Turning Pages

          I love trying new things, especially when it comes to things that give me an adrenaline rush. Jet Skiing, Tubing, Zip-lining, I love all of it. In that sense I leave my comfort zone constantly. But when it comes to my social comfort zone, I never leave it.  I've always been very introverted. I'm the kind of person that prefers sitting on the side simply observing rather than actively participating. I'm always the quietest person in a conversation. I hate eating with people at lunch; and meeting new people is always a headache for me. For most of my life I hated how awkward and shy I was. I thought I was prohibiting myself from experiencing some grand experience. I was wrong. I tried participating more, adding more to conversations, eating with friends at lunch and I realized I'm not missing anything. I hate the feeling of having to balance eating with talking to someone. I scarf food down like a wild animal and I have horrible table manners. I also hate talki

  I heard this prompt on Wednesday morning. When I heard it I thought it would be perfect, so I started typing away at my keyboard… for like three minutes. Then I got distracted and clicked on a different tab to work on something else. Then with 10 minutes left in class I resumed my journey of writing this essay; but then the bell rang and I told myself, i'll work on it later . That evening I got home from practice exhausted and I told myself I'll finish it tomorrow. On Thursday I had a swim meet, I realized I didn't have the time to finish the blog, so I told myself I'll email Ms. Rodems. I then proceeded to forget to email Ms. Rodems and fall asleep. Now, today, it's Friday and i'm finally writing the essay.  That pretty much describes my relationship with procrastination. I always tell myself I can do something tomorrow and then when tomorrow comes I tell myself I'll do it later, then suddenly later is tomorrow and the cycle repeats itself. To my credit I

  I wouldn't call myself a perfectionist, I don't think I could be one even if I tried, at least not anymore.     I remember when I was in middle school and I used to be obsessed with being perfect. Or at least my version of what perfection was. I wanted to be perfect, or at least appear perfect in order to hide all of my insecurities. I remember being very insecure in middle school. I always felt like I didnt quite fit in, I never knew how people wanted me to act.  I wasnt always like this. I dont think anyone starts off insecure. I think insecurities are something brought on when people begin to lose their childhood innocence and start feeling the pressure of living up to societal standards. For me I felt an overwhelming pressure to act a certain way. My entire life – especially when I was younger– I constantly saw the negative stereotypes associated with black people. We are too loud, we dont talk properly, we arent smart, the list goes on. As a kid I took these as thin

Longing for the past while living in the present, that's nostalgia. It's really a bittersweet feeling, remembering the joy you felt in a moment of your past knowing you can never create it again. Nostalgia always gets me thinking about the past and I often wish I could return some of those moments. This yearning for the past reminds me  of my favorite childhood book, The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein. The Giving Tree is a book that follows the lives of an apple tree and a boy, who develop a relationship with each other. When the boy is young he and the tree are inseparable but as he ages his priorities change and they grow apart. As they grow apart the tree still gives the boy everything he wants from her apples to make money,  to her trunk so he can build a boat. Each time the tree gives the boy something he comes back and asks for more but eventually he comes back and the tree has nothing left to give the boy but a place to sit. “Well,’ said the tree, straightening herse

Gangsters was by far my favorite chapter in Sag Harbor. The chapter touched on a lot of issues and themes that I found particularly interesting. The theme I found most interesting in Gangsters was the correlation drawn between the rise of gun violence and the rise of violent themes in hip hop music. “ Something happened. Something happened that changed the terms and we went from fighting ( I'll knock that grin off your face) to full blown annihilation ( I will wipe you from this earth). How we got from here to there  are the key passages in the history of young black men that no one cares to write. We live it instead.” The part of the statement adult Benji ( Ben) makes between gun violence and the violence depicted in hip hop that intrigued me the most was the part where he talks about how no one really knows how or why violence had suddenly become such a defining feature of black culture. I found this interesting because I realized he was right, lots of people talk of about the ne

The development of Jason throughout Black Swan Green is one of my favorite character developments I have seen out of all the coming of age novels we’ve read. Jason's story line really fits the definition that comes to my mind when I think of coming of age. Throughout the novel Jason transitions from insecure and searching for validation to confident and care-free ( carefree as it applies to Jason wanting to be accepted by his peers).  You can really see this when you compare Jason's attitudes and actions from the beginning of the novel to the end of the novel. For example, take a look at page five of Black Swan Green when Jason's mother ask him why he doesn't want to wear his black parka and he tells us (the reader) that he doesn’t want to wear it because it would give off the appearance that he is cocky, too full of himself, or as Jason phrases it “fancies himself as a hard knock”. Jason is worried about how he may be perceived by how he dresses so much that he avoids