Critical Analysis about Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway "Today on the five oclock news a man goes on a rampage at the office leaving five dead." As I flip on the TV, I see another top story! A man has killed others at his workplace and taken his own life. This is becoming very old.

I begin to think, "what could push this person to the point where they feel that it is necessary to take the lives of innocent people?" Even more disturbing, what could drive a person to the point that they believe it is necessary to end their own life? What could drive a person to the point of no longer having the desire to live? I believe that being prepared for life and the difficulties that come along with it is part of the key. The world can be a very difficult place, especially once out of high school. It is the high schools job to prepare us, as students, for the harshness of the real world. Expectations are high for every single person in todays world and some people just can not live up to the expectations of other people. Trying to live up to other peoples expectations creates competition.Competition is in everything from getting into college to finding a job.

I believe that is why some of the most basic skills learned in high school are so valuable. The most basic and important skills are used in school everyday: reading, writing, listening and speaking. These are some of the most important skills needed to a get a good job, a good education and essentially a happy and pleasing life. Reading is extremely important when it comes to surviving in the real world today.Being able to read opens up a variety of doors in life and opportunities.

If you cant read, imagine what type of job you will be qualified for. Lets see, a minimum wage job at McDonalds! Wait, even to be able to work at McDonalds you have to be able to read. What about reading the cash register or the orders off of the computer? Even a minimum wage job making burgers requires the skill to read. My reading skills were shown and improved upon in my English, Spanish, Math, Keyboarding I and Football classes.

One class that might question how I learned or improved upon my reading skills is in my Football class. For football class, we read different lifting magazines and pamphlets, that teach new strategies to get a better lift. If we do not know how to read it, it is difficult to fully understand the article, and therefore the proper and safe lifting technique. In my portfolio I have placed a picture of me lifting.

At the beginning of the semester I would not have been able to even come close to the weight I am lifting in the picture.This shows just how important reading has been in my advanced football. So in my football class I believe I showed enough skill in reading that I can qualify for a $5.75 an hour job flipping burgers. So far so good. The second class in which I believe the skill of reading is important and becomes improved is math.

When I am about sick of math class and we still have 15 minutes to go, I come to a very complicated word problem.My mind is not completely in it. That is when reading comprehension comes into play, so I can properly complete the problem and accomplish everything that was asked for. If not for my skill of reading comprehension, I might not be able to figure out each and every word problem. The math lab that I placed in my portfolio would not have been possible if it were not for my skill of reading. If I did not know what the book was asking of me, I would not have been able to complete the lab.

The lab asked me to graph and solve the equations using the techniques we read earlier in the chapter, this is where reading comes into play. Now I am not only able to read, but I am also able to comprehend. I have also learned the technique of re-reading. If I do not understand something the first time through, I have to take the time to re-read the problem. This qualifies me to the next step up in the career field, now I can go from flipping burgers, to another $5.75 an hour job working behind the register, because of my reading skills.

I also believe my skill of reading is shown and improved in my Spanish class. I have to be able to read and comprehend in Spanish as well as English. If I cant even read in English how am I going to be able to read anything in Spanish? I have placed a little book in my portfolio that I made in Spanish. First, I read the requirements for the project. Then I had to read and write certain things that I wanted to place in my book.

I believe the book is a quality product. This shows just how I used the skill of reading in my Spanish class. Now due to my ability to read and comprehend, I can communicate fairly well in Spanish. This also will look good on my college and job applications. This will also open new doors to new chances and opportunities.Maybe if I could get a job at a place that needs a person who is bilingual.

If it were not for my ability to read and comprehend, then I would not have even passed Spanish I, let alone Spanish II. In my Keyboarding I class the skill of reading comes in when we are reading over what we have to type and the different things it must contain. We must read the instructions to each assignment so we know what style the work is to be done in. In my portfolio I have placed an assignment ( R5-36) that I completed nearly perfectly, thanks to my skill of reading.I read the instructions in the book which told me the assignment in the style of enumeration which we had read about earlier in the year. This is why reading is so important in my keyboarding class.

