#9

I have been at home for the last two weeks due to the pandemic occurring in the world right now. So I have been trying to keep myself busy. The first thing I did was redo my room by painting it then rearranging my furniture. But after that I didn’t really know what to do other than go on social media and watch hours of TV that I am sure have definitely rot my brain. I had to read a book for my history class I’m currently taking, but I did not want to read it, even if it did seem a little interesting. Whenever someone plops something down in front of me and says that I have to do it, it seems about sixty percent less exciting to do. So, while I was procrastinating reading this book, I rearranged my bookshelf that I have in my room and I realized I had gotten a couple books over winter break that I hadn’t had the chance to read yet. So I pulled out one of them and started reading it in the morning and finished it that night. I get very sucked into books because sometimes I want to be a world that isn’t my own for a couple hours. The book I read was in my favorite series and it definitely was not the best book in the series, but it was good and still has my mind on it right now. I can’t wait to read the next book just to see how the author plans to figure everything out that is happening with the main character at the end of the last book.

After I read this book I continued on with another. Again, procrastinating reading the book I actually had to read. Eventually when I was a couple chapters in, I finally decided to read the book that I needed to read for my history class. As I was working up to reading it I was dreading every minute of it. I did not like the book and just didn’t want to read it, even if at first I thought it would be interesting. When I was buying the book for this class I looked at reviews that people gave and everyone was saying along the same things, that it is one of the best books they have ever read. So, automatically I was going in with an idea that this was just going to be a fantastic book, but I always forget to determine what type of books these people truly enjoy reading. I prefer to read books that are science fiction or romance. I enjoy a story line that I can think, dream, and expand on in my mind. This book that I had to read was historical fiction and it was based in a time period that was extremely discriminatory towards African Americans. When I read books with this premise, it just makes me sad and angry that people had the audacity to treat another human being like they were lesser simply because of the color of their skin. It was just hard to read something that caused people pain because there was a racial hierarchy in this time period and I never want to return to this way of life. I read science fiction or romance novels about a world that is not our own most of the time, or at least not what my world feels like. So, I feel like I can escape what may be happening in my life and enjoy reading something happy and uplifting. I don’t really know what this blog post is really about. I think I have just had so much social distancing that this is the first time I have had the chance to speak about something other than how I want to return to my school in Ohio so badly. So a distraction of books or redecorating is my way of escaping from the reality that is going on today and I am grateful for these resources.

#1

I have never considered myself to be a writer. In high school, I knew I was good at Math and wanted to progress with that since I found it fun and easy. I was not as strong of a learner in my English classes because I have reading comprehension difficulties as well as the ability to not know how to spell anything. Because of this strain on my learning I turned to Math, so this is why I want to become a Math teacher for high school students. When looking back at my high school experience, I wish I understood the difficulties I had with reading and writing before so I could work on them and become more proficient in this field since I have always loved the idea of being a writer. Reading books has been an escape for me for as long as I can remember. I mostly read romance or science-fiction and so one time I wanted to try and write something like this myself. After writing one page of a story I thought up in my head, I learned that this was a lot harder than it looked. I am not very good at expanding on my ideas so, I knew I wasn’t going to be a writer. Even though this wasn’t going to be my future, I want to continue to grow with my writing skills. I’m grateful for this experience though. Without the difficulties I had in high school with reading and writing I may have never fallen in love with math. Something I like to say about math is that it really is its own language and it’s universal. Yes, it is still extremely difficult, but maybe in some weird way I can consider myself to be a writer in the language math someday.