I Now See the Fog

Many people look forward to winter break because it is a time for relaxation and a time to spend with the ones you care for the most. However, this morning, the reality of my winter break splashed me in the face with freezing cold chlorine water at 7:30 am. My inner self was begging for this to be a dream, but the barking of my coach of something along the lines of,"NO BREATHING OUT OF YOUR TURNS", or, my personal favorite, "JUST BECAUSE YOU'RE TIRED DOESN'T MEAN YOU CAN STOP SWIMMING", rudely awakened me and snapped me back into reality. The longer I swim, I seem to swim further and further into my personal fog. I think of nothing besides how much my body is hurting at the present moment. In fact, as we began our kicking set, a cloud of fog actually formed above the pool because the air was so cold. It then dawned on me. I had forgotten to post my blog by midnight the previous night. This made my body ache even more. I began stressing about how many points I will lose, and what this would mean for my mid-term exam grade. My legs then began to throb even more. I could feel my heart pounding out of my chest and I soon choked on some water. HOW COULD I SWIM AT A TIME LIKE THIS? The fog above the pool then suddenly began to fade away because the heater started working. As soon as it disappeared, I took a few deep breaths and was finally able to bring myself back to sanity again because I realized that I could blog about my sighting of the fog.

Today I Almost Killed Myself... But Nobody Seemed to Care

Today, as I walked into class a little late, I slipped on the floor and lost my balance for a few seconds. The immediate reaction everybody had was to laugh. When Ms. Serensky commented something along the lines of, "of course nobody acts concerned because you are all too ruthless and selfish to even pretend like you care". I was also laughing at myself, (of course), but realized how my fellow student's lack of sympathy really is not entirely their fault. In psychology class, we are learning about the development of the frontal lobes in adolescent's brains. In fact, our frontal lobes are not quite fully developed yet. Insight is what gives us sympathy and compassion for others. Since our lobes are not fully connected, ,(and won't be until we reach about age 25) we often act self-centered and more careless about the well-being of others as compared to our parents, who have fully developed frontal lobes. The nerve cells that connect teenagers' frontal lobes with the rest of their brains are sluggish. Teenagers don't have as much of the fatty coating called myelin, or "white matter," that adults have in this area. Think of it as insulation on an electrical wire. Nerves need myelin for nerve signals to flow freely. Spotty or thin myelin leads to inefficient communication between one part of the brain and another. Therefore, I forgive all of my ruthless classmates for laughing at me today, because really, they are all too immature to act any less-selfish.

Substitute Teachers Help Us Reassure Our Intelligence

On friday, Ms. Serensky's absence caused a guessing game of what would happen in class with the substitute. In 4th period commons, everybody unanimously agreed that it would be a practice essay or a journal writing. Most of us rolled our eyes and groaned, because by friday afternoon, the last thing most want to do in class is to write until our hand cramps. However, we were pleasantly surprised to be greeted by a friendly-looking young man who said that we will have a class discussion, despite Ms.Serensky's absence. As our discussion began, we shocked this man. He could not believe how in-depth and detail-driven our conversation had become. After mentioning many instances of situational irony in the novel, he finally confessed that he did not know the meaning of the term. The class all looked at each other in disbelief with raised eyebrows of confusion. We wondered, "how can this college-educated man not know that situational irony means? When we finally explained it to him, he understood perfectly and tested himself by asking us if certain scenarios of movies and other books represented situational irony. What I believe to be situational irony is the fact that the students had to teach the teacher a common literary term. It seems like ever since we began blogging, I find a literary term out there for almost every social situation. Could I possibly be turning insane?

Role Reversal In the "Cuckoo" book

Despite my strong dislike of the novel thus far, I have actually found a positive aspect of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" that I find very amusing. That is, that a woman, Nurse Ratched is in charge of a male mental hospital. Whether a coincidence of not, I found that one year following the 1962 publication date, Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique became a legendary non-fiction novel which inspired women to strive for more equality in American society. Her inspiration for this novel came from a 1942 class reunion of her college, after she followed up with a questionnaire for her fellow woman classmates. In interpreting the findings, Friedan hypothesized that women are victims of a false belief system that requires them to find identity and meaning in their lives through their husbands and children. She believed this causes women to completely lose their identity within their family. Friedan specifically locates this system among post-World War II white middle-class suburban communities. She suggests that men returning from war turned to their wives for mothering. At the same time, America's post-war economic boom had led to the development of new technologies that were supposed to make household work less difficult, but that often had the result of making women's work less meaningful and valuable.

I am proud to learn about this uprising of women questioning the status-quo in America in the early 1960's. I and often cheer to myself while reading, as I come across evidence of how much Nurse Ratched intimidates the male patients.

Why Are Most Successful Writers on Drugs?

As we discussed Ken Kesney the author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's nest, I was not very surprised to learn about his "Acid Test" parties, which had black lights, LSD, cocaine, and the other hallucinogenic drugs for his guests to enjoy. This is because, after doing a little big of research on the topic of famous authors who abuse drugs, I came across this Top-10 list:

http://www.alternativereel.com/includes/top-ten/display_review.php?id=00075

These writers have produced some of the greatest works of literature, and it definitely upsets me to know that almost none of their books were written in a sober state of mind. It also slightly discourages me, because it makes me wonder. Does this mean that in order to take my writing to the next level, I have to pour myself a large glass of vodka or even take acid?

What I Think About While Swimming

Swimming, a sport which involves staring at the same black line at the bottom of the pool for two hours with a limited oxygen supply and the bitter taste of chlorine lingering in one's mouth, has remarkably gotten more exciting since the beginning of AP English. I now analyze much of what I see or how I am feeling at the moment based on which set Coach Beth makes us swim. Some examples include:

1). Jackie is touching my feet, which indirectly characterizes her as impatient and unwilling to swim in front of me, eliciting pathos of frustration in me because I would rather not have somebody lingering this close to me.

2). When Beth says, "Now you guys have to swim 8 400's, and negative-split them", my tone toward her abruptly changes from admired, derived from the positive diction of "awesome" in saying, "Our Beth is an awesome Beth" to an extremely annoyed tone in about less than a second. This marks the time where I can only groan and utter the word, "SERIOUSLY?" Undoubtedly, my short syntax in my expression also reveals my deep frustration.

3). Lastly, as Davis says, "Gosh, Meghan, why is the suit you're wearing so ugly?", I indirectly characterize him as extremely rude. Here, he represents a synecdoche for male swimmers, stereotyping them as ignorant because they really have no sense of style nor color coordination. His inclusion of "gosh" demonstrates his utter shock in my attire and elicits pathos of anger in me because of his lack of respect for my bathing suit.

The commentaries do not stop here. Each day, I craft a sentence of analysis during practice, depending on my mood. I actually come to appreciate our grueling activities in English because it provides for me a source of enjoyment, as a way to pass the time in the pool.