Links
http://academyofdiscovery.com/phoenix/Index.php?cat=4&paged=2
This is the link to my Protector of the Flame story. I never finished it, but I still think it was probably one of my better stories. I really did like this story, and I think I just lost my steam. I'm proud of it because I was able to get so far on it and maybe someday I can keep going with this story. All of this was written in the 8th grade
http://discoveryutopias.wikispaces.com/Alex%27s+Utopia
This is the utopia I worked on in 7th grade. I really enjoyed working on it because it was kind of fun. I got to make my own society, I got to plan out all of the ideas, I got to write about a whole society apart from the world, it was like one big story with lots of little nuiances. This is one project that I'm never going to forget.
http://sites.google.com/a/academyofdiscovery.com/discovery-isms/Alex-ism
This is the ism project we did in 8th grade. It was a tricky project, but it was nice to work on. It was interesting to see the beliefs I really had and getting them organized.
http://docs.google.com/a/academyofdiscovery.com/#owned-by-me
This would be my google docs account. There are so many things on this site, I had to post this. There's the powerpoint on plants that we made in science (that was interesting), there are some of the stories that me and my friends have written (including A Flame amidst the Darkness- Bergen's Avatar story), and some of the science labs we've worked on (egg + molasses + water + 5 days to soak = leathery egg shell and gooey stuff inside).
Thoughts
There are so many good things that have happened in these past 2 years, I don't know where to start! Maybe the electives. In seventh grade I took Spanish 1b and Choir. Spanish was so cool, and there were a lot of really nice 8th graders in that class, Katie and Trevor, and Sarah and Greta and Danielle, they were always so cool. Mrs.Zastrow was a really fun teacher as well. We always played games and joked around and laughed. I had her again in the 8th grade, and there were only 8 or 9 kids in th class. Spanish 2 was really hard, but if I can speak to my relatives someday thanks to it, it's completely worth it, especially with such a cool teacher. Choir was really fun. I love singing, and I sang alto, which I think had the better parts, and we did 2 concerts, one a bit more solemn and the other disney. The first one had songs from Les Mis and Joseph and the technicolor dreaamcoat and there was one song I really liked called "turn, turn, turn". That song was so beautiful. The second concert was more fun, though we did have more then disney songs. We sang "we go together" from grease and "what a wonderful world". As far as disney, we sang the Little Mermaid and Tarzan and this one series called Disney Spectacular that had everything from Mary Poppins to Cinderella.
8th grade had so many fun parts. We went on this one digidenver field trip, and I went with Bergen, Katy, Rachel, Manas, Mona, and Erica. We walked around downtown for hours. There was one point where the coordinates were wrong on the GPS and we ended up down near 11th street when we were supposed to be headed for the Capital!
Lunches have always been a highlight of the day. Rachel and Manas would race down to the cafeteria, and if Manas sat in Rachel's seat, she would keep whacking him nicely with her lunchbox until he gave up that seat, which he normally did before she started the whacking anyway. We always sat in a specific order. Starting in one corner, Katy, Rachel, and Manas, then sitting across from them starting at the corner, Bergen, Me, and then Mona or Ava or Madeline or the other Rachel. It varied a lot. We had fun talking about everything from next year's classes to Twilight, Hayden Christiensan (Rachel is going to kill me since I spelled it wrong), and Avatar. We had the weirdest inside jokes, and the one that takes the cake is...Friendly Mushroom! (I don't get it either, but it's still funny!)
My favorite class this year was probably Science or Social Studies. Learning about different aspects of life was interesting (and the frog dissection was actually cool, how many times do you see a frog spleen?) but learning about different cultures in the Eastern Hemisphere was really cool (after 7 years of American history, I was ready for a change of pace). Probably the best part about 8th grade were my friends, all of whom are 7th grade. Bergen, Katy, Rachel...they are true friends, and I wouldn't have traded that friendship for anything. You guys rock, go Sevies!
Last year in Language Arts, we did this one activity called a survival simulation. We had a group of 7 and we had to figure out how we would survive. I was the surgeon. It was interesting to accomplish.
Let's see...I was in NJHS (national junior honor society), and as a community service project this year we raised money to buy goats for poor families in Nicaragua. There were some really funny bets. One teacher, Mr.Cordova, did a deal that if the school got to a certain number of goats, he would shave his head. We got to that number of goats. Also, my math teacher, Mrs.Lornell, and my Social Studies teacher, Mr.Wakefield, made a bet that they would try to get the most goats, and the loser would dye their hair for a day. Mr.Wakefield lost and wwent with orange.
Even now as I type I am finding something to remember. "I hate writing, just like I hate reading, like I hate piano and bananas" insert little squishy ugly I like to eat bananas song- Carrie W. Random.
Middle School was so much fun, and now I actually have something to remember it by.