My Summer

I never know what to talk about for these ‘write your own’ blogs, but since this is the last one like that and the second to last one total, I guess it doesn’t really matter. My last two blogs have been under the word limit, so I am going to try to make this one at least 300 words. So I guess I will talk about my summer, it is going to be pretty low key I guess, just the usual stuff. I am going to try to go swimming more than I did last summer, because I think that I only went twice last summer and I really want to go to the beach a few times this summer too. I am going to Mexico in the middle of June with my aunt and little sister. My sister graduates high school this year and since I graduated last year, my aunt decided to combine our graduation presents and just bring us both to Mexico for a long weekend. That is the one thing that I am very excited about this summer. Another thing that I am excited about is that I finally got a job for the summer. It is at the baseball stadium by my house and I work box office, so it will only be about 2 hour shifts every time I work, so not a lot of money, but I guess it is better than nothing. I am still looking for a second job too though. I might get one at Family Video, I just need to take the test when I get back home to see if I pass. If I get that job, then that would be really nice because then I could transfer here and then have a job for the fall too. I am also going to summer school, but it shouldn’t be too bad, only Wednesdays from 12-2:30. I was going to take 2 summer school classes but the one I was going to take was online from Heartland and I just don’t think I will be able to get my High School transcript and stuff over there in time to register, but that’s ok. Hopefully I am getting my tattoo at the end of this summer too, I wanted it before Mexico, but if I get it now it won’t heal in time for me to enjoy Mexico fully haha. I am so excited for this to be my last weekend here. I am going home next weekend for my dad’s birthday, but I wish I was going home for good, it sucks that I have to come back after that, just to take two finals. Oh well, it will be here before I know it and then I can enjoy seeing my best friend that I haven’t seen in so long because he goes to Nebraska. Our breaks don’t really match up with theirs too well, besides a part of Christmas break. Can’t Wait To Be Done!!

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This weekend

Since we were supposed to talk about anything we want, so I am going to talk about how sick of this topic I am. I like the idea that we get to write about the same topic for all 3 projects because it is supposed to make it easier, but by now, I am SOOOO sick of my topic I can not even tell you. Ok well another thing that I am going to talk about because I didn’t realize that that wouldn’t take up much time, is this weekend. My family is coming this weekend! Well just my two sisters and my mom. My older sister and my mom are coming down today and then my little sister is driving down by herself tomorrow. We are going to the Circus on saturday night but my sister is scared of clowns, so she doesn’t want to go. I told her that there wasn’t going to be a lot of clowns, if any and she said ok. Then on Sunday we are driving down to the little town of Villa Grove near Champaign for my grampa’s 70th birthday, which is actually today. He just had surgery two weeks ago and is still recovering, so we might just stay for lunch and then come back here. This weekend should be interesting and fun, but the one thing that I am really excited for it not eating dining center food!!

4th To Last Blog! :)

Our blog post this week is supposed to be off of the Rodriguez article that we read in class, but I really don’t know what that is, so I will just explain how I plan my writing I guess. I was always taught to start with a basic outline, thesis statement and build off of it. I research as much as I can using databases and just googling things. Then I insert the ideas into the part of the outline where I think that they should go. Next I just organize the ideas, so the sentences form a paragraph. I feel kind of stupid for explaining this, because I am not really sure what we are supposed to be explaining, but this is what I do. I would suggest to anybody doing research, that they should find a couple of really good sources to begin with, and then use other sources as fillers for extra information. Depending on the topic a lot of the sources might have the same information, so you want to be selective on what quotes sound the best in your paper, and who is the more reliable source. This is going to be a short blog, but I don’t know what else to suggest besides outlining. I love outlines, the always help me stay organized.

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Close Reading

Close reading is no new concept for me, but looking at certain things in this class helped me realize that you can read even closer into texts than I would have thought to do. We looked into some things in high school, but that was mostly just the basic lesson that was supposed to be learned from stories, not other aspects that we could have looked at. When we looked at the Beauty and the Beast example in class, and how Belle was supposed to be an intelligent girl, kind of the first of the Disney Princesses to be, I immediately thought of Princess and the Frog. Disney now considers the main character, Tiana, as one of the Disney Princesses now. I’m sorry but I grew up with them and she is not one of them. The only reason that Disney made her one, and made that movie was because they needed an African American Disney Princess. The movie itself was also very stereotypical. At the beginning of the movie she was in a castle with a rich white girl, and Tiana’s mom was their seamstress, working for the rich white family. Then they go home to a poor neighborhood and cook for their neighbors. Even when she is older she is working hard and needing to say every penny that she gets. She also lives in New Orleans, and the music is very “soulful”. All of these things bothered me, Disney just amplified all the stereotypes of African Americans and people in the south, and threw them in one movie. They could have done this a lot different than they did. This movie was not meant to be set in modern time, but more of the past. I think they did that so it could fit in more with the classics. Overall I just did not enjoy this movie because they could have gone about the story in a completely different way, and I did not like the way that they wrote it. 

