I dont want to achieve immortality through my work, i want to achieve it through not dying.

Well, welcome to your first day of English III with the legendary Kealy Duke. Maybe its not your first day, but if i remember properly she made us read these on one of our first days so. You need to decide now whether you are going to work in this class or not. There is no sliding by in this class i will tell you right now. While in some classes you can get by on copying homework and not reading what is assigned by cramming the class before, this is not one of those classes. I know some of you wont listen to me, because i wouldn’t have listened to me either. So i’m going to give you a list of things you have to do if you want to be satisfied with your English III grade.

1. BLOG. At first you will like it. Then it will become a hassle. Then you will forget about it till sunday every week. Then you will despise everything about blogging. But you have to do it. Our class averaged about 1400 points a semester in this class and a huge block of those comes from blogging. So do it, trust me not doing it is not an option, i tried.

2. When you have a group project, or have the option to work with a partner, dont pick the one person you wont get anything done with. Find someone you get along with but will also make you work and you will be amazed how much more you get done.

3. Read. If you dont do any of the other homework you will be assigned nightly, and dont worry there will be a ton no matter what, read the book you are assigned. If you read you can always get away with doing the work last minute, or even late. If you don’t read you are screwed as soon as you walk into the class. You absolutely cannot get away with not reading in this class, so just do it.

Follow these rules and i can almost guarantee you get a b-. And that is like gold in Duke III. If you are shooting for an A there is a lot more you have to do, and good luck to you because that is a feat i cannot accomplish. Much like legendary on halo3. While i’ve shone a somewhat negative light on this class do not take that badly. You won’t wake up in the morning thrilled to go to english but Mrs. Duke really is a great teacher, and I dont think anyone will deny that fact. She knows a lot of interesting things, class can be really fun if people cooperate, so try to keep it on that track. Good luck to all of you, i’m sure i will hear plenty of complaints in the student center next year and i look forward to it.

I was quite impressed with your rendition of Hamlet! I must say that when i first saw you in the play you did not even come close to my idea of what Hamlet looks like, which threw me off, but you made up for it. I think the thing you did so well was that you followed the actual play almost exactly. Some people seemed to think that you were too old for the role, but the way you portrayed the emotional Hamlet put that thought on the back burner for me. Even in the most intense moments in the book you hit the emotional aspect perfectly!

Now, while i thought you portrayed Hamlet’s emotional side perfectly you did stretch some things a little bit, especially towards the end. The last scene seemed almost unreal. The sword throwing, and people dropping dead left and right and no one paying attention… didn’t seem all that real to me. I think while that last scene is a very dramatic one, it should be done in a more serious manner, with emphasis on the important deaths and how those deaths came about, instead of just a duel to the death. Overall i thought you did a great job though!

The end of this book was predictable but interesting all the same. As the title of the book is Rosencrantz and Guilderstern are dead, it was pretty obvious they would die by the end of the book. But how the death came about was quite interesting. Hamlet overheard R&G reading a letter to the king which made hamlet change his letter which re did the outcome of the book single handedly. Not to mention killed R&G. There was also a ton of foreshadowing of their deaths all the way to the end, such as pg. 121 Guil: “England! That’s a dead end. I never believed in it that way”.

The foreshadowing of life and death throughout the book, and the way R&G talked about it made it pretty clear to me that they would die but that didnt answer all of my questions. Who poisoned the queen? I got the impression it was Hamlet but i dont understand that… Of course since Rosencrantz, Guilderstern, The queen, the kind, Laertes, and hamlet are all dead at the end maybe it is fitting. The end of this book was definitely interesting and im looking forward to talking about it in class.

I think this is the most important reading we have seen thus far. Stoppard starts to use intertextuality a lot more which connects Hamlet and R&G more and more. Looking at these parallels between the stories is very cool because i think about how they were written hundreds of years apart. ” What have you done, my lord, with the dead body?” – Rosencrantz speaking to Hamlet. This is a big example of intertextuality in the book, based on a big issue in both plays. 

