Metacognition: Short Story

I'm really not sure how I'm feeling about my short story. I really liked it, until I had to put pressure on my main character, the mannequin. I understand that it is important to the story to challenge the characters, but I don't know if I accomplished this well. With this feeling of insecurity, I wrote the ending of my story. I tried to make my girl sound as confused, desperate and desolate as possible while also keeping rather cool, but I feel as if the ending is too abrupt. I also remember Mr. Allen telling us that the ending shouldn't really be final, but I think one could take mine to be either final or unfinished. Either way, I'm feeling very insecure about it. Because of this, I'm just letting my mind roam free as I write, and not really thinking extremely carefully about every word. (This could prove to be a good thing or a very bad thing)



I wish I could have discussed my ending with Mr. Allen individually, like when we talked to him about the middles of our stories. It would have been nice to have a little bit of direction; right now, I feel as though I'm just slinging words on the doc and seeing what sticks. I really hope my ending works. It would be a bother to rewrite it with little guidance. I'm also worried about the story in general. I know it would be nearly impossible for Mr. Allen to really look at every sentence in everyone's stories, but I almost feel as though my ideas might be good, but once looked at more closely, there will be many problems. I wonder if we'll have more time after this revision to focus on the smaller aspects, or if it will just be assumed that it's perfect, from the inside out?

Metacognition: Jane Eyre Writing Assignment

I really liked the idea of this assignment, bringing together characters and having them interact in new ways. I also liked how we could choose our own groups and topics that interested us most. I believe my group's experience was very different than other groups, however, because of our extracurricular challenges. The week the project was due was tech week for GBN's spring play, Cinderella, which Kyle, Melanie and I all had roles in. We asked Mr. Allen for an extension, which he generously granted us, but we really did not have much of a chance to work on the project during the week, with rehearsal every night until 10 p.m. We finally all got together on Sunday afternoon and spent quite a few hours adding, editing and finalizing our transcript.

It was a fun experience to create a discussion. Normally, when writing a paper, it's all from one point of view, very direct, and very structured. For this project, I tried to think of things from multiple angles; rather than just stating opinion or fact, I also made sure it fit with who the character was. For example, the views on feminism in 18th century could not really be expressed by our faux Academy student, and some of the Academy book connections would be better explained by the student, rather than Charlotte or Jane. I also liked writing it because there wasn't a specific structure that needed to be followed; we could just let the conversation flow, while also incorporating our connections and quotes. I won't really know how successful it was until we receive our grades, but if we did it correctly, I would definitely say that it was a much more enjoyable and free-formed way to reflect on a book read in class.

I liked the connections I made, especially with Sophie's World. I realized it's easier to connect two books with a pre-established theme, rather than to just try to find any similarities. I also especially liked when I read through the previous work and helped connect the sub-conversations while preserving the overall theme. I'm pretty happy with my work; I just wish our group could have met together more often, because on a collaborative project like this, it really does work better when the group members are physically together.