Spring Term Paper

Areli Garcia

Dr. Preston

English

25 May 2019

Room 619

Every morning is the same. I wake up, get dressed for school, brush my teeth, and head to school. It’s the same routine meaning that sometimes I’ll barely be on time for first period. I always thought about changing my morning schedule, but I never did until one day when I was writing in my journal during second period. We create these habits that aren’t that easy to get rid of. So little by little I would be changing the time that I would wake up and then I also changed my morning routine to the point where I would now shower in the mornings. Starting to shower in the mornings was a good idea because it has me awake. It would have me as awake as a person who for the first time would have Dr. Preston drop a textbook just to prove a point.

Coming into Dr.Preston’s class each day is not the same as coming into any other English class. Each day we get a minute of mindfulness and that isn’t given to us each day by any other teacher. Sure my history teacher does it once in a while where he gives us five minutes to just relax and just have some peace, but it’s not the same as receiving it everyday. People don’t always appreciate what is given to them. Like the trust that was said to be given to us in the beginning of the school year. He had to trust that we would get our work done especially when it came to the masterpiece academy and in a way other did too. We would all learn something from each day that we had someone present their big question and we would depend on it because it would teach  us what we could do for our presentations.

There were some presentations that I liked that just had me sitting there being so interested. Like Jovanny’s presentation caught my attention because not everyone will believe that doing exercise everyday to stay fit is necessary, but it is necessary for some. The hard work that you put yourself through will set motivation towards other goals that you would like to accomplish because you’ll know that you can always push yourself harder to be better. Samantha’s and Maria’s presentation interested me because sleep is something that everyone has gone through, but not everyone understands it. Not everyone understands how important sleep can be. They don’t understand why they have to get at least seven to eight hours of sleep. Some of these presentations connect in the way that they are about what we need. For example as Alexis stated that we need agriculture because we depend on it to provide us with food sources. They also connect in showing awareness like Celeste’s presentation on how prescriptions or drugs are really being used and why it’s not okay. These all connect on how something can affect our body as well.

One day as I was entering my geometry class, my teacher had asked me, “Are you guys reading Shakespeare for your class?” and that’s when it hit me that Dr. Preston’s class will never be the same as any other class. We don’t come into class expecting to read Shakespeare which is really, incredibly hard for me to understand most of the time. Instead, we’re reading Les Miserables written by Victor Hugo. It really doesn’t matter how long ago that book had been written because most of the things he writes about in that book still apply to today. We should be reading whatever it is that everyone else wants us to be reading, but I’d much rather be reading Les Miserables. I don’t think I would have had the same learning experience if we hadn’t been reading it. Jean Valjean used to be this man who would just by instinct do the wrong thing thing or he would be mean to others like when he was mean to the little boy. Most of the time I act upon instinct because I don’t take the time to think things through so like I’ll do something similar as to what he did to the little boy. Then afterwards I’ll be finding myself feeling so guilty because I know that I want to change. I want to be a better person so that’s why I’m taking it a step at a time. I don’t personally connect to what Cosette has been going through, but in a way my mom did. My mom’s mom died when she was around the age of five and so then she had different family members taking care of her. She’s told me about it and her mom also died because she had gotten sick. My two older siblings can also relate to not having a father figure in their lives all the time like Cosette. I know these connections I’m describing  aren’t between Cosette and I, but they are between people I know who have been in my life for so long. It’s interesting for me to see that people can have connections between fictional characters because then you know that you're not the only one who has gone through that situation.

Sometimes when I start writing I get that feeling of not wanting to stop because I feel like I have so much to say. So whenever I start writing in my journal there’s this one idea that comes to mind and then another. It’s not always like that because I overthink it and that’s when I can’t write. So what I’d like to do is that whenever I feel like I can’t hold something in, then I should write about it. Writing in my journal everyday had showed me that I do have lots to say, but that I don’t always say something. I’ve learned so much this year from all my classes. I don’t think the same way I used to before. It took me time to realize some things, but in the end I learned what I needed to learn.