Christmas Break So Far

After I went through the stressful week of exams I decided I needed to stay in Tuscaloosa during the week before Christmas to work. I was so proud of myself because I went on Monday and worked for a while. Tuesday came and I never made it into work. Wednesday came and I went over to my brother's house that lives in Tuscaloosa to babysit his two little boys while my sister-in-law went to help with his two older girls Christmas parties at school. I could have went to work afterward but I didn't make it. During that time I didn't make it I was cleaning my house seeing how some of the cleaning gets neglected during the semester, so I actually did accomplish something. On Thursday I went Christmas shopping for my mom, dad, and my brother from Atlanta. I got Mom and Dad a dry erase board with dry erase markers, an eraser, and board cleaner, there will be an explanation later. I got my brother a two month subscription to Netflix. He really likes Netflix so I got it for him thinking maybe that will be enough time for him to have it while saving up so he can get it for himself. I hope it works. Anyway I did that and came home and packed up the car. Then Buddy and I loaded up and traveled to Magnolia. On Friday my Dad had his last day of work and only worked half a day and came home to a house full of his children and grandchildren. We had a get together for him to let him know that we appreciated him working so long in order to support us, as for me he is still supporting me but hopefully not for to long. On Sunday my Dad, brother, and I went to church, which was good, and came home. Mom had a virus but she feels better now. Then we went over to my aunt's house to have a late lunch. She had all of her family there except her daughter from Utah and her mother, which my family calls Grandma Harrison even though she isn't our grandmother, so it was good to see them. On Christmas I got up around 7 or 7:30 and mom and I waited for Dad to go feed his goats and for my brother to wake up. around 8 we started opening gifts. I got a digital camera, the book Le Morte Darthur by Sir Thomas Malory, some tools, a book of all of the publishers in the U.S called Writer's Market, and a book with all the works by Truman Capote. I am excited about all of them. After gifts Dad, Mom, my bother, and I went to my other aunt's house to have our traditional Christmas breakfast. My aunt thinks we have been doing it for 50 years. It is a tradition I enjoy alot. I get to see my cousins and eat eggs, bacon, sausage, grits, and biscuits with hot chocolate. Very good!!!! I hope everyone had an excellent Christmas and have a Happy New Year.

Journal of Hope Townsend: A Story of Friendship

The week of exams I finally finished my creative project, the one about Selma and the Selma-to-Montgomery march in 1965. Here is an excerpt. There is a possibility of typos and errors.

Sunday January 3, 1965

Dear Journal,
I want to tell you about my best friend Latosha. I love her so much. She is my bestest bestest friend in the whole word. That is a lot of lovin’. We play together everyday. Her mother works for us and Latosha comes with her. Latosha likes purple just like me. Whenever we play I Spy she always picks something purple and I always guess right. She has black hair and brown eyes. She is really pretty. She doesn’t have the same color skin that I have, but that doesn’t change how I feel about her. Some people yell at her and call her names. That is very mean. They also yell at her family and call them names. Someone called her dad a “coon” the other day. I thought a “coon” was something that daddy calls raccoons sometimes. It makes me very upset when people are mean to her and her family. It makes her upset too. Everytime something happens she cries and I feel so bad for her. Why do people do that? Her and her family are the same kind of people everyone else is but just a different color skin. Latosha and her mom came over today even though they don't come on Sundays because they go to church just like us. She brought me a birthday present. She wrote a letter to me telling me how much she is glad I am her friend and that we are BFF-Best Friends Forever. She told me that a man came to Selma today, I think he is a doctor, she said his name is Dr. King. I wonder if one of his grandfathers was a king. She said that he is going to help people get the right to vote. I don’t see why people need help because Daddy and Momma went to the courthouse and filled out thing saying they could vote. She said she went to watch him talk to a bunch of people about having the right to vote. Well I’m getting kind of tired. TTFN-Ta Ta For Now. Hope

The final draft is a little over 20 pages. If you want to know more maybe one day I can get it published. I plan to polish is up and enter it into a contest at the university before April.

A hard lesson to learn

Here I am a senior in college and have never run into what happened to me last night and this morning. I am an admitted avid procrastinator. To make a long story short and stay away from venting about one of my professors I had two papers due today, which if I remember correctly luckily has never happened in my years of college. One was a group research paper, which is the stupidest thing I have very heard of, seeing as I hate group work and I suck at writing papers since I procrastinate. Needless to say I waited until yesterday and last night to work on them both. I only had to write a minimum of 4 pages on each paper, which you would think would be easy but there was, for lack of a better word, a lot of BSing in the group paper. The other paper was a regular interpretation of a work, which can be hard depending on the work. I finished the interpretation paper last night around 8 and started on the other one. I got two pages on that one and then quit around 10:30 and went to bed. I slept until I got up at six beside the two time I woke up but I don't think I got to much sleep last night because I was stressing. I can overstress about things and that is what happened today. I got up finished my part on the group paper and went to the school computer lab to print my interpretation paper. Lesson learned - as I told mom I only have one more year left.

