Journal #50 - Faith

Faith is an important part of the lives of everyone. Everyone deals with it, whether you are an avid church goer, or if you put your faith into something else. A majority of people put faith into something at some point in time. There are many times when you have to put your faith into other people. Times like these could happen when you are working on a project in a group of people and each person has to work on the different part of the project. Each person has to do their part of the project otherwise the project will fail. But the only way these projects will work is if each person puts their faith in the other people to get the project done. Faith is an important aspect to people's lives because everyone needs to believe in something. It is human nature to put their faith into things because there are many things that there are no explainations for. Such questions are like why are we here on this earth? What is our purpose? These questions do not have any specific answers beside what the bible tells us, or whatever other religions believe in. But we are not seeing these things with our eyes happening. We have to trust what is in the bible and what we read. We have to put our faith into things because we can not see everything with our won two eyes. A good synonym for faith is trust, because when we put our faith into something, we are trusting the being to get the job done. Or in religion's case we our trusting our God to take care of us and give us the strength to go about our daily buisness. I put my fatih in God and he delivers by protecting me each day. I think that by putting our faith in things, it is a good way of coping with all of the stresses that we deal with on a daily buissness. This puts stress onto other things instead of feeling that we have to do everything ourselves.

Journal #49 - Family

I spend a lot of time with my family because they are important to me. Until I could drive, I spent a lot of time doing things with my family such as playing games with them and going out to eat with them. Ever since my brother has gone to college, we have done even less stuff together. My brother, Andrew, goes to college up at Augustana in Rock Island. My dad is an accountant for RSM Mcgladrey and my mother is an RN at Memorial Medical Center. My favorite times of the year is in fact the holiday season because of all of my cousins that I get to see. We usually meet up at my aunt or uncles house down in St. Louis or in Chicago. We usually have amazing meals because everyone in my family has been trained to cook like my grandma. We celebrate Christmas, Thanksgiving, and Easter together. In all three of these holidays we always have huge feasts. I have many cousins, but I am the youngest on my mom's side and the the second youngest on my dad's side. I have cousins that are 33, 30, 28, 29, 35, 26, and 19. Those are on my mom's side. Then on my dad's side I only have cousins that are 20, 16, and 25. They live up in Chicago. I have always been far away from the ages of my cousins, so I can not relate to many of them. One of my cousins is a sucessful Anesthesiologist and he is married to a doctor. When he was a high schooler, he was also an all state golfer. I also have a cousin that is currently attending Truman State College in Missouri. The cousins on my dad's side include a graduate of Virginia, a current student at Dennison College where he plays tennis, and a high schooler that is a very good volleyball player. My extended family is very close because we get to see each other many times throughout the year. We even take a special vacation every year down to the Ozarks with my mom's side of the family. We spend time on the lake and we also get to use their boat. My family has given me a lot of great times.

Journal #48 - Spring Break

My spring break was a random assortment of activities. It always goes way too fast, yet somehow I feek ready to be back at school. On the first day of spring break I decided to embark on my first golf round of the year. I went with Quenten Hooker to Piper Glen Golf Course and we played the back nine. I ended up playing a lot better than expected for not playing since Sectionals in October, but I still made some stupid mistakes. I was hitting my driver quite well for only hitting one fairway. My irons were average, and my putting was very good for having such a long time off. Then next day of spring break was a track invitational at Greenville. I ended up running the open 400 in 53.3 seconds, which was good enough for 3rd place. I was satisfied with this time because this was my first open 400 race of the year and 53.3 already ties my best time for last season. I am excited to continue the season this week. Last thursday was another meet at rochester. This was a very important meet because we broke the school record in the 4x800 meter relay. This was our first and only time running it, we put a team together just to see if we could beat the record. On the days that I did not have meets, i decided to play some ultimate sports with my friends. My friends and I played basketball, ultimate tennis, and a new game that we created called sky ball. What we did was the game was like ultimate ball played in middle school. But instead of a dodgeball, we used a sky ball, which can be found in a sporting goods store. Instead of throwing the ball you have to bounce the ball once to your teammate. You try and score the ball in a goal by bouncing it in. It was a very fun game, but it was dark when we played it so it was kind of difficult. I also had to work on homework during spring break.

