First day of school!

Here's how it went:
I confirmed that I will in fact be receiving huge amounts of homework this semester, and this is a bit new to me I must say.
I got put in second lunch with none of my friends and a bunch of freshman and sophomores!

Now, I know what you're going to say: "Alex, you were once a freshman and what not too.."
And I say this: "But, cooome on! The lunching arrangement doesn't even work!" I will not go into details but that is just a little bit of me personal life.

In relative but other news, I had to write a couple of essays for school over the course of the summer. I'm a bit happy with them for my level right now, so I want to share them. They don't really have to do with the books or a certain topic so it should anyway. The first is a speech about fear, relating to Lord of the Flies; the second a essay on why I want to take an AP History class and something about my favorite quote. I apologize in advance for spelling and grammar mistakes, but if I was not able to correct them for my teachers, I was not going to RE-check them for you. Enjoy or don't, but this is sometimes the usual stuff I put on here anyways.

1st - Living Without Fear (or something to that effect)

In the Lord of the Flies by William Golding, it takes only a child-like sense of fear to transform nothingness into a beast – if whom is mentioned inspires a cold paralysis of the body's soul. Though only imagined, the Beast is treated as if a god waiting for the moment to seize a body in the night. It is made real by the boys' minds, taking and forming that supernatural and superstitious fear into something equally supernatural; an ancient power from the void of time. It is made tangible through an offering to that fear – feeding it, allowing it to breathe and move among the boys. By these actions, the Lord of the Flies could be awakened; a devil among the innocent boys, living through them, inspiring the savage actions and rituals of the island.

Fear is natural and therefore good. Fear is what makes us human; it gives us caution before we move ahead too recklessly. Fear becomes unhealthy and dangerous when we can not control it and give away to its illusions. Then, under these circumstances, the emotion becomes less of an admonitory factor and more of a controlling factor, changing some thing into something it's not. Under this transformation we give that thing power it doesn't have, thus effectively imprisoning ourselves by our own minds. How much fear is put into the authority of judges or politicians; into the stereotypes of different races or religions; into the inhumanity of terrorists or warring factions? It is true that some these should be feared or respected, but not so much they are made to be inhuman. As this should always be remembered from Yoda: “Fear leads to Anger. Anger leads to Hate. Hate leads to suffering.” We should live not without fear but instead with courage, thus leaving the human only human and equal, and approach the treacherous with caution.

The ancient Samurai of Japan developed a Code of the Samurai that taught to not fear death. Instead, the Samurai lived with death and respected it, consequently rising among the top of the martial practices in the world. The Native Americans of the “new world” did not live in fear of the primeval wilderness surrounding the continent, but instead learned to respect it, nurture it, and make use of it for survival. If the boys of the Lord of the Flies learned to control their fear and learn from it – discovering in fact there was no physical beast – they could have survived without murder or war. When we can learn to control our fear – instead of feeding it – we many learn to survive by rising out of the darkness and mindset from which we trapped ourselves at the start of humanity.

2nd - Essay on me

I'm taking this course for a couple of reasons: firstly, learning isn't as bad as everybody makes it out to be, so sometimes I like to fill up my head with knowledge. This class can help with that. Secondly, however boring some of it may be, history is very important – not only so one may look good in an intelligent conversation but so one may know where one's roots come from. In the ages of humanity, we have learned much as a people as a mixture of races, religions, minds of thought, and practices. When we act alone without the failures and successes of humans passed, we act stupidly and not relative to the needs of humanity. From the experiences of the legends of the ancients and the stories of our grandfathers, we can know what is best for ourselves and our race of humanity. And when we try something new, we can record the failures or successes of that something in the passages of history for the generations below us to learn.

By taking AP History, I hope for many things: I hope to learn something about American history past the Civil War; I hope to not learn everything there is to know of American history, but that of the trials and work of the American people and not so much of the conquering of nations under America. This does not interest me so much as facts do about my stretchy book cover used to protect the textbook for this class. I believe it is mostly this history of the ones under the affect of the governments controlling them then the governments themselves. That is what – though it might be likely to change – is what I'd like to get out of AP History.

My favorite quote is a lengthy one by Herman Goering, a Nazi military leader and politician, uttered during the Nuremberg Trials and an interview there: “Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger.” I like this quote not because it denounces nationalism and exposes the effect of a country's leaders - democratically elected or not - on it's people and their actions, but for the danger of a nation's people growing up to believe without knowing why one is believing. When this is the case, one is not thinking but simply following the practices of their forefathers whether they apply to one's time or not. When this is the case, one is not thinking but simply following the voices of their leader's drum, whether that drum is beating to the rhythm of war, ethnocentrism, evil, or good. In this way, a nation's history can be lost to an illusion of romanticism and untruth. By that, my previous paragraphs fly out the window, and we cannot accurately learn and live for ourselves. I believe if we are not thinking, we are not living, no matter how luxurious the world of entertainment and fun seems to the world of equality and a people's justice.

I cut out some on the latter assignment.

Your friend,
Alex