The Power of Preparation 

Studying, “Ed Hiting”, and Commas Rules

“There is no substitute for hard work”

~Thomas Edison

    My English exam experience was interesting compared to my other subjects. The exam preparation started two weeks ago when Fitz assigned a literary reflection for the book Old Man and The Sea by Ernest Hemingway. One of my habits is getting my work done early so I have more time after to make sure the work is good, so because of this habit I got right to work. I randomly had three study halls on the same day so I finished writing my literary analysis on that day. The next day I found out Fitz was making it part of the exam which meant it wasn’t due for another week. Because I had the literary reflection down I started working on my comma rules and literary analysis. I finished the comma rule packet pretty quickly because I could do it by myself; however, it did take a while to write all the example sentences because there were so many of them. All week long Amir and I were hard at work writing our literary analysis and inserting quotes into our writing. We finished the writing process on Tuesday, so we used the rest of class time to edit our analysis and make the formatting as clean as possible. Most of the work was done for our exam and now all we had to do was study. The studying process was very interesting because it was the one class where I didn’t know exactly what to study. I spent most of my time practicing my comma rules by going over Fitz’s book and writing down example sentences with different combinations of the comma rules to improve my writing and so I’d understand using two rules at once even better. The exam itself was pretty easy as more than half of it was just copying and pasting my already revised sentences and essays that I completed during the week; however, even though most of the work was done before the exam, the microworx and “poopweed” exercise were very annoying but straightforward. I think this was one of the hardest exams to prepare for, but one of the easier ones to take.

Simple, but meaningful

"The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn”

~Dr. Seuss 

    Reading a book is easy, comprehending it is hard. The Old Man and the Sea was a short and easy book to read; however, I had to dig deep to find themes and comprehend the true meaning of the story. This book challenged me to be more engaged and made me think deeper about the book and it’s themes.

~Amir, Parker

Old Man and The Sea

Connection

“The most important things in life are the connections you make with others.”
~Tom Ford

    In the book, The Old Man and The Sea by Ernest Hemingway, the main character Santiago goes fishing on a long journey on the water and uses the power of connection to keep him going throughout his adventure. Santiago makes many connections throughout his life and especially while searching for his first big catch in 84 days. He connects not only with his friend Manolin but also with the creatures of the sea.