Thanks!

There are so many people within my English class that I am thankful for, although some, I may have never spoke to, nonetheless, I will give them my thanks for just being part of the class and making it such a wonderful learning atmosphere. Although everybody has received my gratitude, there are those in my class that I have bonded with more, and choosing just one of them proved to be a very difficult choice for me, so I will thank them all. First off, I'd like to thank Rameez, Justin, and Jiawei being my companions that I associate myself with the most. I met Rameez and Justin during my Freshman year, with Rameez and I becoming great friends from the start. I met Justin later, and as well, we became pretty good friends. Now Jiawei I met this year, but nonetheless, I consider him as a great addition to those I consider my friends. We have all sat together since the beginning of the year and have always worked together on everything since, leading to a very tragic and painful experience when Mr. McCarthy only allows a groups of three and one of us has to be left out. The others that I would like to thank personally are Amanda, Gissel, and Elli, who are great people with their own great personalities, which makes me feel lucky to be able to call them my friends. Thank you to all my friends who have made the school year such an amazing one, and know that I am thankful for each, and every one of you.

I Celebrate Myself

For one to celebrate themselves, it can have various meanings to what it actually means, but to me, celebrating yourself is when you have come to the point in your life where you accept who you are in society. You have come to enjoy the person you are, no longer worrying what others have to say about your lifestyle. What they may find weird, you have come to the realization that that is what makes you happy, and if you would rather stay at home on a Friday night and watch T.V. than go out with a couple of friends, why does it matter. You should pursue what makes you happy in life, not what may satisfy others. We were taught growing up to always be yourself, but as you age, reality hits us, don't be yourself is what you're basically fed every day. We live in a world where it is important to hide our imperfections and follow a set guideline to our social norms. We are taught that staying inside is bad and that going outside is not. We are taught to be socialbeings and seek out others, but sometimes we are able to find the most comfort when we are alone and left to our own thoughts. When you finally learned to respect yourself and who you are, that is when you gain true happiness, being able to shrug off common norms, not being worried what others think of you, be the individual that you want to be, not the one that society wants. Shape yourself out to become who you truly are, it may seem difficult if you go against what society deems as right, but sooner or later you will realize that the positive factors far outweigh any consequences you would face. Stay true to who you are, do not become someone you do not want to be, love yourself for who you are, or in other words, learn to celebrate yourself.

Poe

             Edgar Allan Poe was a famous poet throughout the Romanticism age, he was well know for his dark stories, Poe was born in Boston on January 19, 1809. Poe was born with two other children, Henry and Rosalie. By the time Poe was two years old, both of his parents had died. Later he was adopted by Mr. and Mrs. Allan, both of whom, made decent money leading to Poe growing up in a fairly well environment. Growing up, Poe had started to face difficulties in his life, with him being in debt and his adoptive parents had shunned him. In 1827 he joined the U.S. Army as a way for his parent to support him and send him money, when this had failed, he started being a nuisance until eventually he was dismissed from the academy. He finally found a break through a job as a newspaper editor for the Southern Literary Messenger. Later on though, he quit the job due to his salary not satisfying him. He continued this for many more years until finally his mysterious death had taken him.

             Now that I have talked about his life, I will talk about his writing. From the pieces I have read, "The Fall of the House of Usher" and his most famous piece, "The Raven" Poe manages to fulfill the the dark entertainment that he is well known for. The Raven, I understood why it was his best piece, reading it and trying to figure out what was going on can be a tad bit confusing, but once you start to piece things together in your head, you understand more and more about what is going on. I wish I could say the same thing for his other piece, "The Fall of the House of Usher" As I read it, I lost interest in it a few paragraphs in, it seemed to drag out a story and then was ended in a way as if he was trying to finish the story and get it over with. Possibly if the story had been shorter, much more thought would've been put into this piece, even with a much better ending than the one it has received. From these two pieces, I am neutral to his writing, if Poe has gotten such great reviews off of everyone else, then I will read more of his pieces to see what makes him a great writer.

What is an American?

      What is an American? How would we describe them? If we were to answer this question in the simplest of terms, we would define an American as anyone being a resident and living in the United States. Although being an American consists of living in North America, it also consists of those that live in South America. Due to our modern society though, we do not consider anyone who does not live in the United States as an American, for example, someone living in Brazil would not classify themselves as an American, they would say Brazilian. So that leads us to answer the question, what is an American?

