the first blog assigned :)

When I first came into Mr. Tangen's class, we were assigned to do daily blogs on topics he would post. Coming from a school in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, i had absolutely no idea what a blog was. Our first assignment was to read a text from one of his own personal blogs and respond in our own.

What is a blog? Why don't we just print out our assignments like most teachers do? Will blogs be the future generations books? All these questions have answers which i have only recently discovered. A blog can be a great many things. It can be a personal or made up story, or a summary of a piece of literature that you have read. there are also blogs about all sorts of things; such as, politics, sports, fan clubs, music artists, etc.

One of the reasons as to why teachers prefer to use blogs rather than paper or books, is because they are afraid they might lose the papers. This has happened to me on quite a few occasions, and at the end they always end up finding my paper in a different pile or somewhere else. another reason is to be green! America alone wastes so much paper on stupid things. with blogs you are saving a great amount of trees and oxygen. the last reason as to why i think teachers prefer blogs to books is because you don't have to carry a blog. Colegio Nueva Granada is on top of a huge mountain. In my opinion it is just as high as Mount Everest, and we have to climb it everyday in order to get to school. Carrying books and loose papers around probably isnt the smartest idea when you have the option to carry a laptop or you could just use the computer once you get to the school.

Because the internet is taking over the world at such a rapid pace, book sales have plummeted. People find it easier to just sit at there computer and look for whatever they need with the "click" of a button. This makes the reading of blogs more popular, and it is very unhealthy for people. Overall, i believe that in about 30 years there will be a great decline in books, and blogs will be used for almost all things.

Now that i understand how blogs work, it took me about 4 months to figure them out, i enjoy writing them much more the writing a paper. They are more convenient for everyone!

short story

When i was a teen-ager, I wrote a science-fiction story about Leonardo da Vinci. In it, a young art historian becomes fascinated with Leonardo's otherwordly paintings, with their strange rocky backgrounds, unplaceable landscpaes, and enigmatic not-quite-human saints, their single fingers forever pointing straightly upward. to make a long, and rather shamelessly, rod Serlingish, story short, the art historian eventually discovers, in a previously unknown codex, that Leonardo WAS an alien, that the rocks were the lanscape of his native planet, and that the fingers were pointing longingly back home...

This discovery was fascinating but at the same time scary. Knowing that scientists went on day after day researching the same things and not finding any evidence, yet me, a regular girl, having all the evidence and possibly the greatest discovery in the world was overwhelming. now, I had two options: i could not tell anyone and just continue through life, or i could find a way to prove my discovery and possibly become the world's next Darwin. After a long period of thinking, i decided to share my knowledge with the world... it took 60 years after my discovery before it was accepted into the world of science; however, even though i was 75 at the time, i was given credit and the next space expedition to attempt to find Leonardo's long lost home, was named after me. That expedition and many more were complete and epic failures. I died soon after so I will never know what ever ended up happening, or if the aliens came and destroyed the earth.

leaves of grass

Everything we do has a reason, with this, there are questions to what that reason is. In the poems asked to read by Walt Whitman, he begins with questions about life, but instead of actually answering them, he responds to them with more inquiries. This enforces the reader of the poem to maintain interested and alert to what is proceeding within the poem. Being a new student this year, I did not have the privilege of having Mr. Tangen as an english teacher last year. Instead, I had an extremely strict nun who happened to be teaching english honors. In her class, she taught us how to speak intelligently, and how to use grammar correctly. She also had us write many essays that were many times 5 or more pages. These essays would include rules; such as, no "to be" verbs, same tense throughout the whole paper, same person throughout the whole paper, and different sentence structures in the essay. This lady was a great teacher and helped me improve my english to a great extent; however, entering into Mr. Tangen's class was like entering a class which taught whole new and different language. Most of the class I was completely lost and had no idea how people would come up with the responses they shared in the class discussions. The rest of the time, I was trying to figure out the different technique he wanted us to use while writing our blogs and essays. Throughout the course, I had the privilege of sitting next to Daniel Toro and Pipe Reina. Pipe, being a new student from Miami last year, new exactly how i felt and how different and overwhelming the class was, so he was able to help explain to me when i was mostly confused. Daniel Toro, who is also incredibly smart, also helped me understand the techniques being asked of me. Mr. Tangen wanted us to learn the "if then so what" technique. This was the hardest for me because I was taught that you needed to end an essay with a conclusion and just finish the essay. With Mr. Tangen, I had to make my conclusion, finish the essay, and then see how i could instigate more as if i were going to continue another 5 pages in the essay. This was tough but the choice i made to stay in the class I am sure (hope) helped my english and will make me a better writer for the future.

In life, you make many choices; however, how do you know when you have made the right one? Personally, I dont believe that there is ever truly a dead right choice like in math or english that can be chosen when making life decisions. Instead of there being correct and incorrect, I believe there are only consequences and depending on them and the person, determines whether it was a good decision or a bad decision. Whatever led us to that particular decision is what can be determined as correct or incorrect. But there will never really be an answer as to why you do what you do. There will always be another question that can be asked.

The question in Walt's poem "What is the grass?"(6)allows us to enter into a whole new world of thoughts. Im sure that not everyone walks around, sees a piece of grass and ponders on what grass really is. With this poem, he enters a whole new philosophical meaning to the small leaf. He complicates and explains something most people would find so relatively small and simple. It's grass. Plain and simple plants that flow in the wind. Whitman explains and describes this plant in words that even young children would understand.

By repeating the words "Or I guess..."(6) He continues to show that there is no real answer. There is always another question that inquires further into the subconscious level of the mind. This occurs when you think of something too hard. When the answer is so simple that you question it further and further until you dont even know what the right answer is anymore. This disease of the mind can be great for writers, but personally, i think i shall stick with my simple answers. :) just kidding