for the moment and focus on the test. Complete focus on the test will provide you with the minimal stupid mistakes that cost many people a score that they can be proud of.

Journal #35 - Chanting the Square Deific

Upon analyzing this poem by Walt Whtman, I have read the poem out loud to myself multiple times so that I would understand it as much as possible. The first step is to find the literal meaning of the poem. I think that the literal meaning of the poem is simple. He talks about how God is great and the wonderful deeds that he has done. But he also talks about Satan and what he is capable of. I think that by mentioning both of them that he means to say that to believe in one we must accept the other as part of this world. If not the world would not go 'round. I believe that Whitman ties all of this together in the last paragraph when he talks about the sun and the moon. I think that he is relating these to the sunject matter by saying that these words because of both sides of the spectrum. The next step in this process is determining the figerative language that is present in the poem. I have notived some alliteration at the beginning of the poem when he writes Out with the Old. He also says Solid, four Sided, from this Side. These are examples of his alliteration. The personal meaning is the next portion of the process. I personally find about the same meaning as the literal meaning. I think this is a valid point and that it makes a lot of sense to believe in that. Because there would be no spectrum without both good and evil. The world would not be the same is all of the evil were gone as well as all of the good. It is a logical approach to faith which actually makes a lot of snese to me. I think that he helps people keep life in context, because life is not completely good nor completely evil. This is a good reminder to have and Whitman did a good job getting the message across.

Jornal #34 - Groundhog's Day

Once upon a time, I woke up on a bright and sunny Groundhog's day. I had a friend who was a very mean person who was rude to every person that he had met. I tried to help this friend get better at being a better person. My friend had disrespected the groundhog on this very day and this caused the groundhog to see his shadow. My friend went the rest of the day bring a horrible person and then went to bed when he got home because he was tired from being mean all day. The next day when he woke up, he started to realize some similar things about the previous day. The man on his radio clock was saying similar things as the day before. The sun was shinning just as brightly as the previous day as well. He walked out the front door of his house and grabbed the newspaper off of his front porch. The heading on the front page read Happy Groundhog's Day. This seemed odd to the man because yesterday was groundhog's day. He thought it was just a joke until he got a call saying that he was needed at the sighting of the groundhog for his job as a reporter. The man started to freak out, he thought maybe it was a dream so he just finished his day as usually until he went to bed. The next morning was the exact same as the morning before. And the next and the next. This drove my friend crazy so that he tried killing himself in different ways, but he kept waking up the next morning in the same manner. He eventually learned that he was supposed to be becoming a better person before he could move on in his life. He also gained the love of an unsuspecting woman in a single day. This story is told to teach us to be better and more polite people. This also probably sounds a lot like the movie Groundhog's Day with Bill Murray. This is so because I was writing about the movie. So this actually did not happen to me, but it is a good movie. I would suggest watching it sometime.