Homecoming Parade

So during Homecoming week as usual there is a parade, and this year, I had the honor of being in Tech's with the cheer team on the fire truck. And as fun as it was to be in a parade, it was also SO painful! Somehow, and I have no idea how, me and my good friend Alice ended up on the very very front of the ladder ON TOP OF THE TRUCK, and when you are going 40 miles an hour back to where everyones cars are packed that spot is particularly FREEZING. Don't get me wrong it was nice to be the first people that the crowd watching the parade could see, but that only lasted so long. I have to say if I could do it again, i would definitely try for some other seat, maybe shotgun? Oh well, it was still fun, and it made for some really good pictures whenever I was actually waving and not chattering my teeth with my arms tight across my chest.

Rocky Horror Picture Show Movie? Play?

Yes, that is my teacher wearing nothing but a lab coat and whitey titeys ( or however you spell that) and that is how me and my good friend loren found him at an interesting reenactment of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. I myself had never even seen the movie, and I have to say the entire night was definitely an experience. Not only was the movie itself ridiculously strange, but the strangest part of all was the crowd yell in unison at the screen with the most hilarious commentary I have ever heard. I cold hardly keep up with all of the excitement, between the cross-dressers, the random and strange sex scenes, and the crazy and creepy music. It was so exciting that I didn't even mind sitting in the back on top of the air-conditioning unit. :)

"Evaluations"

When I was writing my review for Professor Andy's class I thought that I was doing a pretty good job. But after reading the two articles from the text book I changed my mind.. For one thing I don't think that I was critical enough. One of the things that made those two articles so good was the fact that the authors told exactly how they felt without holding anything back. They were very descriptive about how they felt too. They definitely made me think twice about the paper that I ad written and now I basically feel like I was too soft on my review. I need to follow the examples of these two writers a little more where they came up with original and personal opinions on their topics and stuck to them the entire paper. And even if there was on thing that they did not like they could still like it a lot as a whole. I especially like the Harry Potter review because the author pointed out a lot of things that weren't too good about the movie without trashing the book because despite the fact that they have the same titles, they are two different pieces entirely, and the producer of the movie and J. K. Rowling are two different people. This really made me happy because I am not a huge fan of the movies but the books are amazing.

"Meet Joe Blog" and "Homelessness on Campus"

1) Blogging has always just been to me what techies did in there free time to express their feelings and complain about politics and other things that they could never really get published in an actual newspaper or magazine or something. But after reading "Meet Joe Blog" I kind of see that there is a lot more to it than that. I mean I am still not going to start some on going blog where I express all of my feelings and opinions, but thats just me and I'm just a little too shy to do something like that. But now at least I can respect and understand a little more the power and convenience that truly lies behind good blogging.

2) Wow... I can honestly say that i never really considered the idea of homeless college students until I read "Homelessness on Campus". I guess I always thought that there was enough financial aid at colleges and universities to help these students. But then again I suppose a problem with that is a lot of financial aid and scholarships tend to go to people who have the grades to be competitive. And sadly that's just not the case for a lot of people. From personal experience, and growing up right outside of Memphis, Tennessee, I have seen first hand how kids can be in the top of their class at a school such as B.T. Washington High and still not have the ACT scores or any number of other things to make it to college simply because the education that they received wasn't good enough to really help them. It really is a sad situation and one that lot of universities seem to overlook or just not notice. And it's the same situation it seems with these homeless students, their problems are just overlooked and the focus remains on the majority of college students who have means of paying.

"Cookie Master" and " Unlikely Superstar"

1) So I always wondered who came up with the sometimes ridiculous sayings that I see in my fortune cookies, and I guess now I know. But I guess I always imagined it being like a team of people that all sat down and brainstormed all day. And these people were all Confucius looking old asian men with vast amounts of wisdom and age. Well, I suppose that dream is gone now, but that's not necessarily a bad thing, at least now I know that if my fortune cookie says, "Beware of odors from unfamiliar sources" I don't have to sit there and ponder the true and omniscient meaning behind it. I suppose in a way it is also comforting to know that the writer of any bas fortunes that I read is only human and therefore I might not go into incredible debt or get eaten by a lion or something.

2) Wow! I have to say I never thought that there was so much to Johnny Depp. Don't get me wrong, I've always known that he has a ridiculously strange personality, I just never knew that the person behind the fake gold teeth was really so down to earth. One thing about this profile that I did not like about Depp however is when it talked about the almost temper tantrums that he would have when he was first starting out. I completely agreed with his coworker from "21 Jump Street" in having the courage to confront Depp on how much of a jerk he was being. But I suppose the writer of this profile made me forgive Depp also whenever he explained how much he loved his family and how much being a father had changed him. In the end I have to say that I still love Johnny Depp just as much as before if not more, and now I want to find and meet his son that I never knew he has even though he's about 2 or 3 years younger than me. :)

Chamber of Commerce Meeting

Recently I was required to attend one of Cookeville's Chamber of Commerce meetings for cheerleading and let's just say it was very interesting. I never really knew before what types of things go on at these types of meeting and i know now that I really wasn't missing much. The whole thing basically consisted of them announcing the new and existing members and pretty much just needless formalities. The only really interesting part to me was when the Tech football coach went up to the podium and basically told everyone that the team is not going to be any good for about another two or three years since there are only like 8 seniors on the team, and half of the team are freshman. I don't know why i thought that it was so funny, but I suppose i really just didn't mind because I am a freshman myself and so I guess I am okay with the fact that the team is apparently going to be really good my senior year. So overall even though the meeting was extremely boring, I suppose I learned a few things anyways, and it did offer a little practice in front of a crowd for cheerleading.

