My teacher talked about a lot of stuff over the course of the first semester, most of which I already knew. I’m still going to cover what he talked about, and also share my harsh, honest opinion of the different topics that we talked about. We had a few weeks of introduction to the course before we actually started looking at essay writing material, before we started talking about planning for essays and writing some shorter essays. Following that, I began writing speed essays, before we moved on to book reports, book reviews, and research papers. Research papers were the last section before we wrapped up the semester with the beginnings of this essay.

After our first weeks of introduction, we talked about mind maps. To make a mind map, you draw a large box in the center of a paper with your main topic on it, then draw branches out to different topics, and then branch those out, etc. This is basically the brainstorming phase. Personally, I only use a mind map when my project is really complicated and I really need a mind map to organize my thoughts, which isn’t often. Regardless, I do know when it will be helpful to make mind maps. Most of the time, it is much easier and more time efficient to skip straight to the outline.

The next stage in the writing process we discussed was outlines. Outlines are a more organized way to plan your paper. You take your mind map and then make a list of what you are going to talk about in what order you are going to talk about it. I generally have one bullet point for each paragraph because I generally don’t need to go into more detail in my outline. I use an outline for most of my papers that are longer than two pages, but there are circumstances when I don’t use outlines. I generally don’t use outlines for very short papers (less than two pages or 500 words), because it would just be a waste of time. There are exceptions to this rule. It just depends on the topic and complexity of the essay. I don’t do outlines for speed essays ever, just because it is a waste of time. I am quite good at organizing my thoughts in my head, and so there is no reason to spend my time writing them down on paper.

We went on to the next step in our studies, which was paragraph writing. If I am totally honest, this section would have been much easier without using the mind maps and outlines, which I was assigned to use, because these assignments are so short, but I was supposed to have the practice for making mind maps and outlines, so it makes sense why they were there. Writing paragraphs is easy. I have been doing it for years, and it was no different this year.

We had a relatively small section about grammar, which I am thoroughly sick of after learning the same stuff every year since 3^rd grade, but it wasn’t long and so it wasn’t much pain this year. Grammar is very easy at this point in my schooling because I have been practicing it for so long, so I don’t really have much to say about it. It was just a review.

The next section in the semester was about speed essays. All of the speed essays have been very easy. I didn’t do mind maps or outlines for almost all of them, and they were still high-quality essays. This has been my favorite section of the semester by far, because it put my typing and composing skills to the test in a practical way. For most of my essays now, I just put a stopwatch in the corner and time myself, even if it is not a speed essay. At the end of this essay, I will put the time it took me to complete the report from start to finish. I only had one speed essay that I didn’t meet the length requirement for, and that was a two page essay with a very hard topic, to be finished in thirty minutes. I know I can write two pages in thirty minutes (my stopwatch is at 26 minutes right now), but the topic was very difficult, and so I had a hard time reaching the required length.

Our next section was about book reports. Book reports are quite easy; all you have to do is summarize the book. We had a couple of book reports about specific topics (eg. The Setting of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne) and also just some general reports. There’s really not much to tell about book reports, because they are basically just essays about books, and the planning and organizing of book reports is not that different from a normal essay.

The next thing we covered was book reviews. Book reviews are basically just book reports, but without spoilers and adding my own opinion of the book. We had one review on With Clive in India by G.A. Henty, and one comparing The Scarlet Pimpernel and A Tale of Two Cities. I really enjoyed the second review in particular. Book reviews are arguably even easier than book reports because (in my opinion) stating your opinion is easier than summarizing facts.

The last thing we talked about this semester was research papers. Research papers were new to me, and they were also a giant pain. We had two, maybe three research papers. Research papers take a lot more thought, time and effort. Beyond using both mind maps and outlines, we also had to take lots and lots of notes. You then use the notes to organize a mind map, the mind map to organize the outline, and outline to organize the essay. On top of that, these were some of the longest assignments we had so far, and I believe I even got sick during this time, so it was not a fun time at all.

