Best of Week: "Study with nachos"

This past week of school has been a particularly busy and difficult one filled with many tests and quizzes. Dealing with this kind of work load can be very stressful and often teachers try to pretend like they are sympathizing, but they don't do anything to make the situation better. One piece of advice given to our academy class this week that I found particularly useful was when Mr. Allen told us all to "study with nachos." He didn't just mean that we should eat while studying, although that always keeps things more interesting, he meant for us to help each other with our work load and relax while doing it. My classmates and I took this to heart and over the weekend various groups of us got together and collaborated on our english essay test. This was very helpful and lessened some of our stress. It was nice for a teacher to give us a solution for once instead of just telling us that everything will be okay, even when it's not.

Connection: King Lear and Allie (from The Notebook)

As people get older, they tend to go through an experience where they become dependent on others, often referred to as "a second childhood." A character undergoing this stage in life in King Lear is Lear. He is nearing the end of his life and knows it, so he rations his kingdom between two of his daughters and depends on them to take care of him. While reading this, I recalled a character named Allie from The Notebook. Allie is a very elderly woman who lives in a retirement home and greatly depends on her nurses and family to take care of her because she has alzheimers.
Even though Lear and Allie lived in completely different times, they can relate to each other because of this common stage in life that they both undergo. As I said before, they become dependent on others to maintain a somewhat normal lifestyle. For Lear, these people are his daughters. For Allie, they are nurses. Even though Lear doesn't have alzheimers, his old age still cripples him from running a kingdom, similarly to how Allie's disability prevents her from living in her own home. This connection shows me that problems we encounter today have probably been around as long as people have been on this planet. Knowing this makes me feel like I'm not alone because other people have had to deal with the same things I do, and have gotten thought it.