Music of the Renaissance A 7th grade English report; we were to do a presentation in class with some sort of visual or performance or what have you, and I was going to play Greensleeves on my uncle's mandolin. Only then I got sick, and never had to do it. Yay ;D 7th grade might have been the worst year of my life, and in one of those psychological defenses or whatever, I remember almost none of it. I'm telling you this because I truly, honestly don't remember actually writing this. I mean, I know that I did, but I don't remember at all. I do remember writing the other things from 7th grade.
Hear Ye, Hear Ye, O People of Corbreynia One of three personal narratives for an 8th grade English "about me" assignment; this one is about my second grade experience, which was pretty good. As for the rabid bunnies, Mrs. Bratton (teacher) wanted us to take out all the "be" verbs and replace them with active ones 9_9()
Honey, Smile if You Love Me Second personal narrative; this one's about a trip to Colorado Springs we took when AnJa won the Focus on the Family Adventures in Odyssey sweepstakes. Uhh, how old was I? Six or seven? I can't remember. It seems like I was older, but I look *really* small in the pictures we have. I had the surname of the station manager replaced with "Mr. Kipper" to protect their privacy; now I think that's a little foolish, but I can't remember what their real surname was, I think Lapine or Levine or something. (I also replaced my real name with 'Mr. Kipper' any time it appeared on any of these essay things, and I nonsensically replaced the appearance of AnJa's full name in this story with simply 'AnJa.' Paranoia or stupidity?)
Be Careful What You Ask For Third of the narratives for that assignment. Sure, I was an angsty teen, but I really was also severely depressed.
Semper Fidelis ALSO for that project, but not one of the three personal narratives. Uh, I think we were meant to write about ourselves from the perspective of a toy or pet or something... but I copped out, because I really did make my duck write this for me.
The Boy Behind the Chocolate Factory More 8th grade English; a book report on Roald Dahl's autobiography, Boy. Roald Dahl is teh ossum. Guillermo (another kid in my class) reviewed Jackie Chan's autobiography. I've read that one; it's pretty cool.
The Goddesses Who Don't do Anything Rewritten lyrics of the Veggie Tales song "The Pirates Who Don't do Anything." My friends and I performed this at the Greco-Roman festival in 8th grade and won third prize ;D
JET! A play about women's rights written and performed by me and pals for 8th grade English, for which we are all going to hell probably. It's a satire! Calm down! Geez, you always take everything so seriously! I can't even have a conversation with you anymore!
Affirmative Action Persuasive essay written for 8th grade American History. (We were forced to write one, for our congressman. o_o) I was pretty ignorant about the subtleties of it all back then, so the argument's rather sophomoric, but I do still basically oppose affirmative action.
Obituary- Alexander Hamitlon Another 8th grade history thing; really, we were just to write a biographical essay about some figure from American History©, but Mrs. Byers for some reason thought to make it Fun and Interesting by having us write it in the form of an obituary. It didn't work in mine; I don't know if it did in anyone else's.
The Cherokee Kid 8th grade assignment; 'tis a li'l biographical essay on Will Rogers WHO IS COOL.
Civil War- The Cause 8TH GRADE HISTORY ! We had to write a paper about one of the causes of the Civil War and, like, you know, talk about it. I always hated John Brown, so I liked getting the assignment since it gave me an excuse to write a paper about how much I hated him. I really wasn't pleased when the comment my teacher wrote on the paper was "He had the right reasons, he just did the wrong thing!"
Serenade of My Life Summary for a project about Gerda Weissman Klein's All But My Life; these projects were follow-ups to reading Anne Frank. I'd love nothing more than to make an mp3 of the project itself, but Veneliza had the only tape of it, and I think she lost it. The woe is so enormous.
Video Write Up- Water and Wildlife Conservation A video write-up for 9th grade World Geography. I don't know why I'm posting this. That's true of a lot of the stuff here.
Video Write Up - Tracking El Niño Another one!
Video Write Up - Killer Quake OMG WHAT IS IT
Extra Credit- Stars and Bars Extra credit for 9th grade World Geography ;o The extra credit option was to choose an article from the paper and write a one-page response to it. Whooo.
Extra Credit- Elian Gonzalez Remember THIS one?! Yeah. C. Reynolds was of the opinion that Elian should be trained in the way of the ninja, then returned to Cuba to spread the American way with a shuriken and a hardened fist. All other opinions were and still are wrong.
Synthesis - Isolation My synthesis paper for 9th grade English, based around the theme of isolation.
