Lillian Boxfish Reflection

As a young person, I don’t really notice how quickly the world changes and advances around me, because I’m changing and growing right along with it. Lillian Boxfish, the elderly title character in the novel Lillian Boxfish Takes A Walk by Kathleen Rooney, does. Her age, a focal point in the novel, allows Lillian to view the world as she remembers it, while at times preventing her from appreciating as it is. On New Year’s Eve in 1985, Lillian decides to ring in the new by remembering the old with a walk around her beloved New York City. As she walks, she thinks of the city as she once knew it and sees the city it has become, reliving memories both good and bad. In particular, Lillian is struck by how easily the city embraces new culture and ideas and forgets the legacy of what came before. Through Lillian’s journey, I learned that while it’s important to appreciate the past, you cannot neglect the present.

Basically best friends. We would Facetime and message each other every day. Time flies by and it’s 8th grade. Everyone had already formed their cliques. Hannah and I weren’t in the same clique, and didn’t sit at the same table. Hannah wasn’t very popular and hung out with the “lame people.” I encouraged Hannah to sit with me. My friends were absolutely rude and mean about it at first, but then they got to know her and she felt like she belonged. I felt overjoyed for her. One day, something terrible had happened in math class. These two kids named Joey and Peter who were popular jocks, called this girl named Brianna ugly. It was because Brianna stood up for this kid named Eric, who was being bullied by them. Hannah told them that it wasn’t nice. Then they continually called her loser and dumb until she started crying. Hannah went up to me and I asked her what was wrong. She told me what had happened, and I felt so anxious. What I was going to do took guts. I marched over with my friend Adaora. “Stop it! Bullying isn’t okay! Shut up!”“Yeah, cut it out. It’s not cool. You’re hurting her feelings.”, Adaora said. They then stopped and were quiet the whole class period. Hannah was about to leave school, but I told her that I was always going to be there for her, no matter what happens. I felt courageous. It beyond doubt made our friendship so much stronger knowing that we would always be there for each

At first, I thought something was wrong with me, and that’s why I was bullied. I tried to change myself and when I couldn’t, I felt betrayed by my own emotions. It turned out that this person hadn’t trusted me, and that’s why he was mean to me. He had wanted to talk to my friend, Meadow, and he didn’t want me to know about it. The trouble started when he found out Meadow trusted me, while he didn’t. After that, I understood that I didn’t need to listen to things others said about me, and that it’s not worth it to worry about all the haters in my life. In sixth grade, when I found new friends that weren’t afraid to be themselves, I learned to let go and be myself, no matter what others thought. “Real integrity is doing the right thing, knowing that nobody’s going to know whether you did it or not,” Oprah Winfrey once proposed. I know that that is true, and in this trouble, I used courage to find my integrity. Although the war didn’t resolve at first, I wasn’t discouraged by it anymore. Integrity is something that will help anyone fight a battle, and that is what I used to stay strong while I faced a dilemma.

Less than two months into my second semester of High School and I had lost all of my friends, I had nobody that I could turn to and felt as if my life was ruined. At this point, I was heavily hit by my depression and became ostracized from everything/everyone that had previously made me happy. It all started on February 21, my best friend’s birthday and also the day they asked if I would go out with them, when I refused everything began spiraling downhill. Upset by my rejection and inflamed by the idea that they were “so out of my league” and that I could “never get someone like them again”, my best friend went to our group of friends and told them several lies. All of these falsities revolved around the idea that I consistently slandered my friends behind their backs and how I never truly enjoyed their friendships. The idea of me doing these things enraged everyone and without even questioning the claims, I was removed from the

It was the year 1922 and life hadn’t been this good in a while, times had taken a big change for the best. In Manhattan, New York, there were extravagant parties every weekend; the whole city shows up and doesn't leave until they see the sun. There was once this wealthy family living right in the middle of the roaring twenties. There was a mom, a dad, an older sister named Alice, and a younger sister named Anna. Alice loved to go to all of the huge parties, meet new people, and not come home until the morning. Every time Alice would get ready to go out for the night, Anna would watch her get ready as if she was picturing that was herself. Anna looked up at her sister and wanted to do everything she did. Alice had been talking about this party for a long time, and the night

Recently, a contractor working for the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) unintentionally released 3 million gallons of toxic mine waste into the Animas River in the Mountain West state of Colorado. Today, people in the US are debating the efficacy of the EPA (the right-wing is using the spill as anti-government propaganda) and the toxic aftermath the spill will undoubtedly have on local economies, communities and ecosystems. So far, the spill has "contaminated the Animas River, San Juan River, and the Colorado River in Utah."

All I had on my mind was that my little brother was falsely accused of vandalism. When I woke up and went to school the following morning, I immediately got called to the office. There I found Branden, Bryson, and Jack. They are football players that cause a lot of trouble . As soon as I walked in, Jack said; “Jake did it and you know it.” Me, knowing this wasn’t true, raised my voice and replied, “You’re a liar and don’t be accusing my brother of something you didn’t know he did! You and your friends probably did it!” At that point, the principal and resource officer pulled the three boys into the office. Soon after, another officer walked in the door. “Emiley, come with me please.” he said. Once we walked into his office, he had the tapes pulled up from that Friday night. “Which one is Jake?” he asked. I replied, “Jake isn’t in it.” While watching the tapes, I saw a blonde haired girl, she reminded me of Anna. I asked the officer, “Who’s that girl?” and he replied “I can’t tell you, is there any reason your brother might’ve done this? Vandalism may be an act of revenge, a way of expressing a political opinion, or a means of intimidation.” At this point, I was so annoyed I got up and walked out. As I left, I walked past the football players as they snickered and laughed. While I was walking back to class, my phone vibrated. My mom texted me saying, Your dad and I are on our way to

Learning How to Grow Up Over the time of the book To Kill a Mockingbird we see many characters grow. The characters are maturing from the beginning to the end in the span of three years. Jean Louise is a great character to make an example out of, this is because she a child at the beginning of the story and doesn’t go through hard life problems. As opposed when she is three years older and has been through things a 9 year old shouldn’t have to go through.

