Memories

It was sometime near the end of July. My family was checking out land in a rather large rural neighborhood in the southeastern part of New York. My family was thinking of moving there and having a house built. Out in the front of the lot, there was a large mount of gravel that was just lying there. At this moment in time I was around eleven or twelve years old. To me it looked like it was taller than a house. That was where I first met my soon to be neighbors, Blake and Troy.
One, Blake, was a grade younger than me and about year younger also, but we shared a lot of the same interest. But so do most kids around that age. The other was around my brother’s age, who was just about to go into 1st grade. They seemed like they were nice, and even though I didn’t know they’re names at the time, I knew that we got along well.
About three or four months later, our house was finally ready to move into to. When we got there, Blake and his Brother Troy were already there. We would hang out and play all day around our little section of the neighborhood. We lived in an unfinished dead end street that turned in to a dirt road. There were only about 5 houses on that street. One day Blake decided to introduce me to the rest of the kids that hung out on the street. There was and older blonde girl, Whose name I sadly cannot remember, who was probably in 6th or 7th grade. There was a young kid who was either in 1st or 2nd grade. And A brother and a sister a year younger than me, You would have thought they were twins. We all got along really well.
We would all like to hang out at this one spot that was right on a creek. Running on one side of my house was a creek. It ran under the street all of our houses were located on and came out on the other side. On the other side of the street was where we would gather and talk for hours on end. Above the creek there were two large rocks that had flat tops. They were pretty high above the creek, and they were prefect for standing on or lying down. We would sit there, all of us dangling our feet off the rock looking at the creek as it flowed through. Here, we would talk about anything and everything. Mostly about schools and how our teachers were giving out tons of homework. It was fun and everyone enjoyed just talking, sharing jokes, and laughing.
One weekend, we were pretty bored. It was a long weekend and the teachers have given us no homework. We all figured we would go down to our usual spot and hang out down there. After a while one of the kids came up with a good idea, or at least that’s what we all thought at the time. He decided that he could jump from one rock to the other over the creek. Well, he made so we all decided to try it. It was fun and we did that for as long as kids could do that without getting bored.
Days passed and we continued going to that spot and hanging out. We would explore the tunnels that the creek ran through under the road. One day, the man who owns the area that we were hanging out on said that he didn’t want us there because we could get hurt and it would be bad if we sued him for us injuring ourselves doing something without our parents around to watch us. Eventually we all just went our separate ways after that. With nowhere to hang out we just stopped all together. That January I left New York and moved to Indiana.

Class Discussions

The talks in class in the recent days have been very interesting to say the least. It has gotten me to think a lot about how stories are told and given to others around us. I have thought about human nature and how us as human beings want to be heard and want to be acknowledged. We want others to notice us, and at the same time, to notice others. I've thought about how stories that I write pertain to the Big 5 questions. I also wonder whether I should write my story around those or just let it come naturally in order to create a more believing piece. It would be an understatement to say that I have had just a few "light bulb" like moments. I've gotten more out of passages than I have ever hoped to get out of them before. If I wasn't in class to hear about how Gatsby is related to a machine gun, I would have never believed it.

"How I Started to Write" reflection

Carlos Fuentes' piece How I Started to Write was a piece about how his Latino and American background has affected his writing and the way he views the US and the world. The Audience I believe Fuentes is talking to is general Americans. You can tell by how in first person it sounds like he's talking to America as a whole when he says "you". The reason for this is to show people how your background can affect your writing and how you can view different aspects of life. He wanted to get his side of his unique story across to the general American audience so they can see where he coming from and where he's planning on going.
Another reason he wrote this passage is to just show how he started writing was unique and different. We all have a story to tell, and Fuentes chose this one. I believe that he wanted to get his origin across for educating his audience of himself. We all could tell our own individual story of how we came into writing. That is something that is unique to each and every one of us and there is probably no one in the world who can have the same story as you.

"I could tell you stories" reflection

Overall I found the discussion very deep and intriguing. It made me think of how you can judge characters in a new way, but probably the most important, for me at least, was the idea of the different levels of story. I never thought of how you can convey the same information and it could be so different. While I have to admit that I have seen it in different places before, I have not until that class given it more thought. After that discussion, anytime I'm watched TV, read a book, or heard a story. My mind immediately thought about that discussion and made me think of how the real story is being portrayed differently by the way that i was originally, or even meant to be, presented. I wondered how it could be conveyed better for it's own meaning. It just made me look deeper into story that I would normally look at only for entertainment, and really wonder it's value and how it meets up to the actual story in it pure and original state. Along those lines I guess I came to a small conclusion that for certain stories, there are certain ways that the story can be portrayed. This is something else that would just seem to pop into my mind as I was doing one of these things. I wondered whether there was a better way to portray the story, or if the way it was presented was the best way, or at least the one that made the most sense. I don't know why but after that discussion all of these things started popping into my head, and I would just unconsciously start evaluating everything. I can't say that it's bad because I believe it helps me a bit understand more about those stories and the lessons that they could possibly, most likely not, hold deep inside them.

Class Reflection- 8/22

AP English is a challenging, thought provoking, and overall rewarding class. From the little of the class that I have experienced I have learned not just a lot about the English language and literature, but also much about human nature and psychology. I’ve expanded my brain to think in ways that it hasn’t done before. It makes me feel accomplished and intellectual. It has been fairly hard so far, but it’s been a rewarding experience. I have learned a lot and have taken two books that I wouldn’t have given a second look at before and looked at them under the surface to truly find out their literary meaning and what lessons we can learn from reading these books. It has been an enjoying class so far, and I can’t wait to see what the rest of the year holds in store for my class as a whole.