Sarai’s English Log

 One adventure that I would like to go to is on a trip to visit museums and monuments in places like Italy and Greece because I've always seen pictures of them and I feel like it would be a whole different experience to see them in person. I've always wanted to visit places like that. Today we started looking at Emilt Dickinsons poetry. What we are doing can help me learn more about how to better understand poetry, as it is something I have always struggled with doing.

 One thing that I will never fully understand is why there are so many different variations in religion in the world. In theory, only one of them could be true, and a lot of them originate from events long ago in history. With some religions, it seems like they are just different interpretations of the same events, but some are just completely different. Did people just start coming up with them because they needed something to believe in, or they wanted to give themselves a reason why certain things happened or were created? It seems like theres no way to truly know what's "true" and what's not, although there is evidence to support some religions, but it's mostly just based off pure faith. Today in class we presented our Origin Myth Posters.  The presentations in class helped me learn more about my classmates presentations, and what they wrote about, and it's an eye opener as to how people can interpret an assignment differently, as most of the stories were ...

 

 Something that I wish I could have more of is time. There are so many things that I've wanted to do in life, and things I still want to do, and sometimes it seems like I might never get a chance to do any of it. Especially as we get closer to graduating, it seems like life is getting more real, and I feel like when I'm actually an adult, I won't have as much time to do all the things I love to do now, because I'll have to change my priorities.  Today in class, we worked on our posters for our origin myth. Making this poster can help me learn how to channel creativity into different ways, and I'm also learning how to use a different website that I haven't used before.

 The most creative thing I have ever made was a short story I wrote for my literature class last year. I would say that this stands out as my best work because, I had a lot of people around me, like classmates and family read it, and they all said that it was really good, and one of my family members genuinely said that if I wanted to pursure writing that they would help me. Today in class we learned how to use adobe express to make a poster based on our origin story.  I can use what I learned in order to use Adobe express to help me in future assignments in this class, and also for other classes as well. It can also help me have a broader view of what different resources I have that I can use in school, as I'd never used Adove express before.

 One of the biggest questions I have in life is why it seems like some people don't have any empathy for others. They do things that are blatantly bad, and cause harm to others, but don't seem to have any remorse, and it just seems strange that anyone would do that, especially with seemingly no motivation. The second biggest question I have is why, when two countries leaders have a problem with each other, and start a war over it, their whole countries have to fight and suffer over something that's a personal issue. If anything, they should just do the fighting themselves, and not make everyone else do it for them. In class, today, we started working on writing our own Native American origin myths. This assignment will help me improve my writing skills, and help me learn how to be more creative and open minded when it comes to certain elements of a story, such as using worldly elements, and incorporating personification in a way I wouldn't do normally.

 One time that I felt completely lost was when I was younger, maybe in 1st or 2nd grade, some time in elementary school, and I went to the store with my mom. While she was busy shopping, I kept running around and hiding in between clothing racks and aisles, and one time, when I peeked out of the aisle I was in, my mom was gone. I was pretty young then, so I immediately started panicking. I went to the front of the store, and told one of the employees that I got lost, and they had to do that thing where they call on the intercom to say something to the whole store. So then my mom came and got me, and she was definetly mad. In class today, everyone did their group presentations on The Jealous Father. Today, I learned about how other people interpreted the story, and new information about the cultural elements of the time that related to the story, which I didn't know before. I can use this knowledge to understand how people might view stories differently, so that when I read a story ...

 I have adapted to the demands of this course by paying attention to the lessons, and learning things like how to critically think about a text, and analyse it deeper. One strength that I've had is that I already had good reading comprehension skills, and this class has helped to improve them even more. One challenge I may face though is when it comes to poetry. Out of all types of literature, I can usually understand anything, but I always have a hard time understanding poems. In class today, we took a quiz to check our understanding of origin myths so far. The quiz we took today in class can help me understand what our future tests and quizzes will be like, which can help me find better ways to study in the future. 

 One situation in which jealousy negatively affected a realtionship I had is when I was younger, in around kindergarten, I was at one of my friends houses. Me and her had been playing together, and I don't exactly remember how it started, but we started arguing over a book, because we both wanted it, but I had it first. We were both trying to pull it away from each other, when she suddenly bit my arm. We were kids, so it was kind of a silly fight, but I remember after that I was crying, and I don't remember ever seeing her again. Today in class we started working on a group project, and we read the story "The Jealous Father". This group project can help me learn how to work cohesively with my classmates, which is helpful for me, because I usually prefer doing solo work instead. In addition to that, I will also get to know some of the others in the class better, and work with people I don't usually talk to.

 One meaningful place in my life is my aunts house in Florida. Although I was born in Georgia, I spent most of my life in Florida, and my aunt practically raised me from Preschool until 6th grade. My favorite part of the house was my room, where I had a big bookshelf where I had all the books I had collected over the years, and it was there where I really started loving to read. Today, in class we read a Native American myth about the creation of the Navajo. From this lesson, I learned more about how to pick out specific factors that show the difference between a religious story and a myth, and additionall, I learned how to dig deeper into a story to pick out allusions in a story and connect them to other things I know. I can apply the techniques we used in class to other texts I read.

 One time that I felt connected to nature was when I was younger, in Elementary school, and I used to go to the park practically every week. I would spend hours just on the swings most of the time, and it just felt really calming to swing. What also contributed to the feeling was the fact that the park I went to had a lot of really huge trees, and back then they seemed even bigger, and it made it feel like the park was separate from the rest of the city, like it just had a different energy when I went there. Today, in class, we took notes and learned about the history of Native American literature. We learned about the specific types of literature we would find in the entirety of Native American literature, such as myths, religious texts, and urban legends. With this knowledge, I can used it to identify the kind of story I'm reading, and in doing that I can look deeper into the context of the story based off what I know about each type.