The FINAL Stretch!

It’s the last month before finals week and the feeling of unpreparedness, stress, and anxiety is in the air! I feel it as I walk through the hallways and the grounds and it’s not a great feeling. The rapid weather changes don’t make it any better either, though I don’t have it as bad as people with allergies or seasonal depression. My body still hates it though. I’m beyond excited for summer!

I don’t know what this class has in store for me, but I’m quite interested. I hope my interest is still piqued as we enter The Final Stretch. It’s usually around this time that I begin getting irritable and distracted at the thought of the impending summer. Only time will tell what the end brings!

Calm Before Storm

It’s officially April now which means Final Examinations start in a month. I’m slightly stressed but know that my time management skills will save me like they always do. I feel bad for my fellow students who wait until the last minute but it’s also frustrating when they complain how stressed they are. Perhaps if they hadn’t started working until the night before, then they would be less stressed?

Anywho. I’m finished with my coding generation and it was a lot less daunting than I thought it would be. That being said, I am very relieved that it’s done and I don’t have to worry about coding anymore for the time being!

Exploring NaNoGenMo

When first introducted to NaNoGenMo, we were asked to explore the site and find and ‘learn’ one enough to show the class. In my process I found some interesting ones, but my favorite one was one that was never actually completed. The creator’s intention was to use their Facebook feed to generate a novel, and I was really intrigued by that idea. In the future, will Facebook, or other social media’s, be accessed and used for biographies and history books? Probably. There might even be books made of just a famous person’s timeline-especially if it was from a private account.

Détournement

Miss Jane Stark has struck again with the destruction of school property. At this school, if you must write, we encourage students to be uncreative. Creativity is dangerous. However it seems Miss Stark has gotten her hands on an illegal book once again titled Uncreative Writing by Kenneth Goldsmith. Now at first I was willing to overlook this, as it first appeared that Mr. Goldsmith might be encouraging the readers to do away with creativity. However, it seems Miss Stark picked up on a concept called “détournement.” She has taken our school rules video and replaced the captions with a manuscript from Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice, and then played the video across all of our school’s television devices. I will be looking further into why such a book titled Uncreative Writing would lead to such destructive behavior.

House of Leaves and Knowledge

Finally, the week is over and I am ready to go home to visit my family for break! I got everything done, of course, because my time management skills are superb, even without a time turner. I’ve finished midterm exams, midterm papers, midterm projects, and am all packed. The only thing left I have to do is fight Crookshanks to get into his carrier and board the train.

I’m looking forward to reading some new books over the break, especially since I just finished House of Leaves which was a major headache to me. Thankfully, it allowed me to connect with new friends from all over time and space who also commiserated over it. I’m slightly exagerrating because it wasn’t all that awful, it just wasn’t formatted the way traditional books are. There was a learning curve in understanding it, and reading is second nature to me, so I struggled. But, I suppose struggling is a sign of gaining more knowledge in the end. And the more knowledge I have, the better!

Consequences

Consequences lay on my desk in my room. This book I could vaguely remember was about a small boy who didn’t speak up when things around him were not okay and even though his life was not directly effected those around him suffered dearly. I tried to control the large amount of ironic thought that hung over me. I began to read it. At first I felt like I should have grabbed a different book one for adults. But it occurred to me that Ryan would have known I would be coming to his house to burn eventually. Then I flipped through the book rapidly. There was a small sticky note on page 232. The note read “read yourself and your will read others” I was confused how this would help me. I didn’t understand how this was supposed to change my perspective. Then I saw a sentence underlined on the same page “How did you learn this?” I froze. How did I learn this behavior.  I almost felt robotic at this point. Without thinking I began to write.

Say it ain’t so.

We got called in today at 3 p.m. to a house on second street. I new this house my friend Ryan used to lived there. Sadly, this was not the first time I had to go into a friends home to burn their books. As I proceeded in the house they had Ryan on the ground pinned like a murderer. I heard him yell Tommy help. I stilled, but avoided I contact. They began to pull him to the police vehicle apparently he was distributing as well has storing books. This was a double offence and will cause major problems for Ryan in the near future. At the door he yelled consequences. At first I thought he was just babbling about his mistake or warning me to help. But it occurred to me “consequences” was a book we read as children it was Ryans favorite. I moved quickly and quietly into his room and felt under his bed and low and be hold it was the book.

Tonight I read…

When I decided to become a fire fighter I was around 28 I am now 32 years old and until recently I never regretted or even questioned the chose to burn books for society. Recently, I have been contemplating the idea of reading. We throw the word around as if it doesn’t have a darker meaning. We often in daily life read into things. Additionally, we also read images and video. If reading is what is corruption then with how society is wired you will have to literally blind them to control them. I ask myself now are we being blinded? Even if the government was intentionally doing what they thought was best and didn’t intervene fear and the idea around it would persuade one not to read after this reaction. SO tonight I will read I will read the next book I see when we are called into work today regardless of consequences and fear. I will be blind no more.

Love Reading, Hate Writing

Slowly but surely, I am surviving midterm week. I just finished my History of Magic essay and it took up four pieces of parchment! My hand is completely numb, but that’s to be expected from writing so much. Thankfully, it’s Wednesday and the week is halfway over. I’m counting down the moments until I’m home and free to read as much as I want whenever I want, without any care in the world!

Intellectual Inequality.

The main thing we want these children to understand is that we want to prevent an intellectual inequality. We have found that this bazaar thirst for knowledge is one of the key components to peoples suffering. Or even the reverse then don’t know enough to function properly in society so then suffer. By controlling the exact input into our students we control this uneven flow of knowledge and prevent suffering. I find that being the main push for me when I burn. As a young child I struggled in the old schooling system. I often found myself longing to leave and a deep disdain for information. I just wanted to go on with my routine with out being notice and yet because I was academically secondary to my fellow students I would be subjected to ridicule by not only the class but the teacher. People don’t need to suffer like this. So I am aware of the lesser thinking people are at developed though this method. But the government reminds us of the previous pain we have felt and I understand why we created these specific roles in which we follow.