Sunday, February 28, 2010

In-Class Entry 3/1/10

This past week was one of endless reading with our continuation of reading both As I Lay Dying and The Great Gatsby. We were assigned an unusual assignment this past week in which we were split into groups of three of four and all we had to do was be a sort of voyeur to the other group members while they talked about what they had previously written in their journals. Of course in the least creepy way possible, I sat in my group with three girls and listened to their stories and eventually told my own. Then, we were instructed to sit down and make a table in which we listed the personality, gestures, clothing, and many other descriptions of each group member. By this time, I was sure Mr. Glenn was going to have us do some ridiculous assignment comparing a group member to a character in one of the novels that we're reading. But that was it. The bell rang and the class was thankfully over. We continued this assignment in the computer lab the following day when we had to choose a group member's journal to perform a close reading on. I personally chose Julia Wayne's just because I think she is interesting when it comes to writing. She is oddly intellectual if you will and her journals had the most rhetoric at first glance. With all our class practice with doing close reading I think I'm actually getting pretty decent at it. It helps to recgonize all the little details in the piece that is being analyzed.
This week I did a current event on an article from MSNBC that was talking about how Obama was going to reform education laws for states and only those who abided would continue to recieve federal funding. I find it interesting that Obama randomly seems to talk about something like this when there are so many other things in our country that I believe need his focus. Along with this article there was another recently that talked about how Obama was trying to introduce high speed trains in our country's infrastructure in attempt to go "green", provide jobs, and advance our country's transit system. At first glance I think that would be a great idea and it would be cool to be able to travel interstate via high speed train. The article mentioned that most trains would average around 150 mph but some would exceed speeds of 200 miles per hour at times. They say the first trains to be built would be from Los Angelos to San Franscisco and Orlando to Tampa Bay and Miami. The problem with this plan/idea about building a new train system would be our reliance on other high-speed train developed countries like Japan for help, resources, and plans. It also would be a billion dollar project; money that could easily be used to bail out America's everyday people from our so called depression. If this did happen though, imagine like 15 years from now when people would rely on train travel to get to work and what not.

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