Sentimentality

Its hard for anyone, not just poets to avoid or minimize the state of being sentimental when he/she write about personal experiences and write confessions about their past life, especially if this confession or experiences carry painful memories. Moreover, it’s a human nature to be sentimental when someone remembers death and dead loved one. Some people cry, other hold their tears in their eyes forever, and some write it down and try to let the paper hold these painful memories instead of their minds.

In fact, sentimentality is a the a factor in some of this weeks poems that put them together. Some poets used it in a way that makes the reader relate to them and feel what they feel and it seemed like a massage that tells the reader to feel sorry for them. Fro example, Sylvia Plath wrote about her depression and how it made her try to kill herself. Some readers will think she was exaggerating when she said “Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman. The first time it happened I was ten. It was an accident.” and “The second time I meant. To last it out and not come back at all. I rocked shut”. In fact Plath fell in the trap of writing with sentimentality in this poem.

On the other hand, Anne Sexton was successful in avoiding sentimentality even though she went through a lot of painful experiences in her life. For example, in her poems "And One for My Dame" and "The Truth the Dead Know", Anne Sexton was not sentimental when she wrote about the death of someone else. The death of her parents. She wrote the poems with pure feelings to let the reader know why she reached such a high state of depression and how the death of her parents affected her life, without letting her emotions govern her writing like Plath, and did not write with sentimentality.

The Beats vs. NY School

Allen Ginsberg and John Ashbery are tow poets from two deferent schools, where the first one is from the Beats and the second one is from the New York School. Furthermore, those two poets have a similar poetic style, but at the same time they hold some differences which make them relate to their schools of poetry.

On one hand, Allen Ginsberg wrote his poem “A Supermarket In California” in a form that looked like a story, which started with some feeling he had and went to describe the whole supermarket atmosphere. He wanted to send a message to the past poet, Walt Whitman, and tell him how life changed in America. Moreover, he wanted to highlight the changes that happened in people’s lives since Whitman’s time and until his time. Furthermore, he used long lines, no visible breaks that a reader can follow, and had an interesting flow that makes the reader what to read more and engage him/her to the story in the poem. He used a simple language and straight forward images that a reader can easily comprehend without struggling when it comes to understand the poem.

On the other hand, John Ashbery wrote his poem “The Painter” in a way that he wanted the reader to picture a painter drawing some art work. He used metaphor in his poem to make it easier to the reader to understand and visualize what he wanted to say. For example, at the beginning of the poem, he compared the painter to “children imagine a prayer”. Furthermore, the randomness in his poem make it a little harder to comprehend compared to Ginsberg’s poem, but at the same time used a simple language that helps the reader understand without digging for hidden meanings and images.

Contemporary Free Verse

Free verse is one style of writing poetry and it became more popular as the poetry developed from one period to another. It is a style that is not governed by rules and does not have a lot of boundaries. Moreover, a poet can write his/her poem with an irregular rhythm, without an obvious meter in the lines, and with a great freedom to the ,awareness of rhyme.

The poems used in this week’s collection seemed like they were some sort of lyrics that singers use in their songs, especially those which tell stories. Moreover, the poets used their personal experiences and turned them into lines that created poems and not just ornamental ancestors and maybe the free verse used in them made them look like written narratives, but the use of images, language, and themes relate them to poems. For example, In his poem "This Be the Verse", Philip Larkin talked about how his life went wrong and blamed it on his parents. Furthermore, he created a theme for his poem to show how angry he was and how he was treated made him a mad man. Hence, poem’s flow started with anger at the beginning and started to cool down in the last stanza with a piece of advice for people.

Another example is John Berryman’s Dream Song number two. In this poem he used a metaphor in the beginning of it to relate his position to someone who is out in the cold when he said “A final sense of being right out in the cold”.

The Use of Metaphor

Some poets use metaphors in their poems to help them in clarifying images they drew in the lines, or describe the ideas which they want the reader to understand and make it easier to observe by relating the idea to something that a reader can imagine or know.

In fact, Audre Lorde used metaphor in her poem “Coal” to relate her ideas and images to some physical objects to make it easier for the reader to understand. She named her poem with “Coal” which implies black color to show the reader how she was proud to be black and specially in the Black Arts Movement period, which was a period that blacks tried to form a self identity and came over the slavery period they lived before. Moreover, she had chosen the coal in particular as a material that has the darkest black color possible to help her describe that state of an extreme proud of her color. Hence, this metaphor can be seen clearly by relating the coal to “"I am black because I came from the earth's insides.”