A humbling experience

The main reason I started a blog was to put my work out there, since I will be a writer, for people to see. Some of the work I create during my college career will only be put on my blog for free but afterward money will have to be paid for my work
In my Creative Writing class, we are having to write about an historical event for our final project. In my thinking of an historical event I am thinking of something huge like 9/11 or the wars we America has been involved in, something huge. Well, come to find out it really doesn't have to be huge but something that happened in the past, such as something family related or something little in the news. Also I found out something huge was still okay. So anyway, my mother brought up a good point and makes since is to write about what you know. Since Magnolia, Alabama is about an hour southwest of Selma, Alabama and I know Selma I chose to write a piece on the Civil Rights Movement is Selma. What I am doing is writing a fictional account of the events surrounding the the Selma to Montgomery march such as the killing of Jimmie Lee Jackson in Marion and "Bloody Sunday" My main characters are an 8 year old white girl that has a black friend. It is in the form of a journal kind of like Ann Frank with the Holocaust. Yes the whole friend thing sound like "Selma Lord Selma" but my story is going to take more twists and turns than "Selma Lord Selma", so I'm not completely plagiarising. Growing up I always thought the Selma to Montgomery march was something that happened in Selma and didn't affect me in any way so I didn't think that much about it besides what I had heard from my peers, family members, and history books. Well yesterday I found differently.
I convinced my mother that she needed to go with me and help research so yesterday I drove down after classes and met mom at the Selma co-op and off we went. At first I thought we could go to the chamber of commerce and find some info and then go to the Civil Rights Museum. Well, we went to the Civil Rights Museum first and found more info than I thought we would. I was very excited. When I first started writing this piece I ran into the problem of not knowing what an 8 year old would understand. In fact, I came out that my character understood more than what she should. Well, that problem what solved yesterday. At the museum mom and I started talking to the director and come to find out she was 11 years old when all of it happened. I'm thinking great. She had the most humbling story I have ever heard. To respect her and to get you to go to the Voting Rights Museum I'm not going to tell it on my blog but ask me in person and I will tell ya. While she was telling it I felt the spirit of what happened, she conveyed her feelings very strongly. She wasn't all yelling and shouting, but she was calm and I could feel what happened to her through her words. The whole time she was telling the story she looked out of the window and didn't even pop a smile when she told something on a liter note. Every once in a while she would look up at us, but mostly she looked out the window.
If you haven't been to Selma I highly recommend it. There is soooooo much history, not just Civil Rights. Driving through Selma you can look at the buildings and know that what they witnessed. On Dallas Avenue there is a block of churches that definitely weren't built in the 20th or 21rst century. They are so so so beautiful. Definitely recommend the Civil Rights Museum if you are interested. There are so many antebellum houses and old old beautiful houses. You can tell they weren't just thrown up in a couple of months like houses nowadays. Also, if you like cemeteries (maybe weird but I like them) the Live Oak Cemetery is awesome. It has old Spanish moss hanging from huge oak trees. There is other things I haven't mentioned. Anyway you just have to go. Hope this didn't sound like a tourism brochure.

Classes and so on

Wow, it has been over a month since I have blogged. I thought it was only a couple of weeks. Since I haven't blogged in over a month and I am procrastinating my homework I feel inspired to do so. Classes are going ok. I have gone through the stressful and crazy time of midterms and paper number ones for my 4 English classes, which weren't to bad for me(knock on wood). As far as I know i did better than expected on my Am Lit midterm, less than expected on my Brit Lit test number 2 (material was really interesting but his tests suck in a disguised sort of way), don't know about my Linguistics class, and don't take midterms in Creative Writing class.
As a usual ritual on this blog I am going talk about my classes since that is my life at this point in time so her it is:

American Lit-340 is interesting Dr. Beidler is the funniest 62 year old man. It is like a friend of mine said. She said in a paraphrased sort of way he ticks people off but he is funny. I had tears coming out of my eyes because of laughter the first day of class, but he is a little to liberal for me. He has ticked me off by making fun of Marengo County, Alabama, which is where I grew up. What he said was funny the first time, because for some reason I did see some truth in it, but when he does it over and over. That's not funny. Marengo does have many good aspects to it. That's the county my hometown is in dude. Not to mention there are two people I know of who have affiliations with Marengo County that I know who are in the class with me. One of them has told me she isn’t happy with him either. Anyway besides my ranting, Am. Lit. is interesting, Dr. Biedler has brought some literary aspects to the works we are studying that are interesting and I haven’t thought about. Hey I’ve seemed to have convinced him I can write a paper, I am so cunning.

