Grass

Immediately as I began to read this poem, I already had an idea of where it was heading. The use of the names of the places in this poem is very powerful because they represent the places where war and a lot of death had occurred. This poem to me shows how we have forgotten a lot of the times about the mass amount of deaths that have occurred in places such as Gettysburg that have made a significant impact in the world. The grass represents this idea of forgetting them. It wants to cover up the bodies so that when people pass by the place, they do not even know where they are because all of the bodies are hidden from them. Words: 123

Blandeur

I got two different ideas and feelings from reading this poem. One idea was that the author was asking God to make all things look very similar, flat, or boring in some way. I think the title goes along with that. The title, “Blandeur”, is a made up word, but it gives us that feeling of things being bland. The other idea, however, that I got from this poem was that the author wanted God to do something very amazing. He was saying that it is by God’s power that the landscapes of the world are so different and amazing, but some people choose not to see it that way; therefore, maybe if God suddenly changed the landscapes significantly and made everything look the same, people would be able to see his power. Words: 134

Driving to Town Late to Mail a Letter

I love this poem because I can totally relate to this feeling. I love the snow and winter time, and sometimes snowy winter nights are some of the most beautiful and peaceful times someone could have. Other times, they can be the scariest nights because it can be very dangerous. I like how he explains how there is a sense of privacy in these kinds of nights. I know what he is talking about. Usually there are not a lot of people out on the roads on a snowy night like he explains, and it is very peaceful to just see the town asleep on a cold winter night like that. Also, in the very last part he says how he decides to just drive around a little longer and waste some time. I love to just drive around sometimes and soak all of the beauty and the alone time in, and nights like these are great for that. Words: 159

Europe

While I was home for Thanksgiving break, I spent a lot of time with my best friend. We have this great plan that someday we will go on a backpacking trip in Europe. Of course, this takes money to do, which we both do not have enough of right now, so hopefully one day we can do it which will probably be after college. When we were planning on places to go, it hit me that there are just way too many places in Europe that we want to visit, so how do you pick which places to go to? I want to go to a lot of places, and she wants to go to a lot of other places too. This will take a lot of time and effort, so maybe we should plan on making two Europe trips so we can make it to all of the places.

Words: 150

Thanksgiving Food

Thanksgiving is a very interesting holiday. On Thanksgiving, most people go to one of their family member’s house and scourge themselves with food; however, Thanksgiving is also a day that is supposed to remind you of all of the things that you should be thankful for that you take for granted a lot. I just thought it was interesting because we take food for granted a lot, so does that mean on Thanksgiving we devour as much food as we can so that we remind ourselves to be thankful for it? Or is it a little bit ironic because we eat all of this food while there are other people in the world who are starving and would like just an eighth of the amount of food that we eat on Thanksgiving. I just thought that was kind of interesting.

Words: 140

Road Trips

So this week I experienced for what seems like the hundredth time the eleven hour trek to Grand Rapids, Michigan and the eleven hour trek back to Memphis. I really do not mind road trips that much except for when it rains the whole time you’re in the car. You would think it really would not make that much of a difference but it really does. It rained literally the entire trip up to Michigan, and it seemed like such a long trip. I think it could be because you’re focused so much on the windshield wipers and the cars in front of you, and you’re not able to see barely out of your windshield because your wipers suck. Well, at least that’s how it seemed to go for me. On the way back, however, it did not rain that much, and the time seemed to just fly by.

Words: 149

Technology

I have mixed feelings about technology. Sometimes it makes life easier, and sometimes it makes your life more stressed. Sometimes I get so frustrated and annoyed with things like my computer that I wonder why I ever got it in the first place. Even when the technology is actually working correctly, you have to worry about paying bills for the use of the technology. There just seems to be a lot of stress involved with using new technology; however, it is weird to think about living in a world that does not have all of the new technology that we have now. Sometimes I think that I would like that world better, but there are times when I realize how I take technology for granted.

Words: 125

Soccer Season Over

This weekend, our team went to Baton Rouge for the first round of the NCAA tournament. We lost to Texas A&M, so our season is now over. It was a good season, but we were hoping for more. We won the conference championship for the third time in a row and were ready for a couple of wins in the NCAA tournament, but that didn’t happen this season. That just gives us more incentive for next season. Now that the season is over, we will be having a lot more time until Christmas break, and life is a lot different. It is always sad when the season is over due to a loss, but it happens to every team except for one.

