Nancy's Blog

                                                   My Essay Essay           Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote the story " Young Goodman Brown "and just by reading it, it sounds like it's a story about some ordinary guy who goes on a bizarre walk. By the end of the story Goodman Brown is miserable, suspicious, doubting and depressed. He struggles to figure out if everything that happened on the walk actually happened. Everything that happened on the walk causes him to doubt his beliefs. Beliefs shape everything we know. If we question our beliefs then we question every single thing we've ever known.               Hawthorne communicates his theme by saying something then making the reader question if it’s really true. For example, Hawthorne said that Goodman Brown had gone on a walk and then made us question if he actually did. He questions our understanding and makes us take our thinking further. He wants us to think for ourselves and look at the story the way that we wan

I think that when the author is in the room it's easier to understand what they were trying to say and teach with their work. New perspectives also come to light and are seen and understood. In other words, having the author discuss their work with others make them suddenly understand it better. It's strange but very true. Most of the time they point out things you didn't notice and help you see it from their perspective. Even if you caught something they usually add to it expanding your point of view. Overall in my opinion having the author read and discuss their work with you is better than reading and discussing by yourself or with others.

I think that my essay will mainly focus on getting my thoughts and opinions out, heard, but most importantly understood. In my opinion it is way easier to reflect on stories like "Young Goodman Brown" without a prompt because then you don't have to stick to one thing. You can talk about the different thoughts you had while reading the story. I just feel like it's less complicated. The less complicated the better.

I think that Hawthorne wrote "Young Goodman Brown" because he wanted his audience to see what the mind was capable of creating. He wanted us to see that not everything is as it seems but completely and totally different. It's about looking at something from a whole new perspective. I think that Stephen King was affected by this because he saw the truth behind this story. He saw the damage that certain people can leave behind. He realized anyone can hurt you and leave open wounds.

I think that I will select a channel I know that I can trust. Online people also usually review websites and apps etc. and give their feedback. On certain places there is also people writing and sharing comments about their experiences when using a form of media. I think these are helpful because it's a variety of good or bad. If you choose to read the comments then you should get a good idea of how it works.

In class we read " Young Goodman Brown " and at first i was a bit confused. Dr. Preston had to explain and really break down what was going on. In the story this guy goes for a walk and his wife, Faith, wanted to go with him. He told her that it was too dangerous so she couldn't go. As he began his walk although he felt his wife's sadness, he continued. He was walking through the woods and started to feel uneasy. He thought there could have been Indians watching him. Some other guy walks towards him and starts talking to him. Young Goodman Brown thought he could have been an evil presence.

Throughout this course I think I've done the daily journal well. I just feel like I can interpret what I'm thinking into writing very well. I read my journals from the first week in my English class and I can see the improvement in how I write about my thoughts and opinions. I think there's still plenty of room for me to improve even more and hopefully get comfortable enough to share my opinions in front of the class. Although it might take some time I'm confident I can do it.

For the majority of my free time I'm usually not doing anything productive. I'll either be sleeping, watching Netflix or watching YouTube. I know I should be doing my homework or at least something productive around the house but I simply can't. My laziness takes me over completely making it difficult to find the motivation to do anything. Recently I found something to motivate me. I realized if I get my priorities straight and do my work then ill be on track to get a great college education and really start to shape my future to how I want it to be. Its all about finding something to motivate you and getting your stuff together and acting on what you want to do.

This story was overall really interesting. I think that it’s a good story to tell children and show them that a girl can be the hero. Mostly in stories that are told to kids men are the heroes. Women have a smaller role in these stories and I don’t think that’s fair to the young girls hearing them. It’s good for them to have someone to look up to and want to be like them. There were some parts of the story that made me question what was going on. Like when the chief's pregnant wife went towards the edge of the hole to look into it. She held on to one of the tree's roots but ended up falling anyways. Why would anyone let a pregnant woman stand near the edge of a hole that she can fall into and die. That didn't make any sense to me. Also in the myth the animals talk. I get it its a story told to kids but come on. I guess that's why they call them myths.

A while ago in class we did an activity where we had to find people in the class who had a unique experience. It was like a treasure hunt. It was just something about ourselves that not a lot of people knew. I remember a couple kids had some pretty interesting ones. One kid said he wrote his own lyrics and I thought that was pretty cool. Someone else had written down that they had gone sky diving and I was really surprised because I would never do anything like that. There was one funny one that I remember. Someone else had written that they ran into a glass door and i just thought that was pretty funny. Anyways I think that in order to get comfortable around new people you have to get to know them first. The more you know about someone the more you understand them. Understanding someone is one of the best things you can do.

Today at around 12;30 pm I was feeling super relaxed. As I was breathing and basically meditating I felt myself being calm and stress free. It's a feeling that I haven't felt in a while and it was a feeling I would want to feel more often. Honestly my mind went to another place and it was an interesting thing to think about. I felt like I could finally focus on my assignments.

For today’s blog I will be talking about the reason I write. Sometimes in class I would be scared to share my opinion since the teachers or students would degrade my thinking. It wasn’t until last year that I realized my opinion was my own and no one could tell me otherwise. I wanted to be understood and encouraged when it came to expressing how I felt about a certain topic. Today I can express my opinions in more situations. I hold myself back sometimes but that’s mostly because I’m a little shy. I want everyone out there to feel like they will be heard and understood when expressing their opinion. I’m writing this to be understood and hopefully I will be understood by someone out there.

I’ve had both good and bad experiences with writing essays. Sometimes I would stay up and stress about an essay I had no clue how to write. Other times I wrote the essay in under an hour because I understood it the topic well. That was rare. When I needed help last year I would either ask my classmates or my English teacher at the time. She would help me write and understand the text at the same time. If you need help with an essay I recommend talking to a teacher who has either helped you or helped other students. This helped relieve some of the stress I had.