Spring 2007 and Interim

I really must say I fell like I should just delete my blog seeing as I don't post that much. Hopefully though, since summer is starting officially for me tomorrow after my exam maybe I will post more regularly. Spring semester ended three weeks ago and I started interim after that. I had to take one class that is only offered during interim. Spring semester ended with the regular As and Bs report card. I began to get worried toward the middle of the semester about a class and wondered if I would have a passing grade. It's amazing what attendance does to a struggling grade. The semester was pretty productive though. I wrote some short stories that I would like to make into a longer story. I had a creative writing instructor that really stressed the whole publishing aspect of writing and so I made the goal of at least starting the process of getting published before I graduate. By the way, I am expected to graduate in December so Hooray!!! This summer I plan to write until I come up with something I feel comfortable with sending to a publisher. I've written a lot of short stories in my creative writing classes and want to revise this summer and send those off and hopefully one will get published and I will start getting my name out there. One of my CW classes was a class on poetry. We ended up just writing a lot of our poetry and workshopping (critiquing) some of our own and so I discovered my poetry side. I wrote a couple that were good, but I don't think I will be pursuing writing poetry. I think I will stick with prose. In another CW class I ended up writing what I think is the worst story I have ever written in my whole entire life. I had a good idea but it got out of control and so I trashed it.
My interim class has been really interesting. We talked (or took notes while our teacher lectured rather) about some books and then we watched an adaptation of it. We read The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, The Last of the Mohicans, The Scarlet Letter, and we finished up with The Great Gatsby. I really love The Great Gatsby. Ever since I read it in high school I have absolutely been in love. When we were done talking about it in high school I went to the local Movie Gallery, which was about 30 minutes up the road, and got the movie with Robert Redford, Mia Farrow, and Sam Waterston. It is a really good movie. We ended up watching it in class yesterday and today. I fell in love again, especially with young Robert Redford. Really he was hot. A little old for me though.

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.

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.