Crime is Pride

The quotation from Antigone by Sophocles implies, pretty clearly, that all people make mistakes; no one is perfect. But it also states that someone of good character will stop when he or she knows they’re doing something wrong, turn it around, and fix it. The final line explains that the only wrongdoing someone can commit is being too proud of themselves.

I personally agree with this entire statement. It is true that nobody out there is absolutely perfect, but if someone has some shred of a conscious, they will realize when they’ve done something wrong and will correct themselves without hesitation. Someone without that natural inkling to correct their mistakes probably doesn’t feel any sort of guilt or remorse and, therefore, are committing the “crime of pride”, as Sophocles has pointed out. They are too proud of themselves to realize that they’re hurting someone or something.

This excerpt makes me think about what I learned in my AP Psychology class on anti-personality disorder. Commonly, we think “anti-social” means that a person doesn’t talk to anyone and stays locked up in their room alone. In reality, it means that person literally lacks a conscious; they don’t feel sorry for any negative things they do or say, and they do these things mercilessly.

The idea of pride as a crime can be seen in another light as well; the person doing the good may become too proud of the deeds their doing and grow to be a little too conceited. They will fix the “evil” for their own self-serving reasons rather than taking the time to consider the other people their actions could have affected.

 

Word count: 281

Music Freak

As many of you know, I really enjoy art and I'm pretty good at it. But if there's one thing in life that I love more than art is music. I absolutely love music. Not like. Love, because there is so much that music can do besides sound pretty. Music has also inspired my art and helped me focus or, "get in the zone" if you will. I would totally persue music if I had any shred of musical talent (I took band in middle school...fail). So I guess that means I'm just stuck listening to music which I am perfectly fine with. It's fun to dance around your room like an idiot with a hairbrush microphone, or head-bang at your steering wheel. Have you ever found a song or songs that remind you of a certain place or person or experience in your life? I relate a lot of my best memories to songs that remind me of them. My friends and I have songs that are simply "ours", or they describe our relationships or they spark up a memory between us. Those songs are always my favorites, unless they remind me of a sad memory or of someone who isn't a part of my life anymore. The saddest part about that is they were songs I once really enjoyed, and I feel like I can't listen to them anymore without bringing back those memories I worked so hard to forget.

 

Not only is it fun to dance to and jam out in your car or have a private shower concert, but it's also therapeutic in a way. Really! Have you ever had a terrible day at school or work, or you just broke up with your boyfriend or girlfriend and you just want to vent but you don't know how to? As teenagers, we kind of use music to escape the real world when we're stressed or upset about something, and we focus on the melodies and the lyrics and it's calming, even when the music is very loud and crazy. I personally listen to loud, heavy, shredding guitar music when I'm angry, or sappy love songs when I'm depressed because they fit my mood to a point. Although, sometimes it's better to listen to songs opposite your mood so it'll help distract you and make you feel better. Honestly, song lyrics can express how I'm feeling better than my own mouth ever could. It's almost impossible not to find a song that doesn't express your feelings at any moment, which, I think, is pretty awesome. It's even been scientifically proven that music can help your mood!

 

Word count: 441

Ophelia

1.      The heaviness of death clings to the air like dew on the morning grass

2.      Nonsense melodies cloud her saddened mind

3.      The herb placed to her lips tingles, burns with eagerness

4.      She should not do this; she cannot do this

5.      Her footsteps are a storm as she stumbles through the wood, leaving heartache behind her

6.      A tree is her savior and her solitude from reality

7.      Splintering, cracking like her broken heart, its limb has no strength to save her from her fate

8.      The broken branch lies over the brook

9.      Willows weep softly; their tassels hang mournfully above her

10.  Her limp body floats, like a leaf, on the surface of the water

11.  Mermaid hair swims around her as she glides down the shallow creek

12.  Her heart stills, frozen with the absent warmth of love she wished to receive

13.  Her once-lovely pink lips turn pale, as her breath silently whisks away

14.  Petals float around her, the only color that remains

15.  Ophelia, her body wilted, slowly sinks down into depths from which she won’t return

My first technique was imagery. As you can see, I pretty much use imagery in almost every line; I was once told that poetry was constructed of sound and imagery, so I just went on from there.