Accordingly, Lorde used the diamond as another physical object to describe and clarify her ideas about the words spoken by humans and how they can be shaped in a good or bad way. This can bee seen when she said “Some words are open like a diamond“. Furthermore, she kept on using metaphor to describe the words by relating them to the breeding of adders when she said “Some words live in my throat breeding like adders”, which implied the ability to hold dangerous things to say even though it is hard to hold. Accordingly, the words were related to other things in Lorde’s poem, when she compared them to gypsies when se said “Other know sun seeking like gypsies over my tongue”, wagers when she said “Then there are words like stapled wagers in a perforated book”, and sparrows “explode through my lips like young sparrows bursting from shell”.

In conclusion, Lorde’s poem satisfies the idea of “Poem is a metaphor”. She went through her ideas and pictures in her poem and related them to physical object, colors, human kinds, and snakes. Hence, the use of metaphor might make the poem more clear to readers to understand how the poet felt and wanted to say.

Modernism Poets

Poets in the Modernism period are like other poems in other periods whom were influenced by works and poets who created some beautiful pieces of poetry and they followed their steps with adding their own techniques to it to come up with a totally new period of poetry.

In fact, the poet Robert Frost was one of the Modernism Period’s poets who got some inspiration from the early British poetry which was inspired by the natural world and how this world was created with its humans, animals, plants and everything else. Furthermore, he fancied the natural world in some of his works and created some pictures which are related to the beauty and misery it has. For example, in his “After Apple-Picking”, Frost admired the apple creating and how it looked as well as the surrounding of an apple tree, where someone would pick the apples, and even his other poem “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening” he showed the picture of the winter season and how snow was covering everything around it and how even the horse felt the cold night in the winter and in the middle of the woods.

Dylan Thomas is another poet from the modernism period who was inspired by the past poetry periods. He was inspired by older works that had been written in a free verse form. Hence, in his poem “The Force That Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower”, Thomas was not governed by a specific verse and did not have a meter to build his lines over but it still made since and might be enjoyable for petry lover to read.

The Snowman

In his poem "The Snow Man", Wallace Stevens argued that the mind would be shaped in the same way that its surroundings is shaped. And a human wont understand the meanings and images of winter unless they set in it, look at what it causes, and feel the cold weather.. Therefore, the mind of a snow man would be detached from most senses and emotions and wont think of the misery in the sound of the wind.

I n fact, Stevens used clear images of the winter to let the reader understand and imagine what he/she needs. He showed the picture of the pine-trees and how it was covered with snow to show how heavy is the winter which he highlighted that it was in January which falls in a snow period of the years. Furthermore, the way he pictured the junipers and how they covered with snow in a an image that show the level of high snow in a heavy winter again.

Stevens kept on showing the image of the winter by describing the wind flow and how it scattered the leaves around which make a noise which might make a misery for a listener who would think about this wind and what it carries in this silent winter.

The sentences in this poem and short and looks like it was created in a one senesce form to help the decryption of the images in a simple way. Hence, these short sentences help to describe the human’s mind which relates to each part of the surrounding just the same as what happens to the snowman.

Compare & Contrast

The power and beauty of poetry, perhaps more than any other literary genre, are typically considered to be subject less to stylistic conventions and formal structures than to the individual taste of the reader. Poets, unlike novelists, short story writers, playwrights, and essayists, are able to experiment liberally with form, bound only by the obligation of the function of poetry, which is to compel the reader to consider a familiar object or experience from a new perspective. Thus, poets use language, images, and figures of speech in diverse and imaginative ways, to greater and lesser success. By comparing these three particular poetic devices in Lord Byron’s “Written After Swimming from Sestos to Abydos” and William Butler Yeats’ “An Irish Airman Foresees His Own Death,” I contend that it is the former poem that is the superior of the two. Although each poem has its own merits, “Written After Swimming from Sestos to Abydos” is more compelling than “An Irish Airman Foresees His Own Death” because it is more original, more imaginative, more daring, and less conventional in its application of the poetic devices of language, images, and figures of speech.

