The Final Day

To start us off I owe some special thanks to everyone that has helped me throughout the entire year. The obvious ones are my Family including mom and dad for being with me throughout the entire year. Then there is a couple of special tributes in the blog. These include people like my brother Nate which he helped by being there for me to compete with throughout the year. I have always worked to be better then him and for the most part he is an academic rival. Next up is Joe Brouhard. Him and dad have been giving me the needed shove throughout my time so far in Tae Kwon Do which is a very special part of my life because being there has helped me learn a few things and keep me from feeling too lonely during the school year. There is also my friends Alex and Kale who have been with me for a couple of years and have been supporting me through the year as well as just being awesome friends. Finally there is everyone else that has followed me throughout the year. I could never forget my small group of followers. I may only get 25 views a day but that is just 25 people who care what I have to say from day to day and that means a lot to me.

I will be going over my reading work first which has always been what I wake up to do in the morning. I have read a total of 25 books which equaled 8076 pages total being read. All of the books that I have read are listed below and it leaves me astounded. I never thought that I had read this much in total throughout the entire year. It all started with The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole and just kept going further and further until I had finally gotten to books like Les Miserable and Fountainhead.

1) The Overachievers: The Secret Life Of Driven Kids - 405 pages
Alexandra Robbins

2) Catcher In The Rye - 214 pages
JD Salinger

3) The Secret Diary Of Adrian Mole - 185 pages
Sue Townsend

4) Anthem - 105
Ayn Rand

5) The Fountainhead - 720 pages
Ayn Rand

6) Atlas Shrugged - 1236 Pages
Ayn Rand

7) Freakanomics - 268 pages
Levitt and Dubner

8) Superfreakanomics - 239 pages
Levitt and Dubner

9) Economics For Dummies - 312 pages
Seann Flynn, PhD

10) The Good Earth - 284 pages
Pearl S. Buck

11) Battle Hymn Of The Tiger Mother - 215 pages
Amy Chua

12) Silver Like Dust - 197 pages
Kimi Grant

13) Nothing To Envy - 302 pages
Barbara Demick

14) I Am Nujood, Age 10 and Divorced - 111 pages
Nujood Ali

15) Nurture Shock - 264 pages
Bronson and Merryman

16) The Trouble With Boys - 300 pages
Peg Tyre

17) An Invisible Thread - 208 pages
Laura Schoff

18) To Kill A Mockingbird - 323 pages
Harper Lee

19) The Power Of Half - 178 pages
Ken and Hannah Salwen

20) Anne Frank Diary - 238 pages
Anne Frank

21) Les Miserables - 896 pages
Victor Hugo

22) Hunger Games - 384 pages
Suzanne Collins

23) Asperger Love - 52 pages
Amy Harmon

24) Lord Of The Flies - 155 pages
William Golding

25) Mr. President! Mr, President! - 285 pages
Sarah McClendon

That is just the curriculum I woke up every morning to do early but there is still more including my English work. I remember the beginning of the year where I was crying my head off over the written response questions and complaining to my parents to let me get away with not doing them. I ended up doing them anyway and not just with English but also with Reading and Social Studies questions. It has been a while since I last did any of those so I wonder how good I am now. The last time I did a written response was during the last time I worked in my Social Studies textbook. There honestly wasn't anything wrong with the questions and it made me much better with all of the other question types like multiple choice or fill in the blank.

I have been working on Pimsleur throughout the entire year and it deserves some word in my blog as well. The ups and downs that I have had due to my French work were practically the comedy relief on the blog. The times where it has stopped me in my tracks throughout the year has been another obstacle in the form of a ladder. I can climb as high as I'm willing to go but it is also a shaky ladder which will rattle when you reach a certain step stopping you in your tracks. No matter what happened I would keep going through along with some encouragement. I still am not the best at French yet but from some info that I have heard it can take a couple of people maybe 8 years to learn their first second language.

