Personal Experience: A Poem Analysis

Society judges those who are different both physically and mentally and those that don’t fit in with the social norm but it is up to the individuals to look past that and rise against their judgement. Shane Koyczan’s ‘To This Day’, is a poem about those who have been bullied throughout their lives and its long term impact it leaves. The poem tells multiple stories of the victims of bullying due to their physical appearance or their mental state. The poem begins with a personal adecdote talking about how he earned his first nickname. The anecdote is used to allow the readers of the poem to relate as it doesn’t rely on the abstract logic as the anecdote provides proof. He tells his story about how he used to love pork chops, and didn’t know the difference between pork chops and karate chops, until he was called pork

The mission trip to New Orleans. I had let Jesus into my heart but I started to get this desire and passion to want to start following him, but I didn't know what that looked like or what that meant or how to do it. And so I prayed and longed for him to show me that. As we headed down to New Orleans, the back of my van started to get into really good conversations about life and each other and Katie Thul asked the question that forever has changed my life. “What has been the hardest part of your life so far?”. This might not seem like to bad of a question, but the fact of the matter was that I had never told anybody about the dark and gritty parts of my life before. I had always bottled it up, to scared to tell anyone because I feared what people thought of me, to afraid they’d turn away. And as people went around sharing, it came my time to share and I knew I couldn't do it, so I said I didn't want to share, and as they went around deep inside me I was being told I needed to. I needed to let it out and just speak. And so they came back to me and I let them in, I told them about what I had gone through and as I was in tears I looked up and saw this kid looking back at me from the front of the van. He wasn't apart of the conversation we were having but you knew he was listening in and as our eyes met, he was in tears. I then realized that this was Anna’s brother. This was the kid. That week I embraced my past and used it to help and grow and evangelize this kid, Jackson. I knew what to say because I was in the exact spot he was in just a year earlier. The Lord showed me that I can make a difference in people's lives through him. God opened my eyes to the people I had around me. He put Sydney into my life, someone who on this trip poured a tremendous amount of wisdom, truth, and love into me and essentially pushed me to love and follow Jesus recklessly and at all costs. So many people, from Ally to Zach, to

When I was in 6th grade my Aunt Dana was fighting cancer, and had been for 3 ½ years, I supported her all the way through it. So we held a rally in Thompsonville to support her and show her how much she meant to all of us, and that if she could fight cancer and get up every morning knowing it could be her last than we can get up and fight our battles. She was my light in a very dark tunnel.

My mom was spending lots of her time over at a friends house in 2013, because one of her best friends Jenyi, was diagnosed with cancer. This was tough for me. Not being able to see my mom as much and knowing that Jenyi was struggling. This helped me grow spiritually and emotionally. I learned to put my trust in God, and as a family we spent many nights in prayer, hoping God would heal her. He didn’t. Instead, he chose to take her home to heaven. We didn’t understand, we had lots of grief and pain. I miss Jenyi, but I learned that everything was going to be okay. That good things came from bad, and that God can use these things to change people. After Jenyi died, we had to continue life, so we did. Not much later, in Des Moines for Labor day, we went boating with my mom's side of the family.

After many intensive surgeries, chemo, and radiation, my mother was left to tend to my father. She spent every day either in the hospital or taking care of my father. She did everything from changing his dressing to putting his socks on. After going bankrupt, losing her father, watching her son leave, to taking care of her husband as he laid on a hospital bed fighting for his life, I have never seen anyone more strong in my lifetime to this

“Whose canon is it anyway?” is an article written by Bethan Marshall. In the article, Marshall analyzes a review by Tom Paulin of a book by Anthony Julius about the anti-Semitism and literary works of T. S. Elliot. Despite being a well-known anti-Semite, Elliot and his poetry were studied in schools around the world. Therefore, by questioning his beliefs, we also question our own culture because Elliot’s works are closely related to its foundation. So, Elliot poses the question: Is culture something we can control or deliberately influence? In 1993, the head of the National Curriculum Council, David Pascall, changed the curriculum in an effort to try and answer Elliot’s question. Five years earlier,

Many people experience moments which help define them; for me, that defining moment came through loss. Nearly four years ago, my entire world was shaken to its very foundation from the death of my mother. After many tumultuous years, my mother lost her battle with breast cancer in 2012. Though coping with her death proved to be the most challenging obstacle I would ever face, it proved to also have a silver lining. Through my adversity, I have been introduced to a community of cancer families which have provided me with endless support during my times of struggle, and to whom I have been able to comfort in their own times of need.

