Zach's Blog

Even Though I didn’t go to D.C with the school, I’ve been there at least 8 or 9 times with my family. I liked the Holocaust Museum becuase it was very educational and I learned a lot about what the Jews had to go through and what happened during that dark period in Europe. Walking the Monuments was the best part, I loved walking from monument to monument becuase its parts of history that this country was involved in and people may have lost their lives to protect this country. The Smithsonian’s were extremely cool becuase the displays were so vivid and awesome. The best  Museum was the Air and Space Museum because it showed so much things that were related to Air and Space.

My accomplishment of my 3 middle school years would being a successful student athlete. Playing football and doing track while being a good student is a very difficult task to perform. It was very hard to maintain a good enough grade average while playing sports.

          First of all, time management was a problem. It was hard to get off of school and go to practice and then do homework right after practice. Some ways that I thought that helped are squeezing homework in on downtime, doing any studying after practice anywhere I could, and trying hard not to be irresponsible. The most effective method in my opinion was squeezing homework in on down time. Like whenever I could do it, I would like riding in a car, riding on a bus, extra time in class, waiting on something, during meals, or even just when the planed time that I was supposed to do it. Time would always work against me so I worked against it by using some of these methods. I thought the task was pretty impossible to do but once I actually broke it down, I become simpler to do and I began trying to work at being successful on the field and in the class room.

          Not only would it be hard to stay on task in school, it was also hard on the field. Game days always got me, I would be extremely nervous during the day because that’s how I usually get. So finding ways to cope with that was also a challenge because I didn’t immediately know a way. So I found ways to secure myself before a game. Not thinking about it kind of help so it was good just to calm down and access the situation. It in turn helped me perform better in sports just by doing that.

          It was my major accomplishment of middle school to learn how to be a great student and a great athlete. It was hard at first but when I got into a habit of being more responsible, It became gradually easier.

                                My Middle school memories are really vast and very complex. 6^th, 7^th, and 8^th grades have been great but I’ve had some bad memories. Most of the time, the times I’ve had with a lot of people have been good. I’ve really found out who my real friends are and learned not to trust everyone you may find.

          6^th grade was a fun year because of the classes we all had. Social studies with Mrs. Phiffer was the most fun I’ve ever had in a social studies class. Learning about ancient history was quite interesting to say the least, well at least to me it was but being thought by Mrs. Phiffer was absolutely fun! Having all of my good friends in that class also made it really fun. Mrs. Phiffer knew how to make anything she thought interesting and I loved that class. Mr. Redard’s class was a very fun science class and it was one of the best classes that I’ve ever taken.  I liked it because we got to do a lot of hands on labs that were very enjoyable and fun to do.

7^th grade had its moments; we had a fun class to do things with. I liked Miss Collins class because she was so fun to talk to and her class was kind of fun. 7^th grade went by very fast due to the people in my class and the field trips we took. The state park field was the best/worst field trip that I’ve ever been on. It was fun because it was an overnight and it sucked because I got bit by a muskrat. I had to get 8 rabies shot just in case that I might have gotten rabies from the muskrat. Mrs. Andrelzyk’s class was fun because Mrs. Anderlzyk is a cool teacher! We had a lot of fun in her class and I’ll never forget it.

          8^th grade was pretty sweet, my grades majorly improved because I generally just tried harder than I would have in 7^th grade. I got accepted into Sussex Tech and I’m extremely happy that I did get accepted there. All of the 8^th grade year was okay, some parts were boring, some parts just sucked and parts I liked. Semi formal was probably the best dance because I looked really awesome there and my date looked amazing! Otherwise, I don’t have much to say about 8^th grade.

          I could keep expanding my memories because I have so many memories and if I went into detail, it could possibly take 500 pages. Everything was pretty good about middle school and I’m glad to be going on to high school.

I learned a lot about rock history through my blog. Doing the history was fun and it provided me with information that I didn’t know prior to doing all of it. I think it was a great topic to do it on and it was a fun experince.

Into Thin Air

 By Jon Krakauer

                                        If you look at the Book “Into Thin Air”, you may just think it’s another account of a climb of Mount Everest. You would be absolutely wrong because this book is a firsthand account of a disaster on the roof of the world. Jon Krakauer witnessed the 1996 Mount Everest tragedy and he wrote the book several months after he was off the mountain.

                                         Jon Krakauer was a mountain climber at heart, ever since he was young boy he dreamed of scaling the roof of the world. He had gone to Alaska to Climbed Mount McKinley and succeeded at doing so. Climbing was always a big part of his life and threatened his marriage a couple of times. At age 42, he worked as a journalist for the Outside Magazine and he lived in Seattle, Washington and published many articles. The Outside Magazine’s publishers asked him to do a story on the Commercialization of Mount Everest and why it was becoming more and easier to summit the world’s highest mountain. They wanted to pay for Jon going to Everest and reporting what it’s like but never going higher than base camp. Jon was astounded at the fact but he told them that if he was going, then he would summit the mountain.

                                                     The publishers set him to climb with world renowned climber Rob Hall on The Mountain Madness Expedition but originally he was signed with Scoot Fisher on the Adventure Consultants but Hall offered them a lower price. Krakauer flew into Katmandu and met up with his junior guide Andy Harris and stayed the night in a hotel. The next day, he was introduced to his team that he would be climbing with and they took a helicopter ride to the base trials to base camp. They hiked up to base camp and it took them three days, staying in 3 different villages. At base camp, they devised a strategy for getting up the mountain safely and it was a one month acclimatization period so that they don’t get HAPE (High Altitude Pulmonary Edema) or HACE (High Altitude Cerebral Edema). The next few weeks were grueling for the climbers. When summit day came, all the climbers headed out of camp four and went to the top. A few hours later, three climbers and one Sherpa turned back to go back to camp four. Jon noticed that some thunderhead clouds were moving in because its monsoon season in the Himalaya. High winds pounded the climbers as they went to the top but Jon lead the group along with a guide from another expedition and a Sherpa from his expedition. He had to wait for the group several times while he was wasting his bottled oxygen. Jon finally reached the summit at about 2:00 pm along with another client and the senior guide.                                                

                                     The hike down was bad for Krakauer but he made it down alive. Due the storm, many people didn’t make it back down including both guides. I seriously recommend this book for anyone who likes the outdoors in general and mountain climbing if you’re in to it. This is possibly one the very best books I’ve ever read because it’s a firsthand account of someone surviving a terribly bad storm on the world’s highest mountain.

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune–without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I’ve heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

This poem is good becuase it explains hope in her own way.

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice –
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do –
determined to save
the only life you could save.

I think this poem is cool becuase it talks about someone’s journey.

Limerick

A man named jimmy

A man named jimmy was afraid to die,

Before jimmy had lost his eye,

A danger to grave to bear,

But behold, the danger was there,

Maybe death may lie.

Cinquain

Time

Time

May try

To be complex

But going nowhere

Always

Haiku

Earth

Don’t destroy our mother

She provides and allows for life

But all we do is deface her

Free Verse

We don’t belong here,

All of us,

Me, You, Them, and whoever,

The time is now to speak out,

By Mary Oliver

I thought the earth remembered me,
she took me back so tenderly,
arranging her dark skirts, her pockets
full of lichens and seeds.
I slept as never before, a stone on the river bed,
nothing between me and the white fire of the stars
but my thoughts, and they floated light as moths
among the branches of the perfect trees.
All night I heard the small kingdoms
breathing around me, the insects,
and the birds who do their work in the darkness.
All night I rose and fell, as if in water,
grappling with a luminous doom. By morning
I had vanished at least a dozen times
into something better.

This Poem is about someone that had something better.