Well, that's one quarter done. Only 11 more until we graduate! Hooray!!!
Looking back, it was a pretty tough quarter. Starting off the year, I was overwhelmed by the amount of work, but I quickly learned to manage. Also, our class at the beginning of the year was slightly below par. We were(and still are) very talkative and class seemed to be a little bit out of control. Ms. Froehlich was clearly frustrated with us which I picked up on but I'm not sure if the whole class did. But we overcame that problem, coincidentally, when our class became a bit smaller. Now we are still talkative but I think that we have done a pretty keeping class under control. Our discussions are still lively but are not as wild and disrespectful as they used to be. So the class has improved a great deal since the beginning of the year but there is still room to become more excellent, but not perfect.
I think that I have improved in English as well. Again, I was slightly overwhelmed in September, but now I don't have a problem managing the workload. Also I think that my writing skills have improved quite a bit. My work was very confusing, or so I was told, but I have been working on that and have definitely cleared things up. While we haven't written a full paper since ELIC, my paragraphs and thesis's have been much better and have, hopefully, made sense to more people besides myself. In addition, kinda off topic, but, my journalism writing for Zephyrus has been much better. I'm growing in more than one type of writing, which is good.
Finally, my goals for 2nd quarter. First of all, I want to continue clearing up my writing, and work on getting rid of all of the metaphors in my writing. To do this I am going to try to get more feedback from classmates and Ms. Froehlich, before our research paper is due.
Secondly, I want to work on finishing my work before the last minute. This will make my life much less stressful and will help my work improve. Also, I want to make my grade a bit better, I don't want to just scrape an A, I would much rather earn it.
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
Thursday, November 1, 2007
Outside Reading Post
Well, we've finally reached the end of the first quarter and with it the end of this blog topic. It's an emotional time for all of us...
just kidding
Anyway for my final blog I'm going to talk about potential themes that I saw in The Bourne Supremacy by Robert Ludlum. This book is written in a way that provokes many themes. Everything that is told is told in a way that could be seen as hard to pick a theme out of. The writing is fast paced, action oriented, and much of the time seemingly unthoughtful. This may be true in a few rare cases but most of the time things were meant not only by the story but by the abstract writing style as well.
One of the things that pulls a theme out in this book is the use of David Webb and Jason Bourne. They are the same person but are written as separate characters. Both of them have two very different personalities but we can see that they are, deep down, almost the same. This brings out the theme that to succeed in any endeavor, one must first get to know themselves. David asks, "What do you do when there is a part of you that you hate?"(646). Marie replies "Accept it. He's the one who brought you back to me" (646). From this quote we can see that although Webb does not like his dangerous side, but because he was able to use it and know it, he saved his wife Marie and she is, obviously, very grateful. Also we can infer that if David himself had tried to rescue Marie from the government and the Chinese that he would have failed. But he knew what Bourne could do and he was able to use that.
Another theme that I noticed in this novel is the idea that the motives behind an action do not justify the actions themselves. This may be a fairly obvious theme but it takes center stage with no problem. Marie is abducted and held captive just to get her husband to come to China and help capture a killer. While this end may be justifiable the actions used to get there are not. Bourne tells one of his wife's captors, "It's obvious that she didn't have a damn thing to with it. Let her go!"(159). Bourne is furious that his wife has been dragged into this. He agrees that this killer must be caught but he is severely opposed to how they got him to do it. Throughout the rest of the book Bourne is very distrusting of the government for obvious reasons and this shows us how serious their infraction was.
Well, so there's a couple themes, kind of a boring topic but since this is English, somewhat necessary. Overall this book seemed to fit well inside the thriller genre which is what I expected, the writing was still fairly complex though, which lends an analytical element to the story. I'm not sure if I would recommend this book to anyone, especially those who think that it will resemble the movie. I enjoyed reading the book, but the first book in the series was much better and would still make sense if left alone.
So if you do decide to read this book, I'm open for discussion. There is definitely a lot to talk about.
just kidding
Anyway for my final blog I'm going to talk about potential themes that I saw in The Bourne Supremacy by Robert Ludlum. This book is written in a way that provokes many themes. Everything that is told is told in a way that could be seen as hard to pick a theme out of. The writing is fast paced, action oriented, and much of the time seemingly unthoughtful. This may be true in a few rare cases but most of the time things were meant not only by the story but by the abstract writing style as well.
One of the things that pulls a theme out in this book is the use of David Webb and Jason Bourne. They are the same person but are written as separate characters. Both of them have two very different personalities but we can see that they are, deep down, almost the same. This brings out the theme that to succeed in any endeavor, one must first get to know themselves. David asks, "What do you do when there is a part of you that you hate?"(646). Marie replies "Accept it. He's the one who brought you back to me" (646). From this quote we can see that although Webb does not like his dangerous side, but because he was able to use it and know it, he saved his wife Marie and she is, obviously, very grateful. Also we can infer that if David himself had tried to rescue Marie from the government and the Chinese that he would have failed. But he knew what Bourne could do and he was able to use that.
Another theme that I noticed in this novel is the idea that the motives behind an action do not justify the actions themselves. This may be a fairly obvious theme but it takes center stage with no problem. Marie is abducted and held captive just to get her husband to come to China and help capture a killer. While this end may be justifiable the actions used to get there are not. Bourne tells one of his wife's captors, "It's obvious that she didn't have a damn thing to with it. Let her go!"(159). Bourne is furious that his wife has been dragged into this. He agrees that this killer must be caught but he is severely opposed to how they got him to do it. Throughout the rest of the book Bourne is very distrusting of the government for obvious reasons and this shows us how serious their infraction was.
Well, so there's a couple themes, kind of a boring topic but since this is English, somewhat necessary. Overall this book seemed to fit well inside the thriller genre which is what I expected, the writing was still fairly complex though, which lends an analytical element to the story. I'm not sure if I would recommend this book to anyone, especially those who think that it will resemble the movie. I enjoyed reading the book, but the first book in the series was much better and would still make sense if left alone.
So if you do decide to read this book, I'm open for discussion. There is definitely a lot to talk about.
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