Monday, May 23, 2016
Journal #18
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A character in a story we read in ELL III this year says, "For Beauty is why we live." For this last journal of the year, step back from your day-to-day concerns and consider the question, Why do I live? Another way of phrasing it is, What's most important to me? The painting above, by the way, is called "Christina's World," and it was painted by Andrew Wyeth, who spent a good deal of his time in Maine.
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- TGriffin
- I have been a language teacher (ESL/ELL, French) for 30 years. I have taught in public and private schools, immersion programs, refugee programs, adult/continuing education, elementary, middle, and high school as well as university. Currently I teach ELL at a high school somewhere in New England.
Oliver He
ReplyDeleteAs the old saying, "it is never to late to learn". We must realize that the most important thing in our life is learning. Some people think that they had completed their education when they finished their schooling. But in my opinion, learning is a daily experience and a lifetime mission. There are several reasons accounting for this viewpoint. First of all, there is no doubt that learning is an actually complicated and painful matter, and as a result, it is advisable for us to commit much more time even our whole life to it. Secondly, it is exceedingly obvious that we are easy to forget what we learned, and accordingly, the significance of lifetime learning cannot be ignored. For example, memorizing vocabularies is commonly the first step of preparing for an English test. However, it is pretty difficult for us to put a huge number of new words in our mind. Therefore, we can divide these words into some groups and spend some hours each day on it in order to remember and understand these words. Thirdly, learning can light our road in the coming future. There is no denying the fact that the society is developing increasingly fast and we are often easily surpassed by the people around. The only way to avoid this is to learn to improve ourselves. To sum up, no matter who you are, no matter how old you are, let's keep learning and never stop!
I think the most thing in my life is goal. I always need goal in my life, I need a destination that can give me power to work, to study. I have a goal for my whole life that is having a happy life and accomplishing something in my life, I don't want a boring life, I hope I have some good memories when I get old. But this goal is too far away and it's unclear. Therefore I have some short goals, I need to have a good grade in these four years and I have to adopt the American culture and people, I need to start thinking about what major I am going to study in college and what course is helpful for this major. The goals can make me full energy, and I need to accomplish these goals step by step that can make me have a great life.
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ReplyDeleteOur life on Earth is too short to worry about stupid things and tomorrow it's not a guarantee. Do what makes you happy, be with those that makes you smile, and love life. I believe that whatever you choose to do with your time will change who you are. Choose to be someone you can live with. We live because one day when we were little kids we realise that we are alive and that we already have lots of reasons to go on living. These include the fact that there are many things about life that give us happiness and pleasure, even if sometimes we are sad, too, and sometimes ill (this will never last longer). We live because of the happy things and moments. We live because we have hope, and want to see what happens next. Life at its best can be wonderfully good, and want to help make it like that and that is a great reason for living. We live because there are people who love us, and people we love back. We live because we want to find out things, and learn, and become able to do things that we would like to do in our futures. We live because others love us to, and we want that they live together with us.
ReplyDeleteJack Zhao
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ELL Journal
Mr. Griffin
June 4, 2016
My dad told me, life is making yourself better everyday and it becomes the most important thing for me now. We are going to school when we're young, because we need to grow up and improve ourself. I go to school because I want to make myself a better person. Someone said they don't afford to school, so experience is a good way to improve yourself. For example, there are lots of successful person in the world, not all of them had good background. Like my dad, he was poor when he graduated from college, but his experience is rich. He was sleeping in the train station, because he had nowhere to go. But now, he is a good successful business man for me. We have the same goal, it reminds me keep working everyday. But this goal can't be accomplished till I die. But at least, I will obey my goal forever.
Ｉ ｔｈｉｎｋ ｔｈｅ most important thing in ｏｕｒ life is ｐｏｓｉｔｉｖｅ ｔｈｉｎｋｉｎｇ because ｗｅ ｌｉｖｅ ｉｎ ｗｏｒｌｄ ｗｅ ｗａｎｔ ｔｏ ｂｅ ｈａｐｐｙ． Ｔｈｅ ｐｏｓｉｔｉｖｅ ｔｈｉnkｉｎｇ ｃａｎ ｂｒｉｎg courage and confident to you when you meet some challenges．For example, last year, before I took the final exam of chemistry, I was so nervous and I was thinking I would get a bad grade on the final because the exam would include all of the things I have learned. It would so hard. I told my mother I was so afraid of the exam. She said to me: “ you studied hard for the whole semester, and you did well for the whole semester, just think about you would get good grades at the end, and review it.” I reviewed it for a week, finally I got 97 on the final exam. My mother told me positive thinking and actually the positive thinking encouraged me to review it. I kept thinking if I would do bad, I would give up to review.
