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James: Learning Reflection
Riley:My Progress Q1 W4

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Dear Hair,

I'm sorry for all of the times that I cut you. It must hurt, doesn't it? I refer to you as "dead ends," and I chop you off.  I'm sorry for all the times I burn you, to take the curl out of you or to put special curls back in. Does that hurt? Does it hurt when I tie you up and pull you around? Does it hurt when I stick metal bars in there to hold you back?

Just know, dear hair, that no matter what I do to you, I will always, always love you. Because no matter what I do to make you look different, you're part of what makes me me. And I will always respect that.

With love,

Laura

literacy reflection

Writing has always been something that has been a little bit of a breeze for me. It was something I had always done because I wanted to, and I incorporated any school writing into that. But at this year has gone by, I have been forced to shift my focus from low-key personal narratives to formal research projects, which has been hard for me. Usually, I can make my writing flow purely because I like writing. But since I'm not as much of a fan of research papers, that insurance left, and I was forced to find other ways to make things work.

In terms of reading, not much has changed. I'm a little better at reading poetry than I used to be, but other than that, I'm still reading my books for six and a half hours every week and just enjoying it. The only thing that was different was when Dr. D gave me Arcadia. It's really hard, and even though it's an eighth of the usual size of my books, it's taking me ten times as long. But I think that reading a book like this is good for me because half the time when I'm reading I just read a book a night and I don't get anything out of it but the plot. This book forces me to slow down and think, something a lot of other books don't do.

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Wyatt: Affirmative Action
Ryan:My Video Games

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Jett: Song Analysis
Trevor: Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen analysis

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This post is totally random but I had nothing else to write about so... here goes.

I'm having mixed emotions about my coffee habit. A lot of you know that I drink a giant Yeti full of coffee every day, and on the weekends I literally drink a stream of coffee from wakeup-4pm, unless I have a meet. My problem is, I read everywhere that coffee addictions are bad bad bad. But I don't think mine's an addiction, because I've skipped coffee before and I was able to function just as well.

Is it really a coffee habit if I'm not dependent? I'm not sure. Is it possible to drink as much coffee as me and not become dependent? Still not sure. Am I causing myself trouble in the future by doing this? Even more not sure. But all I know is that coffee tastes really really good, and I don't want to stop drinking it. So coffee addictions aside, I think I'm going to keep on drinking it.

song

She Loves You by the Beatles.

http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/beatles/shelovesyou.html

I have determined that analyzing  poetry is not my strong suit. That said, I think a couple of these "techniques" I found might be a little shaky, but I think that's mostly left to how its interpreted.
I found several different techniques in this song, but the most unusual one I found was anaphora. When I think of anaphora, I usually think of a pledge, or an oath. "We will do this. We will do that. We will honor this. We will pledge to do that." And et cetera. But this anaphora is smooth, very different from the harsh anaphora I'd seen before. It's the repetition of the phrase "she loves you" at the beginning of every other line in all but three verses, when it say, "She loves you/and you know that can't be bad/she said she loves you/and you know you should be glad."
Another thing that goes on is sibilance. This occurs every time the words "She says she loves you" are sung. (She says she loves you). There is a hyperbole when they sing "she almost lost her mind." I know this doesn't count because it's end rhyme, but the rhyme scheme is ABAB for all standard verses and the chorus. the intro, bridge, and conclusion don't follow this pattern.
The last two things are the ones I consider to be really shaky. This is because it is left entirely to how a person looks at these words. The first is euphony in the verses. In verse one, they sing, "You think you lost your love/Well I saw her yesterday." I hear this as euphony because of the "oo" and "eh" sounds that are repeated and because of the sibilance in line one. And although the words themselves can be viewed as sad, the syllables are smooth. And the last thing I noticed was personification. This is when they sing, "Pride can hurt you too." I view this as personification, because I think they're referencing the fact that the person who they're singing to hurt the girl. I think that it's a karma thing.

But then again, its all based on the connotation.