Job Shadowing Experience

During my day at a workplace, I went to a private engineering firm by the name of Hampton, Lenzini, and Renwick, Inc. This was an interesting place to go because of my interest in engineering. I personally learned a lot during this experience because I got to talk to real engineers about real job sites. I did not just follow one person all day though. What I did was I met with my contact at 8 AM in his office. Then what we did was we met each other and talked about random stuff to get to know each other. After the initial meeting of him, what my person did, Steve Megginson, was showed me around their office. It was a somewhat small office, considering it only fit about 15 people to work in it. After I was shown around the place, we sat down in his office and he went through the basics of the trade. He showed me some different types of jobs that he has done as well as he enlightened me about the joys of his job. This person got to travel around a lot to job sites and he got to inspect bridges. I forgot to say that this person was a bridge specialist. We talked for about two hours about what he did and he also showed me other things like how they had to promote themselves because they are a private firm. He talked about how it is important to be very good at the technical side of the buisness, but if you do not learn to communicate your ideas to other people then you will not be a very sucessful engineer. After we talked for a long time. He took me over to another engineer to talk to. He was a different specialist, he was a forensic engineer. I had never heard of forensic engineers before and I think that his job sounds really cool. He is like a detective trying to figure out what went wrong in an engineering blunder. The ironic part about this person is that he turned out to be the dad of a person that I compete against for track. So we had a little more to talk about than just engineering. This man talked about a few different scenarios that he had to figure out, and it was fun because he tried to involve us in the discussion rather than just telling us how he did it. He then talked about the trusses on bridges for a little while and we moved on to the next person. Then next guy that we talked to was a hydrolics guy. He did all of the figuring for where a river or creek would move so that it would not erode the supports of a bridge. After talking to all of these people, I noticed that all of these people worked as a team to make sure that their bridges were safe and that their bridges worked efficiently. They all talked about the different stages of the engineering process as well as the buisness aspect of working with budgets. I found out yesterday that there is a lot more that goes into the engineering field than just pluging in numbers to equations. I learned about the buisness side of the trade, and I think it sounds like a good job to have.

Journal #46 - Favortie Car

Well I have to say that my favorite car is obviously the 1997 Toyota Camry. I am not much of a car guy, so you can already begin to tell that I have no idea what I am talking about when I talk about cars. But this is the current car that I have and it is also the first car that I have ever had. I have taken care of it thus far, the only dent on the car coming from my brother backing into someone else's car a few years ago (this car used to be my brother's before he got a new car). My car may not look like much, but it is in very good shape for its age and it has served me well. It is black and looks just like any other car. I have a sweet steerring wheel cover for my steering wheel that says University of Illinois on it. I also have University of Illinois license plates on, thanks to my dad. I can hit zero to sixty in about a minute and a half and sometimes when I have to drive uphill, it doesn't make it up the hill. Just kidding about the last sentence, because my car actually works quite well. Thus far it has not broken down on me nor has a tired blown out. The worst thing that has happened to my car so far is having the sun roof stuck halfway opened, which was fixed with the love and support of my family. We were all worried deeply for my car, but it made it through the surgery bby the mechanics. He has been safetly driving around for the last six months injury free, except for that grinding noise in the trunk. I'm pretty sure that it is just the boogie man who moved from my closet to my car, but there is no way to know for sure. One time, I was driving my car to a friends house where there was a huge pothole on the side of the road. I accidentally took the turn too sharp and my tire went straight down into a three foot drop. Luckily my car is industructable and survived without a scratch, but that definately gave me a bit of a scare.