There are a few things that I didn't like throughout the entire year but most of them were resolved. One thing I don't like to this day is Math but that is pretty much non negotiable. I am so far behind on Math due to the long time it took to find some new curriculum that removing that at all would be horrible. I never was a huge fan of my writing work but then again I feel pretty darn satisfied at the end of the paper when it looks pretty and rolls along nicely. I wouldn't mind a more consistent day in school either. What I mean is that one week I might be working on essay questions and then the next few weeks there are none. Another thing is probably going to be fixed next year when I go on to work on the college classes and that is me wanting some more people to see during my day because as I have mentioned it gets very lonely for me but the main reason is because I don't like social networks and I can't seem to hold on to any phone numbers if my life depended on it. Even worse is when people have an email that they never look at so when I try to send an email I can't get into contact with them. Since that's about all I can think that went bad this year that hasn't been fixed lets move on to the good side of things.

I love having different books to read because I have always enjoyed reading when it comes down to school. I enjoy reading so much that I have gotten in trouble in public school because I read to much. The worst part is that the teachers couldn't do anything about it because not only was I following along but I was also doing my work to boot. I bothered them to no end so eventually they took away my rites to read in school if it wasn't a curriculum book I couldn't read it. Another awesome part of home school is a lack of tests. I originally had to get all of my grades based on my tests and it messed with me to no end because I always had something against doing homework so when I was in 7th grade last year I found out that I couldn't get away with just aceing the tests and that I actually needed to do the homework so I started spiraling downward. Now I don't do tests often so my grades rely entirely on how I do on all of my other work to get a good wrap in school. Pass or fail grade system is fantastic. I don't have to worry about the fact that I might be at a D+ in school because I didn't do to hot on my test. or maybe I missed a major writing project that shot my grade through the ground. With Pass or fail I don't have to worry about that because of the lack of pressure of a scale. Lastly there is the flexibility which is just a god send for me. I have always struggled with making up my mind when it comes down to anything. A good example is Last years English class where I had to write an essay on what I wanted fixed in the school. Even worse is that this was submitted to the principal of the school for her to go over and help with next years class. It took me 2 weeks and help from multiple people before I could think of a subject for me to write about because I had wanted an actual problem that could be fixed by the teachers. Asking for more bully prevention would have been a waste of time because they claim that they are already doing their part and helping where they can and then ask for another lecture on bullying because there is still a large amount in the school. There is a ton more that I could have gone over but I couldn't think about it at the time.

I do believe that I owe an explanation for my extremely long weeks of being moody and obnoxious. To give you an idea it only happens after I get in trouble. For example April 12- April 8 was extremely depressing and that is because I had gotten myself in trouble I couldn't forgive myself. To wrap it up nicely I am my own worst enemy when it comes down to things like that. The reason why is because I beat myself up over getting in trouble while my parents are over it after a good night sleep. I can reason with myself as much as I want but until I can finally get over my own stupidity over time I will stay depressed for a while. Just thinking about it makes me feel a little sad but still this is a happy day that will keep me from being sad at all just at the thought of getting through my first year of home schooling.

Before wrapping things up I need to give a paragraph to my field trips. They were always what I could always look forward to including Madame Butterfly, The Marine Biology lecture, and the NASA lecture from very recent. I can't forget how amazing they were. Madame Butterfly was a touching story and the lectures taught me what they had intended to without droning on and having something that I found to latch onto in each one. For Madame Butterfly I fell in love with the dramatic and touching love story of the opera. At the Marine Biology while the whole thing was about the state of the marine biomes I fell in love with the really sad looking Manatees who looked like they needed a hug. At the NASA lecture I laughed along side the narrator as he poured his heart out about his work and the process of what he needed to do get the lunar rovers landing. Each one had there own story to tell and I loved each one.

This has been a fantastic year and I still plan on writing blog entries once a week to keep up the blog and make sure that people don't forget about little old me over here because while I can have a fascinating entry every once in a while there is still plenty more places you could go and read something like this so it is a competition for the most part now. I love how great things have turned out because I think I have mentioned it before but I never expected my blog to take off like this. I started out horribly with bad grammar and only word of mouth or family to spread word of my blog Now things are doing pretty good. I think of how long it will be before I go back to things like Pimsleur or my books and the memories that I have had with them and it seems like leaving an old friend. I feel like I can't leave if I wanted to at this point. My books line my little shelf downstairs, my disks sit quietly hoping to be used again, the cars wait to drive to the next grand lecture, and curtain sets on the end of my first year of tranquility.