ReplyDeleteHuman only can live to 90-100 nowdays. And to do everything in in world, 90-100years are not enough. So we don’t have a lot of time to do learn what we want. But many people wasting their time to do stupid things. I think to not wasting time, people need their own goal. If you set a goal in your life it make you more active. The goal doesn’t have to really hard. It could be just simple goal. But when you set the goal you have to think about you can do that steadily. My goal is to get a nice house. I think to get a nice house is not that hard. And this goal makes me more active and make me studying hard to get a job that I want. And also When you meet challenge, don’t give up your goal to easily.
ReplyDeleteI think the most important thing for our life is dream. Everyone has a dream. Dream is the positive thing from inside of our body. It likes a force to push our keep working everyday. If you have a dream, you will make goals and realize your dream. If you have a dream, you know what you need to do , make plan and work hard every day. Without dream, just like you without soul. You just like a dead body, you have nothing to do. There is no hope in your life. You don't have power to work and study. I want to make my soccer skills becomes better and better. It is one of my dreams. I want to join dorm soccer team next year, but I need to improve my skills. I play soccer almost everyday with my friends and my skills are better than last year. I also have a big dream. I want to be the best doctor in China, I want to improve Chinese medicine. We still have some problems on medicine. I want to fix that and I want to go to Columbia University or University of Washington to study medical science. Everyone has dream. Let's work hard and realize it.
ReplyDeleteWhen I buried by lots of homework and other students’ complains in middle school at China, I considered why I live. Every one won their first match when they were zygotes in their mother’ s embryo. People in this world are different. I fight for my life based on two main reasons
ReplyDeleteFirst is love, because of love I fight for people who love me and who I love. I believe that being a good son is one way to return my parents. If I meet the girl who I cares a lot one day, I will fight and live for her also.
Secondly, there are lots of material demand I live for. People want to have better life quality and better environment to live. I live for those niceness such as beautiful landscapes from different regions. Those glories building will purify my soul When I arrive those place one day.
For responsibility is why we live. In childhood, everything I want to do needed my parents permission. That is a kind of responsibility which is I have to follow my parents. Because I can't live by myself. Then when I grow up, I go to school, i need to finish the education. My responsibility is do great on school for a better life in future. When I become an adult, I had a wife, children, a family. I have responsibility to make them live well. Also I have to take care of my parents. They're old and inconvenience on many things. A person from birth to death. He has responsibilities every time. He can have fun, anger, sadness, bored, worried …. from his responsibilities. This is life.
ReplyDeleteI am eager for freedom. I think freedom for me is do the things I want to do.—record every beautiful or touching moments, even don’t need someone accompany with me.
ReplyDeleteI’d like to travel all over the world, travel every beautiful places,and use camera to record those places. Now I am still too young, I have to study and I can’t make money. I only can record my daily life. To be honest, daily life is kind of boring, but I still can find chance to experience nature’ beauty.
Last weekend, we have a trip to watch the sunrise. When I saw it, I feel so excited because I never watch the sunrise before. Actually in my age, as a boy, most of boys aren’t like to get up that early and waiting for the sunrise.But that is the thing what I really want to do. When I went to the beach that morning, I saw an old man is finishing. No one stay with him, he just stand there and fishing. For me, it is kind of touching moment. I guess he really like finishing and he finishing everyday. Just do the thing you want to do, that is freedom.
I think the most important thing is we can grow up healthily. Health is the most significant for everybody. For example, you get sick, you feel uncomfortable and you can't do anything. In general speaking, Health can produce felicity, because you have a salutary body that you would do anything you want. For the poor people, they can't get enough food and they drink without clean water, which go down with disease and lose their health. So this is importance of health, we should cherish ourselves.
ReplyDeleteWhat's most important to me? There are more than one important things in my life but the most important one is ‘’my family’’. We receive support from our families and we shared everything with our families. We’re learning what is wrong or true from our families, they are teaching us the reality of the life. I can’t imagine my life without my family. Past 18 years they lived for me they gave me everything I want and now I’m here in US. I’m so thankful them and rest of my life I’ll live for them.
