Your mind is like a parachute, It doesn't work if it's not open.

We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorns have roses. You decide.

The worst battles we have to fight are between what we know and what we feel.

Sometimes the most important lessons, are the ones we end up learning the hard way.


Wednesday, February 29, 2012

CONNECTIONS

Author's Note: In this essay I tried to explain why the people you think can help you sometimes always can't. Also I was trying to work on my goals of transitioning between paragraphs and developing different sentence begins.   

“I know all those astronomers I’d watched an hour earlier on CNN can explain just what happened and how and why and they’ll be explaining on CNN tonight and tomorrow and I guess until the next big story happens. I know I can’t explain, because I don’t really know why.”[…] “But the moon wasn’t a half moon anymore. It was tilted and wrong and a three-quarter moon and it got larger, way larger, large like a moon rising on the horizon, only it wasn’t rising. It was smack in the middle of the sky, way too big, way to visible. You could see details on the craters without the binoculars that before I’d only seen with Matt’s telescope.(19)  Some people think they know everything, whereas there are people that know they can’t help you but try anyway. It always seems to turn itself around on you, and the people you relied on the most are useless and the unhelpful people turn out to be the ones that take charge. Sometimes the “helpful” people in the world, like in this case, the astronomers, could not help anything, and the citizens had to live with the moon and try and just figure out what’s going on. Life as we knew it by Susan Beth Pfeffer. To the readers always try to succeed in the things that you do and try to be successful but even though you do have a big scientific job where you think you can help you will never be perfect at it. 

In this book Miranda and her brother live in northern Pennsylvania with their mom and an asteroid hits the moon and brings it a lot closer to Earth. In their little town this was really cool and everyone on their street was out to watch it. When the asteroid hit there were some cheers and then as the moon started approaching earth there were screams and people were running all over the place like chickens with their heads cut off. No one knew what was going on. I feel this way sometimes when I’m given directions and don’t know what I’m doing. When I have to run a machine that could kill someone while were splitting wood I feel a little uneasy. These people were unsure of the unknown and were scared. 

Even though being scared was a big part of this book second guessing yourself was another. Their where people second guessing God because of what was going on, and their own choices because they didn’t know what to do. But the biggest thing was when people in the town started arguing with each other and eventually everyone was second guessing their actions. I have second guessed myself every since I was really little. But what seems to be the biggest thing I’m doing know is second guessing whether my bowling ball will curve or not on the ally. So I swing my arm across my body but the people of this little town had bigger things to worry about.

This was a book that I really had a chance to connect with it was hard at first but as I read deeper into the story I could really understand what was going on. I never could understand why I second guess myself or feel scared when I know I’m doing something right. But in this book it really helped me to understand those things, and it’s all because I want to make sure everything comes out perfect in the end which is never true because nothing and nobody is perfect. Everyone is like that, not only me it is hard to just understand why. But now I know so don’t ever try and make anything perfect because it will never be but you can always try your hardest to succeed the best that you can.

Friday, February 3, 2012

CHANGE

Author's Note: In this essay I tried to work on how change not only affects you but everyone around you. Also I tried to work on my transitions between paragraphs to give it a better flow to the paper.


Your left all alone in a city where everyone is turning mad and you have to fend for yourself and your two younger sisters, you would be scared. Which is what happened to Alex in Susan Beth Pfeffer’s book The Dead and the Gone. Now and then life throws you curve balls and you have to catch them and run with all you’ve got and on the way you may change.

 Change is a big thing that different people experience in different ways. Slow change is easier to adapt to than fast change. Leisurely change consists of something along the lines of you take something and slowly change it to something you like. In this book slow change happened not as present as fast change but it was still there. The main characters realized that their parents were never coming back. That was hard to adjust to at first and then the realized that they had to live with it and move on. Occasionally things like this may happen and you have to move on and deal with the consequences.

Even though slow change is hard to deal with fast change sometimes hits really hard and you almost don’t know what to do. Alex, the main character, was hit hard like this when he realized that he had to keep himself alive and his two younger sisters. Even imaging this would be hard, on how this could even happen. Often in the way; that you have to roll with the punches and not let anyone or anything get in your way.

Even though slow and sudden change is hard to deal with personal change hits home in this book. This is because the main character Alex changed so much from the beginning of the book. Even though in the beginning he was just a normal 17 year old with a job and a family. But then when his parents disappeared he kind of took on the parent role of his two sisters. It was really hard to connect with this book though because I have never been put in a situation like that. I’m the youngest in my family and have no siblings.

This book showed me how change affects the lives of not just you but everyone around you. You can just be stubborn, and want everything but you have to give a little to get. That is a hard lesson to learn because when you want something you want it and then when you can’t have it you don’t want anyone to say or do anything to you. So sometimes when you catch that ball and run with it you still have to remember the curve ball was thrown at you first before you got to where you are now.