The Plot Sickens: Free Write & Reflection

                It was Christmas Eve. Fog stuck to the tarmac at Lindbergh Field. My family was planning on traveling to Boston to visit our family. In Boston, they were expecting over two feet of snow to fall just around the time our plane would land. However, we were hopeful that the tarmac in Boston would be clear for us to land. Shortly before boarding the plane, we heard a dreadful announcement.

There was a change of plans. The snow continued to fall at a steady pace in Boston, and our flight would now leave around 8 am. My family and I called my grandmother and confirmed with her that it would still be acceptable to arrive at her house later than expected, and we decided to sleep over in the uncomfortable airport chairs. My little sister broke out in tears because she realized that she would not get presents from Santa. After getting evil looks from almost everyone in the airline, we were able to settle her down. After waking up in time for our flight to descend, we could not find my little sister.

                My parents alerted the security guards in a state of panic. We had everyone in the airport searching for my young sister. The police also began the search everywhere around Lindbergh Field. Just as we began to lose hope, we looked up to see two policemen walking hand-in-hand with my sister.

                After interrogating her to find out why she wondered off, my family and I finally got a straight story from her. She wanted to search the whole airport in the middle of the night to wait for Santa to show up at the airport. We were just happy to be reunited with her, and she was excited to see all of her presents waiting for her in Boston.


Reflection:     
              A) I found the document "The Plot Sickens" by Fanny Howe very interesting and remarkable. Howe's critics to young authors made me realize how different the world is today than it was ten years ago. In student's essays, she found more violence and endings that often ended in death or other forms of violence. Howe states, "The students plotted their stories so that all kinds of terrible things would happen to their protagonists, but in the end it was arranged that everyone, alone or together, would work their way out of trouble and get on with their lives." Franny also goes on to blame this on the Economy is the main reason students find it difficult to find a happy ending to their story. Young contemporary authors are influenced by many forms of entertainment showed on the television, and these movie stars are always on view for us to see so we often forget the immense amount of money they make.
             B) My free-write deviates from her claim that most young authors don't solve the problem to their story, and it often ends in violence. Howe claims, "The plot snaps or explodes. Clearly these young writers can't figure out how to solve the problems they created in the first few pages." My essay, however, ends with the child happily finding her family again. There was no violence or mayhem involved in the solution. Franny's claim may be true for most writers, but that does not include me.

I'll Make a Title Later- Self Deprecation

　

​     It’s only 3:00 pm; I have plenty of time to do my homework. Just one more episode and I’ll start. Similar to most students, one more episode often turns into three more episodes of shows such as Gossip Girl or Breaking Bad. Suddenly, I look at the clock and its 5:00 pm. At this point, I might as well wait until I eat dinner. I work better on a full stomach anyways. One hour later and I still haven’t commenced to my work. I have no problem finding time to check Twitter to see if Sue broke up with her boyfriend or what to see who’s at some stupid party or text all my friends about their ex-boyfriends that just started dating a new girl but when it comes to homework, I always put it off to the side until the last minute. Studying and homework are not nearly as important as One Tree Hill or Snapchat. That is, until it’s 9:00 at night and I come to the realization that I still haven’t started the pile of homework on my desk.

​   Math, Spanish, English, and biology. Sounds easy enough. I started with my biology homework, which happened to only be a couple pages of fill in the blank answers. However, what I prayed would take me 15 minutes ended up taking me 45 minutes. Not too bad. I deserve a break. After 20 minutes of catching up on everyone else’s lives, I decide to get back to mine.

​    As soon as I take out my Spanish homework, my friend blows up my phone asking for questions to the math homework. I decide to do that first. Our lesson in class was easy to understand but when I looked at the work in front of me, it looked like Gibberish. Let me just take a 5 minute break to get my head back in place. 20 minutes later, the same friend that was struggling was now the one helping me understand the confusing words and numbers known as math. After completing the nearly impossible work, I reward myself with 10 minutes of communication with my friends.

​   30 minutes and a snack break later, I open up To Kill a Mockingbird and begin reading. Did people actually speak like this? What does any of this mean? So, once again I turn on my phone and read the two chapters on Sparknotes. This takes longer than you would expect, however, because after every couple sentences I get multiple messages from a group message which is way more important than this useless story. Although I’ll regret it the next day when I fail the quiz, at the moment we were having a great conversation about food and shopping.

​  One more class and I’m done. This should be easy. Wrong. I open my book and find that I have to copy over 50 words in Spanish. Please tell me when I’m going to need to say words like "dust" in Spanish! After 2 words, I look at my phone. Another one of my friends asks me what we need to know for our quiz next class. Quiz!? There is no way she mentioned a quiz! I look at my agenda and surely enough "Quiz next class" is written in bold letters. Whatever, it can’t be that hard. Wrong again. After succeeding to vaguely copy down 50 words in a language I’m never going to need to use, I finally lie in bed and go through every social media and message left on my phone that I didn’t use as an excuse to not do my homework. 4 hours of sleep is enough, right?

​   Once again I was very, very wrong. After oversleeping my alarm, I rush to get ready for school. Oh no, I forgot to study for Spanish! Whatever, I’ll have time in school before class. When I walk into school, I immediately join my friends in conversation about more drama that occurred during the few hours of sleep I actually got. All together, I studied for a total of 10 minutes, 5 of which were spent with people standing over my shoulder trying to have conversations with me. I spend my day exhausted, and I promise myself that I will start my homework earlier the next day. This cycle repeats nightly despite my pledge.

​  Every student, at some point in their learning career, has become very familiar with the word procrastination. For me, it’s more like a habit than a one-time mistake. Something always seems more important than what I should be focusing on. Maybe one day, I’ll fix my procrastination problem. Then again, Friends just came on Netflix.