Words: 122

Thanksgiving

There is only about one week of school left until Thanksgiving break, and I cannot wait to go home. I am making the trek to Michigan with some of my roommates. First, I am excited because I love road trips. A lot of people are really bored with road trips, but there always seems to be some sort of random fun that happens while sitting in the car for eleven hours, and the excitement of being on my way home for the first time in four months is awesome. Also, I just cannot wait to see my friends and family because I have not seen them in so long. I think that one of the greatest feelings in the world is when you’re starting to get close to home, and you’re driving and can see the places and landmarks that are familiar to you. This is when you know that you’re back home.

Words: 153

Life Dreams

I was just thinking yesterday, as my team and I were driving past the Dallas-Fort Worth Airport, about the dream I once had of being a pilot. I know that there are a lot of kids who have this dream when they are really little, but this was a dream of mine that I had as a kid but came back to me in high school. I thought hard about going to the Air Force for college and training, but I ended up deciding not to mostly because of expenses. (This is really weird because I just right now saw an Air Force commercial on ESPN.) Anyway, I was just thinking, isn’t it sad that a lot of people give up on their dreams because they simply cannot afford it? This is something that my best friend is struggling with right now. She is from Brazil and wants to be a movie producer, but college is so expensive. When she finishes this year of college, she will have to leave the community college she is at right now and go to a more expensive college to continue pursuing her dream. A lot of questions, concerns, and doubts flood our minds daily when we see that our dream is so far away. We need to continue to encourage people to follow their dreams. If it is God’s will, it will all work out. If it does not work out, then it’s God’s will to go a different direction with your life.

Words: 250

Dreams

Isn’t the idea of dreaming really weird? I don’t know the whole scientific explanation behind it, but it is really weird to me. The other thing that I seem to find with my dreams is that I will be in such an intense dream that seems so real to me, but when I wake up, I can almost never remember what my dream was about. My friend, on the other hand, almost always remembers her dreams. I just wonder what this tells me about the way I am. Does it mean something that I usually can’t remember my dreams? It is just so strange to me.

Words: 106

Persuasion in Music

Right now in my oral communication class, we are working out our persuasion speeches. Our teacher first gave us an assignment of listening to a song that we think has some sort of persuasion in it and discuss how it uses persuasion. That was a fun journal for me to write because I love music and am always thinking about the words in the song. The song that I chose was “Face Down” by The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus. It is a song that talks about abuse of a girl by her boyfriend and is really a touching song if you listen to the song. Listening to this song made me really aware of how this kind of this goes on all the time without us even knowing it. It’s really sad.

Words: 131

Reflection on "The Twelve Angry Jurors"

I went to see “The Twelve Angry Jurors”, put on by the University of Memphis, for one of my outside events. It was a very interesting play with a lot of personalities. The aspect of the play that I got the most out of was how some of the characters were so driven by their own prejudices, emotions, and past experiences, and how they influenced their decision on whether the person was guilty or not. There is a specific part in the play where one of the jurors gets so mad at another juror that he says, “I’m going to kill you!” This is significant because this is what a witness said that the accused person said before he supposedly killed his father. This just shows how hateful and quick to judge that humankind is. We are so quick to point the finger at others without even knowing if it is true. Also, for me this was all significant because, as a Christian, I believe that it is just as bad to murder someone as it is to hate someone like the one juror hated the other juror. This play really showed me how sinful and impulsive the human kind is. It also showed how preoccupied we are with our own lives and the little things that are going on in our lives, and when someone else’s life is on the line, a lot of the times we are very quick to just pass by on others’ lives. I saw this in the play when some of the characters wanted to simply vote that the person was guilty without even talking about it because they just wanted to go home and eat dinner or go to a baseball game. We put unimportant things as our top priorities and don’t think about the well being of others.

Words: 306

Poetry Reading Event

Tonight I went to the poetry reading at the Outlands café. It was a really fun, interesting, relaxing time and feeling. There were four different local poets there who read a collection of each of their poems. Not only was it interesting and nice to hear the poetry, but it was also interesting to be in that coffee shop with the different people around and the different personalities of the poets. It had a really safe and cozy feel to it. It wasn’t very organized which I liked. Each author had a lot of different themes to their poems including love, loneliness, suicide, Bible stories, time, random things like avocado colored toilets, and a bunch of other things. For me, it was really interesting to watch the authors as they read or recited their poems. Each had a different expression and style of reciting their poems. One man was very animated in how he read his poems and was really funny and got the audience into his poems. Another man was very different. He had his poems all memorized and looked a lot more serious with a more solemn appearance about him. This affected my mood and how I would react to each of their poems. It was a lot more difficult for me to understand the more solemn man because his poems were more deep, but it was almost like I could relate with him in some instances when he was talking about love or loneliness because it is something universal that happens with all of us, and we do not need to even fully understand what he says, we can feel it in the way he says the words. I could relate with some of the other poems that were really simple and seemed to resemble some aspects of my childhood. I could visualize the memories from my childhood Sunday school classes when one author read about the feelings of certain Bible characters and their stories. Another poem was about playing the game “Heads Up Seven Up” which I played as a child in elementary and middle school. When the author was explaining the senses involved in this game, I could specifically remember and almost smell and feel the situation happening over again at that moment. My experience at the poetry reading was simply really good for me to relax and get away from all the stress going on in my life and listen and experience the words of different people in my community.

