BOO!!!!

 9-11 happened when I was in the 6th grade. I was in english class at the time and we were all devastated. Well I had some friends who were Arab, and over the next next few months after 9-11 happened they were looked down apawn. I couldn’t believe that people were treating them so horrible when they had nothing to do with what happened. Just because of who they were and where they came from, people thought they had the right to treat them like they were outsiders. Alot of people dont even realize they are prejudice because they were prolly brought up that way or they’re just not used to other races or something like that.

In To Kill a Mockingbird, Jem is a really important character because he’s the only one who has had worked up enough nerve to go and touch the Radley’s house. Only out of pride, which is one of his strengths and also one of his weaknesses. It is one of his strengths because it shows how brave he is to do something most people are afraid to do and wouldn’t dream about doing. But it’s one of his weaknesses because he could get into alot of trouble for being too brave and doing something he’s not suppose to do. When he was first introduced into To Kill a Mockingbird, I thought he would be a fun person to hang around if he was a real person. The first thing I noticed about him was that he never backed down from a dare, though the book pointed it out, but he also didn’t like to look like he was scared so thats why he never turned one down. To me someone like Jem, has to care how people see him. I wonder if it has to do with how he was brought up or if it’s something else. In the book, his friend dares him a task at one point he hesitates and his told he is to afraid to do it. He then, in like some parallel universe he somewhat forgets that he’s scared and he goes ahead with the dare. It’s like he can’t help but show that he’s not scared of anything but at the same time everyones that he gets scared and knows he wont admit it.

Since I wasn’t here for the group discussion for the symbols of To Kill a Mockingbird, here is what I thought were symbols. Some things that caught my eye for some symbols were the coins that they had found and the gum that Scout found. I think that the coins and the gum were left by the same person. Maybe the mystery person is trying to let them know that they are watching and is trying to let them know they want to be friends or something like that.

In my opinion, veils are like shields. Most people are afraid of the unfamiliar so they keep there lives secret. I don’t see why keeping secrets would be so wrong. I’m not gonna lie, I have a ton a ton of secrets. And i know everyone has probably as much as I do, if not more. Even if everyone on this planet were to go to letting all their secrets out, it wouldn’t happen because we would all most all likelyt lie about most of them then that would make even more secrets than there were before. Secrets are like the blankets we used to carry around everywhere we went. They are our security blankets.

Viels in my opion are like a shield of not getti

The moral of the story is that secrets are gonna be hidden and not everyone is going to like it. The minister I think was trying to, in some way, so that to the people of the community. They obviously took it the wrong way and thought that he had turned dark or something and they didnt like that idea. I dont see why he tried to get people to show their secrets or whatever cuz theres always going to be secrets no matter who you are. I mean he had a secret him self the whole time he wore the veil. Just by not telling anybody why he was wearing it is a secret. Isn’t it?

I HATE essays! not gonna lie. I’m not good at them what so ever. I’m not good to good about putting my words on paper escpecailly when I have to write a certain number of pages or words. When I get assigned an essay, I get lazy about it and put it off until the last min so its not my best talent.

In one of the scenes in the book that REALLY surprised me was when Lee started hooking up with Cross, whom by the way she had been crushing on over the past four years that she has been attending Ault. Most of us think of hooking up has only making out but this was not only making out it was much more than that if you get what I am saying. This really surprised me not in a grossed out or “Oh my gosh! I didn’t know people actually did that!” way. Just the fact that she had enough guts to do something like that since she thought that people didn’t like her that way, well at least the guys anyways. Towards the beginning of the book, Cross had made a move on Lee, not like a kiss or anything but he just cuddled with her on the way back from a movie. So I kind have expected them to do something but not losing her virginity to him after seeing him for like a month and experimenting with him. What was strange to me was that he didn’t talk to her in public. Well, mainly because she told him “not to tell anyone about us.” But he still could have just talked to her like they were friends but he didn’t, he just came over to her dorm at one in the morning to fool around whenever he felt like it. Which was quit often until after spring break when he started fooling around with Melodie Ford. She was heart broken. I felt bad for her. Especially when Cross’s roommate told her about a list they kept with every girl Cross was trying or already fooled around with. On the list it said whether the girl tasted like fish or cheese. When Lee confronted Cross about it, I was embarrassed for her. ( I got embarrassed for her a lot in the book.) He had told her that Devin, his roommate, was a “prick” and that she shouldn’t listen to him but I don’t think she believed him. At that point, She let him know how she felt about him. I was proud of her because she was trying to do that throughout the whole book. At this point, she had grown so much from when I started reading. It didn’t work out for them, they didn’t talk again after that. And the whole thing where Cross fooled around with almost every girl did pretty much turn out to be true. This scene in the book shocked me because I’m not used to read about fooling around like this, especially when her emotions and thoughts were being revealed at the same time. I not saying I’ve never heard about someone fooling around or that I never read anything about the it. I guess I was just shocked how many thoughts and emotions ran through someone going through an experience like this. I guess I really don’t know how to explain how it made me feel.