The Internet Question 10th grade World History essay. That was a really interesting class; I learned more about essay-writing in there than I probably have in most of my English classes combined.
Sin I think the assignment was to write about something we regretted... I can't quite remember. This was for 10th grade English; it's a true story, and I still get a terrible feeling when I think about it :\
Die Free My synthesis paper for Lord of the Flies and Ten Theories of Human Nature in 10th grade english. We got them returned for revisions, and I thought we had until after Christmas break to turn them back in, but then we DIDN'T, so I went to the library during study hall to type it back up, revise whatever, and print it out, and I was DONE but then the computer FROZE. So I had a nervous breakdown.
The Religion Question "Off-the-wall" paper in World History. But I got a 100 on it! It was the first time I got a 100 on a World History paper, but after this, I always made 'em. GO ME
Blue Bear Something we did in creative writing when we had a substitute :o The prompt was prefab; we were meant to look at a painting of a blue bear with one white paw wearing pink sunglasses sitting in front of a piece of paper on which it seemed to be drawing a picture of itself, then explain why the painting would appeal to both preschoolers and teenagers. The logo is a reproduction of the WACKY FONT I used when I typed this up for my Creative Writing portfolio.
Vexing the World 10th grade english. Paper purposefully without an introduction or conclusion (since the whole thing was done in a group and we were to write transitions between the papers later, only I wasn't told which one I was doing so I never did it, but we still made an A) about Jonathan Swift's influence on the 1600s, and theirs on him.
The Russia Question A sort of mini-paper for World History. I got a 100 on it, suckas!
POKEY THE PENGUIN AND WHAT YOU ARE LEARNING Which was included in my Creative Writing portfolio. For real!
Righteous Harmony Fists A 10th grade English paper! This was a sort of pre-assignment to the Big Project of the year, in which we went to elementary schools and taught the kids about stuff 9_9 Guillermo (the same one who was in my 8th grade English class) and I taught some kids about anime and manga. Because little kids like Pokemon and Sailor Moon!
The Stoic Posse A skit for an English presentation on theories of happiness (OMG GUILLERMO AGAIN). The "It's All Good" sign had a picture of a happy sun that was saying "Mazeltov!"
A SHOCKING TRUE STORY CREATIVE WRITING JF;AFJDS The assignment was to write a story that was either true or not true, but write about it as though it were. This one really is. Did you know there was a chicken one time that survived for 8 months without a head? In the end, it choked to death. (It's freakin' true, look it up)
The Oklahoma Manual of Style A style analysis for chapter 9 of The Grapes of Wrath in 11th grade English. We poor children had a lot of Steinbeck thrown at us.
Life is Archetypes, Highness After studying archetypes in English, we were to write an essay finding various archetypes in something like a movie or TV show or book; I used The Princess Bride (film version). By the way, guys? Yeah. That movie rocks.
The Fisher Trimalchion 11th grade essay on The Great Gatsby and the Arthurian legend of the Fisher King. In one version of the tale, Sir Parcival says, "Sir, I only knew that you were thirsty," and OH MAN, it's the GREATEST thing in the world, I am so freaking serious with you right now.
Two Sides to a Coin Random 11th grade essay on The Scarlet Letter (you know, one of those where the teacher gives a bunch of prompts and you pick one and write an essay. Yeah the prompt was to analyse some passage or whatever). Ha ha, I was a bombastic jerk.
Nocturne Poetry explication on Lord Byron's "She Walks in Beauty" for 11th grade English.
College Essay: Capitulation of Self Our final in 11th grade English was writing a college essay, and I wrote this. Rereading it now, it seems rather like my prose was having digestive issues.
From the Sleep-Deprived Student's Point of View As part of our dual credit in 12th grade English, we'd occasionally have to read a passage from the book World of Ideas (containing stuff written by various philosophers and people), then either write a one-page response to it, or answer some questions about it. The questions were dumb and time-consuming, so I always wrote stuff like this instead ;D
Supernatural Insufficiency 12th grade synthesis essay for various Latin American works we'd studied. The Mission is a good movie, Jeremy Irons and Robert De Niro are super cool.
The Morals of Liberty Crime and Punishment essay for 12th grade English; I can't remember what the prompt for this was. Raskolnikov is sexy.
Machiavelli's Prince Response Another one-page response to something from World of Ideas.
Four Idols Response And a third World of Ideas response. By the way, yeah, these won't be with the sense-making if you aren't familiar with what it is I'm responding to, but that's just tough ;D
