Always be thankful (Formal Blog)

If I had a chance to be friends with one of the people in the novel, I would choose to be friends with Arthur Radley(also known as Boo Radley).

Though constantly being perceived to be a bad person by the residents of Maycomb County. However, as the story progresses, the children slowly get in touch with his character and form another type of image in their minds, one of a kind-hearted and caring person, contrary to the image of him painted by the residents. They finally encounter him, when they are attacked by Bob Ewell and he comes to their rescue, and he proves to be the amiable person that they thought he was, especially to Scout, after she was able to have a little conversation with him and was finally able to stand in his shoes.

The reason why I would choose to be friends with Arthur Radley is because he is able to understand the situation of the society and is not afraid to make decisions in spite of knowing that he would be misunderstood and criticized by people around him for that. In the book, he chose not expose himself to the society, due to the fact that he wasn't able to stand the injustice and discrimination that was rampant all around him. He was brave in the sense, that he would rather lead a completely fulfilling and morally upright life without having to experience or witness any biasedness, instead of being able to get out of his house, and leading a more exciting and vibrant life, but at the same time, have to tolerate and live with evils of the world. To be able to make such a major decision and have to pay such an excruciating price, shows how matured and wise a person he is.

He may seem like an anti-social person who is withdrawn from society to someone who doesn't know him well. When you look past that external shell, and into his heart though, you'll find an angel within, glorious and mighty. I would be his friend definitely not because of his charisma or likability, but because he can exercise maturity and deep thought in his actions and decisions. Such people are hard to find, and hence, I would seize the opportunity to be his friend.

Here is the link and the code for the viewing of my personality results -
http://www.bgfl.org/bgfl/custom/resources_ftp/client_ftp/ks3/ict/multiple_int/results/results.cfm
Code: hkm2jpn883382b

My two highest scoring areas are Intrapersonal and Interpersonal. I feel that the test scores are quite accurate in pointing out my two areas of strength. I can say that my Intrapersonal level is high as I know myself well. I know what I want, don't want, what I like, dislike and will usually take action according to how I feel. I am also a very interpersonal person, enjoying the company of friends. I work better in groups, and I also feel more comfortable doing so because I feel good knowing that I am sharing my answers or ideas with other people. Very seldom do you see me choosing to stay at home if I have the time to go out and there is an outing or gathering on on that day.

Remember me sharing with you about our weekly runs? Well, we just had our cross-country run on Wednesday.

True, I was exhausted and tired out by the run. But that’s not the main point of my blog post. True, we are going to be getting LEAP points from the run. But again, I’m not going to revolve my blog post around my excitement about how the run is going to help in building my portfolio for JC. Instead I’m going to talk about how the run applies to us in our lives.

Let’s split the run up into three stages: the start, the journey and the end. I’ll use a year of schooling as an example, but I believe this can still be applied no matter what you use.

The start, is the part which everyone, or rather, most people would have enjoyed. Everyone was bursting with energy and zest. It wasn’t surprising to see many people person sprinting forward with strength and energy that did not seem to falter. Let’s link this to the start of a schooling year. We are usually excited to be back at school and back with our friends. There isn’t any homework yet so we are all quite relaxed. Apart from getting up early, the days past by effortlessly.

The journey, is the part where things started getting a bit tougher. It seemed like a “sooner or later you get tired” situation, where many people stopped running and started walking. Sounds like us? Definitely. This is the part where the homework, tests and stress start to hit. “Life’s tough” or “I hate school” are common phrases used. The run doesn’t seem that fun now. We just want to give up and take the easy way out. Suddenly, life isn’t fun anymore. In fact, the days pass by so slowly it hurts.

The end, is the part, which I felt was the most difficult part of the run. My energy had been drained off almost completely. Almost everyone was walking. There was a strong temptation to stop running and just walk to the finish line. The end actually very much represents our end of year exams. This computer game is suddenly so attractive and addictive. That book suddenly engages us so much we can't put it down. Are we disciplined enough to do our work, or do we give into temptations which only provide temporary satisfaction and joy. Despite the temptations, I persevered and made it to the finish line, full of fatigue, but proud of my efforts.

Do we take on life with this attitude? Do we persevere on when we are facing problems, or do we decide on taking the easy way out and giving up? Everyone faces temptations. Everyone will feel tired after being exposed to some form of continuous activity which in this case, can be either running or studying. But it’s how you tackle these problems, that is the significant and important part. The choice is ours to make. What do you choose? I choose to press on. I choose to persevere. I choose not to give in to temptation when it strikes me. I choose to be victorious.

