Final Reflection- Stanley Suter

1- What are the three most important things you learned this year?

          The most important things that I learned to do this year were how to format an extended response, how to format an extended response, and how to format an essay. These will be essential in high school because they make us write a lot.

2- What is something we did this year that you think you will remember for the rest of your life?

         We watched "Life is Beautiful." I will remember this, simply because it is known as a very good movie teaching major lessons about both people and the holocaust. In 20 years I'll say to my children "Oh, yea. I watched that in 8th grade Acc. Lit. 

3- What was the nicest thing someone in our class did for you this year?

         The nicest thing anyone did for me this year in class was that Leanna taught me how to "nae nae." I don't think this needs an explanation. 

4- What is something you taught your teacher or classmates this year?

         I taught my classmates how the world works logically. Not everything had to be completely by the books, and anything can happen.

5- In what area do you feel you made your biggest improvements? What is something you accomplished this year that you are proud of?

          My biggest accomplishment of this year was making a butterfly out of wood. I have made obvious improvements in the ways I take notes and the effort I put into some of my work.

6- What was the most challenging part of this year for you?

          Dealing with others (you know who you are.)

7- What was the best piece of writing that you did this year? Why do you think it is your best?

          My best writing was in my Algebra class, only because I like writing the obvious in ways that are hard to follow. This is easily done when thinking logically and it made the piece very good if I do so say myself. 

8- Of the books you read this year, which was your favorite? Why?

          I really enjoyed reading TKAM, the connections throughout the book were very well placed, and the theme was respectable. 

9- What advice would you give students who will be in this class next year?

           DO YOUR WORK AS EARLY AS POSSIBLE. It is a very good life skill to control the time you spend, and invest it wisely.

Final "Tuesdays with Morrie" project, Aphorisms.

          The aphorism I have been given is "Once you learn to die, you learn to live."  Morrie's main message in this aphorism is that you really will not understand how to spend your life properly unless you "believe" that your time is limited. For example, as a normal person, later in life I would go for the job with the highest wage and the most opportunity to earn money. If I knew that I was going to die soon, I would much rather be doing something that I enjoy doing, and be spending much more time with my family, rather than my associates.

         This aphorism relates to something my dad once told me. He said, and I quote "people are so eager to grow up, that they don't realize how much nicer it is to be young." This sort of Nostalgia is what makes people cherish what time they have left as they realize they aren't to far from the end. It makes them realize that they may only have so many looks at nature left, almost forcing them by human nature to savor the final moments of a certain kind.

          I completely with Morrie's Aphorism "Once you learn how to die, you learn how to live" because as I've said before, when you realize your time is limited you are going to cherish the moments you have left. It's the same with eight grade. As I feel my time running out, I feel the nostalgic feeling and the sadness from having to separate from the rest of my class.

          "Life is like a roller coaster, it has its ups and downs, but in the end we all exit it." -Stanley Suter.

Tuesdays with Morrie Bucket list, Stanley.

         What is on your Bucketlist? You can write a paragraph leading up to a bulleted list of what you would like to do/accomplish in your life.

        I obviously do not want to spend my life without purpose or in vain, so below is what I would like to do before I "kick the bucket." These are items that I hope to do in the next couple of years, but I would still like to have them completed by the time I die. I would like to feel the thrill of falling from thousands of feet in the air because I've heard it's phenomenal. I want to go completely beast mode in a Ferrari because it's just amazing, and one of my highest life goals is to be able to slam dunk. At Nazareth we may be looking at an oppourtunity for another state championship in baseball or football next year, so we really never know. Heavy Metal Concerts are crazy. 

Bucket List-

-Skydive
-Blow too much on a nice car.
-Cross-Over slam dunk.
-Win a state Championship.
-Go to another Heavy Metal concert.

"Life is Beautiful" Blog, Stanley Suter

         There are many similarities between "Night" and "Life is Beautiful." This starts with the "Father-Son" bond, both father's death directly before liberation, and the hope that they would both in fact leave the concentration camp alive. You can really see the father-son bond in the movie because Guido goes to great length to cover his son from the evil that surrounded him. Even on the way to his death, he was brave and looked his son in the eyes to insure him, he was going to be all right. Just like in night, Guido dies almost directly before the liberation and hope stays with Guido that he will find his wife and son, to escape the concentration camp.

          Some of the differences between "Night" and "Life if Beautiful" are really just the mood and tone. If you generalize the plots of both stories they are basically the same, Jews are being separated into concentration camps and a family is divided. A man struggles to keep both himself and his son alive. But when you get into the atmosphere of the movie you find that "Life is Beautiful" is a much lighter tone, having many jokes and the main character being a sort of jester. When you look at "Night", you find that it is very solemn.

