Kayla's Corner

I try to not be bothered by much and to let most things slide, but recently I've had trouble ignoring those who are hypocrites. I just don't understand why one minute people are preaching about something they don't like or find irritating and then the next minute they are doing that exact thing. I find that with covid people have turned into the biggest hypocrites. Over the summer my friend's mother would not let her daughter go in anyone's house, but then she would go to bookclub and wine nights with her friends in their homes. Just recently my friend had a birthday party with a few friends and the same mother called and told the mother that it was so unsafe for her to have people indoors for the birthday even though she allows her daughter to attend Waterpolo practices where there are no masks or social distancing. Some people need to understand that you have to practice what you preach. This is not just an issue with my friend's parents, it's politicians ...

Back in I think eight grade my teacher would play Sarah Kay poems and we would watch her Ted Talks. I had never heard spoken word poetry before, and I really enjoyed watching the videos because you could hear and see the emotion in the poems. Her name stuck with me until now, and when we were told to pick a mentor poet, her name was the first to pop into my head. This poem, Hands , was the first one we watched back in eight grade so I remembered it the best. I always liked how she told a story about her life through her poems and then connected it to something else to show a deeper meaning. In this poem, she shares about how her and her Dad had a game of holding hands, and about the many things people use their hands for like writing and playing sports. However, she also shows the other side of hands and how they can be used for bad things that they were never meant to be used for when she discusses the Middle East and politics. My favorite part of the poem is when she discusses how ev...

 When I first started my BBC book, I had no idea what it was about. I didn't even read the quick summary on it that we were supposed to. I picked Middlesex to read only because my friends in the class put it as their first choice. I had no idea what I was getting into when I opened the book and started reading for the first time. I guess I couldn't expect much cause I didn't even have the slightest notion of what it was about. I don't think I've ever read a novel with the level of detail and plot that Middlesex has. I'm still not convinced that the book is not based on a true story, and for that I applaud the author. Having just finished the whole 544 pages, I can confidently say I've never read a book quite like Middlesex . For a good third of the book, I thought a character had died and I just managed to miss the section where it actually said it. However, the character never actually died and was alive the whole time. They were just not talked about for...

For some reason, I couldn't get past the meaning of the word. I tried to look up the most beautiful sounding words in the English language, but if the word had a bad meaning I couldn't see the beauty in the pronunciation of it. The example given in class was Gonorrhea. If I didn't know the meaning then maybe I would see how nicely it sounds, but the definition of the word ruins it for me. This is why I had to choose a word with a somewhat okay definition.  The word that I find most beautiful, at least out of the list of the 500 most beautiful words in the English language, is Effervescence with an honorable mention going to Silhouette. I don't know what it is exactly about these words that like. I recently read effervescence in a book. I remember having to read over it multiple times because at first I pronounced it wrong. That is probably why it stuck out to me on the list. Silhouette on the other hand, I'm not really sure why it caught my eye. One possible reason ...

Last week, I finally got to go back to school, after five months stuck behind a screen. There were pros to being online, like sleeping in later and getting up to make myself breakfast on the breaks. However, in the end I was miserable. I couldn't get the social interaction that I desperately needed when I was online. Coming back to school last week was refreshing. I was able to talk to my teachers and actually pay attention during class. Unfortunately, when I was just getting used to the in person routine someone on my cheer team got Covid. Now I have to stay home and sit behind a computer for five hours a day once again. I cant go to school, cheer, or water polo. I don't even have it, but those are the guidelines in place. I don't really understand it all. We wear masks and social distance at practice, so why do I need to stay home? I know they are trying to keep everyone safe incase I actually got Covid from a spit particle that traveled through my teammates mask, flew si...

     I dislike blogging. Last year, my teacher was the only English teacher who made her classes do weekly blogs. I was jealous of all my friends who were in different classes because they weren't forced to do them. When the year ended, I thought I was free. I didn't expect to be forced to write them for a second year in a row. My life would be so much better without them. However, I can say that the prompts this year are definitely better. I don't like writing them, but I do like reading them. It would be nice to get class time to read other peoples blogs.      Choice reading is not really "choice" reading. Yeah we get to chose a book instead of  being assigned one, but we can't just choose any book we want. Its highly recommended that we pick one off of the AP list which really means we have to select one of them. Not in a million years would I chose a single book off of that list if I was actually given a choice. I want to read a dystopian novel or ...

The play Fences can be analyzed in many different ways using multiple lenses. However, today I'll take a deeper look into the play, specifically the characters, using a psychoanalytic lens. In the play Fences , by August Wilson, Troy's approach to his familial relationships and the problems that arise within them, are influenced by his childhood trauma and past experiences. To prove that it is the childhood trauma and past experiences that affect his relationships, the play must be analyzed through a psychoanalytic lens. However, to understand this lens, some background on psychoanalysis is necessary.  Info on Psychoanalysis Psychoanalysis was founded by Sigmund Freud in the early twentieth century, and it was used to treat people's emotional problems by understanding conscious and unconscious aspects in the mind. The conscious mind represents what people knowingly do whereas the unconscious represents what people do without knowing. In addition, the unconscious mind includ...