British Lit-205 is falling between my fingers. I really enjoy the material we have gone over like I said before, but I haven’t grasped how to take his tests. My highest grade in there is my paper. Hmm. We talked about Morte Darthur by Sir Thomas Malory (who is a historian back in old days of whenever he was alive). In Morte Darthur, Malory writes a story, whether fiction or non-fiction is up for debate, about King Arthur and the whole fiasco with Lancelot and Guinevere. I am very interested in that subject thanks to my high school English teacher. That whole thing fascinates me, I might write a book about it later in life.

Linguistics Approach to English Grammer-321, I really like. Besides its insanely long title I am learning a whole lot. I have the worst grammar in the entire universe, if you don’t believe me ask my mom and professors and read my blog, and I really think this class will help me with my grammar. Keep your fingers crossed. The title of the textbook is How English Works and that is exactly what we have been studying. Pretty cool. ( I am such an English major) Some of the things we have talked about seems like the English language people of the world are pulling out of their rear-end to justify why certain words are used, but hey it is fun to do their rear-end pulling out of processes of sentence making. Dr. Sawalis is so funny too.

Creative Writing, Uses of History-308 is awesome. I can’t say enough about my creative writing class. I love it. I really like reading my classmates work and talking about it, or in my case listening to people. There are some really talented writers in my class and needles to say I am one of themJ. Our instructor knows what he is talking about and has very good advice for writing. I have decided to write a fictional account of the Civil Rights Movement in Selma. I am writing it form of a journal from the point of view of a 8 year old white girl, who is friends with a black girl. I don’t plan on offending anyone, but in some subjects that is impossible.

And for my life outside of school it has been good. I have seen my whole entire family two time this month, which is a rare occurance. I can't express how thankful for them I am and I love it when I get to spend time with them. A downside is that Buddy has had fleas, and I don't mean just momma, daddy, and two or three kids, I mean mamma, daddy, all forty thousand kids, grandpa, grandma, all their friends, and the flea from the local five and dime store and all his ancestry and descendants. So needless to say I hate fleas and think they need to become extinct and if you have any suggestions beside frontline and flea collars and flea baths and flea spray feel free to comment and let me know. Untell my fingers meet keyboard keys again, later friends.

My experience with "The Birds"

Everybody remembers the movie by Alfred Hitchcock called The Birds. Well, I had a personal experience yesterday morning. Buddy and I were in my room minding our own bussiness when we hear a bird chirping. I had the back door open so Buddy could go in and out as he pleased. I fiquired we were hearing the bird from ouside so I didn't go investigate. The chirping stopped and then starts up again so Buddy decided to go investigate. I see him causiously walk into the kitchen, refer to fiquer 1.1 for explaination (i have been in school too long), and into the back room. Meanwhile I'm soaking up the ability to be on the Internet seeing as my computer didn't start up for two days. I see Buddy out of the corner of my eye come into the living room. I don't think anything about it until I here him jumping around like he is playing with something. First I think, Buddy doesn't have any toys in the living room to be playing with, then I think, Oh crap Buddy has caught the bird and is playing with a dead bird in my living room. So I relunctantly and anxiously walk into the living room. I see the bird on top of the bookcase and Buddy raring up on his hind legs trying to get him. Of course he can't because he is a small dog and the bookcase almost reaches the ceiling. The bird (I am sure) is freaking out at this point because he has two things that thinks will hurt him, not knowing Buddy and I are the biggest wimps in all of Tuscaloosa. I'm thinking the whole time maybe the bird will fly out by himself and I won't have to do anything. Well, the bird flys into the back room and onto the headboard of a bed that is back there. I put my brothers clothes that he left here when he went to Atlanta on this bed. At this time I'm thinking please don't crap because I will have to be the one to clean it up. So I go back in the kitchen and shut the door between the kitchen and the back room, leaving Buddy there and hoping he will get the bird out. Well, he is sitting in front of the exit to get outside. Of course the bird isn't going to leave with him sitting there so I call him into the kitchen and I go into the back room and shut the door behind me. Obviously Buddy is not going to solve the problem as I'd hoped. I walk over by the head board and the bird and I are looking eye to eye with each other. Both with fear in our eyes. I see one of my brothers shirts and I grab it and begin to use it as a little coaxing method to get the bird to go in the direction of the door. This is where Alfred Hitchcock comes in. The bird decides he does not like this and I see it flying toward my face. So I throw down the shirt, try to protect my head by bending it down and bending my knees, and scream. I look up to find the bird back on the headboard looking at me once again. So realizing I have failed once again and wondering what the heck am I going to do to get this bird out of my house and hoping it will happen soon because I need to leave to go to class. So I go into the kitchen and Buddy goes back into the back room. I look back in to back room and the bird has flown in a board that had previously been nailed up there, which is right by the door. At this time there is hope. Now Buddy and I are both staring at the bird wondering what the bird is going to do next, like in the living room. Well, the bird flys at me once again. This time I have my hand on the door knob and quickly shut the door, trying to prevent another Hitchcock moment. It works, so I open the door again wondering where it has gone. I look around and cautiously look in the laundry room and he is nowhere to be found. I guess after he flew at me he flew back outside. It was a frightening experience, but funny afterwards.