In many ways, Lord Byron’s “Written After Swimming from Sestos to Abydos” and William Butler Yeats’ “An Irish Airman Foresees His Own Death” are quite similar. Thematically, both poems involve an exploration of the individual’s awareness of and acceptance of death, specifically death as a possible consequence of serving some greater good beyond one’s own self-interests. Both of the poems are also similar in that they are situated within a natural setting in which the speaker is acutely conscious of the influence of the physical environment. In Byron’s poem, the forces of nature are larger and more powerful than the human figures, who are their subjects and who are vulnerable to natural elements. At the end of Byron’s “Written After Swimming from Sestos to Abydos,” the speaker reports that Leander “was drowned” and he himself has “the ague” (l. 21). The physical outcomes suffered by both men—for one, fatal and for the other, temporary—are caused by their defiance of the elements, choosing to swim across the “broad Hellespont” (l. 4), one for “Love” and the other for “Glory” (l. 16). In Yeats’ poem, the Irish airman who foresees his own death recognizes the danger of his current profession of flying a war plane, and is so certain that he will die among the elements that he immediately expresses this belief in the opening lines of the poem: “I know that I shall meet my fate/Somewhere among the clouds above” (ll. 1-2). Like the speaker in Lord Byron’s poem, the speaker in “An Irish Airman Foresees His Own Death” is acting for ideals larger than his own beliefs and interests, and there is a sense in both of these poems that the fate awaiting the speaker is inevitable, acceptable, and even necessary.

Despite these similarities, however, the two poems are also dramatically and distinctly different, and these differences are seen most clearly with respect to three specific poetic devices: language, images, and figures of speech. With respect to language, “An Irish Airman Foresees His Own Death” is direct, straightforward, and even simplistic. The language of the poem is plain and requires no deciphering, and the message of the poem is delivered in compact, compressed lines in which the economy of language is maximized through words that were chosen carefully by the poet. Though simple, the language is also intimate; the first person narration of the speaker allows the reader to enter directly into the speaker’s thoughts and come to know him well in a matter of just sixteen lines. In this way, the reader learns that the speaker is clear-headed and yet, at the same time, he is ambivalent or indifferent about what he is certain will be his fate. As he explains to the reader in candid and clear language, he neither hates his enemies nor loves those he has vowed to protect. The ambivalence is reinforced throughout the remainder of the poem by the pair of contrasts incorporated in each line. About his forecasted death, the speaker observes, “No likely end could bring them loss/Or leave them happier than before” (ll. 7-8). He goes on to say that “Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,/Nor public men, nor cheering crowds” (ll. 9-10), and that he has always sought to achieve balance in all aspects of his life. The natural end, then, is to balance life with “this death” (l. 16).

“An Irish Airman Foresees His Own Death” is altogether absent of figures of speech, and the images are as spare and simple as the words of the poem themselves. Through his calm and clear narrative style, the speaker is able to evoke visual images in the reader’s mind, but they are as balanced and as tempered as the speaker’s own attitude towards the death that he is predicting for himself. The reader can visualize the speaker up in the clouds, navigating his plane in a time of war. At the same time, though, because the speaker avoids any vivid metaphors or extreme imagery—such as attacking fighter jets, flaring bombs, or other direct assaults—such threats are left to the imagination of the reader. Rather than focusing on the threats, however, the reader is moved with the speaker to a place beyond immediate danger; in fact, the danger itself is not important. Instead, the calm acceptance of the speaker is the tone that has been conveyed, both through language and through the images and lack of metaphorical adornment in this poem.

Lord Byron’s “Written After Swimming From Sestos to Abydos,” while also a relatively calm and accepting meditation on death, is a more accomplished and effective poem than Yeats’ “An Irish Airman Foresees His Own Death.” The rationale for this argument is that Byron used the poetic devices of language, images, and figures of speech more creatively and to greater impact than did Yeats. Although there is something to be said for the spareness and compactness of Yeats’ poem, Byron’s poem is the far more engaging of the two poems. First, Byron’s poem demands a bit more of the reader than does Yeats’ poem. The language, images, and figures of speech all make reference to highly specific individuals and places. While the poem will not be rendered meaningless if the reader does not know who Leander is or any information about the Hellespont, the reader who does possess information about these references is likely to glean a deeper meaning from the poem.

