Last Blog

On Monday we finished watching the film Less than Zero. I thought the film was pretty good, however, i like the book better because they never hid anything. Clay always told it as it was. On wednesday we received our place essays back and are now working on our final paper. The literary analysis paper is going to be a tough one for me because i’m trying to find direct quotes from the book and piece them into my paper. I have enjoyed working with Less Than Zero the past couple weeks or so. Im glad i got a chance to read it. Well, this is the last blog and i’m glad for that, and looking forward to getting my paper done.

Ryan Piprude

“Last Blog!!!!”

This week we all spent time wrapping up the novel Less Than Zero. I liked the fact that our final quiz was a take home quiz. It gave me and opportunity to actually think through the questions, and give a true question instead of being in the classroom and not feeling like I had enough time to put in an sincere answer. By taking the quiz home I guess it gave me and I’m sure my other classmates to actually recall the novel and come to final conclusions of the novel. I also liked that before we turned in our quizzes we got talk about our feelings about the novel overall, and again hear our classmates opinions about the book whether they clashed against our thoughts or not. We also spent time with our outlines. We turned our rough drafts in and received them back on Friday. I really like the fact that for each of our papers we have an opportunity to improve before we hand in our final papers to make sure we are on the right track. I feel that that is the best technique on trying to improve your paper because if you don’t know what you’re doing in the first place then it’s hard to fix your mistakes. So by giving us the chance to fix the mistakes beforehand really helps me become a better writer. Also I enjoyed the extra credit opportunity given this week. The Spirit Room wasn’t complicated to find and I enjoyed that the writers of all the essays, poems, and short stories were staff, students, or alumni of MSUM. Some students had really good stories and I enjoyed the fact that we got to have a copy. All of the poems had their own meaning to it and I liked that. It was also great to hear that Mr. Logan was the leader for the Red Weather. 
Charleta I. Kimber

Brett lien

Week LAST LOG

This is the last log we have to do for this class and im pretty pumped about that. Its not that its hard its just that i have to remember to do them every week and would forget about them. But enough about that, this last week in class we have finished watching the movie less than zero and personally i liked the movie better then the book. I liked the character Clay better in the movie because he was a straight kid that didnt do any drugs and would try and help his friend Julian who was in big trouble with dealers and had terrible drug habbits. The book and the movie were similar but for the most part they had alot of differences. I’m doing my essay on them and I have found alot of them. I think the book has a moral to the story and that is how it shows how bad drugs can be for you and how much trouble you can get yourself into if you live that kind of life style. It shows how the parents of those kids need to be rolemodels and they arent in the book. for the most part I liked the book but some parts just had me confused because of the random parts it had in it.

April 27-May 1

This week went by fast. Monday we finished watching the Less Than Zero movie. The ending was surprisingly better than in the book. Overall, I thought the movie was better than the book. We also had our last quiz over the book which turned out to be a take home quiz. The last quiz was pretty easy becuase it was only three questions and for the most part they were opinion questions.

Tuesday our rough drafts of our literary analysis essays were due and we did small group critiques. I thought this was helpful beucase my group gave me good feedback on how to improve my paper. I think this is the hardest paper we have had to write all year. When I wrote my rough draft I was not happy with the outcome but I plan to work on it and have someone else read it to get their opinion.

Friday we did class evaluations which didnt tak very long. For the remainder of the class we talked about our papers and the works cited page and what needed to be on that. We also talked about the correct way to cite the book and the movie within our papers.

Almost done!
-Brenna Cloos

April 25th- May 1st

Ah! It seems we have finally made it to the last weeks of English.  Moving onwards, we talked about Less Than Zero for the last week and finished the movie on Monday. The movie version was much better than the book because it gave the reader a clear plot line to grasp, I felt that the book plot line had the reader trying to find it in the first place. While I won’t deny that the movie version had the “Hollywood elements”, it still had a better ending. The book left too many stray ends.

