Garda's English Blog

 Back when Tiktok was banned a lot of Americans moved to the Chinese social media app RedNote. This led to a lot of American and Chinese socialization, and I got to hear a lot of stories about how both the USA and China was mischaracterized. The US had pushed anti-communism propaganda for so long, it was a shock to learn that China was not this miserable government repressed, mean country. At the same time, the Chinese were shocked to hear how expensive our groceries and housing were, and how hard we worked. Limiting ourselves to one perspective can create harmful and untrue understandings of other people. To avoid these limited views we should try to get perspectives from both sides of the story. I think direct communication, like RedNote, does a good job of doing that. Today in class we read about the single story. I remember I've actually done this lesson in the past before, but going over it again made me think about things I've mostly forgotten about. 

 Mastering precise vocabulary can positively impact your daily communication and academic success in many ways. For one, it makes you sound smarter, which is a benefit to your schoolwork and communication in professional settings. It also makes you better at expressing your thoughts, which is good in day to day conversations and your writing for school.  Today in class we learned more vocabulary. I appreciate the simpleness of the lessons, it is a good way to start your week. Some of the harder words I don't remember what they mean always though. Also, as a follow up from my last post the mastery band made a perfect score at our LGPE. :)

 When I become an adult I think I will prefer living in the city. Cities tend to host more people who have similar views to my own, and it is very important to me that I live in an area where I am not alienated. Cities also have more things to do, and have better public transport. I used to live in a suburb in Idaho and the only thing you could do there is shop at Walmart or go to an escape room? Unless I start a family I have no aspirations to buy a huge house where I might want to move to a suburb for. Today in class we did commonlit. I also finished the commonlit I missed yesterday, since I missed class because I had to go perform with the intermediate band at LGPE. If you were curious how the band did, it was not great. That was to be expected though, and I know I will perform much better with the mastery band tonight.

 Out of the vocabulary words in lesson 13, nubile resonated with me the most. I think I have seen the word used before, particularly in fantasy books where they marry some 14 year old girl off to an old lord. I do not like this word, I think it is a gross description. Marriageable age? Just say she's a young woman. "Nubile" feels so objectifying and male-centered.  Today in class we finished vocabulary lesson 13. These words were more alien to me, I don't think I've heard the majority of them before. Some make sense though, like onus and onerous. 

 A time when failure was necessary for growth was when I was learning how to play trombone. You have to be willing to play weird sounding stuff and to have your mistakes be heard or else you can't get better. If you play too quietly you'll grow bad habits, plus your teacher won't be able to hear you and give you advice. If you don't come in confidently then you'll always miss that first note and you won't sound good. If you don't try to learn how to read music then you won't learn either.  I wasn't here today in class. It was nice writing while listening to other orchestras perform though. 

 Two summers ago I was staying at my dad's house in Idaho. With nothing to do and no one to talk with my sleep schedule quickly got out of hand. I think the combination of staying in the same room for an extended amount of time and my lack of sleep made me paranoid, but I began to see rats and movement in the corner of my vision. Eventually I had to fly back to Georgia for band camp, which put me back to normal. Today in class we read a poem and started working on questions about the yellow wallpaper. I enjoyed reading the poem. Mental health isn't a topic we commonly read about in school.

 Nihilism is the belief that life is meaningless. It rejects traditional values and beliefs, saying that these things are baseless. I first encountered this word somewhere online. I can't remember where exactly I discovered it, but there are a lot of people on the internet who share nihilistic views and discuss it. Because Nihilism is so widely talked about it is important to know its meaning. Today in class we went over more vocabulary words and finished our yellow wallpaper AI assignment. I disliked using the AI a lot, as all the sites were blocked and it goes against my morals.

 The most memorable occasion where it felt like I was losing my mind was during October, 2023. The stresses of school and relationships were overwhelming me at that time, and while I had been doing poor mentally for a long time it certainly got a lot worse that October. I remember waking up each morning with this horrible feeling of dread. It didn't help either that on my walks to and from school I would encounter this one hawk quite frequently, as it began to feel like life was teasing me somehow. At some point I wholeheartedly believed that something terrible was going to happen to me by the end of the month, and the hawk was this omen for it. Today in class we read The Yellow Wallpaper. I enjoyed the book, and although it was a bit hard to follow I thought it was entertaining.

 My favorite word is "cleek." Sometime last year it was dictionary.com's word of the day, and upon learning about it I thought it was such a funny word. Cleek as a verb means to grasp or seize something suddenly and eagerly. I told a few friends about cleek in band the next day, and ever since then we've made it a thing to sneak up on each other and cleek their arm or shoulder, while shouting cleek of course. Today in class we learned new vocabulary words. I like today's list of words a lot. I was also pleasantly surprised to recognize one of the words, lachrymose, but not because I knew the word already. I was able to identify what lachrymose meant because during my freshman year I took Latin as my language class, and I was able to remember the Latin word which meant "to cry", lacrimat.