EmaleeMeyerhoff: 2011

Sunday, December 11, 2011

A Letter to Lucy Grealy

Emalee Meyerhoff

Ms. Hayes

English III

December 11, 2011

Dear Miss Lucy Grealy,

I recently read your book “Autobiography of a Face” and started off with the notion of this book being another “candy coated” everything’s going to be alright, “give it time” sad story. I also had every intention on not liking the book because I was assigned to read it in my English class. But you most definitely proved me wrong on how the book was going to be laid out and I quite enjoyed your writing. I am sorry you had to live your life the way you did but as you said you don’t want anyone’s sympathy but I’m glad you had the courage and the backbone to write about your life. I am also very pleased on how blunt and real you were with the events in your life and how you told of your true feelings. As the reader I got to see the various “ups” and “downs” of your life instead of just focusing on the good or bad as others might do. You made me feel as though I was sitting right there by you in every setting of the book, seeing everything you were seeing and you tried to help the reader feel what you were feeling but not wanting to ever put that sadness on someone else you said you left some details out and that just shows the type of person you are. Your book really made me think of how you and everyone lives there life during this century. Even though I respect you as a writer and I can never judge you for your actions because it’s not my place you showed everyone how as fallen weak humans we can never be happy and we always want more or something different. Even after all your surgeries and facial reconstructions your high hopes always failed you. You never stopped wanting more, to be better looking even after you called yourself beautiful, changing you appearance to fit in with the crowd or try making friends, using multiple men to make yourself feel wanted along with desired and even after the writing of your book you over dose on heroin. Nothing made you happy enough and you kept looking for something more. Most people who would read this would call me inconsiderate, unworthy of judgment or even just completely stupid but that’s what I’m trying to sound like. I’m saying if you really look at the human kind, after you get what you really think you want you still won’t be as happy as you wished. There always comes another thing and another or you hope get so high you become disappointed with what life so graciously gives you and we never really sit and think how much worse it could be or that we could be dead with no life and no hope at all. I wish this could be different and I wish you life didn’t end the way it did and that you could read this letter but your book made me really think and I thank you for that and I’m very pleased that I read it.

Sincerely,

Emalee Meyerhoff

Another Animoto

Helmuth Hubener's Photo Life

Image: Hamburg, around 1929, Fuhlsbüttel Prison, KZ-Gedenkstätte Neuengamme

The Twenty-First Century English Classroom

So I've just been asked how I feel about having to be taught and learn in a English classroom during this twenty-first century. Personally I have a whole lot of mixed feelings. In this age the classroom is filled with computers, flash drives, smart boards, and everywhere you are in the building you can get an Internet connection. As much of a convenience it might be I think it is a total cop out to our education. If you need to write a paper, you have Word Document which all you have to do is type what you need and it will spell check, double space, give you page numbers, give you synonyms and even different fonts and sizes to help make you work longer than what it really is. Using the Document with spell check means you don't even need to know how to spell anymore or even have legible handwriting the computer does it for you. The use of knowing how to spell, or use the Thesaurus to look up synonyms is irrelevant now. Not only the Word Document but also the whole Internet site including Google, Bing, Yahoo Search and Wikapedia is just a cop out. You barley have to do anything to find out information about anything in the world. What happened to reading and using the library to actually find research and new information on a subject? It was called using your brain and the resources you had. I believe because of these easy, new and "improved" sources we are becoming lazier and more stupid. Don't get me wrong I do have a facebook, e-mail, and obviously a blog site but that's because the age I was born into has corrupted me and sucked me into the its technological ways that make us all lazy and use the easy way out and also, to get a grade in my English class I have to use these sources so the wrap up is that I think that an English class in the twenty-first century is lazy and its ways have become useless and I feel as though I don't learn what I truly need and in a way I wish we would go back to some of the old ways and use our brain more and explore more text during the class.

Thursday, November 10, 2011

Second Semester Comments

Hey Arielle!
Me and you are pretty much in the same boat. Floating down this crazy and rapid filled "6th hour English River"! I was too nervous about the blog grades but I guess it went well for the both of us. I saw that you had a problem with spelling and you of all people should know how bad I am at spelling but what I did before I turned in my paper was to highlight the whole paper and spellcheck every blog entry! I saw a lot of things I spelled wrong I would have never would have changed on my own. So just some helpful advice for you :) I wish you luck for this quater blogging!

Thursday, October 27, 2011

Blog Reflection

Seeing my first quarter grades today I'm quite pleased. I guess there is always room for improvement in everything though. I guess I would try and get everything and every blog in on time and do them when they are assigned instead of waiting till the last minute. What I did right was probably very little but enough to get by. My goals this quarter is to work harder and to care more about my grade on this blog. I will keep up on my reading so I don't have to rush at the end. Those are my goals and what I did right and wrong.

My attitude toward the blogs have change very little. I still dislike having to read two books right now, The Scarlet Letter along with my chosen book The Boy Who Dared. Having to do both is challenging and obnoxious. Even in saying that, blogging is better than writting paper after paper on these books and having a shorter due date for them. With bloging you have new and different topics each week and different choices. One thing I do hate about blogging is that it is all on the computer. I hate dealing with electronics all the time. They are very unrealiable and sometimes complicated to use also to do these assignment you have to have computer along with internet. Some days the internet can be slow or even not work because of natural things or technical problems.

My new book for the second quater is The Boy Who Dared. I know many who have read it and I've gotten some good reviews so I am hopeful. Another reason I chose this book is because its based in the time of World War II which is a time I enjoy reading along with other times in history. This quater I hope to have more creative blogs with more pictures/ visual refferences. I think just reading a blog is boring and I think it makes my blog look boring and bland. I hope to also have my blogs up more contenuiously rather than last quater when they were all put up at the end. That is my new book and what you might see on my blog. Still can't believe its still going on, Oh fun....

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Vlog

My very first vlog o.O!

Commenting

Simone's Vlog-Hey Simone! Loved your blog. How strange this will be my first time Vloging too! I liked the details you gave about the book, not too much just right. I'm actually thinking about reading that book for our next set of blogs. Thanks for the all the information!

Melinda's 20 Pictures- Hey. I love your twenty pictures that represent your book. Its like you don't even need the captions because the pictures explain them selves. These pictures really makes me interested and I want to read the book. I also love the picture choices for the two guys. If that's how they are described in the book then I'm defiantly going to real it! Good job and thanks for the pictures.

Hannah's 20 Ppictures- Hey Hannah. The pictures you choose to use are very cool. I love how they all catch your attention and you used colorful and very animated pictures. I've never heard of this book before but now seeing the picture you picked and reading the captions help me see what the book has in store. Hope you enjoyed your book!
~Emalee