Here's a little bookmark for the logical one in all of us.

♦ Inspired by a book that i saw on the internet and didn't actually read.

Image is from some Florida tourism site.

An ode to my past self's Ideals

♦ This entry has been sensationalized a tiny bit, taken out of context and exaggerated.

I was reading back over my journal in grade 8. It's... just... there are no words. In case you're wondering what I mean, here's a song I wrote. Some people write songs about places or events that inspire them. Some people write songs about someone they love but will never be with. I went and wrote a song about Katelyn, a very pretty, confident, happy girl who I wanted to be like and be friends with.

katelyn b was here
sayin heeyyy!
little kate b

kate is my idol
as you can plainly
see, i have a nice idea
hidden inside me

i wish i could be like kate
little kate b

katelyn b was here
sayin heeyyy!
little kate b

i'll straighten my hair
join volleyball
and be silly...
for little kate b

i don't think they would protest
if i joined volleyball next year
i'll get my does of popularity
in volleyball next year

little kate b
always my idol
i wish i could be like kate
little kate b

A change in the cold landscape: Thinking abstractly about "friendship"

♦ Back in the day, I mean for the last eight or so years of eleven years that I have been in figure skating, I got used to the way nobody was open to friendship other than the groups of friends that had been established sometime when I wasn't paying attention.

I assumed everyone was like that, and I was doing something wrong because it seemed like it was only me who wasn't in their group of friends. In reality, my shyness was only part of the problem.

Skating in almost every aspect, was something that I had to work for. One of the only things I had to work for. Axels were a leap of faith and I found that hard to do, constantly over thinking.

I worked at my axel every day, and I worked at trying to figure out what I was doing wrong, and what everyone else was doing right. I didn't instinctively understand what it meant to be part of a frienship, I knew what it looked from the outside looking in.

It was a hard way to learn friendship skills, especially for someone who doesn't like being behind (less advanced than) other people.

But good things came out of it: I was good at spins and edges. I am a more confident person, and did learn to connect with people who are more open, and not caught up in finite closed groups. I learned not to take the person whom I can hang around with and talk with all weekend volunteering at the rink, for granted. (Thank you for being a good friend this weekend.)

After a half year break from skating this year (for time to do dance, study, and even sleep), I've noticed a change in the cold landscape of friendship.

Essays

This is the first essay I wrote on my own to try to remedy the fact that I am really bad at writing essays. I just gave up by the time I got to the conclusion.

Every explanation of How To Write a Good Essay, is the same, it seems. Sure, there are some differences, but the basic structure is the same. It always tends to be written by someone who is good at writing, and maybe does not understand that people might not naturally know what to write in an essay.

After you have seen this type of explanation a couple of times, it gets monotonous and uninformative, especially the passages that say what to do, explain what not to do, but do not explain how to write it well. These explanations should explain how to write a good essay, instead of describing vaguely what is supposed to be in an essay.

Each of these explanations starts off explaining the basics, which is decent enough. They explain that an essay is made up of an introduction, body paragraph(s), and a conclusion, then go on to explain what each of these requires.

First the writer explains about an introduction. Here, the writer uses the same vague phrases that sound good but aren't really helpful. The first sentence in the introduction must "grab the reader's attention," and introduce them to the topic you will be discussing. Nothing is said of how to formulate this sentence, what to do to make the sentence good, just that it must be good. Sometimes an example is added which could potentially be helpful. Most of them state what not to do--for example do not start out with a personal anecdote in an academic essay.

After explaining vaguely how it is good to start off writing an essay--usually the hardest part is getting started--they explain about a thesis statement. They put a lot of emphasis on the thesis statement because it is such an important part of an essay, and sometimes tricky to write. Here they usually do a good job giving examples and explaining how to write a good thesis statement. Kudos to them.

After elaborate explanations about the thesis statement, the writer moves on to explain about the body paragraphs. The body paragraphs are easy enough if you have something concrete to write about, like for example the effect of blah blah blah on the start of the second world war. However it can get tricky if you are told to discuss some sort of literary device in an english essay. (Either way, at this point, having written a good thesis will help enormously.) Usually the body paragraphs are explained well--sometimes they even explain how to make the essay longer once you have written it concisely!

After doing a decent job on explaining how to write the body paragraphs, the writer explains a conclusion. This tends to include a very vague predictable description of a conclusion, followed by a list of things not to do. It fails to even hint at what you have to do to actually go about writing a good conclusion.

The writer explains that a conclusion should "summarize your essay." It should leave the reader with something to think about, but not introduce new information. It should not begin with "In conclusion." It should state the thesis but "in a different way." It should hold the reader's interest. It should not have a personal anecdote, in an academic essay. The writer is usually someone who is good at writing essays, someone who can assimilate all this information that dances around what has to be done, and write a good conclusion. Not everyone can do this easily.

In conclusion, explanations on how to write a good essay should gear more towards how to write it, rather than just explaining what makes an essay not suck. That reminds me of a math question on our math exam. The exam was called "Differential calculus" so obviously dealt with things related to the derivative of a function. We were given a question where we had to graph this function and we weren't given the equation of the function, just the derivative and some important points on the graph. I couldn't figure out how to find the horizontal asymptotes (turned out there were none) without the equation so I figured out the equation from the derivative and one point on the graph (0,0). Only problem is that it was supposed to be differential calculus. But then again all i found out was that there weren't horizontal asymptotes, which was told to us in part (b) of the question...

---

EDIT: here are some links that actually do explain how to write essays properly. All I had to do was add the word "conclusion" to my search!

http://members.tripod.com/~lklivingston/essay/intro.html

http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Atrium/1437/howto.html

http://leo.stcloudstate.edu/acadwrite/conclude.html

Have fun filling your head with stressful school related stuff fun essay writing! (cheesy smile)

---

EDIT (January 2008): This semester we have a really good english prof. He makes class interesting, and is really good at teaching how to analyze poetry and write good essays. And we will be watching Serenity in class. I believe there is a noticeable difference in my essays now compared to my essays even back in December.

I'll see you in heaven if you make the list

My brain must have been working more efficiently than usual after having calculated whether or not Xena the warrior princess would get a heavy door (with a certain rotational inertia) closed.

♦ I don't know anything about Andy Kaufman, so i'll just write about what i figured out on friday as i was driving home from my physics exam...

I think it's about religion, and how it seems it's getting replaced by modern stuff--even modern "miracles" like putting a man on the moon. When they say "See you in heaven if you make the list" it's sort of a frivolous attitude towards religion. Back in the day everything was religion, but then Mr Charles Darwin questioned stuff, and times changed and now there's a truck stop instead of Saint Peter's and Andy Kaufman going wrestling instead of Moses walking with a staff of wood.

Every time i listen to it, at the end it sounds like it switches to "If you believed" instead of "If you believe." Anyone have any theories on that?