Going into your first year of college is like going on a rollercoaster in an amusement park, you think it’s going to be scary, but it truly isn’t. You ride up a couple of hills, thinking it’s all fine and dandy but then it all seems to go downhill. Fast. And once you start moving faster, and faster, you feel like it will never end. That’s what it felt like for me in english class, there were sometimes everything felt easy and I’m essentially going uphill, but then I have to do an essay, and It all goes downhill. One problem that my professors have told me is I have the bad case of “Engfish”. Which I never saw as a bad thing, until I read the Michael Colson and Ken Macrorie perspective on “What is Engfish”.

When I was in the second grade we had a new student in our class named Yvonne. Yvonne had recently arrived from Haiti and knew very little English. Due to the fact that she didn’t understand English a whole lot, the other kids in my class thought it would be funny to call her names and bully her. One day we were at electives. Our class was divided into two, some going to Dance others going to Drama. The doors were across from each other so we could see what was happening. I was in Dance, as well as Yvonne. We were practicing our routine for Ciara’s “1, 2 step”. Yvonne was quick to pick up the dance and was amazing at it, which I think made the other kids in our class resent her. Our instructor dismissed us 5 minutes early to pack up our things. I quickly went to my corner and grabbed my backpack. When I looked up I saw a bunch of girls surrounding Yvonne. I remember hearing them calling her names like ‘ugly’ and ‘loser’. I noticed that no one moved to defend her. One of the girls actually pushed her to the ground and took her backpack dumping all her things on the floor; that’s when I acted. I pushed my way through the girls and placed myself in front of Yvonne. I grabbed her backpack out of the girl’s hand pushed her and called her a ‘mean witch for making fun of Yvonne’. I also told the other girls that if they messed with Yvonne, they would have to

“Good Morning Ms.Brown” Officer Nick yelled at me as I strolled through the large doors at Simon Gratz High School. Walking through those big red doors every day felt great, I felt even better seeing my friends in first period. We all had gym together and health. The class was 90 minutes long but what better way to spend those 90 minutes running around jumping rope and playing tag. I headed to the locker room on the lower level of the school where I ran into to one of the girls that a friend of mine had beef with the day before. She stared at me but in the back of my mind I’m thinking to myself this bitch don’t want it with me. I continue on to the bathroom to change my clothes and get ready for class. As I’m walking to towards the gym I overhear a group of girls talking about me. So I decided to dip of into the lockers to get a

So this is where my story takes off. It was just a normal fall day in November of 2011. I woke up ate cereal and said bye to my dad not knowing I would never see him again. I rode my bike to school with Zack. He wasn’t just any friend, he was my best friend we hung out every day we did everything together. Back to what I was saying it was just a regular day going to school at the end of the day my principle called my teacher and said that I was too come to the

My friend was shaking her head with wide eyes. Since I was clueless, I asked my speech teacher why and she straight up said with some rage in her voice, “You were insulting me by what I look like.” When she told it to me like that, I felt a little scared that I was going to get detention or suspension. At the time, I was really young, and didn’t know about, how to insult, or roasting people. Afterwards I thought about it, I noticed that she was feeling hurt. I felt guilty even though I didn’t know what was really going on but, I apologized.

None of my friends from the past were in my classes; hence, I was not able to turn to them for support. I would walk alone in the halls which gave three boys the opportunity to talk to me. In the beginning of the school year, the boys would form an unpretentious dialect with me on occasions. By the end of the first marking period, marching band and color guard ended and the three boys began to hector me daily about my interests. I tried opening up to a few of the girls in my class, but I quickly realized they were not truthfully my friends. I believed that talking to them about the three boys would help me, but they did not seem to understand or care. This caused me to become more insecure. By the middle of the second marking period, I would barely talk to anyone. The bullying grew excessive, which led me into a severely depressed state. The situation made me question my worth and made me feel there was no one who could help. I refused to confide in anyone about what I was going through. The boys’ torture increased as they commented about my physical appearance. Those comments caused havoc in my mind, and caused my self-esteem to continue decreasing. Finally, when the second marking period came to an end, winter color guard started. After a few short weeks, my color guard instructor, Mrs. Annette, noticed a change in my behavior and then gave me advice on how to handle the situation. I did not take advice

World War I was a devastating time for the whole entire world, both economically and physically. Even more devastating than the physical destruction and economic losses, were the psychological effects on the soldiers who fought this gruesome war. The conditions and nature of the warfare greatly affected these men. Not only did they suffer from many physical losses, such as death of beloved ones, separation from families, and bodily injuries, they also suffered psychologically due to the extensive trauma. The “lost generation” suffered immensely from post-traumatic stress, and lost their ability to live normal lives, along with their willpower and strength. They may have survived, but they were living corpses. The war had turned them into