EmaleeMeyerhoff

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Missy Vianello

Hello, my name is Missy Vianello. I'm a junior at my local high school and in my science class we were learning about hoaxes. We had an assignment to create our own one and I had the perfect idea. My best friend and closest cousin looked exactly alike. My parents just said that it was a strong family resemblance. So for my project me and my cousin would show up at my school and during the morning announcements I would come out with the great news that I had found my long lost twin. I had everything planed out; it was going to be great. My cousin on the other hand was a little nervous and didn't know what to think about it. We went through with it anyways. What I didn't know was how much more this project would affect me and my cousin than just a funny prank and a good grade. The video went viral and was posted all over YouTube and soon some girl added me on Facebook saying it was a manner of "life and birth". Who says that? Come to find out she look just like me and my cousin. We met and turns out we all are sisters in a weird and crazy story. My life has been a crazy ride but at least now I've found my two sisters that will help me through whatever happens.

Thursday, January 12, 2012

Beginning of Third Quarter

With a New Year and new quarter brings once again a new book to read and to blog about. This time I am reading the book “Three Black Swans” by Caroline B. Cooney. I really didn’t put much thought in choosing this book so I hope it keeps my attention and that I enjoy it. I’ve heard many different things from lots of different people about this book, things like the beginning is really slow and very predictable, for this blogs sake I hope these are not true for me. Have you or do you know of someone who has read this book? If so what did you think about it? Maybe at the after I read the book our opinions might relate or they might even be completely opposite. Either way this quarter our blogs and the way they are set up is almost completely up to us. I say almost completely because we are still graded on these and our teacher has given us a checklist to sort of go by. I am in a way happy about this fact and in another not so much. I like having the freedom of doing what we want just because I hate being told what to do and this also gives us a way to let our creative side to come out and be useful. Then again you have to have a creative side and sometimes its easier just to have it all laid out for us and just follow directions but I’m sure this new way will be great so I’m hoping that my blog will become more creative and more pleasing to the eye! Any suggestions about being more creative are always welcome. Wish me luck!

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.