Journal #45 - Experience on American Literature Site

SO far we have not done very much on the site, but i have already learned how to make a site on google. Thus far, my team members have been wonderful. They created the whole site without me while I was gone to WYSE. They got a lot done without me here, and I am glad that I was assigned these two beautiful girls. Asside from the brown nosing, I think that this website is a good and different look to a project. It is good to get some experience with technology in our ever changing enviroment. It is also important that we reach into ourselves to find some creativity and see what we can get out. This project is combining our knowledge, credebility, and our creativiy all into one piece. We just completed a civil war project in our history classes in which people created a web page filled with our information. That project has helped me with some of my experiences thus far on the American Lierature Sites Project. I think that the only problem with this project is the fact that everything is online. I like being able to use my brain for a project instead of looking up all of my information. But that part will come when we analyze some of the Dickinson poems. I think that this project is going to help me with some of my computer skills as well as teach me a way to create a web page. I like working in partners as well, because it seems like it takes some of the pressure off of you individually. It can feel overwhelming when you have a lot of work to get done on a project and no one can help you with it. In the real world, people work in teams anyways, so we might as well go ahead and get used to this concept by working on projects together. I think that this project will help me with my team working skills.

Journal #44 - Animal Imagery

Once upon a time, there lived a young caterpillar. He felt as furry as fuzzy wuzzy the bear and he was a great crawler. He is the best crawler in the land and he could beat anyone in a race. He tops out at a whopping .1 mile per hour. This little caterpillar wiggles and writhes to the speed of light. He passes the other little caterpillars with ease and everyone looks up to him. All of the little caterpillars gossip about how great this young being can be. This little caterpillar had to face the fastest leaf looking bug in the area though. It is unfortunate that the leafy bugs are naturally faster than the caterpillars, but our little friend wants to be the first caterpillar to upset a leafy bug. They were challenged to a race, and the leafy bug was pulling ahead. The bug had long legs that carried through the race. He was going so fast to the point where he tripped and fell. The crowd was going wild as the caterpillar started to catch up after the bugs fall. The bugs moral was broken. The caterpillar was going so fast that he was seeing sounds and hearing colors. This little guy started to believe that he could actually beat the leafy bug. Then finally, with a final dive across the finish line, the leafy bug exploded into a giant firey ball of flame. As this spontaneous combustion started, the caterpillar crossed the finish line to defeat the leafy bug. The crowd gave the caterpillar a standing ovation as they welcomed their new champion. The race was over and the crowd was chanting for a speach. The caterpillar gave a heartwarming speach that encouraged all of the other bugs to try their hardest. The bugs all rallied around the caterpillar and they hoisted him into the air. This was a magical time and I am proud to say that I witnessed it.

Journal #43 - Best moment in 2010 Olympics

I did not watch too much of the Olympics this year, but one sport that I like to watch during this time of the year would be curling. I know that this sport may seem somewhat boring and that it may not take very much athletic ability to complete. But this sport produces champions just like any other sport in this world. I watch the women from Sweden win a gold medal this year. I think that this is an important time for Swedish people, such as my friend Ivar. I also wached some skiing , I think it was cakked something like the super G. It was something close to that, anyways I saw a lot of people fall down. I felt bad for all opf tese people because they each had spent all of their lives training for this one occasion and then they just went and fell down. These people do not get a second chance even though they could be the fastest in the world. I think that the biggest story overal was Apollo Ohno winning a record 8 career medals in the winter Olympics. I thought that this was really cool because speed skating is such a tough event. Each competitor fights each other for the inside position in the race, and many of them seem to fall towards the end of the race trying their hardest to win. think it is funny thought that he won one of his medals because the people who were in second and third fell down right in front of the finish line as Apollo sliiped in for his medaling finish. He did not really deserve that medal, but i guess he was good enough to get several others. He is a great athlete and he should be praised for his great efforts in his races during this Olypmics. Apollo should be back in four years to extend his large amount of medals that he has won during the winter Olypmics.

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.