The language of “Written After Swimming from Sestos to Abydos” is clear, but it is not quite as simplistic as that of Yeats’ poem. First, the diction of the poem is slightly more formal and even archaic when compared to that of “An Irishman Airman Foresees His Own Death.” Words such as “twere” and “thus” suggest days and epochs past, thus making the reader responsible for determining the temporal setting of the poem. The manner in which the speaker articulates the story he is telling is also somewhat more formal than modern speech; passive voice is prevalent. Second, the speaker of “Written After Swimming from Sestos to Abydos,” speaking in the first person, makes several asides during the course of the poem, interrupting the natural flow of the story that he is recounting for the reader. In the first stanza, for instance, while introducing the story of Leander, the speaker asks parenthetically, “What maid will not the tale remember?” (l. 3). Later in the poem, in the fourth stanza, the speaker makes another aside, casting aspersions on the veracity of the tale, which he calls “doubtful,” and mocking Leander, who swam “the rapid tide” (l. 13) in order to “woo—and Lord knows what beside” (l. 15). These asides, while injecting some humorous elements into a story that could be sobering, do serve to distract the reader’s attention somewhat. The complexity created by the asides demands that the reader pay careful attention to the poem; he or she must engage fully with the poem in order to understand it and grasp its meaning.

The use of carefully chosen adjectives helps the reader to visualize both Leander and the speaker crossing the chilly Hellespont, one for love and one for glory. Though the tale might well be one of which heroes would be made if told by a different speaker, the self-deprecation of Byron’s speaker—who denominates himself the “degenerate modern wretch” (l. 9)-- and his mocking of Leander, keeps the reader engaged because the anti-hero bent of the poem is not what one might expect. For all of these reasons, Byron’s poem is cleverer and, ultimately, more successful in engaging the reader and applying poetic devices than Yeats’ poem.

In poetry, writers have broad creative license to experiment with form, structure, and other literary devices. Three devices that are central to the development of a poem include language, images, and figures of speech. Comparing the poems “Written After Swimming from Sestos to Abydos” by Lord Byron and “An Irish Airman Foresees His Own Death” by William Butler Yeats, the reader arrives at the conclusion that Byron’s superior management of these three poetic devices result in a poem that is both more powerful and more beautiful, both in content and in craft, than that of Yeats. While beauty is ultimately in the eye of the beholder, this reader finds “Written After Swimming from Sestos to Abydos” to be both entertaining and serious, a thoughtful meditation on relationships and on death.

Works Cited:

I. Byron, Lord George Gordon. “Written After Swimming from Sestos to Abydos.”

II. Yeats, William Butler. “An Irish Airman Foresees His Own Death.”

Free Verse Poems

Free verse poem writing was created as a new style of poetry in the past and continued to be used until the present contemporary poetry. In this style of writing, poets are not govern by lengths or meters, instead, they write what is in their minds in such a way that looks like a paragraph that breaks when the idea is finished, or to indicate that there is more to follow. Moreover, this style of writing doesn’t follow rules or have a rhyme that a reader can indicate, and what might separate it from prose or even other writings, is how the poet arrange his/her words in the verse. In other words, it might sound like a song that doesn’t have a rhythm or beats to follow but still has meanings.

In fact, the free verse helps the poet to design his/her poem and manipulate the stanzas in the way it should be to give the reader the meanings behind it. Furthermore, the breaks in the free verse help the poets to highlight some sentences and make it look more important by breaking it earlier than what others would do. For example, in his poem "A Sort of a Song," William Carlos Williams broke the famous phrase "No ideas but in things" into two parts, when he stopped in the middle of it after the “no ideas” part, them he completed it in the next line. He tried to make his poem revolve over this phrase by highlighting it and assuring that the ideas are worthless unless it was taken into action. Hence, another benefit of breaking the lines is to give the reader a chance to take a breath when the poem is read aloud, because without breaking it, then the reader might lose his or her breath and ruin the rhyme of it. For example, in her poem "Stanzas in Meditation", Gertrude Stein broke the lines just right for the reader to read it loud, and without breaking it in that way, the reader might go on and on, and the meaning might be lost in such a hard poem to understand.

In conclusion without letting the poet be free the break the lines whenever in needed and let it be free to stop in some specific points, the poem might some importance in some parts and wont let the poet enjoy writing the feelings and the ideas on the paper without being governed by rule.

The Victorian-to-Modern Era

The poets in the Victorian-to-Modern era in the late to mid nineteenth century were influence somehow by the past work that they viewed in the beginnings of there era, especially with the earlier English work. However, even with this influence, the poets of the Victorian era tried to create an image of there work that would last in the history and make a new a base for poetry for the poets whom are coming later in the world.

