Frustrated and sad.

I almost felt like my life was all over. I couldn't believe it. The one single thing I can do is my newfound weakness. Everyday I walk in to my English class, I feel overwhelmed when I am not sure if I am analyzing documents and sources correctly.

First, I thought annotating was about writing summaries at the end of each chapter to keep myself on track. While I was reading To Kill a Mockingbird, I soon began to realize that there are themes in the story and the author hints at this through their use of literary devices. This somewhat helped me to write my essay, but I was still not confident with my analyzing.

What made it even worse was when I read Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. During English, when I saw how Charlene's annotations helped her understand the story of Alice better, I felt disappointed with my simple, underlining. Her detailed notes full of literary devices and how she analyzed the behaviors of the characters made my underlining look petty. My disappointment somehow made me fell a little bit frustrated.

In English one day, I felt even more frustrated when I could not "see" the purpose of what the speaker was conveying to his audience. It took someone in my class to tell everyone why he was speaking. I finally understood the speaker's idea and examples he used to prove his point.

I am in awe every time Mr. Soeth and Mr. Gumpert look at documents and are able to see it for what it really is. I hope that I can do the same thing by the time I graduate.

I still feel a teensy-bit frustrated when I can't "read between the lines". I feel that I really do need to work on expressing my thoughts clearly on paper as well as analyzing different aspects of primary sources or documents.