P4- Goals

My goals at the beginning of the year have been reached. Academically I have grown exponentially. I have never had the grades that I have now. I got into a school that only accepts 52% of their applicants; I am on the honor roll. I have succeeded in my scholastic goals, and now I’m working on my spiritual goals. I have a future ahead of me that will require me to be someone that I have to work on being. I don’t know what my future holds, and I don’t know how long it will take before I get there but I do know that I am going to do everything I can. I am putting my life into balance.

I can’t wait for graduation because that means my life is open for interpretation. I don’t have to attend Alden High School on a daily basis and wait for June 23^rd to come around the corner so that I can be around people who are interested in what I’m interested in. I can’t wait for college.

If it weren’t for the goals I set for myself in the beginning of the year, I wouldn’t be the person I am today which is the importance of setting goals. I didn’t hold myself to a standard in previous years so I didn’t try. I didn’t see a reason to try because I wasn’t even thinking about college, I didn’t care. So now, if I can give advice to any freshman coming into high school I would tell them that it ends quickly, and before you know it you need over $100 for college applications. I have switched my major over 3 times over the past year because I’m trying to figure out who I want to be in the future. I will do the same thing I did this year when I’m in college; I will set goals for myself and meet them all by the time I graduate.

P3 - Television

Getting the third question out of the way, I have 3 televisions in my home but only one of them is in use. I have one in my room, but I am rarely watching it due to the busy state of my life right now and lack of DVR. My mother also has one in her room that she never uses. The TV that is used the most is in the living room. Now, we use that TV almost every night, depending on the night.

On Mondays we watch Smash in the spring and The Sing-Off in the winter. Right now, we aren’t really using the TV on Monday nights, we watch Smash when we have free time on another week night.

Tuesdays are big…GLEE. It’s Glee night on Tuesday. We generally turn on the TV around 9 o’clock after dinner, dessert, and a little discussion. We DVR all of our shows so that we can fast forward through the commercials. After Glee New Girl is on so we watch that to end the night.

Wednesday nights are my personal favorite. American Idol night, I love everything about American Idol, even though America just voted off my favorite (Colton Dixon), we still have Asian Persuasion (Jessica Sanchez), Ham Hocks (Skylar Lane), and Mantasia (Joshua Ladet). We nickname the contestants because a family friend that watches it with us is bad with names so he just nicknames them and they stick.

Thursdays and Fridays aren’t really all that eventful anymore because I watch the IDOL results show on the weekends or I look it up on Twitter. We catch up on any extra shows we watch on these nights.

The TV is in use a lot at my house because we watch a lot of program. Here and there we will watch Modern Family, 30 Rock, House, Touch, and Bones. However, our favorites are So You Think You Can Dance, Glee, American Idol, The Sing-Off, America’s Best Dance Crew, New Girl, and Smash. I think that our TV time promotes discussion and gives us family time because we all love the shows for specific reasons. The negatives may be that some nights we are up until 12 at night catching up on shows we missed. I don’t think the amount of television we watch is a problem, I think it’s the time of day, the shows, and the emphasis we put on it. We watch it at night before bed so we can relax after work and school. I don’t think that watching TV is a bad thing unless it’s ALL you do. IDK…it’s my life, you can’t have it.

P2 - Choice #1

Choice blogs are my favorite kind of blogs because I can go on about whatever I feel like writing about. I am going to suggest some movies this week. I watch a lot of movies, some better than others. I, personally, am attracted to Dramas because I like the cinematic suspense that comes with each story. I don’t think I will do all drama this week though; I’m going to select a few one older drama and one comedy/drama I just recently watched. Get ready, they’re good.

Okay so the first movie I’m going to suggest is The Color Purple; Danny Glover, Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey.

Shug: I think it pisses God off when you walk by the color purple in a field and don't notice it.

I’m suggesting The Color Purple because of the story line. It was originally a book (which I’ve never actually read) and I think that this adaption of the film is incredible. This is a really good take on the slavery that went on in the early 1900s. The characters are remember-able and influential to any movie buff like me. Follow Celie, pregnant at 14, by her father, for the next 30 years through a life that no one would even think about living, if they could help it.

Celie: The jail you planned for me is the one you're gonna rot in.

In Bruges; Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson and Elizabeth Berrington

After shooting an innocent child, the hit men Rey and Ken are sent to Bruges, Belgium by their boss Harry Waters. Rey has no interest in staying in Bruges, and all Ken wants to do is sight see. The two wonder the streets of the beautiful town. Rey comes upon the beautiful Chloe when he walks by a film shoot, and he begins to see Bruges a little differently. Chloe’s co-star is an American Dwarf, Jimmy, and Rey tries his best to make friends with the both of them. While it works, things seem to get worse for Rey and Ken when the memory of shooting a child affects all aspects of his life.

 Ken: Coming up?

Ray: What's up there?

Ken: The view.

Ray: The view of what? The view of down here? I can see that down here.

Ken: Ray, you are about the worst tourist in the whole world.

Ray: Ken, I grew up in Dublin. I love Dublin. If I grew up on a farm, and was retarded, Bruges might impress me but I didn't, so it doesn't.

If you are going to watch a movie, these are good ones to watch. The Color Purple is a rainy Friday night movie, and In Bruges is good for a Sunday afternoon.

P1- Teachers!

Reading this was a little scary because I have recently switched my major to Middle Grades Language Arts. I am looking into being an English Teacher for Middle Schools. I don’t want to think that far ahead in the future because I understand that by the time I step foot into my own classroom the rules will be completely different. I can’t ignore it, though, I realize that while I intern and sub for teachers it will be difficult for me to watch other teachers suffer because of the choices each student makes. There will always be one student who thinks that school is a waste of his/her time. The teacher shouldn’t be at risk of losing his/her job because of that one student.