Rodney Atkins Concert

So I had to got to the Rodney Atkins concert last thursday for cheer and I was actually pleasantly surprised with how good it was. I mean I am a country music fan, but Rodney Atkins has just never been one of my favorites. But he turned out to be a really funny person. I remember at one point he started talking about his first gig which was actually really close to Tech, and he told the audience that he was going to play us the song that got him his first gig while he was singing karaoke. So he starts playing his guitar and the next thing i know he is singing the that apple bottom jeans song to a country tune which was really unexpected and funny. So overall I'd have to say that the concert was really good and i was really sad when it was over, though that was mostly because i had to go help tear down and pack back up the entire stage! It was ridiculously terrible, even with the entire cheer and dance program we didn't get to leave until 2:30 that night! It was very tiring, but hey, at least its one more thing to add to my list of obscure things that I have done.

optional paper topics

1:  For my first idea I think I am going to write about the Bryan Adams concert that I went to at the New Daisy in downtown Memphis.  It was definitely a crazy experience for me and i loved every minute of it.  It was definitely worth skipping half of cheer practice to go to too. i think one of the most interesting and almost awkward parts of the concert though was that even at the age of 17 or 18 I was still most likely the youngest person at the concert.  But I mean I was practically breed off of his music so I really didn't mind especially since I was one of the few people that probably knew every word to every one of his songs. However, I think my favorite part of the entire concert was towards the very end when I was actually kind of standing up on a rail of sorts and he actually looked over at me so I kind of gave him one of the cutsie finger wave things and he definitely winked at me to the udder suprise of everyone around me.

2: My second idea for this paper would be to write about one of my trips to the high  school cheerleading nationals at disney world.  i am not sure which year i would choose just yet beecause something special happened just about every year but i have many options.  such as how we actually won my freshman year, or how i was traded to our coed team my sophmore year, or just the amazingness of my senior year.  pretty much regardless of what year i choose though i can write about the ridiculous amount of competition and te mental games used to psych out the other teams and all sorts of stuff like that.

3: The third topic that i was considering writing on was my experience at the Memphis is May music fest.   which by the way I also got to see bryan aadams at... plus many other artists like 36mafia and tons of other groups! it really was an amazing experience and i actually got a lot of vip treatments because of the people that we wet with which was ridiculously cool. for example how we got to ride from stage to stage in a golf cart around the crowds and stuff. it was really cool.

"Us and Them" and "Mick Jagger Wants Me"

So I have to say that the beginning of "Us and Them" definitely weirded me out at first simply because when i first moved to the town of Collierville I moved into a house 3 blocks from the school where I would be attending the third grade.  Not to mention that I moved from that house to one about a mile away.  So I can definitely relate to David Sedaris because in case the whole similar houses story wasn't strange enough, I also had a large family right across the street that was extremely sheltered and shut off from the rest of the world even to this day.  However, other than that I had a very difficult time understanding what Sedaris was actually trying to accomplish through his story.  I couldn't really tell if his focus was on selfishness, or perhaps the corruption of modern day society.  Overall though it almost made me want to ban my future children from TV and other similar things so that they would be blind to the same things as the Tomkey children were.  

Now in "Mick Jagger Wants Me", I can't really say that I related to what the author was saying but it was very entertaining.  I especially enjoyed her incredible graphics throughout the entire thing.  But I suppose that in the end i just didnt enjoy it quite as much as the other story because I couldn't put myself into the story quite as much as I could in the other. I really just cannot see myself as the type of person to be obsessed with someone that I know absolutlely nothing about.  However, i guess when you really think about it, the little boy in the first story was actually a stocker as well with the way that he would study the family at night throughout their window at night.  So who knows, maybe I am just more interested in cooky neighbors than celebrities. 

My History with Writing

            Well my experience with writing, like most other people, started in elementary school where I actually learned to write.  But it wasn’t really until high school that I actually started to know what I was doing.  Most of the writing that I have ever done was definitely done within those extremely long four years.  However, I was taught to write in numerous different forms each year.   For instance my sophomore year we were told to focus on all the abstract details of a novel or play and to write about what the author must have wanted his or her readers to think about certain characters and ideas.  But then, in eleventh grade all of the writing techniques I had learned the previous year were practically thrown out the window! Now, instead of focusing on symbols and themes like before, the focus was on the actual style of the writer and how they use rhetoric and strategies to affect the thoughts of their readers.  So, I began to completely rearrange my annotating skills and began looking for logical fallacies instead of symbols and tone instead of theme.  And then, based off of these findings I was required to use different writing styles such as argumentative or synthetic.  Well, that was until my senior year when all of my papers were of course required to be just like they were my sophomore year.  So then I went back to my meaning searches, but remarkably my papers turned out a lot different than those from my sophomore year. And I really owe a lot of thanks to my AP literature teacher for that because was the one who taught me how to come up with themes and organize a paper without following the same old pattern every time.  So I have to say that though my writing experience has really only come from the past four years, I really do feel that I have had the chance to experiment with all different types of writing.