Becky Said:

What is your opinion of my latest Journal Entry for my writing course?

We Answered:

Y como se dice : "God Bless the Child who's got her own!"
That's you.
Muchas gracias por lo que nos enseño y nos "enseño" a practicar: The Moral!
Grecia.

Wallace Said:

I'm screwed in Middle School?

We Answered:

Print out your question and take it to your teacher so that she understands that your private journal was intended to help you get your anger out in a safe, resourceful way instead of internalizing the anger or taking it out on your classmates. If she's any kind of a teacher, she'll understand.

Highlight the following quote from your question so that she can see it:

"You see I write bad stuff about people in my personal journal whenever they insult me cause I try not to cause trouble so I just write stuff."

Apologize for the language in your journal, promise to be a model student from here on out, and sweetly ask her to lessen the impact of the news to your mom. Then make sure you get a journal with a key, and LOCK it. As the saying goes, "if you keep a journal, it will keep you."

And finally, relax. This will be one of those things you'll laugh about in twenty years' time, I promise. It's been over twenty years since I was in junior high, and there were some rough times in there, but I survived.

And so will you :-)

Terry Said:

How can I gain experience to become a writer?

We Answered:

You have to read and write much.

@

Douglas Said:

Middle School Emergency!?

We Answered:

If Taylor is a snotty and critical person, I think your friends will understand your explanation. They may have felt some of the same things you wrote down. You learned an important lesson here. Don't take private journals to school. Along those same lines, don't send pictures to people that you wouldn't mind anyone seeing or post them on facebook. You'll probably get punished unfairly but at least you've learned a valuable lesson. Good luck!! : /

Jill Said:

What is the point of a dialectical journal ?

We Answered:

Interesting. You are probably aware that Steinbeck wrote his own journal while writing the novel, called Journal of a Novel.

Anyway, keeping a journal of your reading of the novel will help you in two major ways: developing critical thinking skills about what you read; and getting more than one perspective on a passage. I can thus see the journal as a useful tool.

As a teacher, I would want to see you deal with a character's action in practice and how that affects both you and the other characters. I would also appreciate seeing you deal with a major idea in the story and how that affects you and others. An example would be the idea of brudermord, the Cain metaphor; or the idea of the psychopath and how that affects people and a society. Then of course, there is the theme of redemption through the concept embodied in the word "Timshel."

Good luck!