Journal #33 - Whitman

Throughout the Whitman poems that we have read, he has focusedon the Self and what the Self is. In the language of the self, we read that Whitman is writing about the self as well. According to this article, Whitman's writting comes off as egotistical and very self absorbed. I think that this is a common way to portray the self because that is how many poeple are in this world. Whitman writes this way though because he is discovering himself. The reason that he is coming off as egotistical and self centered is because he is simply writing about himself. I do not even think there is a way for him to not sound self centered unless he changed the subject to someone other than himself. The author of this article talks about some people who say that Whitman is an example of this egotistic problem. They say that this represents a problem that many poeple have. I had recently thought of this in one of our reflections, I ahd said that Whitman had given a good example of what not to be like. I think this is also what the people in the article are saying. I think this because they talk about how Whitman was in all ways a good person, but he discovered this side of him through his poems. I think that these people have a very good point and that they have described Whitman's purpose for finding the self very well. Whitman did a great job of finding the self, but what he ahd found was something that was not very good. I think that once Whitman had discovered the true self, which was not very ideal, he had began to regret what he had done. But he had done what needed to be done, and by finding out what the self means he gave way to the inspiration of other people. He inspired people to be the best they can be by both being like his character as well as contrasting from his character.

Journal #32 - Reporter in War

It would be really scary to report a war from the trenches. You would have nothing to defend yourself with, which would add to the scare factor. It is a job that almost seems unnecessary because all I think that it does is add to the amount of casualties that could come from a war. It is somewhat important to report however because then you are showing the people who are back home how the war is going. The war would be a great toll on the mind of the person who is reporting because of all of the death that is going on around them. This would also change the story in the eyes of the viewer, because the reporter might twist some of the details to sound either more or less gruesome.

You know how there are people who come back from war and end up with some mental challenges to overcome such as that stress syndrome thing. I have a feeling that a reporter in the feild would be experiencing things like that. I think this because a reporter has not been trained in ways that the army members have been. A person reporting on a war would be so shocked with the gruesome events that take place that I do not think that they could even give an accurate account of what had taken place. The reporter who would be reporting in the field would have to see many people die if they were in the middle of combat. This would have obvious effects on the reporter. A reporter in war would have a tough time.

I honestly do not know what to imagine when I think of being in a war, because I have obviously never been in combat. It is hard for me to describe what a reporter would undergo during a battle. But after capturing the footage of many people dying, I am sure that it would change the way the a person would thiink about a war.

Journal #31 - Persuasion

Well, today while Mr. Langley was gone from english class, someone stole my friends seat. A girl sat down next to me, whose name will remain anonymous. My friend Jace and I had to persuade this person to leave his seat. As my best friend of ten years, the seat was rightfully Jace's. But this girl preceded to resist. Luckily Jace was trained by Mr. Langley in speech class for being an effective persuasive speaker. Jace came over and worked his magic on this girl to get her to leave. He was not about to back down. Jace could not go back because he was surrounded by girl talk in his original seat. All Jace wanted to do was type his blog in the presence of his best friend. But this girl who is to be remained unnamed, was not going to leave this seat. Then all of the sudden, I witnessed the greatest persuasion of human kind. Jace opened his mouth and immediately words began to form. She did not know what to do except hit jace several times with sharp weapons that she had concealed in her oversized purse. Conveniently Jace was a ninja, rendering her attacks useless. After her attack, Jace somehow persuaded her to leave the seat with his skillful use of speech class. Somehow, Jace had actually payed attention in class and learned something that could be useful to society. This girl finally left her seat without a fight because Jace had used his Jace charm. Jace never backed down, never quit, and trusted his heart. Jace took his place by my side, as she walked away angrily.

This girl was actually just Hallie, who in no way did nothing wrong. However, all events taking place in this blog are based on a true story. But this act of persuasion was a feat that no other man could have accomplished besides Jace. Some of actions in this blog may have been exaggerated.