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Paper Topic?

For my paper I want to show the progression of the horror genre over the decades. Specifically, I am going to talk about the differences between the 70’s TV show “In Search Of…” the 1999 Movie “Blair Witch Project” and the more recent movie “Paranormal Activity”. These examples are all a type of documentary or “mock”umentary. These are the most interesting to me because the writers try to scare people by making them think that fake things really happened or are real. I have always been interested in horror movies, ever since my dad had me and my little sister watch “Chucky” on Halloween when I was 4 and she was 3. That was the first scary movie I ever watched and even though I was little, I still remember that Halloween very well. For some of my resources, I plan on using interviews with the writers of “Blair Witch Project” and some customer reviews of the movies and shows. I also want to find magazine or newspaper articles of professional reviews, so I can see what the experts thought of the different movies. I feel like it is going to be harder to find information on the 70s TV show, so I may have to see if I can find episodes that I can watch myself and do some of my own reviews if I need more information. Paranormal Activity should be easy to find information on because it is the most recent and Blair Witch should be easy because it was the first movie of its kind, and that was a huge deal in the movie industry. Choosing my topic was easy because, like I said I have always been interested in scary movies, and I think that it is one of the genres that changes the most over time. People seem to be getting harder and harder to scare, and with that, the movies and the techniques for scaring people have to change. 

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Blair Witch Project

I would give this movie about 2 out of 5. The Blair Witch Project was one of those movies that may be good the first time you see it, and then it gets worse every time you watch it after that. This movie was good the first time watching it, I was young and in a dark room full of friends. Not, watching it almost 5 years later, it is definitely not as good as it seemed the first time. I think that the writers did a good job of trying to scare people without the gore and blood that are usually present in horror movies. I believe that the writers wanted people to be scared even when they left the theater, not just when they were in the theater. Movies like Paranormal Activity 1,2 and 3, which are more modern “mocumentaries”,  also tried to scare people without the violence.

Although the movie did not have the violence of other horror movies, there was other substance to the movie that the writers tried to use to make it scary. Some things that they tried worked, others did not. The “actors” are not trained in acting or using a video camera. In the beginning of the movie it was very slow, I wanted to fast-forward through the first 15 minutes or so, just to get to the part where they were in the woods. As I was watching I wanted to fast-forward again, because nothing really happened until about an hour into the movie. After the pointless random interviews in the beginning when the actors finally started talking, they were shooting like they were supposed to be shooting a documentary but it was VERY dramatic, and it just did not fit the rest of the movie. When she was shooting the opening scene in the cemetery, she was very serious and depressing but it just did not seem to fit the rest of the movie to me.  There was a huge difference when the actors were reading a line from a script and when it was improvised, the lines from the script were over dramatized and did not seem natural at all. The script was also very cheesy in some parts. When I was watching the movie for the first time, I thought that the shakiness of the camera made the movie more scary and realistic, but when I watched it the second time I got very dizzy and could not even watch it during some parts. Also, I know that the directors were trying to make it seem more “homemade” and less professional, but the lighting was really bad and did not fit with the scary mood the whole time.

I also think that there was too much unnecessary screaming. The screaming just got very annoying after a while. There was also a lot of swearing. So even though I know people probably would not let their children watch this, I don’t think that people that get annoyed by constant cursing should watch this movie either. Overall I just think that the movie may be good to watch once, just to experience, but after you watch it once, it is not worth wasting your time and watching it again.

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My Super "Exciting" Spring Break

Over spring break I am not doing anything super fun, like some trips that other people may be going on. I am just going to go home and relax. Our spring break is so early, and nobody else has the same as us, so I will have none of my friends home to hang out with, except the ones that go to community college, even though they aren’t on spring break either, at least they will be home. Friday night I will be going to my aunt’s to hang out with her, my uncle and my two little cousins, the boy is almost 4 and the girl is almost 3. I am very excited, I miss them, and they are too cute for words. 

Other than that I am doing nothing but maybe going to visit my old accounting teacher from high school to catch up and visit with her. I am going to go shopping for new business casual and professional clothes for Business Week events, because I am a part of the mentor/mentee program. So for that I am also going to be having to update my resume to bring to all those events. Some fun stuff, haha. My break is honestly going to be very boring with homework and looking for summer jobs. 

My best friend’s birthday is on Saturday and I have been telling him that I will make him a cheesecake since Christmas and I still haven’t, so I have to make him one sometime this week for a birthday present. I will probably be baking a lot over this break too, I want to make bacon brownies, cheesecake and then some cookies for my other friend that I promised him a while ago too. Maybe I will try to take a trip to Chicago one day, or go the outlet mall and get some new clothes. I really haven’t thought about it too much, I just know that we had to write what we are doing over break, and I really do not have a plan. I am just going to go with the flow.

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