Final Blog Post

It was really something else having a blog mixed in with my English class. It was really nice though, I loved getting to know everyone on a more personal level. This wasn't my first blogging experience, however. I have a few blogs scattered across the Internet! Granted they are more personal than this one, I enjoyed learning how to use Blogger! This was my first semester in college so I was really nervous about being in a classroom again, with fresh faces and a new instructor. I was pleasantly surprised at how nice everyone was compared to my high school years! I was able to meet quite a few nice men and women in this class, some with common interests, and others with new ideas and takes on things. This was definitely a nice change of pace from high school where people only talked about cell phones, hair, and hook-ups for days on end. For once I could actually have an intellectual conversion with someone!

            The times of my classes kind of threw me off track. In high school is was early morning and back home in the afternoon- now it’s from the afternoon to late at night. I probably should have looked a little more closely at the times considering I leave for work at six-thirty! After English I ware myself out finding my next class and by eight, I’m ready to fall asleep in class! It wasn't all bad though, it got me out of the house and I got to meet new people! I’m really looking forward to next semester and I hope you all have the best of luck in completing college and earning the degree you've all worked so hard for! I hope to see you in the months to come! Good luck and happy holidays, everyone! 

My Review Choice

I chose to do Tombstone as my movie review. As a western film, I don’t have high hopes but I’m willing to watch it and hopefully be surprised. My mom told me it was really popular when we was younger and gushed over the fact that Sam Elliott is in it. I loved him in Mask and did wonderfully so I had to see this, not to mention Val Kilmer isn’t bad looking in it, either! This movie promises action and doesn’t look to be a super romantic movie so that was a plus for me, too. Another factor about this movie was that my great grandma loved westerns so I figured I’ve give the genre another chance for her sake. Don’t disappoint me, Tombstone!

Rave

My current favorite movie is Con Air. It's about an Army Ranger home from war that gets arrested after killing the drunken man that was assaulting his pregnant wife. After serving his jail time and being released on parole, he boards a prison plain with his cellmate home to see his wife and newborn daughter. The other inmates being transported take over the plain and have eyes on freedom. Cameron Poe (Nicolas Cage) has to regain control of the aircraft and secretly partners up with a US Marshal Vince Larkin.

Prisoner “Pinball” creates a distraction after takeoff and releases two deadly inmates whom proceed to siege the cockpit, kill the co-pilot, and takes the captain hostage. The Marshal soon catches on that something isn’t right aboard The Jailbird and is able to make contact with Poe and learns about the dire situation. Poe then assumes the identity of one of the deceased prisoners and covers up the fact that he’s supposed to be heading home. Trying to ease tension and keep things under control, Poe buddies up to the criminal mastermind, Cyrus “The Virus” Grissom, and avoids disasters with civilians.

After numerous brushes with death, the plain finally makes a crash landing on the Vegas Strip. Thinking that this ordeal is over, Poe starts to think of his family until he sees that The Virus is still alive and has escaped on a fire truck driver by another prisoner. Poe and Larkin follow on motorcycles and end The Virus. With all the loose ends finally coming together, Poe is released to his family and meets his daughter for the first time.

I love this movie because it’s just the right amount of action mixed in with comedy. Cyrus is a wonderful antagonist while being witty and intimidating at the same time. The story of Cameron Poe is easy one to sympathize with; a good man and soldier who is locked away for protecting his pregnant wife and not being present for the child’s birth. Right from the start I was rooting for him and his cellmate and was on the edge of my seat when Cyrus began to make trouble. All in all, I found it to be a great movie! Not to mention Nicolas Cage doesn’t look bad in this film!

Yasmin Anderson

I had the privilege to write about Mrs. Yasmin Anderson. She's a very caring and sweet person who has face many struggle in such a short lifetime. She met her husband through her cousin and though sparks didn't fly right away, after a year he went from obnoxious to really hot! She worked at a private elementary school for several years until she became too sick to work there anymore. Since having to leave, Yasmin aspires to do therapeutic work for young adults instead and is going to college for her humanities degree. She’s also a member of a gospel group named “My Sisters” at her church and thrives at singing. She’s every family oriented and loves spending time with her cousins and nephews. It was wonderful working with her and I got to learn so much about her! She’s a truly remarkable woman and I wish her only the best in life! Good luck with your degree, Yasmin!

 Here's the presentation.

Literacy Narrative Reflection

Literacy Narratives are rather tedious and difficult for me. I don’t like talking about myself –and you may have figured out why –so I really had to think about me, my past, and how reading and writing helped me a long. In that sense my past wasn’t all gloom and doom; I was able to find my own little haven. I was difficult to put it on paper, though. I’ve never been one to open up about my past, but I’m trying to fix that and be honest and transparent with everyone.