Lastly, I’m going to talk about my top three favorite books from the semester, and why they are my favorite.

My favorite book of the course was Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne. I really liked this book because it is in the science fiction genre, which is probably my second favorite genre, next to action-adventure. The book is really entertaining, and it was also the first book of the year.

My second favorite is Out on the Pampas by G.A. Henty. This book is a story about pioneers in Argentina, and I really enjoy books written during that time period. It was also another Henty book, and I really enjoy reading his books.

My third favorite book is the Scarlet Pimpernel. This is the first book of the year that actually has sequels, which I am working my way through right now. If I am quite honest, I’m not sure exactly why I like this book series, but for some reason, these are some of my favorite books I have read. They are about a time in history that I don’t know a whole lot about, and I find the books intriguing.

I’m going to wrap up this essay with a conclusion. I had a decent semester in English class. I think it was probably the most educational and practical semester I’ve had in English class ever, (with the exception of learning how to read in the first place). I talked about mind maps, and why I think they are silly. I talked about outlines, and my thoughts on them. I talked a little bit about paragraph writing and grammar, before I covered book reports and book reviews. I had a very hard time with research papers, and then I talked about my top three favorite books from the first semester of the year. Now I am very ready to be done with this paper. My time was one hour and five minutes without bloody nose breaks.

Some say a perfect society is impossible because humans are imperfect. Others say that a perfect society is possible and should be striven for. I’m going to give my honest (and probably boring) thoughts on this topic. Don’t expect this essay to be perfect, as I can barely comprehend this topic at all without writing about it, but bear with me.

The first thing that needs to be tackled is the definition of a “perfect” society. I don’t really think such a thing can possibly exist, if I am quite honest. It is hard for me to wrap my head around what a “perfect” society would look like. Without each member of a society being perfect, how can we collectively, as a group of imperfect people, call ourselves perfect, when each of its members is not? I think that a perfect society cannot exist, but we should still strive for it. The formation of a better society is really based upon the growth of each of its members as a person. You can’t have a lot of imperfect people, imperfect by themselves, be a “perfect” society. Each member would have to be a Jesus-level perfect in order to have a perfect society, and, as we are sinners and not perfect by any means, we cannot have a perfect society. That said, in the bible, it says: “He that saith he abideth in him ought himself also so to walk, even as he walked.” (King James Version, 1 John 2:6). From my limited knowledge of interpretation, I would say that what John is trying to say is that we should strive to be like Christ as much as we can, so we should strive to be perfect like Christ. If every human were to do this, we wouldn’t have a perfect society, but we would have one that is way, way better than the one we have now. We need to strive for perfection, and, even though we will never achieve perfection, we can at least make significant progress.

To recap, I basically said that a perfect society should be striven for, but will ultimately never be attained to the extent of complete perfection, because that is impossible for humans to attain.

Most of what people buy is not necessary. I am going to define necessary as items and requirements for survival, rather than thriving. Luxury items are not necessary. Good examples of luxury items would be fancy clothes, smartphones (and pretty much every electronic device for that matter), and entertainment devices. Now, the line between necessary and unnecessary is quite blurry. Necessary items could also include items used to make money, or for necessary work. If I am a painter and I need to buy a paintbrush to finish my work to earn money to pay for other necessities like food and shelter and clothing, than that paintbrush is a necessary purchase. There are also purchases for health items, like medicine. Medicine and prescriptions would be a necessary purchase. Purchase of a car would fall into the same category as the paintbrush. You don’t need it for survival, but you need it to earn money to buy the necessary items. Clothing is necessary, but fancy expensive brands are generally not. You need to have clothes, but it can be a very basic wardrobe, so clothes are only a necessary purchase if you are unable to wear the ones you owned previously. An item that would be on the line would be electricity. Almost every person in the United States has to pay an electric bill. Electricity is not necessary for survival, but it is very important for comfort. I would say electricity is necessary because you need it for basic comfort, it lets you stay warm in the winter and cool in the summer, and lets you see in the dark, keep your food cold, and much more. Overall, I would say that most of what people buy is not necessary. Most purchases are luxury items to make one more comfortable or happy, at least in theory, and not necessary.