      Now, if we were to try and answer this question with more complex thinking, we would find that answering this question is much more difficult than it seems. America is not made up by just one group of people, but by multiple groups, each with their own unique cultures and societies. Would we classify all of them as American, yes, we can do that, but if you were to ask what they considered themselves, most people would not say they were American, but would state where they are from, or where there ancestors hail from. Do these people still consider themselves American? Why yes, they all came here for the same reason most people come to America, in search of new lives and great opportunities. With all these different people pouring into the United States, the country begins to become more and more diverse. With all this diversity, we can not clearly justify our identity as a country. We are just too diverse to come to a conclusion, sure we can go with the simple definition, but, that would defeat the purpose of trying to describe ourselves as Americans. Maybe, we can't describe Americans by their ethnicity, but by what everyone in the country came for. We can describe an American by the set goals that they had when they first arrived in this country, they are all in search of the American dream, for the freedom. What is an American? In the end, if I were to answer this question, I would put it as someone who has come to this country in search of a better life, better opportunities and for the freedom that is promised in America, not generally someone who lives or was born in the United States.

Modern Puritan

In today's time, there is no such thing as Puritans anymore. The Puritans died out a good time ago. The Puritans were a very tough, strict people who would do anything to uphold their beliefs. Another group of people with similar behaviors could easily be identified as the Amish. The Amish could be said to be descendants of Puritans due to the fact that both groups have God very high in their beliefs. The Amish are just like the Puritans, but the Amish seem much less strict compared to the Puritans. The Amish had similar punishments compared to the Puritans. Both groups seem to do a lot of punishments involving public humiliation and shunning the particular person being punished. In this society, these punishments are very high due to the fact that most people will try to avoid you due to the fact of your negative status. The highest punishment for the Puritans was to be executed, but for the Amish, that would prove much more difficult since execution is frowned upon and the Amish would not be able to execute anybody without outside intervention. Another similarity between these two groups is due to the fact that they have no connections with the outside world, tending to seclude themselves, open only to others of their nature. These two groups have their own law system, their own courts and their own judges. Although they are in America, they refuse to be a part of the American society. They are here for their religious freedom just as the Puritans were here back then. Here they can practice whatever they please without any consequences. This is why the Modern Puriran seems to be the Amish people.

John Proctor: Hero or Stooge

Some would say John Proctor was a fool for not signing the confession. He could've kept his life, and the others would hang. Surprisingly, John refused to sign, and because of this, he hanged with the others. This might seem foolish to most of you, but this simple action just demonstrates the person that Proctor has become throughout the story. In the beginning of The Crucible, John does not start out sounding like a respectable man. He has cheated on his wife with Abigail, committing Adultery at the same time and being cruel to his loving wife Elizabeth. Toward the middle of the story though, Proctor begins to change, after Abigail has accused Elizabeth of witchcraft and is taken to court, and most likely to hang, Proctor begins to care more for Elizabeth and agrees to do anything to save her. At court, John even blackens his name by admitting to Adultery. It all leads up to the end, Proctor is given the choice of signing a confession and saving his life, or disagree, and lose his life. Proctor does not sign, by signing the document, Proctor would be lying. Proctor died for what he believed was right, an what he believed was true. When faced with the penalty of death, John stood tall and took it, he was not going to allow the court to be the victor, they were being executed unfairly and unreasonably, and to make sure that message was received, John hanged with his neighbors. Through these actions, you are clearly shown that John is no "stooge". He is a man who is willing to stand up for what he has fought for and would die for it. All these things are what a hero needs and should be able to represent, John and his neighbors died to correct an injustice, and this is why John Proctor is a hero.