           Life is beautiful throughout the book because even though Guido knows that they are being taken away to a camp, he stays happy and makes a game to protect his son. He knows they are likely to be hurt, but he says that the ride to the train station and the train ride itself are both birthday gifts for his son. He also tells his son that he got the last available tickets. At the beginning of the movie, the color of everything was amazing. It was bright and fast, however you can see as the movie progressed to the final scene exactly how destroyed everyone was. The Jews were just limping out of the camp slowly, and there was very little variation in the colors until the end. When Joshua reached his mother, you could see the field behind them, and life seemed to be "Beautiful" again.

American Sniper, by Stanley Suter (4/22/15)

          Prompt-How well does the title fit the story?

          This week I have continued reading "American Sniper" by Chris Kyle. It is very well written in the sense of accuracy and detail, considering while these events took place Chris was in the middle of a war zone. The main setting of the book is in Fallujah, where Chris was stationed for three out of four rotations in his career and the place he met his best "buds" from the Marines. He is currently near the end of his rotation on one of the biggest missions of his career, ground sweeps. He provides watch for the patrolling marines with searching for the highest ranked sniper in Iraq at this point. This is where he obtains the highest kill amount of his entire career.

          I actually have a couple of problems with the title. First, the name is way to general. I feel like if I bought this book not knowing what it was about, I would think it was a complete fiction about some unknown average sniper. The writher was a living legend, and I think the book about his days of glory should reflect that. Titles that could replace "American Sniper" could be "American Legend" or "Lethal." It would be better just to show he was a successful serviceman. 

          The title fits perfectly in the sense of Chris being both American and a sniper, even though he was so much more than that. I feel like he could have based it off of both his career in the Navy (he was in both technically the Marines and Navy, Marines being a sub-group below the Navy), and his life at home. He had two growing children and a wife during his time in action, and I felt like they could have used that to say he had a double identity of sorts. Maybe "Working man" or "the Soldier with a family", but "American Sniper" is just fine.

"Night" Wiesel's Changes, By: Stanley Suter

 How has Wiesel changed through the book?

          In the beginning of the book, Wiesel could be seen as a perfect person. He was religious, devoted to his family, and dedicated to education. Proving both that he was religious, and that he was dedicated to school, "By day I studied Talmud, and by night I would run to the Synagogue to weep over the destruction of the temple." The Talmud being a religious teaching, religion was his life. His father supported him in his studies, but when Elie want to study the Kabbalah, his father explains that "First you must study the basic subjects, those you are able to comprehend." Regardless of what his father tells him in the beginning of the book, he finds a master to guide his studies.

          The middle sections of the book are really where we see change in Wiesel's personality. He had just arrived at Birkenau and he sees the German cruelty through the crematorium, "Never shall I forget the small faces of those children whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke under a silent sky." This first camp was when Wiesel started to lose hope. He practically gave up on his religion and turned on a mindset of only his survival. Wiesel explains that an SS officer "was striking my father on the head: 'Be quiet, old man! Be quiet!'" Wiesel had stood still, afraid of the blows and angry at his father . He had a mindset that he was alone, there was no God and that he had to fend for himself. Still, he is very ashamed for abandoning his father.

          Towards the end of the book, Wiesel seems to regain many of his morals and values back. I think this is because he learns to cope with the constant abuse in the camps, and he no longer can only fend for himself. "Elizer, my son, come here... I want to tell you something... Only to you... Come, don't leave me alone... Elizer..." Elie even pretended to be sick, and gave his dyeing father his rations so that he may live longer. Even when an SS officer said that he should be receiving his father's rations, he dismissed the idea and continued to aid his father. Over the course of the book, Wiesel lost his morals and religion. He only managed to regain his sense of charity and life, but his religion was lost to him after he discovered the cruelty that humans could commit against one another.

"Theresienstadt's Hospital" Butterfly, Stanley Suter

Once, happier people lived here
in the gray building
Now, death moves silently towards other creatures,
those with typhoid, who moan and writhe
in their own diarrhea,
who lie and don't understand
why they are being fed bread and margarine.
I enter and become silent.

"You shiny new doorknobs,
you pretty painted walls in the bright ward,
can you make up for the stench of excrement?
Can you appease the hunger
of those who are ashamed of their underwear,
and brought here to die,
day by day?

The paint looks at me
and doesn't answer.
"Why? I don't understand why!"
It seems the doorknob would say,
when it opened for me,
a free soul, with a full stomach,
"I can tell you
and then you will come to me!"