My fabulous year

            What can I say other than this was the most hellacious, fun, crappy, upsetting, amazing, stressful, horrific, exciting, scary year of my life… yeah, that pretty much sums it up. No, not really, I’d much rather go into detail.

            To start with, I had no idea how stressful my junior year would actually be. With cheering at games, ACT prep, homework in most classes, and doing all that while trying to actually have a life, I guess you can say I was a little wiped out… okay, maybe a lot. But if you asked me if I were to go back and change it, I wouldn’t. Everything I chose to do this year has made me who I am right now, and I’ve learned a lot from everything.

            Cheer, for example, taught me responsibility. Most people thing that extra curricular activities is just to have something fun to do during the school year. But cheer is a lot more than that. In cheer, we didn’t catch a ball- we caught people. When sports teams drop the ball, they lose a point. When cheerleaders drop a person, they lose that person. It’s a lot more than your average game of “kick the can”. I also had to make sure to show up to every single game on time, right on the dot- with my hair pulled back, my bow in my hair, my full uniform, pom-poms, etc. Not to mention, we had practice every single school day in the mornings. If that’s not what you call working our BUTTS off, I don’t know what is. Cheer definitely added to my stress, but I loved it. I wouldn’t ever go back and change it.

            Another thing that has really grinded my gears this year is college prep, and ACT prep and blah, blah, blah, blah, blahhhhhhhhhhhhhh. I’ll be straight forward and honest- I don’t want to grow up. Just thinking about everything I have to do is already turning my brain into a scrambled egg. I think I can hear it sizzling. I was wanting to do sterling scholar for art. I don’t know how well my chances are of getting it because I probably struggled more this year than anyone else going for it. I guess I’ll still try though. I’m not really one to give up. Either way, I’ll still be proud of what I was able to get through in school this year. I might have struggled a lot, but hey- I never gave up. Even when I felt like my future was lost. I’m back in control of that now. If I could give any bit of advice to younger kids, it would be to enjoy their life while they can. When I was younger, I wanted nothing more than to grow up and get away from my house and start my own life. Now that I realize how hard it will be, I would much rather crawl under my bed sheets and never come back out.

            A lot of people don’t realize that high school is probably a lot harder for the average girl than it is for boys. We not only have to do our homework, and all that jazz, but we have to look good doing it. Getting ready in the morning wasn’t really worth it to me this year. There was actually one day where I was wearing a t-shirt and sweats with my hair and makeup undone, and I went in to take the PSAT. I had only gotten three hours of sleep the night before. I guess you could call this year my scrounge year. I think I looked my best at prom night. Now THAT was stressful. When a girl gets pushed to bawling her eyes out while trying to get ready, you know how hard it is for one to feel pretty and confident every day. So boys, here’s a bit of advice- never call a girl ugly. You have no idea how hard it is for a lot of them to walk out of their house every morning and face your ignorant self every day. Keep your mouth shut, and be nice.

            Basically, this year was… a year to remember. It opened my eyes to everything- and because of everything that happened, I thin I’ll be more prepared to face the things that life will throw at me.

           

The Sunset On My Summer

McKahl Johnson

Honors English 11

3rd Hour

9/6/10

What happened to those endless days of freedom?
Jumping into a freezing cold lake and having the
Sensation of needles pricking my skin was the most
Bittersweet feeling.


I also miss those midnight Maverick trips.
I can still taste the giant fountain drinks, and
Nachos.


But then my alarm clock rang. It wasn’t just any
Regular sound an alarm clock is supposed to make.
It was saying words. It said “welcome to a whole
New world of stress.” This particular alarm stung
My ears.


And there I was. Bumping into people once again,
And ripping my hair out because I didn’t ace a quiz.
It all hit me in one swift punch and I never expected
It.


It ended all too quickly. I don’t know why it had to,
Or where it all even went, but all I can do is look
To the future. I’ll unbury all the school goals for this
Year that I had once tucked away during the summer,
And grow up.


At one point in my life, I thought that summer was
My escape from stress. But the truth is, I really do
Have a whole new world of stress to look forward to.
Not just this year, but in life.


Summertime is a privilege. Enjoy it when it’s here,
But don’t fret when it has to leave. We don’t have
Lot left.

My Brilliant Writing Journey

McKahl Johnson

Honors English 11

8/27/10

My Brilliant Writing Journey

In my day, I have encountered many different stories, poems, writing styles, techniques, even ways to hold a pencil, but it all boils down to one thing- where it all started.



To this day, I remember my pre-school classes. To teach us how to write, they would give us papers with random words or our names on it written in dotted line so we could trace over it. I guess that’s one good way to teach small children how to write, but for me it wasn’t a very useful method. My pre-school teacher wasn’t a positive influence for my writing practices. It wasn’t exactly her fault though. Being the wee, little tot I was way back then, you can only imagine how intimidating for me it was to follow rules and instructions from somebody that wasn’t one of my parents for the first time. I felt much better learning with my mom or dad at the comfort of my own kitchen table during dinner or my occasional after school snack.



After a couple years, my writing skills improved. In fact, I was such a well developed six year old, I even knew how to express my feelings on paper, for example, this is a direct quote from my first grade journal, “I like my mom and dad but I dont like my sister cas she’s sordof a brat.” I don’t think that sentence needs to be corrected at all for you to understand what it means. My first grade intellect was pretty impressive, but all great writers have those moments when something just doesn’t seem good enough. One day, I was practicing writing M’s when the teacher strolled past my desk and began to observe me. Right then, she took the paper from my hands and said an insult so rude, I could’ve gone my whole life without hearing it- “Your M’s look like curvy roller coasters.” It would be an understatement to say I was mad. Even worse, after verbally abusing me, she got me a new paper and made me start all over. But if constructive criticism is supposed to help people become better writers, maybe those harsh words were supposed to be a positive thing for me after all, right? At the time, I did not know that constructive criticism was going to lead me down a road of success.



Currently, I have pretty good strengths in writing. I’m almost always grammatically correct (yes, I am bragging about it) and I try to use big words in my papers to make them sound more intelligent. But hey, maybe everyone does that. I would have to say that my weaknesses in writing are far more significant than my strengths. Over the years, it has become harder and harder for me to express my thoughts and feelings on paper. Every now and then, I’ll become so driven to explain something that’s going on in my head that I’ll have to hurry and write about it. (Usually in poetry form or something along the lines of that.) Unfortunately at times, that creative spark will go away right when I’m in the middle of a poem. When that happens, I stop writing and never look at it again. In order for me to do creative writing, my heart and emotion all has to be a part of it. No great poet has ever just pulled a random thought out of their head and wrote it down without it tugging at their heart strings. Don’t get me wrong, I love writing poetry when I have a motivation to, but I just don’t think that I would be able to make a career out of it. Basically, creative writing isn’t my forte’.



I think that the most important thing for struggling writers to know is that if they want people to take them seriously in life, they need to know how to write for people to understand. This means no sloppy hand writing, grammatical errors, wrong spelling, misuse of certain words, etc. On the other hand, I could be a total hypocrite. Because this paper might have some of these listed errors. If it does, I’m going to look like a total idiot, but oh well. Making mistakes is part of the great journey of writing.