Another technique I used was diction. This would be the sound part of my poetry construction, and I used this in lines 4, 8, and 11 especially. Line 4 is a parallel structure, 8 I used alliteration, and in 12 I used words that related to mermaids like “hair”, since it’s an important feature, “swims”, and “glides”. The entire poem could be considered an analogy for death.

I used quite a bit of personification in this poem in lines 1, 8, 9, and 13. I figured using these would make the images seem more alive so the audience would feel like they were actually witnessing Ophelia’s death personally. (You might be able to consider personification in line 15 in regards to her body since she’s dead at this point).

I used similes in lines 1 and 10 to compare the heaviness of death and her dead body to natural things, also making the story more tangible. I also used one in line 7 to compare the breaking tree branch to her already-broken heart.

I used metaphors in lines 5 and 6, labeling her footsteps as a storm, indicating she’s running quickly, loudly, wildly through the forest to the tree, my second metaphor, her savior.

This brings me to my zeugma in line 6, stating that the tree is her savior and her place of solitude and privacy in one.

My final strategy is anaphora, which you can see in lines 5, 10, 12, and 13 in my repetition of the word “Her” at the beginning of each of those lines.

Word count: 485

I Know You're Ignoring Me...Facebook Said So

Do you ever want to talk to someone really bad, but you're at war with yourself because you don't want to annoy them? Yeah, me, too. Eventually you give in, you text them and get nothing back after a long time, if at all; it hurts, right? Especially when you know that they're the kind of person who always has their phone attached to their hip. Being ignored sucks. Sometimes you just want to go full stalker mode and talk to their friends, find out what they're doing, why they aren't texting you. It's a girl thing. Or maybe it's just me and I'm some kind of stalker freak, I don't know. But I'm sure I'm not the only one who's felt the sting of being ignored by someone whom you really want to talk to.

One of the worst feelings is when they initiate hanging out with you sometime earlier that week or even earlier in the day, and then when it comes time to when they wanted to hang out, they suddenly fall off the face of the earth. No amount of texts or phone calls will work. You're sitting there pouting because you got your hopes up and your makeup all done. You go back into that vicious circle of internally beating yourself up because you want to keep texting them, hoping they'll take the necessary 30 seconds to type out a response. That's what I don't understand: unless you're asleep or at work where you can't have a phone out or something along those lines, I doubt anyone is so busy all day long that they can't take a simple 30 seconds to a minute, at most, to at least say hey. Men, I swear. They just don't get it.

Another issue is when you're hanging out with a friend, and they're constantly texting their significant other. The catch is, when they're hanging out with said other, obviously they're "way too busy" to text you, right? Wrong. That's total bullshit in my opinion. And, quite frankly, it's really inconsiderate. Why even hang out if you're just going to be talking to a billion other people, but then ignore everyone else when you're with that one "special" person? I realize the person they're with might not appreciate them texting either, but why should they think it's okay to do one thing to one person or not the other? It's just not fair. I hope some of you can relate to my little ranting session.

Word count: 423

Nap Time is a Must

            When you get home from a long day of intellectual stimulation and torture, otherwise known as school, sometimes it's really nice to just take a nap. We poor children haven't been able to take naps since Kindergarten, and we're always so damn tired because we go to work after school some days and stay up until the wee hours of the morning doing all of our homework. But on those occasional days off, what smart, sleep-deprive high-school kid isn't thinking of taking advantage of maybe an hour or two for a little snooze?

            Some nights when you have little or no homework, you could just eat dinner and then go straight to sleep really early. That feels fucking AWESOME. Not just the feeling of having no homework but also being able to catch up on some very-much-needed sleep. As we all know, sleep is essential to our learning. Uck. No. Sleep is just fun and it keeps you from waking up like a zombie or being a real nasty person to be around. My sister is that kind of person. She doesn't do well on little sleep. She will fall asleep right when we get home from school and sleep straight through dinner sometimes, wake up for maybe an hour and then go right back to bed. Even when she gets tons of sleep she still wakes up in a pissy mood sometimes.

            I just woke up from a pretty fantastic three-hour nap myself and it inspired this post. I don't know what it is, maybe I'm just weird, but I am really comfortable sleeping on the floor. Hell, I can fall asleep and nap pretty much anywhere: floor, couch, chair, sitting up, on a pile of pillows/blankets/clothes, you name it. Anyone else like that? At least it means that I'm not picky when it comes to sleeping somewhere. Like when your family goes on vacation and there are only two beds for the six of you; of course your parents will have one and your selfish siblings claim the second so you're kind of forced to create a make-shift bed on the floor. Either way, no matter where I sleep, naps are amazing. But they gotta be at least an hour. Or two. Or more.