• Introduction
• The French Revolution
• About Charles Dickens
• About Baroness Orczy
• A Tale of Two Cities Review/Report
• My thoughts on A Tale of Two Cities
• The Scarlet Pimpernel Review/Report
• My thoughts on The Scarlet Pimpernel
• Comparison
• Conclusion

• Introduction
• Famous Figures of the Confederacy
  • Robert Lee
    • Note #20
    • Note #19
    • Note #17
    • Note #18
    • Note #16
    • Note #15
  • Stonewall Jackson
    • Note #14
    • Note #13
    • Note #12
    • Note #11
    • Note #9
  • Jefferson Davis
    • Note #2
    • Note #1
• Famous Figures of the Union
  • Ulysses S. Grant
    • Note #8
    • Note #7
    • Note #10
    • Note #6
    • Note #4
  • George McClellan
    • I hate McClellan’s name. Just why.
    • Note #5
    • Note #3
  • Abraham Lincoln
    • His views on slavery and on the war
• Conclusion

In this research paper I am going to discuss the life cycle of butterflies, in particular, the Tiger Swallowtail butterfly. I will discuss the basic life cycle of butterflies that every butterfly goes through in some capacity before I move on to discuss the Tiger Swallowtail itself in more detail.

Every butterfly and every moth follows a similar circle of life. The parent insect lays the eggs in a location that varies with species. The eggs then hatch into a caterpillar or other type of larva. The larva stuffs itself with food from the plants that its species eats the most of, called host plants. It then weaves or otherwise produces itself a chrysalis or a cocoon. After a given period of time, the chrysalis hatches, and out crawls a young butterfly. This butterfly will go on to mate and, with its mate, will produce egg, which will continue the circle of life. It is good to know that this circle of life varies from species to species of butterfly and moth, and so I am now going to take a deeper dive into the life cycle of Tiger Swallowtail butterflies in particular. (Life Cycle of Butterflies and Moths)

The first stage in the circle of life for Tiger Swallowtails is, of course, the egg stage. Eggs are laid by the adults on the host plant of milkweed. The eggs are small and green. They hatches just seven days after being laid. (How to raise tiger swallowtail butterflies, 2023)

Once the eggs of the Tiger Swallowtail hatch, out comes a fairly large caterpillar. Its color is a lime green. The caterpillar will hatch and molt (shed its skin) several times before it creates its cocoon. During this time, the caterpillar is stuffing itself full of milkweed primarily, but they will also eat the leaves of cherry trees, yellow poplar trees, magnolia trees, and certain types of ash trees. It takes roughly three to four weeks from the eggs hatching to when the caterpillar spins its cocoon, and during that time it is stuffing itself to be prepared to pupate.

The caterpillar will turn brown when it is ready to pupate and form its chrysalis. Most swallowtails attach themselves to a stick and then spin their chrysalis there, and the Tiger Swallowtail are no exception to this general rule. The chrysalis will sit there for 10-20 days as long as it is warm outside; if it is cold than the chrysalis will wait until spring to hatch into a butterfly. (ButterflyGardeningAndConservation.com, Swallowtail Butterflies)

