Before I go about the rest of the post, I got my final grades for the first trimester, including Physics, this time. The grades dropped a bit because of exams. I added the image to the bottom of the previous post.

Now on to the real reason I’m posting tonight instead of later. Today in my Honors English 10 class, we presented a Book Talk  about a novel we were to read over the summer (and first trimester). People seem to be doing pretty well, and I managed to avoid presenting in front of the class for the past 2 days. But today, not only did I present, but I was first! Which is exactly what I didn’t want.

I absolutely hate presenting in front of groups of people. When I heard we’d be doing it a lot in this class, I almost dropped it because I am no good in front of people. But then I stopped myself, because I’m just hoping all of the presenting we’re going to do will help me with my nerves.

Before I go about explaining the presentation, the book I read was called A Separate Peace, and was written by John Knowles (not that anybody reading this really cares, ha-ha). Perhaps I should post my notes for this Book Talk, because there’s 6 pages of it in Microsoft Word. The notes were hand-typed by me, single spaced, size 12 Calibri with default margins.

Anyway, I get up in front of the class to present my Book Talk. I haven’t started yet and already my heart is pounding and my palms start to sweat. I wouldn’t be surprised if my face also got really red right off the bat, if not, it happened eventually. I begin my Book Talk, speaking slowly and loud so people can understand what I’m saying, and I’m trying to avoid too many details because I’ve got a 5 minute time limit. I explain the setting, characters, details, etc; when I get to the summary, I for some reason get confused. I had practiced everything up until this point, and I had 3 full pages of information on the book, so I started off just talking about the first things I can remember from the novel. Things start going pretty smoothly, better than if I were to read it from the notes. But I finally get to the climax of the story, when the teacher stops me and says, “I’m sorry, but your 5 minutes are up. Really quickly, though, would you recommend this book?” frazzled, I just said yes. She asks why, and I don’t feel like I have time to read what I have on the notes, so I just make up some random combination of words that presented the book in a positive manner.

I was really quite embarrassed after that, but I am glad to say that I wasn’t the only one that couldn’t finish. Probably about 5-6 other students (good students) also ran over their time limit because they had an excessive amount of information.

Just a few minutes ago, I got on our school’s grade program to see what I got on the Book Talk, and I got a B+. I put way too much effort into the Book Talk to only get a B+. I at least have to see what I got marked down for. If it’s because I didn’t finish, I’m going to complain, naturally. The teacher shouldn’t be able to mark me down because I actually gave effort. Oh well, that’s the post for today.

Some website-related things: As you can see, I’ve added a Blogroll and an Archives page. If you would like to put yourself on the Blogroll, please use the contact section to apply.

Also: http://pf.kr1s.net is an upcoming portfolio for the site. That way I can show off my designs and other artwork without having to link you to another site. As you can tell, I’m just testing it out for now. I have no information on when it will be done.

One Response to “Cut Short”

1. Tim says:

   December 6, 2009 at 9:31 pm

   You might want to increase the post font size, feels a bit small and makes this post feel 10 times longer.

   And when did you get this into wordpress?