Hits and Misses

My first “hit” from this academic year was one of my discussion posts for Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. The topic to write about was poverty, and I noticed many little moments when poverty was displayed.

In Absolute Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Arnold is constantly facing the fact the he is poor. He says it in the book as if it is not a big deal, but once a reader gets to know Arnold’s personality, it is unraveled that he really does not like being poor. It is almost depressing for Arnold because he knows that all poor Indians have little to no future. His future should not be automatically determined, because every human has the right to choose his/her future: “Coach was thinking maybe I’d play small-college ball… How often does a reservation Indian kid hear that? How often do you hear the words ‘Indian’ and ‘college’ in the same sentence?” (Alexie 180). This quote was an eye-opening line that showed me how small of a hope Arnold has for a future, and the rest of the Indian boys in this reservation.

Arnold also has a very low self-confidence for himself. He is constantly saying that he is not good enough, but when he puts his mind to it, he is. One thing that I really like about this book is that the reader can see the stream of conscience when Arnold is talking about one of his flaws. In one of the paragraphs, Arnold says how he expected him to not be good at basketball, but his teammates and coach expect him to be good and know that he is good. This makes his self-confidence much higher. It is astonishing how if just one person thinks that you are good in a sport, then your self-confidence is boosted.

I was a little flustered when reading how provincial the town of Rearden is. I stood by Arnold’s courageous choice to change schools, but many offset characters in the book did that like that decision. Arnold is taking the leap to get a better education, but part of taking the leap is the fear of jumping. Arnold knew that the Indians in his reservation would be furious at him for “leaving the reservation,” but he took the leap anyway. When Arnold started to attend Rearden, many parents and students were not happy with an Indian going to an all-white school. This part related most for me when we had discrimination over African American people attending white schools.

My next “hit” was a blog post that I did on a poem. It was this poem that created a milestone for me this year. I am very bad at writing poems, and it normally takes me a while to create one. I just cannot get into the mindset of a poet. However, I felt that this poem was exceptional for me because I included many poetic terms. This poem consisted of an Euphony, hyperbole, cacophony, simile, alliteration, and assonance.

I wake up on the smooth, fertile grass

Birds are chirping because of the beautiful spring 

Suddenly, I see rain clouds clustering and gathering around

It hasn’t rained in decades so I knew it wouldn’t rain

I was wrong

The rain had a spooky wind 

with deathly sounds in the distant

I was drenched and felt like a mop

I ran as fast as I could to find shelter

But I was in a vast valley that had no end 

My last “hit” was another blog post that had to be a vocabulary story. Not only was it fun for me to write and make up, but I felt that the vocabulary words that I used fit very well with the context.

I have been trying so hard to get into South Park school. This school required the best of the best, but I was somewhat affiliated with the school because my dad taught there. It was time to take the test to get in and I knew I was doomed because after looking at the 1st question, I thought to myself, “how am I supposed to figure this out?” My self confidence immediately lowered but after telling myself, “I can do this, I got this” for about 5 minutes I felt much better and continued with the test. 

About 1 hour after the test, the school administration started calling names for those who passed. Since my last name is Johnson, I had awhile to go until I can possibly hear my name. When they started to get to the I’s, my anticipation was so high and I was sweating too much. Here we go. “Jackson, James, Justin.” My heart skipped a beat and my rancor grew strong for those people. 

I wanted to cry. I walked out of the room as quickly as possible when I heard an adult say, “Could Emily Johnson please come see me?” Oh great. What did I do. It turns out that I actually got a 100% and they wanted to congratulate me. It is crazy how in 5 minutes, I had a range of tears of sadness to tears of joy. It is amazing how if you just tell yourself, “You can do it,” during a test you will do so much better. I will do this again in the future. 

One of my “misses” would have to be when we were assigned to analyze a song for poetic terms. It felt strange to wrap my brain around song and poetic terms, because when I think of poetic terms, I think of poetry. When I think of songs, I think of pop music. It was just hard for me to put together and even harder to explain how the artist using these techniques helped contribute to the overall meaning of the song. My next “miss” would have to be when I wrote a discussion post on Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian and the prompt was on Addiction, Mental Illness, and eating disorders. I did not note a lot of this in the book so it was just hard to back up my writing. I also did not like it because it did not demonstrate me as a reader. I am the type of reader that reads very deeply, and this post did not show that. My last “miss” is my literary analysis. It was hard for me to decide if this was a “miss” or not, but I struggled a lot with it. I was not used to that type of writing, and was fully immersed in it. So many times I felt lost and did not know what to write about. It ended up being an okay essay, but I just struggled many times in the process of my writing, especially when relating my evidence to my thesis. I feel that I am more educated from writing a literary analysis, but the process was not fun.