Author: JessicaC

The teacher, Ms. Orville seems at first strict and demanding, but in reality she is just passionate. She likes things to go the way she wants, and is often harsh, as shown when she said, “You are not cattle milling in a pen. Enough foolish gaping! Come, come, form into lines.” She also has no problem insulting someone. For example, once, she wrote “young Bruce’s penmanship was comparable to a chicken’s– if a chicken could write.”

Meanwhile, Ms Wilson is more relaxed and relatable to the children. She is more leisurely and doesn’t prioritize learning. She interacts with them and isn’t as strict. She becomes close with most of the class, is lenient, and rolls along with whatever the students do.

In the end, the students learnt more in Ms. Orville’s class, but liked Ms. Wilson’s class more.

(I only have time to write something short so I’m doing this.)

A modest proposal was a satirical article meant to display how the wealthy people were hypocrites. Jonathon Swift was known for writing unserious articles, and he wanted to do an article without people not taking it seriously. He published it anonymously so people would take it seriously, and not immediately realize it was supposed to be satirical.

In “Seventh Grade” by Gary Soto, the theme is that things seem terrible before you get to know them. Victor starts the first day of seventh grade unsure of what it’ll bring, but at the end of the day, he likes seventh grade.

Victor goes into seventh grade nervous. He is taking a French elective for class. He talks a bit with his friend, Michael, about scowling and he leaves to go to class. On the way to class, he meets the girl he likes, Teresa. He finished English and math and goes to eat lunch. After lunch, he has French class. He fakes knowing French and the teacher doesn’t rat him out, remembering what it was like when he was in love. At the end of school, he thinks that school isn’t so bad after all.

Many things seem terrible at first, but after it’s done you realize it isn’t so bad, such as flu shots. Everyone has something they are scared of but overcome. I used to be scared of the dark but I once went to go to the restroom at night and I realized “this isn’t so bad,” which is what got me over my fear of the dark.

In “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson, people only do anything because of tradition.

Every year, the town goes to the town square for a lottery. The tickets are put in a black box with it’s paint flaking off, and the one drawn out is stoned to death. Some towns next to them didn’t do lotteries anymore, but this town thought that they had too do it, because it’s tradition. Tessie Hutchinson was chosen this year, and everyone, including the children participates.

If any normal human were to learn off this tradition, they would be horrified. But to this town, It’s simply tradition to them. It’s what they’ve always done, and what they will always try to continue to do. Even the young children and toddlers. They look down on anyone who isn’t doing it. Other towns have come to their senses, but this town seems adamant on continuing the tradition.

Climate change is caused by global warming. The earth is hotter and hotter each day, because of global warming, causing climate change. In the article, it says that “Earth’s ice sheets are losing so much mass it’s becoming obvious from space. “

Both the Arctic and Antarctica are melting fast. The polar bears, penguins, seals and other animals are in danger. Researchers said that “Greenland’s ice sheet lost an average of 200 gigatons of ice per year, while Antarctica’s ice sheet lost an average of 118 gigatons per year; for reference, a single gigaton of ice is enough to fill 400,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools.” That is a lot.

People should help slow climate change.

In the short story “The Moustache” by Robert Cormier, the lesson is to cherish childhood.

Mike, the main character of the story, has a moustache. His family wants time to shave it off, but he wants to keep it. His grandmother has dementia, and he goes to visit her because he feels guilty about not doing so. When he comes there, her grandmother thinks that he is his grandfather, who is also named Mike. She says that she wants to apologize for accusing him. When Mike gets home, he shaves off his moustache.

Mike got a moustache to prove that he could, and he kept the moustache because he thinks it makes him look like an adult. However, when he realizes what being an adult is like, he shaves it off.

I didn’t really have a “plan” for this. I just liked how creatively books used it and it’s a fascinating subject.

Wikipedia defines the butterfly effect as “the sensitive dependence on initial conditions in which a small change in one state of a deterministic nonlinear system can result in large differences in a later state.” Basically, the butterfly effect is when you do something somewhere or sometime, and the consequences of your actions get larger and larger, until something big happens.

In “A Sound of Thunder” a tiny action, stepping in mud, causes a change in which a different president is elected. Everything is fictional, including the presidents, but it shows a great example of the effect.

If you, hypothetically, went fishing, and fished all the fish in a creek, then you might have doomed humanity in the future. Perhaps a bunch of animals relying on that animal for food die, and omnivores who eat that animal for food turn to eat oxygen producing plants or something. That is the example of the butterfly effect.

Many books involving time traveling take use of the butterfly effect. In my opinion, it is a cool concept.

In my opinion, the young man who was in love with the Princess opened the door with the tiger in it.

The story of “The Lady, or the Tiger?” goes as follows: In a land where a semi-barbaric king ruled, an accused person would face a decision to open two doors. One of the doors would lead to a lady and the other door would lead to a hungry tiger. This was deemed fair.

The king had a daughter, who was the ” apple of his eye.” A young man loved the princess and the princess loved him back. Her father found out and the man was convicted. The man was given the choice with the two doors. The princess knew what door held the lady and which door held the tiger. She told him to choose the door on the right. No one knows what fate he faced.

Here are my reasons for why she told him to go to the door with the tiger in it:

First, if the Princess chose the door with the lady then the man would have been married to the lady and the Princess wouldn’t be with the man. She might have rather have him die than to be with someone else. Love is a strong emotion.

Secondly, as the short story says, she is “semi-barbaric” like the king. Normally, I would have thought that maybe she would be willing to lose her love interest for him to be still alive, but perhaps, as she is “semi-barbaric” she might not.

These are the reasons why I think the man opened the door with the tiger.

The lesson in “Hearts and Hands” is to distrust what people say. Two men, handcuffed together, sit across from a woman in a train.  The lady speaks to the first man, a handsome one. The man looks surprised and he shakes her hand, asking her to “excuse the other hand.” The other man, a glum-faced one, says that the handsome man, Easton, is a marshal. Easton explains he was a marshal and the lady says that she currently is free to be courted. The gloomy man asks for a smoke, and Easton agrees, so they exit. A man nearby comments that the marshal is all right, and his neighbor points out he is really young. The first man explains the marshal is the criminal

In Hearts and Hands by O Henry, Miss Fairchild is naive. When the sad man says that Easton is a marshal and he is bringing him to jail for 7 years, “the girl… [took] a deep breath and returning color.”  She believes him. She trusts that he won’t lie and takes comfort in it. Therefore, she is naive. 

Mr. Easton however, appears calm and composed. He has a “bold, frank countenance and manner.” Even though he isn’t the actual marshal, he is very formal.

The glum-faced man, A.K.A the actual marshal, seems grumpy and disinterested. He is “ruffled, glum-faced person, heavily built and roughly dressed,” as if he was an actual robber. However, he was nice enough to pretend to be the bad guy so that Mr. Easton could save face. Though he appears unlikeable, he is actually kind.

The article talks about how people managed to map out a mouse brain layer by layer to create the most detailed diagram of a mouse brain ever. I personally think that it is astounding that people managed to have science sophisticated enough to be able to trace every neuron in a mouse.

People didn’t even used to be able to take pictures in color. They could only take them in black and white. Now, we can do all this. It’s amazing to see science evolve and new machines being invented and breakthroughs in medicine. It makes you wonder what people will create in 200 years.

If someone showed this picture to anyone in the 1800’s and said that was the image of a mouse brain, unless they were very gullible, they would think that they were lying. If then the person could prove they were telling the truth, they would probably think that it was magic or something. If we saw someone from the 23rd century, we would probably think that that was magic.

If this is what people can do now, I’m interested to see what they event next.