When the butterfly hatches, it will hang by the chrysalis for a few hours to let its wings dry out so that it will be able to fly. Before I talk about what the butterflies do now that they are adults, let me describe the appearance of Tiger Swallowtails. First we have the males. They are mostly yellow, but they have a black edge around their wings. There are black markings on the front of the wings and the actual body of the butterfly. They also have a very small blue marking at the bottom of their wings. They also have their swallowtails that they get their namesake from, which are little projections off the very back tip of their wings. There are two different patterns that the females can have on their wings. The yellow female tiger swallowtails look very similar to their male counterparts, but the blue markings are much larger on the females. There is another color pattern that the female tiger swallowtails can have that looks completely different from the other colors. It is a brown color with the same black pattern that the others have. It is much more subtle though, because black stands out less on brown than on yellow. They have the same blue pattern as the yellow females, but it is more pale and closer to white than the one on the yellow butterflies. (Eastern Tiger Swallowtail Butterflies)

The swallowtails mate quickly after they hatch from their chrysalises because their lifespan is only about two weeks, so if they don’t mate and lay eggs quickly, then they will miss their only opportunity to do so. They lay their eggs on milkweed or the other host plants mentioned above before they die, and so the circle of life continues.

I covered the life cycle of swallowtail butterflies in this research paper. I talked about the basic life cycle of almost all butterflies, and then I went into some of the traits particular to the Tiger Swallowtail, and then I also discussed their appearance. It is kind of sad that butterflies spend all that time preparing for adult life, only to die within two weeks, but that’s the way God made them, so it’s okay.

Works Cited

Opler, Paul. “Life Cycle of Butterflies and Moths.” The Children’s Butterfly Site. Metalmark, [no date listed]. Web. 11/29/2023. [https://www.kidsbutterfly.org/life-cycle].

“Tiger Swallowtail – Papilio glaucus.” ButterflyGardeningAndConservation.com. ButterflyGardeningAndConservation.com, [no date listed]. Web. 11/29/2023. [http://www.butterflygardeningandconservation.com/butterfly/st/tiger.php].

“How to raise tiger swallowtail butterflies.” Rooted Wings. Amazon,8/6/2023. Web. 11/29/2023. [https://rootedwingsco.com/how-to-raise-tiger-swallowtail- butterflies/].

“Eastern Tiger Swallowtail Butterfly.” Butterflies At Home. ButterfliesAtHome.com,

[no date listed]. Web. 11/29/2023. [https://www.butterfliesathome.com/tiger-swallowtail- butterfly.htm].

People who are not famous are quite often better role models than people who are famous. I’m going to dive a little bit deeper into why good role models are often not famous at all, and they might never be.

Role models are something almost everyone has in their life. Some role models are better than others. Role models are people that do good things or are good at something and are (generally) looked up to, but everything is retaliative. A role model can also be someone that is really good at something and is looked up to for their skill in that particular thing, even if there aren’t many other things that someone would look up to them for. A role model is someone that another person tries to emulate because that other person believes that their role model is someone worth attempting to be like.

I think people that you can know personally are better role models because their situation is probably more achievable than the famous person’s. There are only so many famous people, and not all of them are good role models. There are some good famous role models, but it seems to me that they are much less common than other, less good role models. Personal role models are also better because they can give you personal advice. If I know someone that knows a lot about a certain subject that I am very passionate about, then I will probably seek out advice from them personally. I can go to them with all of my problems with this certain subject and it is likely that they will have the answers.

Role models don’t have to be someone famous, and they don’t have to be great at everything either. Neither do the people that look up to the role model. Famous people have role models too. The reality is, nobody is perfect. Everybody should strive to be better than they are currently, whether that means they are looking to a role model that is famous or a person that a significantly less amount of people know.

Out on the Pampas is a work of fiction written by the famous author, G.A. Henty. It is a story of an English family who emigrated to the Pampas in Argentina. It tells how they built up the settlement of Mount Pleasant from barren land into a prospering plantation. The book covers about 5 years of time in total. The book takes place sometime during the 1800’s.

Before I begin to summarize the plot of the book, I must quickly tell you about the characters. The family’s last name is Hardy. Mr. Frank Hardy is a forty year old English Architect, who had spent his youth in North America exploring the western part of the country. He is married to Mrs. Clara Hardy. Mrs. Hardy is about thirty-five years old. The couple has had four children. Charley is the oldest, and, at the beginning of the book, is fifteen years old. His brother, Hubert, is fourteen. They have two sisters. Maud is twelve, and Ethel is eleven.