ReplyDeleteYou Li (Leo)
ReplyDeleteFrom my perspective, I think that the dream is the most important in my life. It is like the power of justice to guide me to find out the direction. Everyone has perfect dreams. The dream can make the goals. I will make plans to study and be hard working to realize my dream. In fact, I really want to be a businessman in the future and I know that it is very far for me. I need to have much knowledge about economy. So, I should work hard at the school to improve my skills every day and I will choose some books to expand my knowledge. I believe that it is not enough to learn some knowledge from school and there are much new and fresh knowledge which is from books. As the old saying, “Nothing is impossible”. I hope that I will realize my dream through working hard.
We live for the future, for the idea that we will all become something important that will change someone's life, for the uncountable memories that we will be able to create by just doing what be love the most. Being around people we like.We also live for the joy, the joy that we can all have from this present given to us called life. Joy can be found in things as simple as a smile of someone we care about, or by a well done job or even just by going to bed thinking that our day has been awesome. We do not live only to receive joy for ourselves, also to give joy to others. Because when you make someone else happy you feel joy for doing something get well. That is why we live for.
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ReplyDeleteIf you just think about it and see that we all got an opportunity to live. Every day you don't think about what you can do. You can see, hear, feel all around you. That is wonderful but people are so used to it. They don't think that it's something special but it is. There are a lot of people on over planet and every each of them has their one reason to live. For some on its money. Others prefer beauty. For me it's moment that I have. Every day I see something, I hear new words, news, stories. I feel different emotions. I know that I won't have any second of my life the same as the one that is right now. Nothing will be the same, it will be similar but never same. You need to enjoy every moment of your life. You have only one chance to make your dreams come try. Only one chance to reach your goals. Only one life chance to see places that you have never ever been before. You are giving only one life to live it how you want to. You are the director of your movie that you film the hall life. I live for moments, they are happening only once. Enjoy it as much as you can. We live only one time, don't lose it.
Why do I live?
ReplyDeleteWhy do I live? I’ve been thinking about this question for a long time, and every time I got different answers. Sometimes I think I live to be with my families and my friends, spend time with them and make them delighted. But one day I realized that in one’s whole life, these persons are only passers-by, and they will all be gone at the end.
So now I’d like to say that I live to breathe fresh air, to listen birds singing, to watch sunrise, to travel over the world, to taste different foods, to accompany important people, to try challengeable things, and, all in all, to be happy. Happiness is the only thing really matters in my life and the only thing that I need to search, and to enjoy in my whole life.
So, my answer to “Why do I live?” is that I live to pursue happiness.
from Carlos:
ReplyDeleteWhat do I live for? Everyone lives for happiness, doing one thing or another. At least in my case I do. I purchase happiness by help my family, friends, people... Also making people laugh, that produce me happiness. I live for goals, there is thing better in this life That think about something you want to reach, and try your best, and the hardest, the better, and sometimes when you arrive to your goal, you realize that that's not he best, the best was the way to reach the thing you were working for. My life would not be pleasant if I don't have goals, and if I'm not happy.
What do we live for? I was trying to ask this question to my friend. "For money." She answered. For sure it was just a joke. But in the real life, for a lot of people, they live for better lives, such as making more money, living in bigger houses, the higher status in the society, and so on. They think those are their goals. Of course, they are important, I would like to do those too. And if they reach those, they will feel successful and happy. However, the problem is that they never end. There is always some money waiting you to make, there is always a house bigger than yours, even the presidents still cannot do whatever they want. So, for me, I live for everything I love and something I'v never seen before. I also live for my family. My parents gave me the life, and I want to give them better lives as well. I want to spend more time staying with them and enjoy the time. In a word, I lived for my family, myself and everything I like in my life.
ReplyDeleteClyde Qi
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Journal
Tom Griffin
6/6/2016
Journal
I thought I had grown up to be a man. But I do not. I am still a kid who always acting like a man but deeply like a kid.
I thought I was a tolerant, a kindness, and an adamancy person because I pardon everyone's fail. I forgive everyone's darkness towards me. I thought only a man can do this. However I was wrong. The bear I gave to them let them become more boorish and made my own life even tougher. I did not understand why would this happen to me until my roommate Chris moved into my room.
Chris is a little taller than me and he is "irascible" person. Chris would argue with people who treat him badly. He told me that people who are nice are treated to be bully, horses who are nice are treated to be ride. A fake kindness guy would letting people bully on him but says nothing. A true kindness guy would be admired by others. He said the fake ones were coward people and I was one of them. He encouraged me to become a little violent to defiance and protect myself.
