The Last Essay – English
There has been much personal growth for me during this semester of English in my freshmen year. How I can prove this is I’ve come to realize that I need to do my work in order to succeed. Usually im a slacker, someone who puts schoolwork second on there things to do list. This
thinking felt right to me and I was pretty careless. Well as a result of that I wasn’t performing to my potential academically. I would say im a pretty average student and maybe even a little more than average but I want more than that. I’ve been trying to set my goals higher than originally. My social life now comes second and doing my work is now one of my top priorities most of the time. My mother has always told me “friends wont be on your college application”, and well whatever that means but its true my so called “friends” aren’t going to help me succeed in life. Its me who needs to make that decision how I am going to make it in this world. Succeeding in high school is just one of many major keys that I need to perfect in order to be successful in the future.
My reading skills are the same but im starting to realize the real meaning of reading a book. Past years reading for me was scanning my eyes through a hundred pages and not getting the concept of the book and I relied on my peers who did read to fill me in on what each chapter was about. The odyssey was a very wonderful introduction for me into the world of reading books. I actually enjoyed reading the hardship of what Odysseus went through and what he did to survive just to get back to his home Ithaca. I hate reading long novels, its just something I don’t like doing one bit but I had to read this book in order to anser the millions of question Mrs. Philips would assign. So I sat and sat and sat and read till my head was to tired to think and I would say it was worth it because it helped my grade and reading books isn’t something that I don’t hate entirely anymore.
Grammar EEK! what a horrible subject. I personally don’t like doing grammar. My attitude towards grammar is I can wright the English language and I can talk it so in that case I’ve pretty much mastered it. “Renea seriously you’re an idiot” I finally had to say to myself as I discovered that there was so much more than that I had to accomplish before I could actually think that I had mastered a language. When I walked into the classroom and got tied up with tons and tons of grammar worksheets I was shocked. What is the point of doing all this work? why why why? I would ask myself but I took a look at them once and a while and realized that when I write I don’t evan think about adverbs or clauses or even all those parts of speech. I still don’t understand some of it but I’ve learned many new things just by practicing with all those good old work sheets. At first I thought Mrs. Philips would just assign them to us to torture our adolescent brainless minds but now I realize that she did it for our own good I suppose.
A weekly vocabulary list helped me understand many words in our dictionary that I wouldn’t of known if I hadn’t taken this class. Weekly spelling lists also benefitted me because I am truly a horrible speller. My ability to do research has grown immensely. The Alexander the Great project that I chose to do for our “Almost” term paper helped me learn how to do citations, parenthetical citations, and research my topic from using big giant boring books instead if copying and pasting from internet sites on the web. I am the same person as I was when I first walked into this class I’ve just learned to ditch the social scene once and a while and hit the books for once and I give all thanks to Mrs. Philips for that because the work and her teaching abilities have forced me to do so.
The style of the tests and quizzes were interesting. Some would be hard and some would be easy. Some made me study the night before and others were just a price of cake and I could do it from memory. I think Mrs. Philips gave us all some slack many of times. I probably took a little advantage of her teaching styles evan though I didn’t realize it. I could be a careless student or an organized student. I turned a lot of things in late because I knew that she wouldn’t give me zeros but I never failed to not do my assignments. Mrs. Philips is a great teacher. She told our class that in order to be a good teacher you have to repeat yourself a lot to give the kids an understanding. This is true and many of the times she did. I get unfocused and there’s Mrs. Philips snapping her fingers at me telling me to focus. I love it when teachers are like that because it actually shows me that they want you to succeed and want u to get the information into the students head. She was a funny teacher she made me laugh and I haven’t had many teachers like that. She got the point across to me and evan used enthusiasm as a strategy to get it across to her students. She would make fun of me sometimes but I never ever took it personally because maybe she wasn’t kidding but she would only speak the truth. I am honored to have the Great Goddess Griggs ( G.G.G. an acronym which she taught me) as my 9th grade teacher she’s a wonderful teacher! a spectacular teacher and I hope that I have her again in the future.
What shall I do with the four million dollars and the old broken-down mansion my long lost relative has left me?
Well I will give 1,000,000.00 dollars away to a charity. The charity that will receive this hunk of money will be none other than The Make a Wish Foundation. This foundation is for kids who are going to die and before they do they are told to make a wish and whatever they wish for will happen but these things can only happen if the foundation is supported. So I have made a decision to help out those helpless boys and girls and make them smile once more by donating this money. My next mission with this money is to renovate this mansion. Its in a rather horrid state but I find it rather enchanting. I have estimated a total of one million dollars will be spent in the process of making this estate a beautiful mansion which it longs to be. My next decision on what to do with the money is to go on a vacation!. Tour the world is what I long to do. I will bring my husband and our two kids on a year trip to enjoy the wonders of the world. From Paris to China and all the way to Peru is where you will find us and this vacation will approximately cost 250,000 dollars. The rest of the money will be put in banks and gain interest through the years and my family and I will live on the money and never have to work again. What a wonderful life this would be if only it were real….