I returned to school, stomach still churning away at the heaps of goodies consumed just a day or two before, tired and bleary eyed, but resigned. What I had been looking forward to for an antagonising one month(or two), had ended abruptly in five days.

Yes, you got that right. I am talking about the Chinese New Year break. Though I must admit that I enjoyed this year's celebrations, I felt that five days just wasn't enough, taking visitations and homework into consideration. Why?

Day 1(Friday): - Morning was whiled away in school for new year celebrations, no work done.
Day 2(Reunion Dinner): - Occupied with entertaining guests(which I enjoyed), one piece of work done.
Day 3(Visiting of relatives, Reunion Dinner): - Out the whole day, no work done.
Day 4(Karaoke at night with mum's family): - Out only in night, second piece of work done.
Day 5(NIL): - Out only in night for dinner, last piece of work done.

Looking at my timetable for a second time, I realise that I am actually quite privileged to have had such a relaxing Chinese New Year. And it's wrong to say the Chinese New Year break was too short. I think without "Chinese New Year", the sentence would still make sense. This being taken into consideration, I realised we as humans, are never satisfied.

Before the end-of-year examinations, everything seems so interesting. You're constantly tempted, for example, wanting to read a storybook instead of revising, or playing a computer game and trying to ascend to the next level. When the end-of-year examinations are over, the book which had seemed so irresistible initially is reduced to dust in less than a week; the computer game suddenly becomes boring and is unable to engage you like it did before. Soon, we are complaining that the holidays are too boring, and are dying to return to school. The first week of school starts well, but when the homework starts to flood in, we start complaining once again, that life is tough and cherish every single holiday we have. Then the end-of-year exams arrive, and the whole cycle starts again.

It's wrong to say that I've gotten the post-chinese-new-year blues. If you would rather, I think "post holiday blues" is a more suitable term. Let's pray I will be satisfied.

Paper 1 – Writing 1h 45 mins

There are two components in this examination paper: narrative writing and situational writing. Let me start with how I feel we can prepare for narrative writing. We have been taught and guided to write tightly and choose important and vital words to enhance our narrative piece instead of spending time elaborating on insignificant and irrelevant subjects. Hence, I feel that perhaps spending some time to write a few pieces of micro-fiction would probably be helpful. Another important thing to take note is time management. I personally feel that this is very important in producing a good and complete narrative piece as there have been times when I spent to much time on the introduction, resulting in a good start and a very abrupt and slipshod ending. Perhaps one way to improve on this is to practice narrative writing at home and timing myself to stay within the time given. An alternative is to map out a detailed timeframe to alert me when I should be moving on to the next part of the story. The last thing to be taken into account is the ability to concoct an engaging story idea within a very short period of time, say, five minutes. This will not only be able to capture the marker's/reader's attention but give me adequate time to pen down the whole story. A good way to prepare for this is actually by reading more model compositions or even novels and discovering their strength in managing to hold the reader's attention.

Now, on to situational writing. Although the idea for the letter has already been provided, reasoning and tone are very vital. Hence, the ability to write well in these two aspects would prove beneficial in the examination. Solution: reading up. All the notes to producing a convincing and powerful letter have already been provided. We have to familiarize ourselves with all these points in ensuring a well written letter. A key note to remember though, during the exam, is not to dwell too long on the situational writing.

Paper 2 – Comprehension 1h 45 mins

Comprehension is based solely on understanding the passage and the questions posed. I don't think there is much we can do to prepare for comprehension. Perhaps just noting a few salient points: answering in the correct tenses, interpreting the question correctly and not lifting from the passage but using our own words to explain. The summary is very much like writing micro-fiction: writing tight. Although a summary is supposed to be written in our own words, we have been encouraged by the school English department to lift from the passage. Basically, we have to be precise so that the gist of the passage remains.

Paper 3 – Literature Strand 1 1h 45 mins

Unseen prose/poetry analysis is also based on being able to understand what the passage or poem is trying to put across. For unseen prose, we are supposed to take note of the characterization of the character in the story, the diction used by the author, sentence structure, treatment of subject and figurative language. As for the poetry analysis, the main thing we are supposed to keep in mind is more or less the figure of speech used in the poem.

With regards to the Animal Farm test, I feel that familiarising myself with the storyline and the different types of characters and who they represent in the Russian Revolution would be enough for the preparation of the test.