My feelings on our looooonnnnnnngggggg writing procedure!!

So, we have a paper due tomorrow, and it seems as if we had to do 1,000 drafts! (lol) I put a lot of time into my first draft, but I knew it could use a little improvising! Little did I know that it would take A LOT of improvising. After i brought my paper to class, I was expecting for my fellow classmates to pure edit it, and they did. So I took my group's advise and fixed the things that they said I should. I went home and retyped what I thought would be my near perfect FINAL draft. Feeling good about my overall work, I walked to class (in the cold rain) expecting to hand my paper in and receive a good grade. I sat down, took out my paper, and waited for Mrs. Sumner Winter to say okay class bring your papers to me. But, those words never came. She told us to take out the copy that we were supposed to print out in landscape style. We were assigned to devour our own papers line by line. I had a couple problems with this, and I was happy to find out that I wasnt alone. Since so many people had troubles she said okay, I want everybody to give me your first sentence and we're going to break it down phrase by phrase. So the first person called out their first sentence to her. The class started tearing down the sentence word by word! I was thinking OH LAWD I HOPE MY SENTENCE GOES BETTER THAN THAT. I begin to count the people in front of me in my mind. One, Two...then me. We finished up on the first person, and as I reached down in my backpack....... "Mauricus read us your first sentence," came out of her mouth. My heart skipped a beat! I took a deep breath and read my sentence aloud silently trying to convince myself that it was a good one. So the long, dreadful devourING of my sentence begin! Not one time did it cross my mind that I would have to change so much in one sentence! Taking the constructive criticism, I wrote down my new sentence and put my essay away. This little event helped me a lot. Although I was tired of doing new drafts, I knew this would only make me a better writer. So tomorrow we finally turn in our real FINAL COPY! WISH ME LUCK!

My Father Drank

The image that sticks in my mind is the gas station. The gas station represents the transformation from dad to drunk. The children knew why their dad was going inside. They always begged to go in with their dad, but the answer was always NO! He would go in as a normal person, but would always come out as a red-eyed, red-faced beast. I think this also symbolizes his constant struggle with staying sober. He would go a long period of time without drinking, but would always resort back into becoming that beast once again. It also symbolizes the struggle between life and death. The ouside of the gas station was equal to life, but the children always knew was was awaiting on the inside of the dark, cold gas station! DEATH........

The Rake: A Few Scenes from My Childhood

When I first read the title of this story, I was thought "I have to read a story about doing yard work?" As I read the story I did not understand how the title related to the story. By the time I read the part about the incident with the rake, I realized that this title was brilliant! The rake incident pretty much summarized every symbol in this story. This scene was most important to me because I can relate to it.
When I was younger, I had a similar situation to this with my little brother. He kept bothering me by jumping up and down on my bed as well as me. I constantly asked him to stop, but he wouldn't. So i got so upset with him that I power bombed (wrestling move..ha) him on the bed, and I knocked his two front teeth back about an inch. He quickly ran into the kitchen with blood dripping everywhere to my dad who was sitting at the round kitchen table. My dad got very upset and angrily asked what happened. Soon after, he took my brother to the hospital to get the problem solved.
The rake scene in this story symbolizes hurt most of all. The sister was always hurt by her step-father whenever her brother was away. It also symbolizes pain. This is not just physically but mentally as well. The children were abused almost everyday of the their lives while living there. Their mother, who was abused by her father was no help to them at all. This probably hurt them more than the fact that they were abused by their stepfather.

Taylor Bradford

So, since we have to do a blog every week, I thought I would use this one for something more meaningful. As we all know, one of our own, Taylor Bradford was tragically gunned down a little over a week ago. Well I turned on the news today and was happy to see that they have found three of his alleged killers, and they are still looking for the fourth and final suspect. This was a great relief to me! This whole situation has made me think twice about a lot of things. We should never take life for grantage, because we never know when we're going to die. It has also encouraged me to have a closer bond with my loved ones. Even though this was a tragic event, I am glad to say that I pulled some good from it. I think everyone should try to do the same thing. I guess that's all I have to say. Peace Everyone!