Year in Review

9th grade English Class 

     “Books can only reveal to us ourselves, and as often as they do us this service we lay them aside.” -Henry David Thoreau 

    This whole year has gone by very fast and English class isn’t an exception. At the start of the year we read the Odyssey which took a long time. I can still remember in detail the meetings and discussions we had on it. We focused on the themes and characters of each chapter. We talked about how the characters changed and grew throughout the book. I personally got pretty bored of the book after awhile mostly because I felt like things weren’t moving fast enough and we had a literary reflection and test for almost every chapter despite how short or uneventful it is. It’s important to remember that this story is very old and doesn’t display as good plot and pacing. The book has many dull points and often seems like it’s repeating itself as the main character travels from island to island and fighting foes and meeting unimportant side characters. 

   Later in the year we read Lord of the Flies which was much more interesting and intriguing to me. It seemed that all the characters were thought out and each one had deeper meanings behind them and what they do. The book is full of metaphors and symbolism which I really liked. It makes some of the deeper and darker realities of life much more understandable. It was very fun reading the book and following the characters and their personalities. I read the whole book in just a few days because of how good it was. Despite the book being so short I learned a lot from it. I was really exited from the start and even though it didn’t include as much as I hoped for I still wasn’t disappointed. 

   Soon after we finished Lord of the Flies spring break started. And after that so did distance learning. It was very difficult to get used to. And juggling all the homework and classes was not an easy feat. I started to get very busy and had trouble finishing all of English classes assignments on the sheet in the short amount of time we could do them. English classes homework definitely took the most time for me but wasn’t too annoying because I personally like reading and writing. One assignment we started was an independent reading book and writing daily metacognitions. I think daily metacognitions took away from the reading experience and made enjoying the book a lot harder and made reading more work. Last year when we had an independent reading project we only had to write metacognitions every couple of days or weekly and got to write our analysis’s of the book less often and more towards the end which let us enjoy and get more into the book we were reading. 

   Overall this year in English was very educational and I learned stuff. There were some parts of the year and projects that I found to be very fun and enjoyable especially Lord of the Flies and even some parts of the Odyssey. 

Power of Reflection

Connor Soukup

    Being able to reflect is important because you need to be able to look back to your past experiences to reflect and learn from it. People can’t progress as people in maturity and wisdom if they can’t reflect. Reflection is something almost everyone can do and we do even without intending. 

    Meditation, praying and forced reflection isn’t very important or helpful because your mind does it by itself. Just remember not to fight the urge to reflect and let yourself reflect all day and not setting a specific time for it. Reflecting at one point in the day may negatively effect the rest of the day and how you take in information. Making the only time you can reflect and concentrate your thoughts being at the regular meditation time. So let yourself reflect and don’t worry to much about it. 

    Reflection is important because it allows us to learn from mistakes and past actions and reflect on them and process the outcome. Reflection is a natural human quality and not something you need to force. Reflection is incredibly powerful as it increases your knowledge and familiarity with the world and all your past experiences.