Reflections

Memoir: I was trying to figure out how I could make this piece as energetic as possible, even though the experience was not funny and very sad. The writing work I did in this piece included different forms of brushstrokes and I worked on comma errors, as suggested by Mrs. Turner. I also took Mrs. Turner's advice that she had given India in her Nature essay about using passive voice and went back through my piece to correct any mistakes that I might have had.
The Crucible Document: I did a lot of revisions on this paper. I had originally started to show how Abigail and my cell phone were alike and different in the introduction and in the conclusion. Mrs. Turner told me that I should not do this. I had to go back and revise my entire introduction and part of my conclusion. I wish that I could have written something as fantastic as Hank's Scarlet Letter essay. His essay was so good that I really didn't believe that he had wrote it himself.

The Crucible Document

Abigail and the Cell Phone

Abigail Williams is one of the very complex characters in Arthur Miller's novel. Through Abigail's deceiving nature in The Crucible, Arthur Miller's description of Abigail's characteristics can show just how complex she really is.
Abigail is very manipulative, sneaky, conniving, and deceitful. She really reminds me of my cell phone that I have. For instance, both can get you in a lot of trouble. In the play, Abigail is falsely accusing people of practicing witchcraft so that she could stay out of trouble. She stayed out of trouble by getting other people in trouble and hanged if they didn't confess. A cell phone could get you in trouble for cheating, going off, or just using it. You get in trouble if it goes off because you're not supposed to have it in school anyway, but you're in even more trouble if you get caught cheating by texting answers to tests or using it in class when you're not supposed to. Both can store a lot of information in their memories, have faces, are white, and are a means of communication. They can be damaged or beaten up by running them over with a car, slamming them in a door, or smashing their faces in with a hammer. They can also be used as hostages. Someone could get whatever they want from you by taking your phone and threatening to do something horrible to it. Finally, they can both be dressed up. You can dress your cell phone with a nice, pretty cover that has dolphins or USC Gamecocks on it.
However, Abigail can be very different than a modern day cell phone in multiple ways. For example, Abigail is a real human and made of blood, skin, and organs. A cell phone is made of plastic, metal, and a battery. The certain amount of memory space is a big difference between the two. For example, any human, including Abigail, has an infinite amount of space to store information in a memory. A cell phone has a certain amount of gigabytes for its memory. The only difference is that most humans have a memory, but can not remember some things, especially important things such as birthdays or anniversaries. Also, one cell phone can be made into a lot of different shapes and colors, and can also slide open or flip open. Abigail is just one person. Unless she had a twin that Arthur Miller was not aware of, Abigail was one size, one shape, one color, and she could not be slid or flipped open. Finally, any human can steal money and run away, but any cell phone can not. Cell phones are just objects. They don't have legs and arms like real humans, and if they did, you might want to run. If I see a cell phone get up and steal something, all of Anderson, South Carolina would probably hear me screaming and running down the road.
As you can see, Abigail has a lot of negative character flaws as well as positive things about her. Even though it was not clearly stated, Arthur Miller's description of Abigail's characteristics can be compared to a cell phone. All you have to do is use your imagination.

Rollerblading

It was a couple of weeks after school let out for the summer. On a cool summer day, the sun shone brightly in the sky and the wind rustled the leaves in the trees. I sat in my room thinking of what to do on a day like this when it hit me. I should go rollerblading down my driveway and into the road. You may all think that this doesn't sound too bad but, clueless, you are BADLY mistaken. You see, my house is at the top of this steep hill with a patchy driveway because I, mischievously smart, used to dig up bits of the concrete when I first moved here because I was bored. Active voice So you see, it's not just dangerous, but also reckless, idiotic, and very painful, but FUN!
Anyway, I rounded up my younger and annoying brother and sister and we all went out the front door to put our skates on. Confusingly slow, I, the "special kind of stupid" everyone in ROTC calls me, decided to roller blade from the very top of my driveway because I thought that I could gain a lot of momentum that way. I started going downhill so fast it became scary because I lost control of my roller blades. Suddenly, one of my wheels on my left foot got caught in a little crack about halfway down. The next thing I knew, I did some flips in the air. My left roller blade flew off somewhere to the middle of the yard.Participle Phrase Flying gracefully, I landed on my backside and rolled all the way down into the ditch and hit my front teeth on the pole of the mailbox. In the process of my downfall, I somehow managed to obtain bits and pieces of rock, grass, and dirt not only in my hair and clothes, but in my mouth as well. Absolute Fear rising, I suspected that, since I live in front of the fairgrounds, many of the people that drove by that day had a real laugh seeing me roll down a hill like a little ragdoll.
The ONLY thing that my brother and sister ever did made me very mad. They pointed and laughed. Nobody came to help me or see how hurt I became. They didn't seem to care about me. They just kept saying that I should have listened to them in the first place and none of it would have happened. Although bruised and cut all over my body because I had on a tank top and a pair of shorts, I had a lot of fun. I did not have any kind of protection on me whatsoever, so you can get a pretty good picture of what that scene looked like. Adjectives shifted out of order Hurt, I, dirty and cut everywhere, went to go tell my mom what happened. Do you know what she did? Nothing! She told me that she heard me screaming, but she didn't look out the window because she thought I went crazy and so had nothing to worry about. I just laughed because in a way, she spoke the truth.
Reality overtaking me, I did a crazy and very stupid thing and I would have did it again if I hadn't have broken my roller blades. Actually, I had a lot of fun that day and promised myself that I would get a new pair of roller blades and do it again, except this time it will be in December when the driveway has ice on it, because acting crazy, risky, and taking chances with my life is what I do!