The book begins with Mr. Hardy proposing the prospect of emigration to his wife, Mrs. Hardy. Mrs. Hardy agrees that they should emigrate, and together they research the best country to emigrate to. They decide on Argentina, which is a country in South America. Land in that region can be bought for dirt cheap (pun intended), and Mr. Hardy also knows some people that live nearby. The family spends nine months preparing to emigrate. Charley and Hubert learn woodwork and gardening, while the girls learn to cook and tend to animals. The whole family learns Spanish as well, so that they can speak to the inhabitants of Argentina, and the children also learn to ride. They then set out on their voyage by ship across the Atlantic Ocean. There is a storm along the way, and everyone in the family except Mr. Hardy gets seasick. They then arrive at the land the Mr. Hardy owns.

They build small huts to live in while they build the main house, and then they build the house. Mr. Hardy has also purchased several hundred cattle and sheep, and also some chickens, and many many seeds. They plant many of these crops, including maize (corn) and live prosperously until Indians come and steal away a large portion of their cattle. Mr. Hardy, Charley, and Hubert gather a party of their neighbors, and go after the Indians. This is the first real conflict of the story. In the end, they surprise the Indians and get their cattle back. Shortly after this affair, they build a fort around their house, and add some new expansions. They are able to easily repel the Indians when they come for revenge. They care for the wounded Indians during the defense of their land, and then give them horses and set them free.

After this there are quiet times for a fairly long period. Several years have passed since the arrival of the Hardys on the Pampas. Charley was now eighteen years of age, Hubert seventeen, Maud fifteen, and Ethel fourteen. One day Ethel took a trip to their neighbor’s plantation (a good ride of ten or more miles), and spent the night. The next day, a man came to the Hardy estate saying that the house had been burned to the ground. Immediately, Mr. Hardy sent messengers to his neighbors, and gathered a search party. They found the bodies of everyone there except Ethel, and, after giving the victims a burial, followed the track of the Indians, assuming that Ethel had been carried off. The Indians set the prairie on fire to confuse the whites, and, hopefully throw them of the trail. This was to no purpose. The search party was able to find the proper trail, and keep following them to where the Indians had made their camp. They arrived just in time, and, with the aid of the Indians that they had treated with hospitality previously, were able to get Ethel back from the Indians. The Chief of the Indians was killed in the combat, and so one of the friends of the whites was elected to be the new Chief. These were the only large tribe of hostile Indians in the surrounding country, so not only was Ethel rescued, peace with the Indians was also established.

In the following years, Ethel and Maud moved back to England with Mrs. Hardy to get a good education, and, not long after that, Mr. Hardy also moved to England, leaving Charley and Hubert to maintain the plantation. Eventually, Charley and Hubert sold Mount Pleasant, and then they moved back to England as well, and married. The book ends with all the members of the family established comfortably in England.

I really enjoyed Out on the Pampas. I think the reason that I enjoyed it was because I like adventure books, and I also like books written in a similar time period. I also really enjoy G.A. Henty’s writing style. My only complaint with this book was that I had to read a lot in order to get my assignments done on time, and I would have preferred if it had been a two-week book instead of the one-week book that it was.

• Introduction
• About the book
  • About the East India Company
  • The Setting
  • The book covers how the English drove the French out of India, and is historical fiction
  • The Main Characters
    • Charles Marryat
      • Charlie is a fictional character
    • Robert Clive
      • Clive was a real person
• My Opinions
  • I did not really enjoy this book much, but I think that is because my assignments were very long and I listened to it on audio book and I didn’t like the narration
  • The story was realistic
  • I think I would recommend this book, but not the same audio book I listened to
  • The parts that I didn’t listen to but read I did enjoy, so I might re-read the book at some point