Then after completing the assignment, I have to go through and make sure there are no mistakes and everything is spelled correctly. Also, reading comes into play when we are learning new techniques to key faster. The evidence which I have placed in my portfolio is a timing test, showing just how I have improved in my time thanks to my reading and comprehending.In the beginning of the year, I struggled just to key the ABCs twice in a minute.

By the time I read and learned new techniques and completed my portfolio assignment, I was up to about six to seven times through the ABCs in a minute. At this point in the semester, I can key the alphabet about 10-11 times in a minute. This proves just how my ability to read has helped me in the keyboarding I class. My ability to key will also look good on my college and job resume, especially considering I want to go into a field working with computers.So far, in just four classes, I went from being qualified for not even a minimum wage job, to starting on my way to a career in computers thanks to my skill of reading.

I also plan to keep reading and improve in my Keyboarding class in both my typing skills and reading skills. In the R5-36 assignment I made one small error, partly because I did not read my paper over thorough enough. So I plan to work on reading my papers over more thoroughly, and maybe even use the technique of re-reading it incase I might have missed a minor mistake. The fifth class that has helped to improve the skill of reading is my English II Honors class.

Reading is one of the most valuable skills in my English class. When I get home from a long day of football practice and lots of running, reading is the last thing I want to spend time doing. That is the last thing I want to do, but I know I must is to make sure to completely comprehend each word of the reading while I try to get it done as quickly as possible. I have to admit, reading quickly is not the best thing when trying to read and completely comprehend a novel.

But I know that in class the next day we will be quizzed on the reading from the night before and then have a class discussion. If I did not read and comprehend what I read, I will do very poorly on the quizzes and not be able to participate in the discussion. This can be a very bad feeling, because you are left out and dont know what the other students are talking about (not like that has every happened to me).A technique that I have learned to better help me understand and comprehend is to re-read. I do not always fully understand everything I read the first time, so I have developed the very helpful skill of re-reading. The summer reading essay in my portfolio shows the skill of re-reading and comprehending.

Sometimes I did not understand things I read over the summer so in order to write a quality essay I had to re-read certain things that I read over the summer. A good example of when re-reading has helped me is when I read the book My Antonia.It was the summer and my mind was not completely in the reading and sometimes I would not fully comprehend parts. That is when I used the skill of re-reading to go back and re-read the parts I did not completely comprehend.

I found out that the more I read, the quicker I become. Reading has also helped me extend my vocabulary. Our teacher expects us to look up a word when we come to one in a reading that we do not know. This has dramatically helped my vocabulary to expand to new lengths.During my junior and senior year when I take the SAT test (two-thirds of which has to do with English and vocabulary) I will do fairly well.

The higher I score, the better chance I have of getting into a better college. Then if I finish college I will have a successful career. This is why reading is so important in preparing me for a good future, the real world and the skills to survive in such a competitive world. I believe my reading skills have improved greatly, but I also realize there is much, more room for improvement.I must"make" time to re-read things, even if it means making some sacrifices. It will be hard but I need to take time away from the TV and radio and re-read something I did not fully comprehend.

Another sacrifice I might have to make is to stay up a little late, I can always catch up on my sleep the next day by going to bed early. It will only make me better and help me in class as well. It is something I do not like but must do it in order to improve my skill of reading.Writing is a very important part of countless career fields today.

There are some jobs in which the skill of writing is not a necessity, but with most jobs it is very important. What is necessary to get into a good college or get a good job? Well, you have to write a resume. I do not think, in fact I know that they will not accept you if they can obviously see that you are weak when it comes to writing. Sure, the fast food job is great at $5.75 an hour, but I do not think it is sufficient when you are 34 and still working at McDonalds and can barely afford the rent to your one room apartment. Resulting because you never learned how to write so that you could go to college and have a good career.

This is when my English, Spanish and biology classes come in. In my biology class, I have to be able to write and describe what I am observing. My description has to be so detailed that some one else could read what I am writing and know what I am describing. This is why descriptive writing is so important in my biology class. The evidence I have provided in my portfolio is a lab that I completed.

This lab followed a strict format. We had to have certain processes in different orders and have the proper structure to the lab write up. An example of the process is if we placed the iod ...