My mother was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer when I was in the seventh grade. School just ended and I remember running towards the playground, throwing down my backpack, eager to get on one of the swings. At the same time as I stepped foot on the playground I saw my brother getting out of the car and walking towards me. As I picked up my bag and got closer, I noticed tears in his eyes. I shifted my eyes towards the car and spotted my family all sitting anxiously waiting for me to get in. During the ride home, I kept asking my brother, two sisters and father what was wrong but they would not say a word till we got home. This is when I turned to ask my mother. Although she was smiling, telling me everything will be okay, I saw pain and sadness in her eyes.

In March 2011, I found out my mom was pregnant and then the next month I found out she had breast cancer. At first, I did not understand what breast cancer was but then my mom explained it to me. She told me that she was going to be sick and lose her hair for a little while. I am an emotional person and I did not know if my mom was going to be okay, so I cried a lot and my grades began to drop. I talked to my counselor often and we became very close because I was always there because of this situation. After my baby sister was born, the treatments and medicine became stronger but she became weaker. In the end, she beat cancer and now is living a healthy life. The lesson I learned is that all

How I was going to be used away and tossed away like the trash he believed I was

In the poems ‘How to Eat a Poem’ by Eve Merriam and ‘Introduction to Poetry’ by Billy Collins, important ideas are presented about how poetry should be experienced and enjoyed. The poets used the techniques extended metaphor, repetition, metaphors and personification to show me how these ideas is important.

Breathtaking. It was the only word to describe the sights and sounds of the camp. Birds’ songs danced throughout the air, intermingling with the gentle whispers of the summer breeze. This euphony at Camp Serene was to be replaced by the cadence of drums. It was the beginning of Alan Keown’s Marching Percussion Camp, a foray into an unfamiliar facet of a very familiar subject. I had experience in drumming, having been involved in percussion since the fifth grade, but this was marching percussion. I had never marched before, nor had I played using the traditional technique they taught and utilized at the camp. I had no idea just how outclassed I would be.

"A gentle shaking has come and what did you notice? A greater quaking is to come, consider how you will respond. This shift is about your heart, as a line drawn across your life, the truth you know and the evidence of your actions, which side of the line will you choose to stand on?

Logic, like Sinatra, started his music career at a young age. Unlike his idol though Logic’s childhood was very rough “as both his parents were alcoholic and addicted to drugs” (“Logic’s Biography” 1). Logic’s troubled childhood took place in a smaller town in Maryland just north of Washington D.C.

While examining the lives of women during the Elizabethan period, Virginia Woolf, in her essay, “In Search of a Room of One’s Own” is dumbfounded by the scarcity of female authors in that period and is thus, determined to find the causalities of this enigma. She makes clear the deficit of literature produced by female writers is an outcome of the male-dominated culture of the time, which entailed considerable difficulty for women to accomplish anything more than of those roles prescribed by society. I find Woolf's arguments to be credible to the fullest, albeit it would have been preferable if she spoke of the male-female divide in more detail. On a related note, Anna Quindlen's, "Between the Sexes, a Great Divide" is a formidable choice for exemplifying the complexities of this bisection. In which, Quindlen uses a personal experience all too familiar to most, the first mixed-sex dance to reveal the case both sexes often misjudge the other, yet in the end, must work together, in hindsight of their differences. I can appreciate how both essays reveal how the misunderstandings of the opposite sex implicitly affect their relations. In Woolf’s case, patriarchal views on women’s abilities made it prohibitively