1st Semester Reflection

For this assignment, we are suppose to respond to the things that we learned in English class that stuck with us the most. For me, probably the thing that stuck with me the most was our Night Unit, when we read the novel Night, which is about a young Jewish boy named Elie Wiesel, and his father, trying to survive and stick together throughout the horrific attempt of genocide against the Jewish people known as the Holocaust. It stuck with me because it was so terrible, and we did a lot of background information on it and had to do a journal on a specific person that was in the Holocaust. It was pretty crazy on all of the facts and disturbing things that we saw from the films and the horrible things we read from diaries, or journals that people wrote of their time in the labor and concentration camps. Another crazy thing about the Holocaust was that no one had any idea on what the Nazis were doing with the Jews. People knew that they were putting Jews into labor camps and such, but they never knew that the Nazis would kill thousands of Jews everyday either from hunger, thirst, overwork, or from the Germans killing them in some horrible ways. They killed them by burning them alive, or using them as guinea pigs in the Nazis' horrible experiments with toxic chemicals and other experiments like that.

Another thing that we did in English class that really stuck with me was reading the novel I am the Cheese, which is about a teenage boy named Adam who knows hardly anything about his true past and still trying to stay sane in the process. What was so interesting about this book was that you can have many opinions about the book, like if Adam is a schizophrenic or is just a part of a government conspiracy. My opinion changed periodically throughout the book, on whether Adam was a schizophrenic or a part of a government conspiracy. But in the end of the novel, I think that because it is a little bit of both, but I believe that it leans more towards government conspiracy, because of the tape series that was involved throughout the novel, which makes it seem like that Adam is being interrogated by a man named Brint. At the very end of the novel, it talks in the tapes that the man that was supposedly helping Adam and his family, seemed to tell some organization, probably the Mafia, where Adam and his family's position was. Adam's mother and father were killed when the Mafia heard where they were. But the man that gave up their position was not fired or put on trial because of insufficient evidence. The man, 'Mr. Gray', was probably apart of the Mafia and was an inside man.

Those were the two main things that stuck with me throughout the 1st Semester of my Sophomore year of high school. 

Where are They Now?

In this blog post, we are supposed to go beyond the book, and look deeper into the book itself. I am looking up a few of the players on the 1988 Permian Panthers football team.

James "Boobie" Miles- After Boobie quit the team, he went on to play for a junior college, but he dropped out. Boobie jumped around from jobs and couldn't find one suitable for him. Now Boobie is a single father of four working at a maintenance company.

Mike Winchell- Mike now works for a surveying company and plays golf on the Iron Man Tour circuit.

Brian Chavez- Brian followed his dream and went to Harvard and graduated from Harvard and Texas Tech in law. Brian has been working at his father's firm in Odessa since 1996.

Ivory Christian- Ivory didn't go anywhere. He is a long haul trucker and he works for a trucking company that is based in Odessa.

Don Billingsley- Don has changed probably the most tremendously out of all of the players, he went from the hell-raising party boy, to a devoted Christian. Don now sells insurance in the Dallas area with his wife and two daughters.

Jerry McDougal- Jerry was known for his drive and under-sizedness. He now owns a concrete company that is right outside of San Antonio.

Gary Gaines- Gary still coaches to this day. He has been all around Texas working for all sorts of high schools throughout the large state. From Texas Tech to his current job at San Angelo Central High School.

Taking it a Step Further...

In this blog post, I am going to respond to a fellow blogger's response of a question. 


Morgan asked, "What is your opinion of fast food and how does it impact your life?"

Callie answered- In my opinion, fast food is some sort of creature that pulls you in from ads that you see on t.v. and can destroy your life. In commercials, fast food restaurants, like McDonald's, looks healthy. But in reality it is full of grease and fat that can make you really sick in the long run. Yes, it does taste good, but it is very harmful to one's life. Fast food doesn't really impact me much because I don't eat it unless I am desperate for food and it's the only thing that I can get.

My opinion on Callie's response to Morgan's question is absolutely true an one hundred percent accurate. All the fast food restaurant's commercials make it look like that they aren't bad for you and glorify the looks of them to make them not look like big heart attack starting grease filled burgers. And they target the kids with Burger King and McDonald's "happy meals" because you get a cheap ten cent toy that breaks before you even get back to your house.

Jason asked, "Do you enjoy high school?"

Jay responded- I do enjoy high school for the most part. I believe this is one of the better high schools, because we are allowed to have some say in what we want to learn about and that makes it a much more enjoyable experience. Friends also help make the high school years that much better because the friends you make here help shape who you become and how the time her goes. But on the other side sometimes stress can get to you and it can come from anywhere such as over zealous parent, school work, peers, teachers, and even the sometimes overwhelming idea of the future."