Words: 460

Reflection on class

In class we have been talking about the relationship and the themes found in two of O’Connor’s stories, “A Good Man is Hard to Find” and “Revelation.” Both have the theme of having some sort of difference and tension between two generations. This is the theme that I have found very interesting because I can experience this in my own life. In both stories, there is an older woman who believes that she has it all put together and is a “good” person. There is also a younger person in each story who crosses into the older person’s life and brings along with them new values, ideas, and view on the world. The younger generation shows the older generation shows the older that they are not correct on everything, and the older generation is a bit hypocritical. I think that this is something that people will continually experience as they grow older and new generations come into the world. Each generation can learn from the other, and I think that this is something that everyone can think about and remember.

Words: 180

Sunny Day

Today is one of the few days we have had this fall that is actually sunny and clear out. I am sitting here in the library looking out of the window in the back, and I have finally found a place on this campus that is actually really pretty. The sun is reflecting off of the trees, and I see the changing colors of the leaves. This really brings me a sense of peace. Sitting here looking out of the window with the sun shining and soft acoustic guitar music playing is all I could ask for right now. I really am so blessed, and I know that I take it for granted a lot. A lot of people in this world have it a whole lot harder than I do, but I forget to realize that a lot of the time. God has given me so much to be thankful for, and I could not ask for anything more because I deserve nothing. This really is a beautiful day.

Words: 170

Graduating

I have been thinking lately about what I want to do after I actually get my degree. Situations keep coming up where people keep asking me this, and it has made me start to think a lot about it. Thinking about it, however, has gotten me nowhere. I do not know what I want to do with my degree. I am a Spanish major and have thought about taking up teaching, but really, I have no idea. It is so weird to think about this because being out in the real world seems so far away, but it is actually not that far away. I still feel so young, but in two and a half years, I am probably going to be pursuing some sort of real job in the real world.

Words: 132

Reflection on Flannery O'Connor

Flannery O’Connor was a Southerner and a Catholic. We can see how her identity as a Southerner and a Catholic are played out in the stories she writes. I am not a Southerner; rather, I am a Northerner from Michigan, and the whole Southern atmosphere is very different than it is in the North. Some things that I picked out from O’Connor’s stories that seem very Southern to me are, first, how she talks using racial slurs in the story. I think that the use of these words are also due to the time frame that this was written in, but I also think that it is a more Southern thing to use those words. Another thing that seems very Southern to me is how there is a great deal of respect that seems to be given to the elderly and certain people like that. I am not saying that we do not respect our elders in the North, but it seems to be a different kind of respect in the South. It is kind of like the Southern hospitality idea. The whole aspect of religion in all of her stories I think ties into the Southern aspect too. I always think of the South as being very Christian, and these stories made that idea even more prominent to me. The Catholic aspect in all of the stories is very interesting too. When I think of the South, I actually do not think of it being Catholic. I think of the South as being more Protestant with all of the Baptist churches and such. O’Connor’s being Catholic is interesting to me because I am a Christian, and her view of Christianity seems very skewed and confusing to me. As a Christian, I believe that I am saved by salvation through the death of Christ; however, while reading O’Connor’s stories, it seems to me that she has the belief that she has to do good things in God’s eyes in order to be saved.

Words: 333

Acting

After acting out our remake of “The Glass Menagerie”, I have seen that there is no way I would be able to be an actress. It takes me too long to get through a certain line or scene because it is so hard for me to take my character seriously. I think part of this is because in life in general, I do not put on a face. I am who I am. I don’t try to change my personality so people like me more or anything like that. I am not saying that actors and actresses all put on a fake personality in life. I am just saying that I think that it is true for me that I am not a good actress because I do not put on a face in life.

Words: 135

Fall and Family

Some of my family is coming to Memphis tomorrow from Michigan, and it seems to be a great time for them to come. When I go outside, I can feel the cool breeze and hear the leaves blowing, and it makes me think about my family and home. I love the fall and the cool weather. It all brings back memories of football games, bonfires, Halloween, and pumpkin pie. I am excited to see my family because they, too, will bring me a little bit of their fall spirit with them. I haven’t seen my family in 3 months and am excited to see how my little brothers and sisters keep growing.

Words: 112