Word count: 380

"I'll just do it later"...

I must admit that I have a serious problem with procrastination. Sometimes it just sounds better to spend an hour or so hanging out with your best friend, or watching a movie and then studying later, or taking a 30-minute power-nap that turns into a couple hours. My difficulties with buckling down and cracking the books have only gotten worse since high school opened its ugly doors for me. Balancing five college-level classes, including all those heavy textbooks, and a part-time job is damned near impossible some days. Putting off that paper and reading assignment for a little while to give myself some free time always sounds like a good idea, until my test comes back with a big, fat “F” on it. I know it’s hard to get into the habit, but doing my homework right when I get home really is the best idea if I want to do well in school. I need to be more self-disciplined and actually follow my planner. That way I won’t have to cram all my assignments into one night and lose precious sleep over it.

I think I can safely say that about 98% of teenagers have procrastinated. The other 2% are probably lying. One thing I’ve learned that helps with my procrastinating is to write things down. Staying organized and keeping track of all the things you have to do really helps because it creates a sort of guideline for what projects you need to finish first and which ones you can afford to put off for a while. If you have multiple assignments due around the same time, and you have, say, a week to do them, spend a little time every night working on each project so that by the night before they’re due, it won’t take as long to finish everything. That way you also have time to finish smaller assignments given to you throughout the week that are due the next day without feeling pressured with the heavy workload.

Another problem that contributes to my procrastinating, and I’m sure others’, is the temptation of electronics; you feel your phone buzz and you think that you have to look at it that very second or it’ll explode. One thing that helped me was keeping my phone in a different room while I worked on homework. That way I couldn’t hear or feel it vibrate and I was able to concentrate without worrying about who was texting me. If you must use your phone for researching or something like that, sometimes it’s better to use than a computer because there’s the temptation of opening tabs for Facebook or YouTube or Twitter. Since switching pages on your phone is more difficult than on a computer, it won’t be as easy to get sucked into the social websites; as long as you’re not texting, of course.

If you have a study hall period, take advantage of it. It’s much easier to concentrate when you’re in a school setting; it’s quiet, and there aren’t those temptations like a T.V. or a comfy couch. That way you can get some assignments done and you can actually take the time to relax and watch your favorite show when you get home.

Procrastinating is a nuisance, but if you have the organization and self-discipline to get your work done first, your grades and your brain will thank you.

Word count: 564

Prom?

I've been debating lately whether or not I want to go to prom. I know it's my senior year and it's really my only opportunity ever to get to go, but I've never been a big fan of dances. I've gone to Homecoming every year, but how different is it from prom, really? It's more expensive. I mean, look at those dresses! The tickets are more since prom includes a fancy country-club dinner, the dance itself and the party afterwards. Everyone spends so much money on hair and makeup and nails when they could honestly do most of that themselves or have a friend do it.

            Another thing I'm not too excited about in regards to prom is the fact that I do not and probably will not have a date. I know it's not a big deal and it would most likely be more fun going with a big group of friends, but every girl wants a guy to ask her to prom in a really cute way. Seeing all the adorable little couples with their balloons and posters and pictures clogging up my news feeds makes me sick and a little sad, to be honest. It makes the prom experience less exciting. It sucks even more when the people I'd be in a group with have quite a few couples in there, too. It's like I never get away from them!

            I don't want to have to spend a ton of money on a dress that I'll probably never wear again, shoes I can't really walk in, and get my hair and makeup done all nice just to get sweaty and gross during a dance, in the dark, where no one can see. I think we get all dressed up for the pictures and that's it which is honestly really funny because everybody takes pictures of themselves pretty much every day anyway.

            Even though I'm not feeling this whole prom thing, I'm pretty sure I'm going to go just to say I went, and I might regret it when I'm my mother's age and I didn't go. I don't want to be Drew Barrymore in "Never Been Kissed", waiting until I'm 25 to go undercover back to high school so I can go to my senior prom. I might as well take the chance now while it's here.

Word count: 401