This has nothing to do with class, but I needed to get it off my chest.

I know this blog is supposed to be for my college writing two class, but I'm going to take a second to rant about the new book I'm reading: Rumble by Ellen Hopkins.  Honestly, I think that Ellen Hopkins is an amazing writer and story teller, I highly recommend her books to all genders and age groups (they're more for mature audiences, though) if you haven't read any of her books. I have all of the books she has written (thirteen in all) and when a new one comes out, I pre-order it months in advance.  All of the books that Ms. Hopkins writes about are ones that are very controversial, so much that some people want her books to be banned. Rumble, her newest book that came out two days ago on August 26th, is from the perspective of a boy named Matt whose younger brother took his life because of bullying.  His parents have a very toxic and unhealthy relationship and Matt, himself, is in a relationship with a Catholic girl named Hayden.  Matt is very anti-religion and Ellen Hopkins has a way of pushing my buttons with this character.  I was in a similar situation when my boyfriend and I first started dating, but I was Matt and he was Hayden (he's also Methodist, but that doesn't really matter). I had several things happen in my life that made me question God and His existence, while my boyfriend had several things happen in his life that made him turn to God.  This is what happened to Matt and Hayden.  I feel like Ms. Hopkins could have made Matt try and find his faith again, but I guess that would ruin most of the book, since their differing viewpoints is a huge part of the book.  Some of the choices that Matt makes in the book made me want to go into the book and slap him.  A little bit into the book, you find out about something Hayden did that makes you question the entirety of their relationship and her religion.
Sorry for the long post about something that's meaningless to you.

Also, Ellen Hopkins made a book trailer for Rumble, so it's here as well if you want to check it out.

This is water

I found the "This is water"  video to be very interesting.  I adored how the video had specific words pop up onto the screen when he felt he needed to put emphasis on certain things that he was saying.  From the very beginning, I felt that David Foster grabbed your attention with his fish story. I think that we go through our days doing the same thing over and over and we forget to step back every so often and slow down or actually look at a situation differently than we have been our whole lives.  David Foster made this point one that I really thought over.

One other section of the video that really caught my eye was when they were in the supermarket and the woman yelled at her child.  I nanny for three families and I also work at the Romeoville Rec Center and I could almost feel what that mother was feeling.  One of the children I watch isn't the most behaved child and my initial reaction when we're out somewhere and he's acting up is to do what I do when we're not in public, give him three warnings and then send him to his room.  Since we weren't at his house or anywhere that I could seclude him, I was confused on what to do in this situation.  I ended up only giving him one warning and after that I told him he couldn't go play at the park when we went there (he had been acting like this all day and I had previously warned him while we were at his house). This caused him to throw a huge tantrum while we were eating lunch at McDonald's.  I was so embarrassed that I ended up driving home, luckily it was close to his nap time, and made him go into his room for a nap. I know when I eventually have kids I'll probably have times like the mom in the video, but I hope to think about it more than she did. I don't feel like parents should go off on their kids like that, even if they are super stressed out.

Overall, I found the video really interesting and I'd love to hear his full speech one day.