There Goes the Neighborhood

There goes the neighborhood, what exactly does that mean? Well, it means when new groups of people start showing up in your area. The same could be said back in the year 1492 when Columbus set sail to find a new route to get Asian, instead of sailing the traditional route and going East, Columbus decided to sail West. That's when Columbus found America, believing to be India, thus calling the inhabitants Indians. The Indians in America were very welcoming to Columbus and his crew, giving them many gifts and supplies of sorts. Columbus, for the most part, did not care for them too much and instead wanted to know if there were any valuable resources on the new found land. With Columbus discovering America, this led others to start sailing to America and start settling down there. This is when the problems began to occur, could the Indians and these new groups of people coexist peacefully? For the most part, no. Most of the new settlers believed that the land was up for grabs to anyone who could grab it first. With this kind of mentality going around, the Indians began to have problems with the new settlers, land that was rightfully theirs was now being taken from them. Then the killing began, that just went back and forth until the Indians were defeated and they had lost their land. This is just one example of how difficult it is for two different groups of people to coexist peacefully, could there have been a solution to the problem between the settlers and Indians, most likely. The Indians were wronged, but there was hardly anything they could do about it, the settlers were more advanced. Now, the Indians and Settlers are not the only example of two groups of people coexisting together. View on religion also caused problems. The Puritans leaving England for America is a good example. At that time, there was no religious freedom, so if you believed in anything else, it was most likely a crime. Now this was a huge problem for the Puritans due to the fact that they had differing views on religion, thus they were hated and came to America to follow their own beliefs. Through these two examples, we realize that coexisting with other groups in society that don't have the same views as us, is more difficult than it seems.

The Life of Me

So, time to talk about myself I guess, and what a better place to start other than when I was born. I was born on April 26, 1998 right here in my hometown Chicago. Currently I am 15 and in my Sophomore year of high school, but before I speak about my current self, it's better to speak about my younger self. When I was born, I lived in a house by Midway. That home, sadly does not exist anymore as it was tore down and made into a parking lot. Due to this, when I was 3, my family moved to Iowa for two years where my little brother was born. Me being 5 at the time, I don't recall much from that point in my life, but I do know that immediately right after my brother was born, we came back to Chicago and I've been here ever since. Growing up, I lived in a small apartment. From this apartment, I started going to preschool at the local school, Daniel J. Corkery. Now, my elementary was not the best school, it was poorly funded and the students that attended, did not care much for the learning. Despite it's flaws, there were still teachers there that did their best with what they had. These teachers were passionate about teaching us, even if most of the students fooled around most of the time. Luckily, I was not the only student there who actually wanted to learn, I made another friend, a childhood friend, by the name of Manuel. Me and him stuck together a lot during our elementary school, as there was no one like us in that school, at least not yet. Coming into middle school, I met others like me, they payed attention, and they worked hard. It was through this, that I made my first friendly rival, a boy by the name of Cain. We would always try to 1-Up each other, not wanting the other to get the best of us. We kept at this pace up until 8th grade, where he started to hang out with the shady kids of my school, and when he went down that path, he did not recover from it. During 8th grade, our school was crazy about the high school choices, most of the kids in my school took the easy route and they went to my neighborhood high school, which in my eyes, was just basically another Corkery. Only me and Manuel refused to go there, and instead tried our luck at getting into a Selective Enrollment School, we applied, we took the test, and both of us had passed, we had been accepted into one of the greatest and brightest schools in Chicago, Whitney M. Young. My parent's joy was overwhelming, they were so proud of me, and to make it better, I had graduated 8th grade as Valedictorian. My dad has had a huge impact on who I am today, he inspired who I wanted to be, after graduation, he spent 1000$ on Photoshop and a 3D modeling program so I could start early. Immediately I had fallen in love with the concept of design and building, it inspired me to want  become an architect, to make the creative images in my head a reality. Also during that summer, before I went into my Freshman year of high school, my dad got an nice little body shop up in Kankakee, my dad had his own business, and with that, over the summer I started to go to work with him, this is where my passion for cars started. At that time I started learning different things such as how cars worked and how to repair them as well. The work wasn't easy, but one thing always made it worth it, my dad would say, "We are working for something ours, we work for it, and we benefit from it." Of course I stopped going for the last few weeks of summer to fulfill my school duties. That's when I entered Freshman year of high school, it was very nerve racking at first, I was somewhere where I had never been, for the first week it was very confusing, but I survived it. I made a ton of new friends that shared the same passion for learning as me. So far, everything is going well for me, I have a loving family that supports me, friends who I can rely on, and a bright future ahead of me, I wouldn't change my life for anything. That is the life of me.