What have I been doing this summer? Not much

This summer has been a summer of trying to get through my last two Spanish classes along with some other things. The first class I had was SP 201 which is the first part of Intermediate Spanish. It was a pretty good class. Our teacher, Francia Martinez was so bubbly and made it a fun class to go to. She kept us so busy that it seemed like the two hour class period went by very fast everyday. There was three people in that class that I had already knew. Lacosta, the girl from Magnolia where I grew up, was there. It was pretty cool to be in there with her to I could get to know her a little bit better because we had only had SP 101 together. I would like to say that I came out of that class with an A-, my first A in college Spanish.
I am about to enter my last week of SP 202, the second part of the class. I only had one bad test, the first one. All of the class didn't do very well on it either. My grades are looking pretty darn good if I have to say so.
Also this summer I adopted a dog. His name is Buddy and he just what his name implies. He is the best buddy anyone could ask for. He is so sweet. I have tried to pick at him and get him riled up so he would fight with me but I can't get him mad. He just looks at me and goes after my hand a little bit so I'll stop. He follows me around the house and keeps me company wherever I go. I am starting to get really attached to him. Also I have found out what being a dog owner is all about. When he first came to my house there were a couple of bathroom accidents but we got that squared away and he now is used to the house and me so that is good. I'm not that good with the actual walking of the dog seeing as I don't get much exercise by myself, but maybe that will improve. By the way if you are looking for a dog and you live in Alabama or somewhere around adopt from Rebecca Harshman from Montevallo, Alabama. She is on Petfinder as Becky and her adoption place is called Save A Stray, or something to that effect. She gets dogs that people have left on the side of the road and gives them a home. She is is very knowledgeable about dogs and she loves to meet new people. I would highly recommend her.

One semester down

Exam week was the first week in May. It had its ups and downs. My Modern Drama exam was not bad at all. Dr. Voss was his jolly ol' self and cracked me up a couple time before he gave out he exam.
My Spanish exam was not as bad as I thought it was going to be. My SP 101 exam was so awful that I expected this one to be the same, but Dr. Maxwell had prepared us really well. It would have been awful if she hadn't prepared us. It was bittersweet walking out of that exam because I knew I wouldn't be able to have her as a teacher anymore, but I also knew I wouldn't have to be in a Spanish class for at least three weeks.
My last exams of the week were awful. I showed up at my EN 300 exam without my book, not knowing that part of the exam was open book. I was the only one who didn't have my book. It was quite embarassing. It all worked out because the girl sitting in front of me had been in a lot of my classes this year so it wasn't that bad when she lent me her's because I knew her better that anyone else. My Shakespeare class was ten times worse. Granted it was on the last day of exam week and by this time I just want to get the exam over and leave campus. Well, Dr. Burke's exams aren't let's just get this over with. He likes his students to learn things while they are taking his final exams. So while we are writing five page essays we are supposed to be learning something. Heck, I suck at writing papers in four weeks much less within two hours. Dr. Burke is a very nice man but his exams suck.
Besides all of the heck I went through during exam week I passed all my classes. I had B pluses in Modern Drama and Spanish and Cs in EN 300 and Shakespeare.