Mr. Morse told me that life is easy. It is depending on how I act and how I react. I think i I still need time to think and explore the truth inside this sentence.
Everyone live for something. Some people live with dreams, and some live for other people. I think the world is colourful, and dream is power for people to live, to make their life beauty. People do what they want to do, that's what people want. People want to live because they want lights, they want to get out of the dark and stricture. I think people should care about other people thinking. Everyone lives are beauty.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comments, everyone, on why you live, and also for all your comments on the ELL Journal this year. I've learned a lot by reading them. Remember, since this blog is public, you can always log on and see what's going on in ELL - even when you're far away from TA! Have a great summer, and see (some of) you in the fall.
ReplyDeleteYuri Vlasenko
ReplyDeleteI live for my future. I go to school, have good grades. I always think what I want to do in my life. And education playing a very big part of it. Without education and experience you will never have a good job or business. I always try to challenge myself, try to make myself better every day. School really helpes me. It makes me better. Every day I learn a lot of new stuff that I didn't know before. I really thankful for every teacher that make me better. Because the effort that they give it's unbelievable. Thank you!
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteWhy do we live? Oh God that's a huge question for people and me. I think I live for myself, for my life goals, for my family, and for my future wife. There are a lot of things out there, that I haven't tried. There are still tones places that I want to visit,but I haven't gotten chance to go. There are couple thousand beauties out there, that I wish I can meet. There are millions of reason for " why do I live?" My life goals are, to go to a good university, have a lot beautiful girl friend. Get a job I really like or a job i hate but I get pay a lot. Have a family, travel all over the world and die a happy man. I haven't even gotten one of them so far. Those goals are the why I live.
ReplyDeletewhy do I live? I guess for love is why I live. I accept a lot of love from my family, friends, teachers, even strangers. I am fully surrounded by love. My family support me to study in the United States and as many as possible give me somethings that I really want. I have some friends from element school, middle school, high-school, and Thornton Academy. We still keep in touch. Back to China, we always hang out. I learn a lot from my friends, and I hope they learn something from me. I really appreciate that they make me become better me. I feel love from them even though we never say to each other. From strangers, I feel love. For example, in the street, we say hi to each other but we are no friends. It makes my day! Everyone is nice to me. I guess I am the luckiest girl in the world. For love is why I live. Thank you Mr. Griffin, I am glad that you teach us. You help me a lot for my English. You are the best English teacher ever! I will check ELL Journal next year. I hope I can surprise you and make you day!
ReplyDeleteWhen someone ask me about the meaning of life. I’d like say that challenges and adventures are the reason that why I live. Since the day we were born, we started to run into thousands of challenges. For instance, I met many challenges since I came to the US because of the new language environment and new people. I used to think the most thing that I would do is go to another city to go to college. At that time I never thought that I would go to another country and study alone without my parents with me. Of course I was nervous at first and I was a afraid to tai to any one. However, I calmed down gradually and I started to communicate with others on my own initiative and I found that everyone is nicer than how they look. Not only that, the most challenging thing that I think I did during the school year is joining the orchestra but it is also the most exciting assignment that I attended this year. Because I am a crazy fan of playing the piano, I joined the orchestra at my current school as the only piano player. From the beginning of September we started to prepare for it. The reason that why this is the most exciting assignment for me is not only that it’s a good experience that performing in front of public. Another reason is that I challenged myself during the rehearsal. Although I have learnt playing the piano for 11 years, this was my first time to play with the whole orchestra. As a result, I used to have problem on following the conductor and that really took me a long time to get used to playing the piano and looking at the conductor at the same time. To be honest, I was not confident enough that I can deal this problem by myself. Other players always encouraged me every time I made some silly mistakes. As we all know, it’s much easier for a person to make mistakes when he or she is nervous. That’s exactly what I was like. I remember that even one time I mess B and D. By joining the orchestra and attending the holiday concert, I challenged myself and I got a great improvement. Next year, I am going to another school, and I am sure that I am going to face a lot of new challenges that I cannot even imagine. However, I believe that those challenges are the energy that encourage us to move on and improve ourselves.
ReplyDeleteWhat is most important for me? That has to be the healthy of all my family members. I have to say, this is really the most important thing of my life. They are the people that I cannot lose. For me, I wish everyone in my family have a healthy body. When someone have sickness in my family, I will really worried about them. Of course sometimes the bad thing has to happen, so I hope I can spend the most time that I have with my family. No matter what, they are all my love and I am going to see them really soon. I hope everyone in our class will have a great holiday!
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