Essay Topic

For our final essay I decided to go with topic B

B) There are a wide variety of relationships in this play including lovers, marriages, parents/kids, cousins, friendships, and religious. Choose the one that you think best represents the complexity of a modern teenager's relationship and provide quotes from the play that help you connect them to one another. Why do you think the relationships are so similar despite being centuries apart? What do you think Shakespeare would think about current teens? Why? Support your position with research and or examples from the play.

I chose this topic because I can relate to it. Being a teenager I think it will be interesting to compare relationships teens have to the relationships in Romeo and Juliet. There are a lot of quotes in the play that can be incorporated into my essay as proof and can back up my argument. Not all teens are the same but each relationship from the play can relate to teens in some way. 

Love

Love is amazing. I stumbled upon Romeo by chance but now I know it's meant to be. He's my soul mate. I’m so deeply in love with him. I couldn't live without him. If I didn't have Romeo I would rather be dead. I can't wait to marry him. Who cares that he's a Montague? His name means nothing to me. I am destined to be with him and nothing it going to change that. I’m going to spend the rest of my life with him. I don't know what I would do without my dearest Romeo. My family wants me to love Paris but I just cannot, now that I have experienced true love it’s impossible to go back. At this point I don’t care what my family says, I am willing to get rid of my last name and become one with Romeo, and I would not have a problem leaving everything just to be able to be happy with Romeo. I know it’s not just a phase or a hormonal thing because I am a teenager and I am going through hormones always so I would have felt something for Paris, but I didn't there was no connection no spark, unlike with Romeo with Romeo I feel like I’m on cloud 9 I’m ecstatic, I feel better, happier and I know in my heart I’m destined to be with him. I’m showing my love by risking it all, going against my families wishes, and marrying a banished man. If that's not love I don't know what is. I believe in love and marriage is the same thing, if one does not love someone there is no point in getting married to them. This became clear when I told Romeo to leave me alone and never come back if he did not love me, if he did not have good intentions. For example I do not approve of my parents marriage, it has become clear to me that my mother only married my father as a business` arrangement. I want my marriage to be inspired by love. That is why I don’t feel a "love" for them yes, I care about them but I do not love them, I love the nurse. She has been there for me all my life. She is a mother to me in every way expect biologically.

Midterm Reflection

 The time has come for first report cards and in our English 10 class we have to give ourself a grade. It is broken down into 4 sections, each out of 25. I'll rate myself on each section and then add up my percentage. I'm gonna include screenshots, examples, and lots of evidence to back up my assessment. 

The first section is made up of attendance, self regulation and staying on task. I wanna start off by saying that I'm always on time to class and I haven't missed one yet. If I am ever to miss a class I know it is my responsibility to find out what I missed and catch up on my own. If I'm ever late for class there will be a valid reason and I will talk to the teacher about it. So for attendance I think I do pretty well. For self regulation and staying on task I know I could improve. I do find myself getting off track sometimes but I try my best to get back on track when I do. I get distracted super easily and so sometimes it's hard for me to "control the elephant", but I'm gonna work on improving that! I don't have any screenshots for this section but if I did they would be messages between me and my classmates about homework or something like that. For this section I give myself a 23/25. 

The next section is about task completion. There were 15 assignments including blog posts, Edmodo comments and Google docs and I completed all 15. Im not sure if all of the blog posts submitted on Edmodo because sometimes I find I have to do it twice but if you refer to my blog they are all there. I know I don't comment enough on Edmodo and that's something im going to work on for the next term. Im all about setting goals! Being active in discussion is not only important in understanding the material, but also in sharing knowledge and learning things from others. I really wanna get involved in that more. For this section I give myself a 22/25. 

The third section is all about work quality. I think I did well on that because I find that when I'm expressing my own ideas  I can get them across to others easily. I also find it helpful when I read others pats because it helps me get ideas for my own work. I want to include examples from my tattoo assignment because I think that was one of the assignments I did well on. I noticed on Erlynns post that she included the tattoos her family members have.  

I thought that was a really good idea because it gives the reader background knowledge and it helped me decide on my tattoo. In my post I included all my family members tattoos and I think it made my writing better. Thanks Erlynn!

I think compared to classmates my work is pretty good. There are some really good students in the class (Erlynn) who I find do super well on all the assignments and I think it helps motivate me to do better. Margarita also motivates me. We work together a lot and share ideas and it helps both of us! I know there is always room for improvement and I can't wait to see how my work improves by next repot card! For this section I give myself 23/25.

The final section is class participation. Like I said before this is the category I think I need to improve most on. I do comment on Edmodo but I find that im always sharing knowledge that I feel like everyone already knows. I wanna start going above and beyond and finding new information to share with everyone. That is my goal for next term. But on the other hand when I compare my effort to some other classmates I think I do pretty well. So I think it's a bit of both and so im gonna improve for myself. For this section I give myself a 21/25.

After adding it all up the grade I'm giving myself is 89%. I stand behind this grade because I feel like it represents my work. I hope you agree and I can't wait for second term!