School, as usual

Overall this semester has been pretty good. Granted I have been a little lazy. My classes are going alright, but there are some perks.
My Shakespeare class is pretty challenging. I have began to appreciate Shakespeare more though. Before I did not really like him because I saw him as a person who was overexagerated and I like going for the underdogs. Now, I actually see him is a different light. He is someone who knew what he was doing. Heck, people 4 centuries later know who he is. I just hope that when I write books people in my time period know who I am.
A class that I have enjoyed this semester is my Modern Drama class. We have read some really good plays. There is only one play that I really wish he would not have asked us to read. I came really close to throughing the play aside and just winging it on the quiz, but unfortunately I trudged through it.
But as for my English studies class I haven't quite fiqured out why this class is required. Yes, it does have some very good information about literature and how to write papers, but shouldn't this class be required on a freshman level. It is a 300 level class and by the time students are able to take this class they are sophmores.
In my spanish class we just took a test. I think I did pretty good on it but I haven't seen my grade yet. I have come to a conclusion that I want to translate every word from English to Spanish, but it can't happen that way. Spanish has certain phrases and words that are used at specific times. There have been time when I have thought it is easier that english but it would have been easier if I had heard the language all my life.
Friday I can register for my classes I want to take in the summer and fall. I want to take some spanish courses I have to take in order to get them out of the way. The fall classes I want to take look pretty interesting, but it is a factor of getting into them.
A friend of mine told me that I am always looking forward to the breaks that we get. She is right. We have Friday off because of Honors Day. Thank goodness for those that need to be honored, they gave us a day off.

Back to the grind

Before I started the semester I went to the eye doctor to get contacts for the first time. I went through a week of getting used to them, but now I am pretty much got the hang of things. Contacts are 500 times better than glasses.
Whenever people would ask me if I was ready for school to start back after the holidays I would tell them, "It's coming whether I am ready or not." It sound kind of negative but that was the way I felt. The first day of school started last Wednesday. Last week was pretty good. It was the usual go to class, listen to the professor tell you what he expected out of you and what the class description is. Most of my classes let out early, so that was nice. This week has been good also, not to many assignments. I think overall it should be a good semester. Most of my classes are English classes which I am interested in so it has been interesting. My other class on the other hand is a different story. My Spanish 102 class is not what I expected it to be. I expected the usual crapy class where the teacher thinks we should know how to speak spanish even though we have not grown up in a hispanic country, but it's not. This class is a lot more laid back then my 101 class. The teacher is pretty cool, so far. She wants us to give presentations on the material so that we can have more of a handle on the material. The presentation doesn't have to be that long as long as you have covered the material that has been assigned. Last Friday in class we still had about five minutes after the people that were prepared to present, so she taught us some steps on doing the salsa. I looked back at a girl that was in my 101 class and said, "We aren't used to this, not used to having fun. It was interesting. Needless to say, I don't think this will be a hard semester of Spanish. The other classes I am taking are: Shakespeare, Modern Drama, and a Intro to English Studies class(basically how to be an English major).
Last Saturday I went to a goat auction with my mom and dad. It takes place every 2nd and 4th Saturday of every month. It was pretty fun. There was some little baby pigmy goats that were for sell, they were so cute. Mom and I just loved them. We tried to talk Dad into getting them but he didn't. I was interesting to watch dad during the auction. You could see the gears turning in his head, listening to the bidding price and trying to decide whether or not to bid. It was fun listening to the auctioneer. I picked up some goat auctioning dialect. The auctioneer would say Dolly and This one needs a friend whenver some of the goats would come out of the gate. He would say dolly whenever there was a nanny that came out that her tits were draging the ground, in honor of Dolly Parton. This one needs a friend means that the goat is sick. Dad ended up not getting any goats because they were going for expensive prices.

Christmas and New Year's

Christmas came and went, then New Year's came. I spent Christmas with my mom, dad, and my brother. I was nice to be able to spend time with my parents becuase I don't see them that often. I reall enojoyed it. After we woke up and opened gifts on Christmas Day we went to my aunt's house to eat breakfast, which is a tradition in my extended family. I didn't know this until this year, but my aunts has had breakfast at her house on Christmas morning for 40 years. They were talking about it this year and said that it started when the guys would go out bird hunting they would cook the meat and serve it for breakfast on Christmas. Then over the years it went from bird meat to patty sausage and now my aunt cooks Conecuh sausage, which is phenomenally good.It was interesting to find out that bit of information. After we ate breakfast there we went to church, hung out for the rest of the day, and then went to bed.
All of my other siblings are married and have thier own little families so they have Christmas at there house, but they go to my parents the Saturday after Christmas so we can spend time together. It was really good to be able to spend time with all of my family because I don't see them that often. For New Year's Eve we shot fireworks that night. Most of my neices and nephews didn't like the loud fireworks so they went upstaris and looked out the window at them. All of them , but my neice that is six years old, her sister, and a little three year old that sat in my lap wile watching them. She was so cute. Every time a firework went off she would have a big smile on her face and never jumped once of tensed up. Toward the end they were getting kind of loud so I asked her if she wanted to go inside and she did so I took her to her mother.