Community Service Mini-Informal Essay Thing

This is another queued post, because I have no life and therefore spend a heck of a lot of time thinking about blog-worthy things yet I don't want to post more than once per day. You'd think I'd have better things to do than contemplate the assumptions, trends, and connotations associated with the word "liberal." Well guess what: Either I don't, or I just multi-task rather well. Or both.


(Paragraph of Self-Deprecation Has Achieved Completion)


Anyways. I was actually working on my Civics & Economics (we're in the Civics portion now) homework and realized the mini-informal-essay I was writing might be of interest to you guys, since it's about my involvement with my old elementary school's writing club, which I talk about on here from time to time. (I can't help but feel that my teacher's judging me, though. I write my Economics book report on For The Win by Cory Doctorow, interview Alan Lastufka for the Economics powerpoint, and now I'm confessing that I write novels in my free time for Civics. Nerd pride, you guys. DFTBA.)


At any rate, here is the essay:

I volunteer as a mentor in the writing club at my old elementary school, and have been doing so for over a year. This club is comprised of 4th and 5th graders, and meets on a bi-weekly basis.

In June 2010, the teacher-sponsor of the club announced she was leaving to take a job at a different school, so in the fall, my best friend (the other mentor) and I were the ones to take the initiative in finding another teacher to keep the club going.

Our job main job is to circulate among the students throughout the hour, answering their questions, proof-reading their stories, and keeping them on-task. Sometimes we lead small groups in which the students read their stories aloud before listening to feedback given by the others. In November, I organized participation in National Novel Writing Month’s Young Writer’s Program, the adult version of which I have now completed two years in a row. This involved helping the kids to set a reasonable word-count goal for themselves and to then meet it by the end of the month. The majority of them completed and even exceeded their goals, and several of the same kids are now in the midst of NaNoWriMo’s sister program, Script Frenzy.

Being a high school mentor for these kids is a unique experience, because I don’t hold the status of at teacher, nor do I view them as being strictly under my authority despite that I do expect them to listen. There is a relationship of mutual respect and understanding, which has done wonders when it comes to them listening to my writing advice. I’m close enough in age that I’m not in the “I’ll never be that old” unreachable category, but I’m also in talks with a literary agent to get my one completed novel published. This allows them to believe that I give them suggestions based on experience rather than curriculum or “this is just the way I want you to do it,” as is sometimes the belief regarding teachers.

I find volunteering with this club to be very fulfilling. It’s exactly the kind of club I wish the school had had when I was there, so I’m glad to be a part of making it possible for the kids like me who are there right now.

Welcome To April

"In wisdom gathered over time I have found that every experience is a form of exploration." - Ansel Adams. I love that.


Back in December I wrote a post that was rather cruel towards the spirit of Christmas. I regretted this post hours after I put it up, and possibly took it down afterwards. However, I meant what I said at the time, and I wasn't happy.


But the feelings depicted in that post are nothing compared to the hatred I have for April 1st, and I hate it for a few reasons.

1. There is usually a span of 30 seconds where I fall for a given joke/prank/lie, during which I am either very excited, very angry, very confused, or any combination of the above. Then I remember the date and just feel kind of stupid. This is not fun.
2. It's the one day of the year when it's considered perfectly acceptable to tell lies just to see other people's reactions. This is usually considered manipulative and other derogatory adjectives I would rather not use. But for some reason it's considered to be okay today. I tend not to think that some socially-frowned-on things should be suddenly accepted just because everyone's doing it at once. Halloween doesn't count, because you just leave your lights off if you don't want kids asking for candy so hopefully no one will bother you.
3. You can't trust anything anyone says. If it's a personal thing ("I'm pregnant!") chances are it's a lie (and if it's not, they just have to learn to pick better days to announce such things), but when it comes to news they're reporting ("Warner Brothers pushed back the Harry Potter date AGAIN!") there's really no knowing, and then you have to go look it up before saying anything (yes, Hannah, I had to do this.) You figure it's most likely a joke, but if Person In Question is reacting just the way they would if it were true...you don't know.

But today is also a couple other things. It's the start of Script Frenzy, for one. So, readers: are you participating in that, what's your script about, and how's it coming?


Today is also the first day of BEDA (Blog Every Day in April). I'm not officially participating in this event either, mainly because it isn't that impressive of a feat for me since I blog almost every day anyway, so I'm not going to bother committing to it. However, I'm glad some people do, because it means there are lots more lovely posts waiting for me in my Google Reader every day.


And speaking of BEDA, and my last post, and the interview with Alan Lastufka...here's the link to Alan's first BEDA post which is basically his take on the same thing Kenny and I have been talking about, although I don't think he reads either of us.

A Character of an Assignment

Ah, cheesy post titles. At least you sound mildly interesting.

We spent most of Creative Writing today reading each other our character profiles/paragraphs. Many were interesting, many were depressing, and many were about a hitman-priest.

Our homework was all of the above, with the priest being optional. We have to write 47 more character profiles for 47 more characters. An interesting assignment, a depressingly large assignment, and an assignment to possibly include a hitman-priest.

I'm thinking of doing some of them on characters I already have. My teacher won't know, and this could really be helpful to me. That's the point, right? To improve my writing?

So far I've completed 5/50 (including the 3 already done for homework last night), and am working on another one. Two of them (Anthony and Alfred Zuckermangut) are brothers, and I might do one about Mrs. Paula Urga-Torie's husband Robert.
This has proven to be a difficult yet enjoyable thing to do.

Crap, I need to go to my math homework. I completely forgot about that. Grrr.