FINAL BLOG POST OF THE YEAR

Finally the school year has come to an end (well almost). And time has come that I write my final blog post of the year.

Reading


I wouldn't say that I love reading, but I wouldn't say that I hate it either. If I find a book that's intriguing, then I will read it everyday. Like I did with The Blood Of Olympus by Rick Riordan. But if a book is really slow-paced and has long and tiresome chapters, then I usually put it off and often times finish it in a long time. This picture represents me as a reader because when I get started, I usually zone out and loose track of what's happening around me. My mom thinks its weird. But on the flip side, my biggest obstacle with reading is; I delay a lot on sitting down and simply opening the book.

The last time I got lost in a book was when I read, Wonder by R.L. Palacio. That book was an easy read but thats not why I liked it so much. I loved the book because it had an emotional aspect to it and I could somewhat relate to it because he doesn't fit in what everyone, and neither do it (I still have friends) . But thats okay because "you can't exactly blend in, when you were born to stand out." - Wonder.  Here is a trailer of the book, its only a minute and a half long so I'd recommend watching it because it WILL MOVE YOU.
https://youtu.be/fgB7_KpBDss

BLOGGING

           

This picture is a perfect representation of how I feel about blogging. I always sit down with an idea in my head and I start off strong. But around 3 or 4 sentences into the first paragraph, I open a new tab and start messing around. A couple YouTube videos later I come back to my blog and type some more sentences. Then back to some other website. So it usually takes me 30-40 minutes to type a blog. I know... I have a problem :(

The best part about blogging was being able to share the good books that I've encountered over the past 180 days, and also finding interesting books to read by reading other people's blogs. The worst thing about blogging was definitely just sitting down and beginning to type. It was long and tedious but now looking back in hindsight, at all of the books I read and wrote about, I feel proud of the quality of work I did and it was worth the hassle.

If you want students to accept blogging, then we should go to the lab on some specific day and we should get time to blog. Pretty much like we did for the first two or three weeks when we started blogging. This provides us with time to blog, because at home blogging doesn't sound like a fun thing. Going to the lab would be beneficial because at school we are in school mode and we do some work, but at home we watch TV or Netflix and don't feel like going back to school mode.

Freshman Year of High School!

I think I am speaking for about half of the Freshman at Mason (maybe in the world). The year started off slow but slowly and steadily it got faster and now we're here. Every year I want the school year to be over when school starts but, when its time for summer, I feel a bit nostalgic and think 'it wasn't that bad. Maybe it should have lasted a few more days.' I was in Geometry this year, which is mostly sophomores, so I had to adjust to the two grades and making friends with two different species. Sophomores have completely interests than Freshman. I've grown tremendously over this year, especially in Science, English and Speech and Debate. All three of these classes have helped me the most because they all had material that was new to me.

**Here's a tip. DO NOT TAKE SPEECH AND DEBATE. Taking this class was the worst/best decision I've made this year. Best because it helped me get over my fear of public speaking (somewhat). And worst because the grading system is really strict and you don't learn how to about the speeches too much. You just learn how to set up and format the speech.

For my sophomore year, I hope to go through it with good grades, because I'm doubling up in Science, doing AP History and playing fall+spring sports. So it should be an interesting year.

Well now that I finally typed this speech (over 2 days), I just want to watch Netflix and I dont know how to finish this off so Ill just do it like this...
 

Duces

Dorothy Must DIE by Danielle Paige

Yes you read right, Dorothy Must Die. That's not a typo. A new series of books; written by Danielle Paige, have recently come out and they all revolve around The Wizard of Oz. This particular book revolves around how Dorothy returned to Oz and took over the Emerald Palace. She has turned eevviilll. Everyone and everything has become her slave. She runs the place.

So far I've read 120 pages out of the book, and they've gone by pretty fast. I think part of the reason could have been because the book has short chapters. So when I'm reading, I usually read one or two chapters more than I had originally planned.

The book starts out with Amy Gumm, the main character, describing her mediocre life, her dad who ran away with some girl, and her jobless mother. She describes how her life has been a complete mess. Then a few events later, which I won't reveal, she ends up in Oz. It is completely opposite of what she expected Oz to be and how it's been portrayed in media. As the day goes by, she finds out that Dorothy is responsible for this dichotomy.

She, along with her friends, make it her goal to. "Remove the Tin Woodman's heart. Steal the Scarecrow's brain. Take the Lion's courage. And Dorothy Must Die."

Concluding on all that I have read so far in this book, I would say, you don't have to be a Wizard of Oz fan to understand this book. Having seen the movie once and faintly recalling the events is enough.  The book starts off on a very catchy note and is a journey till the end... or at least till page 120. Let me know on what you think of this book just by reading this little appetizer; in the comments below.