I thought it was interesting how Stoppard wrote about the Ophelia/Hamlet talk. He makes it sound like it was R&G’s fault that Polonius died because they were scared and cowardly. This is an interesting twist between the plays. I got confused when R&G discuss their death. The player talk to them about it but im not quite sure why, or how. This was an important reading that really connected the two plays, which we knew would happen from the beginning.

In this reading we started to see Hamlet come into the book more and more after we saw him for the first time in the second reading. In this reading more elements show up such as intertextuality like i said, as well as others such as humor and metafiction. In this reading there were deep talks between Rosencrantz and Guilderstern about life and death and such things. 

After this reading i noticed more differences between this book and Hamlet and i think this has to do with more postmodern elements coming out in this reading. The time period begins to come out in the reading which is important because towards the beginning it was very similar to Hamlet. This is actually a big compliment towards Stoppard’s writing style, i think.

This was a much more difficult reading for me than the first. The two characters start off by visiting Hamlet. They then play a weird question game i didnt really understand. Eventually hamlet walks into the room and this is when the two stories actually combine. I think this is when the postmodern aspects of the stories are really going to start to come out, since in the first reading i didnt really see that at all.

Its interesting reading these two stories at the same time. I’m not sure how they are meant to be read but reading them at the same time is definitely good for comparisons. I also think that R&G has made me understand Hamlet better which is helpful. This might actually go the other way for people with different reading styles which is cool.

Even though this story is told in the same sort of lingo as hamlet i find it much easier to understand. I think it might have something to do with how dramatic Hamlet is. The story starts off in a coin toss game which develops into a deep conversation which was based off the chance in the game. They then talk to some actors, one of which stands out to the men due to the fact that he plays a woman in plays. 

Now a man playing a woman is always related to one type of play and that is Shakespearean. Odd that a postmodern story would be written in a shakespearean style. I also notice that you are expected to know the story of Hamlet as you read this book. This is an odd concept for an author to do this with another author’s work. I really saw the different personalities of rosencrantz and Guilderstern in this reading and i expect that i will continue to see that throughout the book.

Last week in english was quite slow. We didnt start our presentations until Wednesday and then another on friday. First was the franklins tale. Mans dominance and magic were key factors in this story which i knew would be touched on in the presentation. The use of magic in the story was actually quite odd because magic was definitely not a socially acceptable art at the time of the canterbury tales. In fact at the time accused witches were actually often burned at stake. But in franklins tale magic was quite accepted.

The presentation started slow but part of that comes down to the fact that they were the first group. After they got going they got more good points out. The powerpoint was well done and i like doing socratic circles even though it helps those that dont want to participate fade into the background. But overall i thought it was good.

The second group was actually my group! i dont think i need to write a Miller’s tale summary since i have already done so, so here goes. I thought we actually did surprisingly well, getting a lot of class discussion and delving deeply into the story. The beginning was a bit unorganized but we soon found our stride. I feel like we could have done more on social class, but we were on a time table. Overall though i think we did pretty good. 

This week i really have to work on a lot of school work. No doubt we will have a lot of english homework since last week was kind of light. But i won’t be getting amnesia and forgetting about it like i did last quarter. This is the vertex of the year, after this last nine week stretch it will all be over and i’ll be happy in the summer again. And i am really trying to appease mrs. duke, not to mention my parents this quarter. This week really is the hump i have to get over in order to feel confident i can do it all nine weeks.

The weather is great and is verdant in color due to the perfect temperature and sunshine which makes it even harder to come to school every morning. In english class i really have to work hard because mrs duke’s acceptance of late work has worn away like the attrition of a river bed. This could easily be a huge debacle for me, if i keep up my work ethic from the rest of this year. The first week for me was pretty good, but the two week hump is what kills me. See i have to upbraid myself harshly in my work in order to get into a good rut to consistently work in. So the proviso of my plan is that if i simply do an hour of english homework per night, that i can get all my work done. So even if i have more than an hour of work per night if i get an hour of it done i’ll probably just go ahead and finish what i started to i can get all the points.

So basically this is a pretty important academic week for me. I have to expunge all my previous failures and just try my best so i can get into the college i want to go to. My hackneyed trend of doing no work isnt really an option any more, and i plan on doing it right this time.