Journal #30 - True Self

Finding who your true self is can be an important task that is quite difficult. There are things that I have done to find who I am, which that main thing is trying new activities. By getting involved in different things, I can determine what I am good at as well as what I am bad at. Not only can I find out what my strengths and weaknesses are but I can also find out what I like or dislike. This is why I did things like basketball and an trying out being an officer in certain things. I found that when I played basketball that it was a lot of hard work and I did not have as much desire to play as other kids, so I quit playing. But on the contrary, I like being involved as an officer in both Spanish Club and Beta Club. It feels good to be involved as well as giving back to the community through volunteer work. By getting involved in activities, I have found out a lot about myself. Learning about your true self can also happen by metting new people and going new places. This is why someday when I go to college I want to join a study abroad program. This would give me the oppourtunity to meet many new people from different countries as I expand on my education. I will get to see new kins of places which will broaden my horizons. Finding yourself is a tough and lengthy task however, because each person is very complicated and takes a lot of time to understand. But it is something that each person will find over time, which is why you can not give up on the quest to find yourself. Likes and dislikes are important for a person, but it is not everything. The people that you spend most of your time around can determine who you are, so chosing your friends is an important task. But your enviroment does not describe who you are either. You determine who you are, and nothing else does. So just be yourself.

Journal #29 - Tested by Nature

Nature can be a destructive force, and sometimes can almost cause death. There was one incident that I was involved in when my brother and one of my friends were almost killed. We were playing a game named kick the can about a year or two ago. The house that we were at had some woods and an old tree house in one of the trees. It was night time during the summer and we were in the midst of an intense game. I was hiding across a pasture when I heard a massive noise that could have been heard around the world. Everyone in the game left their hiding spots and ran towards the noise immediately. As I was running across the pasture towards the noise, I could only think of bad thoughts because I knew where everyone was except for my brother. Some of my friends were already at the scene of the accident as I was arriving. When I saw the wreckage, I was in shock. The tree house had fallen into a thousand pieces and a giant pile rubble. When I got to the scene, I saw my brother emerging from wreckage. The other person who was in the tree house was pinned underneath a large pile of wood and my brother had to lift the giant piece of wood off of him. A nail was on the piece of wood that almost pierced his body. This was such a close call. Not long after they escaped out of the wreckage we were all standing nearby talking about how crazy that was. We were amazed at how they were both almost killed by nature because the wood in the treehouse was old. We all left the scene with a good laugh as well as a good experience. I hope that I never have a close call experience quite like that one, but at least we all can learn from this event. I am glad that it happened though because it gives a good story to tell.

Journal #28 - Winter Break

Christmas break is always a great time of the year, unfortunately i was very buisy during my break and did not get to enjoy the true relaxations that some other people had gotten. What I did on my first day of christmas break was I had to work at Barnes and Noble. I had made good money over break, but it was really annoying to have to work so much. He first day was an 8 hour shift, so i went home and slept that night. The first sunday I went to my aunts house in Athens and we celebreated christmas with my mom's side of the family. This was a buisy day and I did not get home until the later evening that night. I worked 8 hour shifts at work the next two days and did not get to relaw much either of those two days. THen I was gone in St. Louis for the Illinois Braggin Rights Game, which was a dissappointing performance by the Illini in a horrid lost. Then we came back on christmas eve and my grandma came over. THe rest of the night was spent preparing for the upcoming christmas day. Then christmas was the first real day that I had gotten to relax during our break from school. I spent the day relaxing, but then I realized I had to work the next day. So then I worked the day after christmas. THe next day my cousins from chicago came down and spent the night with us, but of course I had to work from 5 til close that night so I barely got to see my cousins. The next day was the last monday and one week left of break. I luckily had gotten the next four days off of work and got to have fun with friends as well as some relaxing time for me. I then worked on the last friday of break for 8 hours. I left for chicago on friday to not only see the Illini lose to Gonzaga by 2 in overtime, but I also got to eat at Harry Carry's. This is probably the best steakhouse I have ever eaten in. THe steak I had was so juicy that it melted in my mouth. Then I came home on the last day of break, so I spent the rest of that day preparing for school. So not much time was spent having a good time on my break, but I accomplished a lot and spent some quality time with my family.