My Great Fish

                 Great Fish essay

“If you fall behind, run faster. Never give up, never surrender, and rise up against the odds.” -Jesse Jackson Jesse Jackson could not have said it better when coming up with this very inspirational quote. Santiago from The Old Man and the Sea struggles to catch a giant marlin in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico. Santiago struggles with many different things like Fatigue, A cut hand, and even having to battle Sharks to keep his prized marlin safe. A problem that i had to overcome was reaching a certain tier of play in my Favorite video game League of Legends. In life facing and overcoming these obstacles is a skill that all people need to have and should be very highly valued.

In League of Legends there is a ranking system that puts you in a tier based on your skill level. 99% of players get put into the Bronze skill tier and must work their way up from there. That is where my struggle begins. Now this was a challenge for me because when you win a game you gain some points. Reach 100 points and you can move up a rank. If you get bad teammates or you don't play well one game you lose points. That makes it so that people are on edge and will give up right when something goes wrong and that leads to loss of points and a painful climb to the next tier. I played and moved up and down ranks for about 6 months. Doing this made me feel stressful at times and excited at others. Sometimes i lashed out at people from being upset about going down a rank. It all sounds bad but in the end it wasn't, and i had a lot of fun playing one of my favorite games ever!

The reason i went through all of this mental and emotional strain is because i wanted to prove to my friends and other people that i was actually better than 90% of players who are never able to leave the Bronze tier of play. Along the way i did have some help from a lot of people. Some directly and some indirectly. People like Satchel were there to play a game or two with me to help keep my head straight as i tried climbing the tiers. I also had help from Gbay 99 on youtube who has a great channel on league of legends and how to overcome the bad teammates and climb through the tiers. Not everybody was helpful though, there were also the people that were on my team that got off to a bad start in the game and pretty much just gave up and started yelling at other players in the games chat box. (We call those people “toxic”). These toxic people were a huge Shark against me and were a big reason why it was so hard to move up the tiers. I finally overcame these “toxic” people by learning how to calm them down before they got out of control. Sometimes when you mess up all you want is for somebody to notice and reassure you that its not the end of the world, and that is exactly how i dealt with these toxic people.

Santiago also faced many struggles and by far the hardest struggle to deal with would be fatigue. Santiago was out on the water for 3 days after pulling in this huge fish, battling sharks and dealing with blood loss from a cut in your hand you would be so tired and just worn out that i am not even sure how Santiago was able to make it. “Then too, he remembered he hasn't eaten since he took the bait and he is huge needs much food” (P.g 74). I chose this line from the book because it shows how Santiago doesn't have a lot of food to last him through the 3 days that he was out in the sea, and our bodies need food for energy. To overcome this problem of fatigue Santiago decided to eat a Dolphin raw. I do agree with how Santiago faced this problem because he reallty dident have any other options, it was either eat the dolphin and get some energy or probably end up passing out from a lack of it. Santiago never gave up in his fight against the Marlin and that is what hemingway was really trying to tell you.

The main message in The Old Man and the Sea is that even though you may be down on your luck and things aren't looking good, your day will come when everything turns around and you get your chance.  I also think that i learned the same thing from my struggle, that you might get a team full of sharks one game and team full of turtles in another you just can't quit and give up when you get that team full of sharks. Also i think that people can learn a lot from Santiago's struggle and how you just have to wait for your opportunity and when you get it you have to pursue it and really make it worth something because certain opportunities don't come very often. Lastly i think that one thing can be learned from my struggle, its that there are going to be people in life that are not going to be nice, and are going to be selfish and only think of themselves but you have to overcome people like this because in the end who cares what they think or say or do if you're striving and pushing for your goals because in the end you're going to achieve your goals and they're never going to come close.

(P.S I did end up reaching silver tier in LoL)

Allegiant book review

*SPOILER ALERT FOR THIS DOCUMENT*

2. 3rd Quarter Outside Reading Book Review

3. Allegiant By: Veronica Roth, HarperCollins publishers, 2013,      Genre: Distopian Fiction

4. In the book allegiant Tris/Beatrice Prior is a girl who has been living in an enclosed city for her whole life. There is a fence surrounding their city, and nobody has ever been outside or has wanted to go outside the fence. But in this book that is exactly what Tris and a small party of people do. When they get outside they are meet by a group of people and are taken back to a compound. Once there they get to the compound they discover a lot of crazy and terrible things, but if you want to find out what they are youll have to read the book for yourself.

5. “Roth paints her canvas with the same brush as Suzanne Collins. The plot, The scenes, And the characters are the same and just as rich. Fans of Collins, Dystopians and strong female characters will love this novel” -SLJ

6.  I have read 2 other books by this same author and the style of this book is different because every chapter the point of view changes between Tris and Tobias. In the last books they would only switch point of views like this if they were trying to show a different point of view of the same scene, but the books were mainly Tris.

7. "Storming out just so that you can have the last word, very mature".

"So is questioning somebody's motives because they're jealous".

"Then I guess we're even"  (267.)

8. Allegiant Has really shown me that the world that i live in, and the world around me isnt that bad. Even though our government doesn't tell us everything that goes on in the world, there not corrupt and there doing it all to help the good of the people. All in all this book really shows me how lucky i am.

9. 3 paws- Pursue it

Will's Big Break!

Will’s Big Break!

2. 2nd quarter outside reading book

3. The Rangers apprentice-book 1- The ruins of Gorlan, By: John Flanagan Genre- Fiction, First american editors published in 2005

4. In The ruins of Gorlan Will is a teenage Orphan who is about to chose what he wants to apprentice in for the rest of his life. Ever since he was a boy he heard amazing stories about his dad who died in the war and is told to be an amazing knight! On the day of his choosing he is denied by the teacher and has to pick another school. After a lot of thought Will chooses to be a ranger under the mysterious Halt. Halt teaches him the way of a ranger and they head out  on reports of strange creatures out in the countryside.

5. “An excellent book - well written, fast moving, characters that you care about. I particularly loved the descriptions of the Ranger training. A quick read but well worth the time.” Travis from Amazon.

6. This is the first book that i've read by John Flanagan but his writing does remind of the percy jackson series which i personally loved. His writing is also very descriptive and clear and throughout the whole story i always understood and could imagine exactly what he was saying. Another cool thing that i found out about my book is that most of the charecters are based off of people from John Flanagan's actual life, and some of the conversations that the charterers have

7. “Will was in the meadow out behind Halts cottage practicing. He had four targets set up at different ranges and was alternating shots at random between the four, never firing at the same one twice in a row” (P.g 126, Chapter 22)   

8. I can relate with Will, because one time my friend invited me down to a place and we were taught how to shoot a bow, I was pretty bad at it but we still had a ton of fun and I would like to try it again sometime.

9. 5 paws- Devour it!!