Wednsday was the day for critiquing our fifth and final composition. The usual people showed up for critiquing, and the others did not. I appreciated this day because it gave me the chance to bounce off my ideas on a classmate. While my essay was a tad controversial and held a somewhat different meaning, I believe that this critique was by far the best one yet because I got some really good feedback on my paper, however, this could also be due to the fact that I have critiqued my papers with the same two people all semester.

I am not sure what to expect for Friday. I believe that we will talk about our papers in somewhat more detail and that class will start winding down soon, with papers and whatnot being turned in.

I will have to say though, that I have never been required to blog about a class my entire life, but it was a nice experience, it posed some problems for me because of my schedule, but it was a good experience overall.

Oh yeah, Happy Friday!!!

-Kelsey Indergaard

4/25-5/1

This week was a pretty easy week, I liked it. We watch the end of the movie and I personally didn’t like it. It was a lot different from the book in many ways. This could have been a good thing but in this case as many times with a novel turned in to a movie it did not live up. I think the director of the movie had to change the plot to make it in to a movie but I do not think they kept and took out the right things in the movie. I’m not a fan of this concept of Less Then Zero because I do not feel sorry for most drug addicts and when you conceder that these kids were rich drug addicts I really don’t feel sorry for them. These kids had ever opportunity to do something with there lives (talking more about Julian now) and didn’t do anything with it. They were rich, good looking, and pretty smart and just pissed it away with a life of drugs and partying. Some people may blame the parents but that is bull shit they put food on the table and put a ruff over there heads and that is all a parent needs to do. A person has to take reasonability for there own life and control the out come.
Anthony Sands

Last Week In April!!

This week we finished up the “Less Than Zero” movie and book. We took the final test on it, which was a take home test that was nice. It gave me alot of time to think about the book and how I should answer the questions. Then we handed in our rough drafts for the literary analysis compare and contrast essayon “Less Than Zero”. I was a little worried about that. I didn’t really understand what I should focus on. It did not help that I watched the movie. So I started getting the movie and the book mixed up. I am not to proud of that draft I have already started on my final and I’m pretty impressed with this one alot more. It also helped that you handed us that example on the literary analysis. I think only a week and a half then we are done!

 

 

Traci Stalberger

1 week left

This week in English we finished “Less Than Zero”. The movie turned out to be a disappointment, to me. There was just too many differences and it was nothing like the book. I don’t really think the director even read the book or knew what is was about. We also got our last quiz on the book on Monday too. It was a take home quiz and was pretty easy. Just some questions about what we thought about the book and the movie. We turned that in on Wednesday and discussed it in class. We also handed in our Literary Analysis rough draft too. I was happy with mine it came together easy once I started writing it. Tomorrow we are doing class evaluations. Then only a couple more days of class.
Brianna Huotari

April 27th week

This week we took our last quiz on Less Than Zero. This quiz was a lot easier than the other ones because it was more self explanitory and opinionated. We also finished watching the movie Less Than Zero on Monday. The movie is much more different than the book. I enjoyed the movie a lot better than the book because it gave more closer to things unlike the book. In the movie it is a lot less random which I liked. The book jumped from thing to thing a lot and it got kind of confusing. It’s not that the book was hard to understand, it just jumped scenes a lot and stuff. It was suprising to me to see that the movie was more about Julian than Clay. The book was much more focused on Clay, so it was weird to see less of him in the movie. Anyway, we also handed in our rough draft for the literary analysis today. I am really not enjoying this paper. It’s probably the hardest of all of them. I don’t really like comparing and contrasting things. There’s just too many differences between the book and the movie so I never now what to include in my paper. – Kylee Johnson

April 27- May 2

So we finished the movie titled less than zero on Monday. It was not as different from the book as I thought it would be, but still different. I liked the book more because it was more descriptive.
Today, Wednesday, we looked over our rough drafts and talked a little about the movie versus the book, and themes.
I hope I am able to convey what I am thinking for my paper. After class I went to my computer and completely re-did my whole paper. . . ish.

Josiah