Extra Credit Blog

This is year in Honor's English I have acquired many valuable skills from none other then Mrs. Gilman herself. The skill that has helped the most in English is TWIST. It has led me to dig deeper into the text and analyze further, which is aiding me tremendously. I already find myself being able to read snippets of text and analyzing each quicker, with stronger points and ideas than before. I know that this will help me throughout this year and later in life. Being able to have the knowledge to analyze and quote everything perfectly is a skill most people do not acquire. Thank you Mrs. Gilman,  you're already helping me suceed in English.

Lobster Discussion: A Tale of Life and Death

While discussing the poem Lobsters, I was intrigued by several ideas that were discussed. My main point/idea was the fact that this poem has very literal meanings. The difference between life and death, the end of everything has the possibility of being the beginning of something new, which was the pot, somewhat symbolizing the Earth. I didn't completely understand that, but after analyzing the poem further, it made me realize how insignificant all the judgements of people and that you have are pointless, because you have to be able to live and let die, because before you know it, you might be the one in the pot. In the text, there was a comparison between life and the death of the lobsters in a boiling pot. I hopefully made some insightful points and changed some people's view on the poem, because after sharing my own idea, I had my perspective definitely changed.
 An idea that dominated most of the discussion was that of society v. the lobsters. While we all were vocalizing our thoughts and feelings on the subject, it struck me as a very logical way to explain the style in which he wrote it in. I really liked the idea, about how the lobsters were treated like the outcasts of our society, because us, the ignorant people who hate to like changes or differences, or lobsters in this case,  kill them instead of trying to understand them. It quite clearly is this- people hate changes. The lobsters are killed because they're so different from anything else in the world that we think we know about. Also, because they're delicious and eating the crustaceans is the thing we know to do with them.

Critiquing & Analyzing: What I Have Realized

        In the last two weeks, I have listened to a number of essay written by my peers, and I have in turn read mine. After listening to all of the criticism (positive and negative), I have began to realize we all as a group have specific things to work on. The main thing in my personal opinion everyone needs to work on, is embedding quotes. There were a number of cases of people specifically said,"she said" or "he said", and I became acutely aware of everyone in the classroom becoming annoyed. Also, the page numbers. That was another issue. Most people embedded them correctly, but the other half of people put (pg. 17) or (Lee pg. 16). Another issue I noticed was people not having a very strong conclusion. The situation was individuals would have a very strong topic sentence, but as the paper read on, the weaker the diction and structure.

        One thing I need to work on from the checklist would be to shorten my paragraph, because I wrote to much for a 5 part paragraph. That will not be too hard because I know I can shorten all of my thoughts into a shorter, smaller, but smarter version. I also need to include embedded on my list of things to do, because I think I could improve my embedding on all of my papers. I do think that I did quite well, considering this be our first 5 point paragraph. The importance of all the aspects of one(5 point paragraph) is all very crucial in being able to get your point across and having a well written paper. Everyone did a good job for their first time writting the paper, but for the next paper I think it wouldn't hurt if we all tried harder to write outstanding paragraphs.