"Someone's Watching Over Me"

For my cool writing presentation, I chose to write about the song "Someone's Watching Over Me" by Hilary Duff. I chose this song becuase it comes from one of my favorite movies, Raise Your Voice. This song also has a lot of meaning behind it.

I close read it where you can take two different meanings out of it, literal and metaphorical. The metaphorical meaning is that you have lost someone, but they're always there with you, watching over you and protecting you, like your guardian angel. In the movie, Terri (played by Hilary Duff) lost her brother Paul in a car accident, and is now performing at the Bristol-Hillman Conservatory in L.A. She writes this song for him, and can now vision him watching over her as she songs this, which brings her more power and doesn't maker her as scared anymore, because she knows he is with her.
I took it in more of the metaphorical way. No matther what you're going through in your like there is always somebody watching over you when you feel alone. Whether is someone you did lose, or, like it is to me, God. I grew up in a very religious home and God was one of the biggest parts in my life. Today, I don't know where I could be if I didn't grow up with that belief, becuase everytime I'm feeling list or down, I know He is always with me.

Another major part of this some is that you can't let other people's opinions bring you down. You have to "believe in your self and follow your heart" like it says right in the some. One of my favorite quotes from the song is " It doesn't matter what people say, and it doesn't matter how long it takes, believe in yourself and you'll find, that it only matters how true you are, be true to yourself and follow your heart." This is one of my favorites becuase it's so true.

Gender Responses

Out of the three excerpts Mr. Kunkle gave to us to write about, I chose the first one, and I think it is very true. Young girls these days take everything media, or other people's opinions, into their minds. Teenage girls think that they have to be socially accepted, even if that means going to the extreme, and losing your self-esteem. By doing that, they lose themselves and have no true identity. I agree that in this day and age, you have to be true to yourself and be who you are, not what someone else wants you to be.

I personally don't try and take what media wants into my head. Well, I guess I do, what girl truly doesn't? But I don't take the ridiculous things, like losing weight. I do take things from media like fashion, but not to wear the things that the "cool people" are wearing to fit in, but to express myself.

I think growing up as a teenage girl is one of the hardest things you can go through, with friends pressuring you to do something, and you think if you don't you might lose a friend. So if you do what they want, do you really have a true friend? Who really knows. Being socially accepted is something everyone wants some point in their life. But to me, losing myself and my dreams, aren't worth that. I'm not changing for anybody. I live my life, and dream my dreams.

Caucasia

My initial reaction to this book was that it was going to be a slow book, and I couldn't get any motivation to read it, and struggled to get through the first chapter, or so. But once I plugged through it and got farther into it, I started to get into it and really like it. It has many controversies and I like how it is told in a little girls' prospective, which makes it simple and somewhat easier to read. Now that I'm getting farther into it, I'm wanting to keep reading more becuase of what's happening with Birdie's mother.

My MARTA Experience

Yesterday we wrote in our free write journals about an experience we had when we were made aware of our race or gender. I wrote about the time when I was on a mission trip in Atlanta, Georgia about four or five years ago. It was my family, and a couple other teenagers with us, riding on the MARTA to get to downtown Atlanta. I was only about 6th or 7th grade, and we came from the most German town there could ever be in Minnesota, so i didn't have too much experience with colored people. When we got on the marta i couldn't believe that we were mainly the only white people on the train. It was one of the most scary times on the whole trip, and i sat there the entire time right next to my dad.

This also relates to the story we just read called "Speaking in Tounges", when Tia was in Atlanta, taking the MARTA for her first time and not knowing where she was going, having to take five more train rides. By our trip, my dad had already been to Atlanta two times before, so he pretty much knew what he was doing with at the station, which helped us out a lot.

Making the Children Behave

This was a poem in our war poetry packet, and it was one of my favorites. The way I interpreted it, this poem was about an American man in a different country feeling like the "odd man out", like he sticks out of everyone else living there, and even the other soldiers who are in perfect unison with each other. At the end of the war, he knows he will be referred to as the "evil one" when all the other people are telling stories to their children about he war. They tell their stories as if the soldiers are bad people and fighting with bad intentions, so their children won't grow up learning that fighting is okay. Everyone else has different view of the war, like they all see themselves as the hero, fighting for their country. But to the other side, you're just someone trying to harm their ways of life. This soldier, however; doesn't want to feel left out, or evil, or even scary; he just wanted to help his country.

I don't have a personal connection to this poem, but I really liked it. I know what it feels like when everyone is noticing you, but not in a good way. And I know what it also feels like to just want to fit in, but it's never that easy. You'll always feel like there's someone who doesn't like you, who doesn't want you to fit in, so they can seem better than you, and the hero in someone else's eyes.

The "Not So Big" Wars in Life

A few years back, in my old house, my family had a few "bat wars" in our house. There was something with our chimney, or something wasn't insulated very well in out attic, so we had a couple situations that were not the greatest memories. Since we were talking about personal wars in class, and a few people brought up stories about birds, that sparked the not so fond memories i had with bats.
There was one time my mom and I were home alone, and we heard a little chirping noise coming from the stairs. We looked everywhere and didn't see anything, until my cat went to eat. She was playing with something behind her food bowl, and when we moved it, there was a little bat sitting there on the stairs. Since my dad wasn't home at the time, my mom and I screamed very loud and tried to calmly call my dad to see what to do with it. We got tennis rackets and buckets and tried to scoop it up to get it outside. It was a very scary situation.
Another time was the story I told in class. In the middle of the night, while my parents were sleeping, they heard little clicking noises on their hardwood floors in their bedroom. They woke up to find a bat walking on the floor on the side of their bed. Freaked out, they got out of bed and stayed in our guest bedroom for the rest of the night. For the next couple days they turned their bedroom upside down looking for this bat. They cleared out their closets, moved all the furniture and even turned their bed upside down to look in the board underneath it. They just could not find it. Another couple days later, I was sitting in my kitchen when my cat, the same one who found the first bat, walked into the room and chased the bat out. It flew so close to me, I jumped and ran up the stairs and shut the door as fast as I could. My parents took about 20 minutes chasing this bat around our kitchen trying to get it into a big enough bucket to get it out of the house, and once they did, i still didn't want to come downstairs.
As you can tell, I haven't had the best memories in my old house. To you it may not seem like that big of a war, but for me, it is one thing that scarred me probably for life. I can't stand bats, and I never want to see one in my house again.

You don't always have to "fit in".

In my short seventeen years, I've had many times that it didn't fit in. Between switching friends in school, or even switching schools, I can think of many times where I didn't always have someone to turn to. In fourth grade, I had one of those "little girl drama" times. Three of my best friends started rejecting me and making fun of me in the hallways. It was especially hard when I had to go with one of them to their house two times a week becuase her mom taught me piano lessons. Because i wasn't getting along with my friend at the time, it was really hard when i was at her house. I would play with her little sister that was about 4 or 5 years younger than me, which at the time would make her in about first grade, or so. That was one hard time for me in grade school.

One more really tough time for me to fit in was freshman year. I had just moved to McFarland and didn't really know anyone. Starting high school by itself is a rough time, but then adding in not knowing anyone, well, that can make for some not so fun classes. I started to get to know some people and it became easier, but that was a really hard year for me. Trying to figure out who to be friends with, staying out of the intimidating senior's ways, and figuring out who to sit with at lunch made freshman year my year of "not fitting in".