                I honestly thought about just making up a story about how I came to love writing. I wanted to skip past my depression and all the other muck. As I kept writing, however, I realized that it was all the bad in my life that helped form and mold who I am today. When I turned in my draft, I expected instant judgment from my peer group. Presently surprised, they were all quite nice about it; no pity looks, no condolences, just comments on my writing. It made me feel like a normal person for once, and for that, I thank those fellow peers that read and edited my paper.

Though I tried to put in as much detail as I could without overwhelming and depressing the reader, I did feel like I could have expanded a little more. In my earlier versions, I wrote about my father and decided to cut a majority of it in the end due to graphic content. I put more about my great grandmother to try to help the reader connect with the love and loss I had with her. Though I wasn’t completely happy with my writing in the end, I thought it wasn’t too awful for my first Literacy Narrative!

About the Author.

I started writing a novel years ago, as you might have read in my last post, and have never been able to put an ending to it. Reflecting on it now, I think I don’t have the heart to do that to my characters; to end their story. It may sound crazy, but my way of thinking that has been molded by my early childhood. Around the age of two, my parents went through an awful divorce. A few years later he came back to our house in a drunken stupor and seeing red. The sound of my mother screaming for him to stop echoed through the house and into the basement where I was hiding. I had never felt so helpless in all my life than on that night. I spent hours crying and praying for this to just end; for someone to press his reset button and make him walk out the door – out of our lives. No one ever did.

The next few years of my life went by like someone had me on auto-pilot. My mom doubled her hours at the hospital to support us, bounced us from home to home, and trying to find me a replacement father. I never had the chance to make any friends when changing schools every year and my family was small and broken. The nothingness I felt came to a grinding halt one day in English class. The teacher told us to write a short story in our notebooks about anything we wanted, total creative freedom. That night something snapped in my head and my pen caught fire to the paper. I had never felt so in control and free in my life. I chose what my characters did, what they said, and their story.

It was in middle school that I really immersed myself in writing. I had shelf upon shelf filled with notebooks in my room. There was everything from elves and fairies to morbid monsters straight from a Stephen King novel complied in them. Writing was liberating for me and gave me such a high that I was floating on cloud nine with no way to come down! It didn’t matter what was going on in the real world around me; if my dad slapped me, I could create a world where he reaped what he sowed. If I miss my mother during the weekend, I could form our dream world where we got to spend all the time in the world together and nothing bad would ever cross our paths! Unbeknownst to me, there was one thing that would stop me writing for years.

It happened in July of ’02. It was watching my great grandmother, my best friend, being lowered into a dark hole carved from the earth that did something to me. It broke the tie between me and the world around me. For years there was nothing but numbness and tears; no writing, no reading, no creativity. I was diagnosed with serve depression and anxiety not long after that. Then another English assignment brought me back to my passion. “Tell me about your darkest time. I want to feel like I was there with you,” said my then teacher, Ms. Allison. So I wrote about that day, all my thoughts and feelings poured out onto the paper before me. It was from depression that my most creative works came to be and continue to come from. Now, I know I can’t let anything stop me from doing what I love, to take me away from characters I wrote for for years. My stories had become like family, and I can never end their lives - their stories - when they helped me through my darkest times.

Introduction

Hello, everyone!

Let me start off by saying I'm Stephanie Moody, or S. Moody as my high school teachers knew me! I just turned twenty on August 10th and I'm working towards my nursing degree! I love to travel and have been on multiple cruises. My favorite place to visit is Cozumel, Mexico! I've been there so many times it's become a "home-away-from-home" ... that doesn't speak English. I don't mind that, though - I took Spanish and French in high school and have started incorporating the two into my everyday conversations; I consider this a nasty habit since I often befuddle family and friends by doing it.

I currently work at a local animal shelter and love my job. It does have its heartbreaking moments – most recently a dog named Cassie, who was left in an outdoor pin without food or water and her deceased pin mates – but it does have perks! I helped Cassie return back to a healthy physical state and was so attached to her at that point, that I had to bring her home with me! Aside from her, I have 3  Miniature Pinschers; Angel, Ruby, and Lola. Needless to say, I have quite a rambunctious household!

Aside from traveling and entertaining my lovely pets, you can find me riding horses or writing in my spare time. I started riding horses when I was little and was greatly influenced to do so by my demi-sœur or half-sister. I've won a few ribbons for riding but find it much more enjoyable when not being scrutinized by a judge! As for writing, I've also won a few medals in middle and high school for speeches and long stories. Currently I'm working on finishing up a novel I started in the 6th grade; it's been a long work in progress since I hate putting an end to something I've worked so long on!

And if you couldn't tell, I tend to ramble when I'm nervous so I'll end this post with a souvenir of Cozumel's Margaritaville! I hope you all have a great day and I look forward to getting to know everyone better!