Assignment #11 The Concrete Rose

 

Did you hear about the rose that grew from a crack in the concrete?

Proving nature's law is wrong it learned to walk without having feet.

Funny it seems, but by keeping its dreams, it learned to breathe fresh air.

Long live the rose that grew from concrete when no one else ever cared.

-Tupac Shakur



In this poem Tupac is talking about a rose that grew from a crack in the concrete. The meaning of this poem to tell people to follow your dreams. The poem says proving nature's law is wrong it learned to walk without having feet. That line might mean that if someone tells you you can't do something you know you can, prove them wrong by doing it two times better.

This poem is very motivational. It is saying that you can do whateve you put your mind to. Even if no one believes in you keep working towards your dreams and goals. This is true though. If you have goals and dreams for your self, you should never let anyone get in the way of you achieving those goals. Especially people don't truly care about you, because you can do anything you really wish to.

I Never Promised You a Rose Garden



I Never Promised You a Rose Garden by Joanne Greenberg is a book about a girl named Deborah who suffers from schizophrenia. Deborah is a sixteen-year-old girl who "lives" in two different worlds. Her parents admit her to a mental hospital where she will spend the next three years of her life to try and live a normal life. Over the 3 years Deborah spent at the mental hospital she meets new people, one being her counselor. Deborah becomes very close to her counselor and she reveals secrets about her made up world, which no one has ever heard.

This book was very entertaining to me. I think that learning about mental disorders is very interesting. In example schizophrenia is a very different thought to think aboout, someones mind works in a completely different way from yours. When people suffer from schizophrenia it is very difficult for them to tell the difference between real and unreal experiences. They also have a hard time behaving normally when they are engaged in social interactions. People with schizophrenia can also get help though, there is medication they can take. During a scizophrenic episode the person may need to stay in the hspital for basic needs (food, rest, hygiene, etc.).

Assignment #10 Bullying



I watched a documentary about the story of Jamie Nabozny. His problems began in 6th grade and continued to get worse as he went on to high school. Jamie finally had had enough of the bullying and decided to take a stand on it. He took his case to court so that other teens and kids will not have to go through the bullying Jamie went through.

Bullying is not good, but it can very easily turn into a horrible (physical and emotional) situation that no child should have to experience. Watching this documentary showed me how bad bullying can get. It is very sad how far someone will go just to put another person down. If you see someone who is being bullied you should never just "walk by" always try to help them because you never know how bad it can get. Jamie was beaten by the bullies so severely that he had to go to the hospital. That is an extreme case of bullying. Bullies may not mean for it to get so severe that someone would have to go to the hospital or would try to do something harmful to themselves, but this is a very common result of being bullied.

Assignment #9 Alien Contact



I don't remember anything. All I know is that I am no where near Florida! It smells weird like carmel and roses? I don't know what the smell is, I think i hit my head because everyone looks so weird they're colored.. I see purple, blue, green. I wonder how I hit my head? Well I'm going to try to tell you what happened... if i can remember...

So I think I woke up and I was getting ready for somthing, oh I was getting ready for school. On my way to school I saw a really weird plane in the sky. It was shaped like an oval and it had weird lights on the bottom. I told my mom to look at the plane but she couldn't see it, which was weird because w always point out planes to each other. Anyways when I got to school everyone told me we had a substitute, everyone was excited. Whenever our teacher was gone we got the best substitue! When we got to class we didn't have Ms. Hernandez, we had Mr. 9b. He was really weird, who's name is 9b? He even talked weird, he had an accent that i had never heard before! We didn't really mind though we just decided to go with it.

The substitute only talked to us about outer space and Earth. He would ask simple questions, in complcated ways, like "where do you contain your bread?". He even asked if what we do with the crumbs. The whole school day was really weird I got bored so I put my head down and fell asleep. I fell into such a deep sleep that I didn't even hear the bell to go to lunch or to go home, and no one woke me up.

The next thing I know is I am the only one in the class and the teacher is turning blue! I can hear him talking into a red piece of paper. He is talking in some weird language not from earth. Then he woke me up and he put a pencil on my head and started to make weird noises. I started to shrink the teacher picked me up and put me in his pocket. I thought to myself he must do this a lot, because in his pocket he had some tables and chairs and couches to sit on, he even had an ipod. I started listening to the ipod but I fell asleep.

I found myself in a weird room, i couldn't remember anything. This weird room smelt of carmel and flowers maybe roses. All I knew was that I wasn't anywhere near Florida! I was guessing maybe i hit my head. There were some Blue people, Green people, and then there were some people who were little and they were Purple. These people were asking me for bread crumbs. The way they were asking me they made it seem like bread crumbs were VERY important to them. So I gave them some crumbs I found in my pocket. I heard someone calling my name. I looked around but I didn't see anyone I knew. Suddenly I woke up. I was laying in my bed, at home, in Florida. I realized I was dreaming, I mean I had to have been. I looked out my bedroom window to see an oval shaped plane with lights in the bottom. There was a Blue and Green person waving to me from the plane. I rubbed my eyes and looked again but they were still there. Was I dreaming? Aliens aren't real... or are they? (:

Assignment #8 The Necklace

The Necklace is a story about a woman who is poor and does not have any luxaries. All she dreams about and wishes for is to have many luxaries, nice clothes, and many other expensive materialistic items. This story displays many different themes, for example one theme is to tell the truth, another may be be thankful for what you have.

As I said one theme is to tell the truth. In this story Mrs. Loisel borrows some jewlery from her wealthy friend, for a special occasion. As she is enjoying the night living her dream (to be wealthy) she does not realize she has lost the jewlery. By not telling the truth she end up wasting 10 years of her life tryingto pay back her friend. Telling te truth is a very important moral. Tellng the truth is not only good because it's the right thing to do but also it can keep you from getting into sticky situations such as one similar to the one in the story.

Be thankful for what you have. Being thankful for what you have is a very good moral. If you are not happy with what you have, how can every be thankful for anything.If you get everything you want you will never be happy, you will always want something else. If you are happy with what you have you will be a lot happier. Then when you do get more thngs it will make you just that much happier

Assignment #7 Self- Value

Jealousy is simply and clearly the fear that you do not have value. Jealousy scans for evidence to prove the point - that others will be preferred and rewarded more than you. There is only one alternative - self-value. If you cannot love yourself, you will not believe that you are loved. You will always think it's a mistake or luck. Take your eyes off others and turn the scanner within. Find the seeds of your jealousy, clear the old voices and experiences. Put all the energy into building your personal and emotional security. Then you will be the one others envy, and you can remember the pain and reach out to them. (Jennifer James)

This quote is talking about jealousy. Jennifer James is saying that when we are jealous of someone we are just simply scared that we (ourself) don't have value, or we aren't good enough. We think that we have to be a certain way in order to live up to other peoples expectations. People are jealous because they cannot "love" themselves. In other words they are not satisfied with themselves they want so much to be like others that they are making other people not like them. You have to look at your self and find the good on yourself before you envy others. In order to be confident in yourself you have to find the good in yourself not others. If you keep looking at other people thinking that they are better than you, you are never going to be happy with your true self. When you are jealous of someone else you just have to clear your mind and think that you arejust as good as they are. Then you can turn into the person that others will envy. When you see people who envy you help them don't discourage them. When other people envy you it's probably because they like the person that you are. For example little kids always say that they want to be like their sister or one of their family members. You would want to be a good example for your younger siblings.