I completely agree with Jay. High school is all that it has been glorified to be, but with great times come with some consequences. Yeah high school is great, outside of the classroom. But you still have to work on homework and other stuff of that sort, which can build stress and can make you more distant to those that you love. High school is also were you find yourself and generally sets you up for the rest of your life, and you still want to have fun in high school, that's your "prime", but just you don't want to get caught up in everything in high school.

Emily asked, "When they talked about how kids used their parents to get to go to McDonald's, do you ever remember doing that to your own parents?"

Ben responded- Yes i do. I would always ask to go to McDonalds because of the Playplace. And then inevitably i would say "im hungry" and we would get food. And thats how McDonald's makes their money. 

I totally agree with Ben's response to Emily's question. That's how all fast food restaurants get there money: the kids. The kids give McDonald's money by them begging their parents to take them there to play at the play place or to get a toy or whatever the special thing is at that specific fast food place.

Quotes

"It was the very first official day of practice and it marked the start of a new team, a new year, a new season, with a new rallying cry scribbled madly in the backs of yearbooks and on the rear windows of cars: GOIN' TO STATE IN EIGHTY-EIGHT!" (3). Odessa is a die hard high school football town, with there rallying cries already written into yearbooks and on cars' rear windshields, they are very dependent on the team. The town goes up and down as the team does, they are one.
"If the season could ever have any salvation, if it could ever make sense again, it would have to come tonight under a flood of stars on the flatiron plains, before thousands of fans who had once anointed him the chosen son but now mostly thought of him as just another nigger." (xvii). Odessa seemed to only like people of a different color if they were a star in sports. Boobie Miles experienced this because he was the Boobie Miles, he was considered a god in the town of Odessa with his amazing skill at the running back position, but when he experienced a season ending injury which eventually ended his football career when he got tired of waiting for his time, he quit the team.
"The sound of vomiting echoed through the dressing room of the stadium, the retching, the physical embodiment of the ambivalence Ivory Christian felt about what he was doing and why he was there." (xxvi). The football team knows that they carry the town, and the game brought a lot of pressure onto the team. They all experience the worst feeling before a game, pregame jitters. And this was the biggest game of the season, against their rivals, so they had an insane amount of pressure on them that night.
Drew asked in his blog, "Why do you think race plays such an important roll in Odessa?"
I believe it plays such an important role because Odessa is in the very deep south, and even in the 1980's, there was still acts of racism. In Odessa, the only reason why there wouldn't be segregated, is that if you were a good sports player.

He's Done.

Into the beginning of the book, ex-star running back Boobie Miles was blessed with his amazing strength and yet finesse moves to get around defenders with his blazing speed, but when an injury in '87 finished his season early and possibly ended his life as he knew it with football. The first chapter starts with the game against the Panthers' arch rivals, the Midland Lee Rebels. Boobie was intent on making this his bounce back game, and he was pumped days before the game to plow through the Rebels. But, during the game, Boobie didn't get one play. He sat the sidelines the whole game. When halftime rolled around he was enraged. He started walking out, with all of his pads put up and all, then the Panthers' trainer, cooled him down and got him to try and pull through and to keep him going and stay in football... But it didn't work, and Boobie quit two days later. The Panthers lost by a one point deficit. Why do you think that Boobie quit? Have you ever quit something your frustrated with? After that, the author gave a brief background of the town, Odessa, and that it was founded in the late 1800's and was a booming town for oil. It would boom and then bust very often throughout the early and mid 1900's. He also gave a background on the football team. The Panthers are the winningest football team in Texas, with four state championships before the start of the '88 season, and the head coach then, Gary Gaines, had some big shoes to fill, to try and keep the Panthers on the right track to yet another state championship.
What is a pepette?
Why did Boobie quit the team?
What was the substitute for cookies and treats to the players?
What was the term "MOJO" to the fans?
Have you ever made a very difficult decision to quit something? Why did you quit it?Boobie Miles

Hello!

Will here to introduce you to the novel, Friday Night Lights. FNL is about a man who follows a whole town that revolves around their high school football team, the Permian Panthers of Odessa, Texas. This novel shows the Panthers', and the town's highs, and lows throughout the 1988 high school football season. One of the claims in the book is that racism still seemed to linger in the deep south throughout the adults then, but on Friday nights, when everyone in Odessa is watching the Panthers, all colors of skin seem to disappear for those few hours of the game. For example, the star running back for the Panthers, Boobie Miles, is loved throughout town in the '87 season, until he hurt is knee and he was out for the season. He was so used to being the "big shot" and such, whenever he final got healthy, he had to show everyone that he still had it, still was just as good as he was last year before the injury.