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December 2018

Paragraph Essay on Christmas

The Spirit of Christmas

Family and the Holidays

ChryslerYou don't choose your family. they are Gods gift to you as you are to them.

Desmond Tutu

Christmas has always been a time for family. In my house, getting together with family has been a long-standing tradition. From aunts and uncles to grandmothers and grandfathers, we always make sure to celebrate the holiday with family in any way we can. In the snowy, winter days before Christmas my family can be found scattered around the house. My grandmother can be found by the fire, knitting and lecturing us about how privileged we are. Me and my dad, outside chopping wood, sometimes accompanied by my twin sister, Julia. My older sister will be inside playing with our dog, Lulu and our mom will be shoveling the walkways and complaining about the snow. The entire family, all doing different things, but still working together. Despite being different in what we do and who we are, we all still come together during Christmas. We celebrate the power of family, because that’s what Christmas should stand for, being able to come together with the ones you love the most and celebrate. Without this family aspect, Christmas is irrelevant. To have no one to share food with, or wrap presents for Christmas loses its true meaning. The spirit of Christmas can take many different forms for different people, but because of this celebration of love and life, for me, family takes the cake.


To Build a Fire Literary Reflection

 

 

The Fire Inside 

Idiot

The danger of arrogance 

That which inspires arrogance is ignorance, caused by the heart's blindness.

Saeed Malik

    Arrogance can be a very dangerous thing. To Build a Fire by Jack London showed me just how dangerous it can be. Although in a very different setting from what I’m used to, To Build a fire taught me how much arrogance can cost someone, however small it might seem in the moment. It also taught me how arrogance can be applied to my life. I started reading To build a Fire expecting a small story about a man who struggles but eventually prevails in building a fire (which was an act of arrogance in itself). What I got was a gripping tale of struggle and danger. As the story went on, and the plot kept getting deeper and deeper, each turn leading in a different direction, I kept having to remind myself of what the book was telling me “don’t believe that you know everything”. Reading this with the class was a blessing disguised as a chore because although it took longer, I felt I could better understand the themes of ignorance and how they could relate to me even in a small way. As the class kept talking arrogantly, we ended up staying longer. It was a simple yet effective way of reminding me not to be the ignorant protagonist in the story, believing his own foolish instincts instead of letting the older, wiser leaders surrounding him tell him what to do. A week ago, I might have told you that ignorance is bliss, and that you’re lucky to have it, but now, after reading To Build a Fire I would definitely tell you otherwise.


The Tell Tale Heart Analysis

Evan Lanzendorf

The Tell-Tale Heart Literary Analysis Essay

Fitz’s 8th grade English

12-7-18  

 

Still Beating

The Heart of Fear

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If you want to conquer fear, don’t sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.

Dale Carnegie

Fear is a driving factor in the success of humanity. In The Tell-Tale Heart by Edger Allan Poe the protagonist is a paranoid madman who spends the story trying to prove his sanity. Reading the piece I could feel the narrators fear as he scrabbles to prove for something that deep down, he might already know is wrong and the fear of the thing that caused him to commit the horrendous crime. The author uses this character’s fight to prove his sanity to represent an irrational yet possible fear. The fear of slipping into a state of uncontrollable madness, not being able to come back.

 

Continue reading "The Tell Tale Heart Analysis" »


Hard Times

   The Power of Hard Times

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Tough times never last, but tough people do.

Robert H. Schuller

    History is shaped by hard times. Without them we wouldn’t learn from our mistakes and strive to become better. I have lived a fortunate life, free from many of the struggles that others around the world have unfortunately, have been burdened with. Unfortunately, around the time that I was about to leave third grade, when I was eight I was diagnosed with diabetes. It was a sudden change for me, I was given new technology which I had to learn quickly to get my diabetes under control. I had to learn to count carbs, and I couldn’t eat whatever I wanted anymore. It was punishing at first. There were many nights after eating too much or even not enough that I would have to wake up to fix my my mistakes. Times where I would go so out of range that it hurt or my hands started shaking. It affected my academic, athletic, and social life in a major way. Eventually I started to developer better habits to help make it easier for myself and my family. I found ways to more accurately predict how many carbs I was going to eat, and how to tell how that would affect my blood sugar. This helped me understand the consequences of my actions. If I didn’t take responsibility for my health, I would feel the effects. It also taught me to restraint, and the ability to think ahead by forcing me to know when and what I was going to eat, and that I wouldn’t eat to much of the wrong things. Although some could look at diabetes as purely a step backwards in my health and an unnecessary time of hardship I like to look at it as a lesson, to take care of myself and look on the bright side of life