Prep takes place in
Massachusetts. The main character, Lee, is originally from
Indiana. I think that Sittenfeld choose for Lee to move to Massachusetts to go to a boarding school because I think he has a either moved to Massachusetts from Indiana or he has went to a boarding school in Massachusetts or maybe someone close to him have done one of those two things. The possibilities are endless.  I think that going to Ault will be good for Lee because it will take her out of her comfort zone and get her to face her insecurities and learn about herself and others who are the total opposite of herself.  The only thing I can think of for Ault being a bad experience for is that if her everything she is worrying about, like what if she sits next to someone who doesn’t like her, comes true. I really don’t think that that would happen but you never know what the results will be. I do however lead towards it being a good experience for her than it being bad. Yes, she’s going to have hard times with dealing with the everyday rumors, secrets, and so on. There is no avoiding that even if you’re never noticed or you don’t talk to anybody. I think that’s what Lee is going to learn throughout the course of her enrollment at

Ault
Boarding School. Lee is going to want to go back home where she is comfortable at times but is going to realize that she needs to stay and get through it. I predict that Lee is going to make a lot of friends and find out who is stealing money from various students.( So far the only students that have money stolen have been Dede, Aspeth, and one who Lee doesn’t know about.) I just have a feeling she’s going to be a hero.

Sittenfeld, Curtis. Prep.
New York: Random House, 2005.

Lee Fiora is a fourteen year old girl who is attending
Ault
Boarding School in
Massachusetts. In the book Lee is an intelligent young girl who is always worrying about every little thing. There isn’t a moment that goes by that she is “worried I would take a seat by someone who didn’t want to sit next to me, in class I worried I would say a wrong or foolish thing. I worried that I took too much food at meals, or that I did not disdain the food you were suppose to disdain….” (15) All Lee know how to do is pretty much worry. When she is not worrying, she sits and wonders how it would be if she was friends with Gates Medkowski. At one point she said, “I always worried someone would notice me, then when no one did, I felt lonely.”(15)  She is so afraid of to go out and try to talk to anybody, she starts to imagine being friends with them.

            Lee is from
Indiana. Leaving home was not Lee’s parents’ idea, “Ault had been my idea. I’d research boarding schools at the public library and written away for catalogs myself. Their glossy pages showed photographs of teenagers in wool sweaters singing in hymns in the chapel, gripping lacrosse sticks, intently regarding a math equation written across the chalkboard…
Marvin
Thompson
High School, the school I would have attended in
South Bend, had hallways of pale green linoleum and grimy lockers and stringy-haired boys who wrote the names of heavy metal bands across the backs of their denim jackets in black marker.” (15) When she was filling out her applications to various schools, her parents “suspected… not supporting” she would get accepted anywhere. When she got accepted to Ault, her parents were really happy for her, yet in a way she way surprised because like her parents she also didn’t think she would get accepted anywhere. I think that this is one of many examples in the book where she doubts herself and her ability to do great things.

 If Lee went to Central, I think I would be friends with her. She reminds me of myself in away that I too worry a lot of the time and can’t help but feel like I’m an outsider sometimes. Yes, I have friends and Lee doesn’t because she’s so afraid but I think everybody feels that way at some point in their lives. Even if they have everything they could possible think of.

Sittenfeld, Curtis. Prep.
New York: Random House, 2005.