Class Details from 9/20

Today we started off class going over our agenda for the next few weeks in terms of due dates and what everything is going to look like further down the road. The biggest assignment coming up is the finalization of our college essay which is due by October 4th (Wednesday of Homecoming week). Mrs. Smith has requested that each of us finds a time to meet with her and discuss one of our three college essays  before this date. This is required but also a very useful tool to help in this process. She handed back our "Who Are We?" essays which is now available to use as an option for the college essay. An edited and revised version of one of our college essays is Due Monday in order to get a more finalized version before having the meeting with Mrs. Smith. Also Due Monday is the remainder of chapters 87-91 (with annotations) which we started in class. To add to that, the outline and essay topics for Life of Pi are up on her Google Calender in Week 6 in order to get a kick start on any planning desired for the in-class essay. She suggested to make a note to bring a laptop (if owned) to class Monday and Wednesday of Homecoming week if you do not want to use the class set of EEE's.

After an update on assignments and due dates we discussed the past reading of chapters 79-86 which was due today. She asked the question, "How has Pi changed from the beginning of the book until now?" The general consensus was that Pi battles between faith and barbarism because we think of the quote where Pi discusses how people can get used to anything, even killing. We also talked about how Pi's fear of Richard Parker is gone and has been replaced more by the fear of hydration and starvation, and the fear of losing Richard Parker. Moreover, Mrs. Smith brought up the idea of hope vs. desperation and what each represents. We came to the conclusion that desperation comes after you can't have something and maybe you need moments of desperation to get through. Following this class "fishbowl" we "circled the wagons" and read just through chapter 90 leaving one chapter left of reading.