Annotation by Kamryn Foster

Alright, y'all. I did it again. I didn't keep my word. I'm so sorry that I didn't write on Friday. So here I am, trying to make it up to y'all. I suppose I didn't know what to write about, until today, when Mr. Johnson said something in class that struck me.
He said something along the lines of it being a good habit to highlight quotes in books that you like. Now, I've been doing this since summertime, but I thought of it as an interesting thought, since it came from an adult. Did he only mean to annotate books that you were studying or doing an assignment for? If not, then why would you highlight a book that you'd be reading for enjoyment? Now, I'm asking these questions from the viewpoint of people who don't really care about reading or English in general, and an example would be my family. They don't truly appreciate anything about the subject, so they think it's weird when I do this with my books; they think of it as doing more than what you have to do, kind of like doing a chore. But that's not it at all!
Sometimes you find yourself reading a book and something strikes you - whether it be a 'life-lesson' quote, a word you don't know, or perhaps just amazing description about something, and you feel the need to make that prominent. You can simply do that, and it'll be there for you when you go back to it when you either reread it, or when you go looking for that one quote that changed your perspective about something. It can be as little or as big as you want it to be. That's why I think books and just writing in general is art, since you can take it as deep as you want, and because you can get something new out of it every time you read it. I think that's absolutely fantastic.

Why Learning about Greek Mythology is Important by Emma Bova

Whether you're learning, or just going about every day life, Greek culture always seems to pop up everywhere we look. A lot of our English culture is based upon the ways of the ancient Greeks and Greek mythology, and some people may ask "why? They're just some silly myths." Greek myths are epic tales about Gods and Goddesses. They are meant to reveal a lesson, moral, or even warning in the end. They often reflect on humanity in the form of a parable. Rarely do they have a happy ending, and they are not exactly written for entertainment. They are written for a higher more important purpose, and are used to pass down lessons without being boring.

          Greeks myths were often told to people to help them realize what is right versus what is wrong. They are meant to help people control or influence their decisions. They are meant to serve as a warning and to inspire the reader not to make the same mistake as of the character in the myth. They may not be the most realistic, but they still portray a message and reflect on human life; then and now. The irony is, people often still choose the wrong thing to do and have to learn their lesson the hard way.

         By learning Greek mythology, one is not only learning about the culture of another country, but they can also apply this information and compare and contrast it to the cultural ideas of their own country. After all, a lot of our language and culture is based off of the Greeks. For example, government, art, many worldly languages, and ways of every day life. From a behavioral standpoint, it is interesting because even thought these myths were written thousands and thousands of years ago, by writers like Sophocles and Euripides, they still are an accurate representation of how humans act in the present day, and they captured humanity very well to the point where an abundance of stories are still relevant today.