Dating Game

Welcome! You're on the Dating game show and you have the choice between three beautiful ladies here's a little about each of them and then you'll have to decide which girl is for you!

Freshman year- Hope Failana, and successly all have the same classes, they are good friends from middle school, and all want to have a great high school experience. Failana is very outgoing and wants to fit in so badly she really wants the upperclassman to like her, so she joins volleyball in hope of being accepted. Hope is is a soft spoken girl but once you get to know her she is very outgoing and nice. She's nervous because she wants people to like her, but also wants to do well in school. She joins the drama club in hope she can juggle both. Successly is very shy and soft spoken. She just really wants to get good grades on focus on where she is going to college and her career.

Sophmore year- The volleyball team goes out to celebrate a big win and Failana falls into peer pressure and tries smoking, but just this once with her team! She also finds out that she has to sit on the bench for the next game because she is failing biology. Hope is way involved in drama but wants to play a sport too. She figures that she is doing a good job maintaining her grades and doing well in drama so she goes to basketball try-outs. She even made Varsity as a sophomore! Successly doesn't like failana anymore and hope is really involved with her club and team so she joins band and looks for some new friends there.

Junior year- Failana LOVES to party. Getting buck wild is her thing. She has tons of Friends and quits volleyball. She's the upperclassman now she thinks those stupid underclassman should look up to her and want to be her like she did. Hope has a way tight group of best friends. All 5 of them hang out a ton and have some really fun times. She's still playing basketball and doing drama her grades slip a little but a 3.3 isn't bad at all! Successly has a very close best friend and they do everything together. They love to read and just hangout at home. She is also way involved in the band and has excellent grades.

Now which one of these lovely ladies would you like to date!?!?

If you picked:

Failana: In her senior year, Failana gets a 1.9 GPA but she has tons of cool friends and has to perfect social life...or so she thinks. Halfway through her senior year she gets pregnant and wants to keep it, so she has to drop out of school. Thankfully she goes back in 9 months to get her G.E.D and goes to a junior college with baby Johnny in her arms.

Hope: In her senior year hope decides she wants to play basketball in college she loves it and it's her life. But then UNC offers her a scholarship to be in their drama program and it's a full ride. There are a bunch of small colleges offering her to play ball though. She doesn't know what to do. But her friends ease her mind and take her out on the town to do their thing. Her head may have hurt in the morning but her mind was clearer and more open to listening to all her options.

Successly: She has made her decision in life and is going to Harvard Law, but she looks back on her high school years and regrets many things. She didn't have a lot of friends, she hadn't met many of the people in her class, she didn't go to the football games, and she never did anything unsafe. But she has a 4.2 and is ready for the rest of her life maybe she'll learn to live it a little more.

Poem

The poem I'm doing this week is "Still Memory." The whole poem starts out asa "dream." But like we talked about in class I believe it's really a memory. But in class we talked about how this was a happy memeory of her childhood, and to be honest it's not like an evil memory that haunts her, but from her vocabulary and the way she says certain things makes me think it's a little less happy more gloomy. "My father in thwe doorway, not dead, just home from the graveyard shift..." That isn't a happy way to describe your father coming home. "Not dead" is no way to happily describe when your father comes home. Then later in the poem, she uses the adverb "throbs", and when I think of throbbing I think of a throbbing head ache or pain. "my house starts to throb in it's old socket." Like an old pain she had that's starting to throb again. Then she talks about heat in their house, "becasue the tiles are cold and we have no heat other than what our bodies can carry." It's a cold house, it throbs, and her dad is back from the graveyard shift, that to me doesn't sound like a happy memory. It sounds like the only good thing was her mom in the kitchen and the flowers opening up. Maybe those were some of the better aspects of her childhood, but I'm not sure. Mary Karr is a professor at Syracuse University she has multiple books and is a well known author.

Poem

The poem i did this week was "For A Duro." After reading the poem I infered that a Duro was a type of money, and it's a peso from spain. "Franco", who's face was on the coin, was a leader of the Nationalist group and lead the Civil War in Spain. He said he was put there "by the grace of God." So then throughout the whole poem the author is talking about all the things you could get with a "duro." I did some research on the leader guy but I can't tell if the author likes him or not. The first time I read it I thought he was bing sarcastic with "the hooked nose tipped upward as though he alone recieved the breath of God." It sounds like the leader thinks he is the only one that God blesses, so I thought that the author didn't like him very much. Then I read this article about how the Spanish nation didn't know what to do when he died so I was confused. Then when he is saying all te thing's you can have for a duro it seems like he is switching back and forth between what HE had for a Duro and what Franco had maybe? Like the author could have coffee and a bad roll while the other guy had everything like cars and women. I didn't understand the milky nape part really why is he still waiting? Like he was in the military then came home and didn't have money or anything so he is homeless and waiting for a duro? Then I know in the end he is talking about an animal hospital with all these animals but I'm not exactly sure why. I believe it's because the Hotel he talks about earlier isn't there anymore and now it's the hospital. The "Riotous colors" was the other section that made me feel like it was sarcastic.

Poem

The poem I'm doing this week is "in Blackwater Woods." when I first start reading it I get this scene of like the white massive pillars of Heaven's gates. "turning their own bodies into pillars of light, are giving off the rich fragrance of cinnamon and fulfillment." It reminds me of a sweet smelling safe place with these big grand white pillars I.E. Heaven. Then it kind of turns the slightest bit just a tad dark "every pond no matter what its name is, is nameless now." This darkens the mood a little but still kind of gives that feel of Heaven because once your soul goes to Heaven it really doesn't have a face or a name any more. "the fires and the black river of loss whose other side is salvation..." This to me is the climax. It's building like this black river is dark and mean and cold but on the other side is salvation where you can live eternally. So it's dark and sad for us who are still on this side of the river but for the one you lost it's their salvation. This is my favorite part of the poem, "to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, let it go." Love someone with everything you have but be able to let them go when the time comes because they are on the other side of the river. They're on the salvation side. :-) The author breaks the poem up into 9 4 line stanzas but breaks the sentences up so the last thought ends on the first line of the stanza after it. i believe he does this is to keep the poem flowing through all the stanzas and to build upon these ideas he is building. Like he breaks the idea of whats on the two sides of the rivers. He wants you to antcipate what's coming. He wants you to be eager to read the next stanza.

Poem

The poem that I picked this week is the poem I taught, "Wallflowers." I really liked this poem. The first thing that stuck out to me was the weird words at the bottom of the poem. When someone has a disease that makes them think they are an animal which totally didn't fit the poem at all. Then after I read it another time I realized that the words at the bottom were the examples of words the whole poem was about. They were these wallflower words that no one uses. And the author really personifies these words as people. She gives them these human characteristics. When I thought of wallflowers it was those middle school kids at the dance just waiting for someone to pick them to dance with. That's exactly what the author wanted to have the reader perceive for these words. They aren't used very much and are waiting on the side for someone to use them more. This poem was really that straight forward. I'm sorry it was on Monday but i was visiting colleges this weekend and didn't have access to a computer till I got home!