Please Read This One

If you don't read any of the rest of my blogs for the entire year, please read this one. What you said today, in fact, the entire discussion we had today really hit home to me. I realize that a lot of my time is pretty booked, and unfortunately because of that I usually wait until the last minute to write all of my blogs; notice that they're all submitted close to midnight on Friday. Now this blog, for a change, I will be writing in leu of an influx of free time brought about by my Senior year starting to wrap up. Anyway, back to the discussion. The discussion was about cheating, but the particular area I chimed in on was allocative resources being used in certain places. As a top 2% student (yes my class rank is in the teens believe it or not), a two-sport varsity captain, and an officer in 3 different clubs, my most valuable resource is my time. In fact I have such little time and such poor organizational skills that I managed to completely forget about a Stanford interview I was supposed to have an hour ago, thus inspiring me to try try to stay on top of things like my blogging. I attested that since my future career does not lie in the field of English or liberal arts I do not need to allocate more time than necessary to English. I've always been a sufficient writer when I put my effort into it, you even mentioned that you can tell from my blogs that if i decided to "turn it on" with my blogging I could be a really good writer. Well I'm turning it on for this blog. My writing style has always been criticized by past English teachers as being immature. I, however, say that my failure to be formulaic and boring is not a weakness in my writing, but a strength that makes it more entertaining. Possibly too much Vonnegut influence has turned my writing voice into one that utilizes sarcasm and dry humor, on top of some drawn out syntax, to make my writing more bearable to read. I'm perfectly happy with the way I write and the type of vocabulary that I employe while writing. Actually my seemingly elegant vocabulary mixed with unusual syntactical structure might be the reason that English teachers don't really like the way that I write. It has created a means for me to write essays upon essays that are so shallow in analytical enlightenment yet receive solid grades thanks to a disguise in my writing style. So in that respect it has built up a little bit of academic complacency in the way I take on English. I love writing these blogs; when I sit down and really think about what I'm going to say in these blogs, rather than pumping out 2 blogs to beat my midnight deadline, I thoroughly enjoy them. It allows for me to display to you what I can do. Why would I care about impressing you? Because you're awesome. Not just as a teacher. You're genuinely an individual that I really admire for your intellectual ability. I envy your wit, especially, and the way that you formulate debates. Ideologically we have polar opposite views on things, and I think that's why I really like you as a person. You're somebody that I can actually have a debate with that never becomes hostile, and at the end of the debate you always manage to provide new insight for me that I didn't have prior knowledge of, which I can't say about a lot of people. I love other's insight for I am a very opinionated person who's opinion is also very malleable. Often times in arguments the person I am arguing with is so hard headed that rather than offering new insight that could disprove my opinion, they just drill what they already know, and what I already know that they know. Rather than drilling in old news, you, on the other hand, typically respond with a "well what about..." And often times I say am caught deeply searching for a just as insightful rebuttal. I can tell that you are a very, very, intelligent person, and that we have both been influenced by very different things that rightly have altered our opinions. Music has had a huge impact on your life, something that I haven't had the slightest exposure to, but I want to know what you have to say because of that discrepancy between us. I think the reason that people like Gavin, and the other guys that sit around me, enjoy your philosophical discussions so much are because they are intellectually stimulating. We're all athletes and enjoy competition, your discussions and debates are like small competitions, battling back and forth with arguments and counterarguements. This is something that very few students are ever exposed to in the academic system, and that's why I love this class so much. Calculus, Physics, Government, etc. all just drill facts into our brains. Facts, facts, facts, but no opinions. Nowhere to argue or display what WE know. But English -yes I just made a full circle- gives us a little glimpse of that, writing in particular. See writing is where we can express who we are through the particular writing voice that we've all adapted into. When I mentioned earlier that sometimes my analytical essays lack a sense of maturity in writing style, I attest that's me trying to break free of the conformity that is our academic system. This conformity is why I might not put full effort into English as a class. With my voice I can express my opinion, primarily through sarcasm which hints that I don't particularly care about what Poet A meant when he said blah blah blah. I'm so used to allocating my resources to achieve a particular grade, usually a 100. My brain is trained into simply getting something done, black and white, which is what a lot of my classes are designed to do, especially English. And since English isn't what I deem as necessary to achieve the highest grade possible, I allocate more of my resources, time especially, into Calculus, Physics, and sports. I hope that after you read this you are more aware of the kind of opinion I have. Like I said, I really enjoy having discussions with you and hope that you have some comments on the viewpoints I have provided. Your opinion is something that I value because of the philosophical weight that it carries, and maybe years from now I can come back and visit, and we can have a drink and talk about trivial things that only matter in how they shape our opinions. Thanks Mr. A.