I think that the Obama Administration has a good idea, but I don’t think they are thinking clearly about how many people this is going to effect. If students begin seeing teachers leave because they aren’t getting high enough test scores they may begin to drop out or think that the government has too much regulation. That is a lot of pressure on the students, to get good grades and pass exams (which they should do anyways but the teachers job shouldn’t depend on the scores of each student individually). The teachers that are coming in now may also have the wrong idea of what teaching is. If they get their own classroom and teach it for the exam and not for the students learning, the point isn’t getting across either. School is a lot more than an exam. It’s where kids spend 13+ years of their lives. They learn how to get along with other people, work as a team, play nicely, share, they learn how to think, react, and pay attention. It isn’t all about the exam at the end of the year.

I believe strongly that it doesn’t matter what school a future teacher goes to, or the education a teacher gets, if they are meant to be a teacher they will know exactly how to do it by the time they get out of college. Teaching is a gift. I don’t know what my life will look like in 8 years, but I do know that I will be 26 years old and I’ll have seen a lot more life. I will watch a president go and new one enter office.  I will watch the rules and regulations change.

O3 - Choice (The Reader)

What do you do when you can't allow yourself to open up emotionally, but you have so much to offer another person? Physically, mentally, emotionally. What do you do when a secret or a truth gets in your way of having an honest relationship with each other? You go through a whole summer of lovemaking and reading stories, you fall in love, you lie, then you leave. But the pain you feel inside isn't the extent of it, you've left another person, someone so attached to you, broken. It makes the viewers think, wonder, ponder, on what THEY think love is. What is love? Is it when things get to be too much, you fall too hard, you want to tell them everything, to be a better person for them? Or is it when you know you can't be what they think you are and then you leave because of it?

The Reader, starring Kate Winslet and David Kross. Hanna Schmitz (Winslet) found a young Michael Berg (Kross) in the alley near her apartment, ill. She cleans him up and takes him home. Three months later, after the Scarlet Fever has left, Michael goes to find Hanna and say "thank you" for her kind help. Hanna is twice Michaels age, but soon the two find a common ground. Michael helped Hanna bring in coal for her shower, mean while getting coal dust all over himself. This is the beginning of a relationship so deep and passionate, yet so secretive and impossible that they could only fall in love with each other. Michael brings his books home from school and begins reading to Hanna; she loves it and their physical relationship deepens.

It isn't until Hanna leaves him, suddenly, that he begins to see the truth. 8 years later, as a law student in college, he sees the woman he used to love on trial. The Nazi trials. Enter post-war Germany, where Hanna sits guilty of a crime she didn't fully commit. And Michael knows the reason she isn't to blame. A secret she kept from him, a love they both shared, a moment in time they will never forget. Take a journey to The Reader and see what happens to two people when they, unlikely, come together for a journey that will follow them for over 30 years.

The Reader, for me, was so intense and so riveting that I couldn't help but love it. The acting in this film was BRILLIANT. So spectacular. DO NOT watch this movie with children, however. There is a lot of nudity due to the artistic nature of the movie.


Michael: I'm not frightened. I'm not frightened of anything. The more I suffer, the more I love. Danger will only increase my love. It will sharpen it, forgive its vice. I will be the only angel you need. You will leave life even more beautiful than you entered it. Heaven will take you back and look at you and say: Only one thing can make a soul complete and that thing is love.

O2- My mother...

My Mother…

She is a mother. As a kid, it is common that you look up to your mother as a superhero or mother Theresa. I can’t say that I didn’t, but for me it stopped earlier than most. Teenagers often fight with their parents because they don’t get what they want because the parents are trying to do what they can for their kids. My mother fell down on that part of my life. I can’t say that she is a hero because she never was. A hero saves people, my mom didn’t save any one of her kids, she actually allowed us to stay children because she wanted to be needed and feel like she was relevant. While that doesn’t seem bad, it is when we look in the mirror and see how spoiled we are. Some are better at hiding it than others, but the effects are the same. I have to live my life fixing what my parents did to me. I don’t have the childhood of someone in Africa, that’s for sure, but I do have some trials of my own.

                 I thought my mom was the ISH, and so did a lot of my friends, but when my Dad left we got to see a little more about her. I won’t share all the details with you, but I will tell you that I have to work every day for the rest of my life to be a good person. If I don’t, I will suffer a miserable life.

                I want to be the best mother a child could have, I want to have the right balance of strict and love. I hope to be the opposite of what I saw as a child. I know that it’s possible, but I also know that it will take a while to get there. Have no fear, though, I will get there!

O1 - College

College pays for itself, I think. I have looked into a community college, a local public college, and a college outside of the state. I can’t really get over the fact that if I stay home, I won’t really be experiencing anything new. The only thing I will see is a new building and some new people, but I’d rather start my life. However, I also understand the huge money problem…

Money is a big part of the college experience, I think. Weather I go to TCU or ECC, I’m not positive yet, but I know where I want to go. I want to begin my life; I want to become my own person. Of course, I can do that while I’m here going to ECC, and it’s cheaper. I think the effects will be different, but I do understand that in the end, my life is already planned out. I can’t worry about my future; I can work every day to be the person I was made to be. I know that the money is incredible that comes out for college and that is a lot to think about. TCU will give me the best perspective on what my life will be. 4 years away from my family is like doing high school all over again, the right way. I feel like parents only let their kids go so far because they don’t want to lose them but I want to be able to say to my kids one day that if they work extremely hard for their middle and high school careers, me and my husband will work every day to give them the lives they each deserve.

                I didn’t grow up with a college fund or a trust fund. I have what I make and that isn’t a lot. I am relying on my faith right now because I can’t see what my future will hold. If I do end up staying home for the first year, I know there is a reason for it.