The Victorian poets took the idea of heroism into their work just like other poets in the past and tried to highlight their abilities in achieving their goals regardless what kind was that goal and how it was compared to that past poets’ goals. Hence, the war and the introduction to battles’ technologies made them even more heroic. This appeared in William Yeast’s work, who used images, themes and symbols that seemed to look like the older poems. In his poem “An Irish Man Foresees His Death”, he created an image of an airman who fight in a plane not for any goal but to for his country and for his people and did not fear of death which was equal to life according to him in the last line of his poem when e said “In balance with this life, this death”. Accordingly, this line showed the heroism in the poem that might be similar to Lord Byron’s heroism when he crossed the river swimming to achieve his goal without fearing death.

In contrast, the Victorian poets created their own form of poetry with their new images, themes, styles and symbols. They were affected by the industrialization world they lived in and the modern thoughts and ideas they got. Moreover, they started a new type of poetry that had more imagining instead of real life stories and probably less religious conservatism, away from the older poetry that was fascinated by the natural world and God’s amazing powers in creation. There new life shaped them to be new people with new thoughts and idea. For example, Yeast titled his work with “Adam’s Curse” and talked about the whole Adam and Eve’s story comfortably and even stated his opinion and judgment about the subject of them being out of Eden. He said “I said, "It's certain there is no fine thing. Since Adam's fall but needs much labouring” which showed his judgment of the mistake Adam did.

In conclusion, I think as the world kept on developing, the poets and their work followed what was new and deferent from the past, but they still relied on older work as the base that they should take off from.

From the assigned reading from Walt Whitman this week, I found a new philosophy and style that he try to invent and demonstrate, as well as some connection of his work to the old British Romantics that I read before.

On one hand, Whitman in “Song of Myself” try to start a new style of poetry with its American theme. He might wanted to start this era of American poetry to complete the British era and make a history for American poetry at the same time. Furthermore, this poem looked like if Whitman wanted himself to appear like a superman who is full of glory and stories to tell for the coming generations. He tried to shine himself between the lines of the poem and create a new philosophy in it by minimizing the comparison and connection between humans and the natural world. Hence, he didn’t show that he was amazed by the natural world in this poem like other British Romantic poets like Wordsworth.

On the other hand, Whitman went back a bit to the British Romantics in his other works like “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking” and “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd”. He showed some influence in those tow poems which he got from the British Romantics by connecting his thoughts to the natural world and the theories of life. In fact, he went back to mention the idea of birth and death, and describe what was in his mind by showing the beauty and phenomenon of the natural world, especially in “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd”.

In conclusion, even though Whitman had some influence from the British Romantics, he still created a style of himself that talked in a proud tone about his own stories and make his country’s name as a label to his work.

In “Written After Swimming from Sestos to Abydos”, Lord Byron appears to be a man who passed his thirties, and began the era of the older gentleman. He seemed like a sensitive guy who wanted to write down all what he has in his mind and get inspired by everything around him. This inspiration can tell the reader that this guy is amazed by Greek gods and heroes even though he was not a Greek. Hence, he used the stories and tales of Leander, the Greek hero in his poem and compared his experience with that hero’s experience, which might make it unreliable because he is talking about himself, and trying to tell the reader about himself and his glory, even though this reader doesn’t know if it was true or not. Furthermore, his poem is written general audience to invite them to explore his experience and salute his glory that he achieved.

Byron drew his situation in the poem as a guy who is proud of himself as a guy who achieved a great goal by reaching his glory and crossing the river by swimming from Sestos to Abydos. He enhanced the image that he wanted the reader to have in mind by stating that the what he did was achieved in hard circumstances, like saying that he crossed the river even though he has “limbs”.

The poem’s sentences are short, straight forward, and guide to the meaning the poet want the readers to get. He structured the poem in short sentences to tell Leander’s story and them go straight to his story and make contrast that favored his position and experience. Furthermore, using punctuation in the poem helped in highlighting some points he wanted to make fancy or on the other hand, make some points less in value from what it should be. For example, adding a exclamation mark after stating Leader’s story of crossing the Hellespont and then adding another one after stating his story and experience which might look like a question to the audience to favor one experience or story over the other. He used some comas in some sentences which made contrast between his story elements and Leander’s

Finally, this poem was chosen by me because of the heroism and how the poet like to tell others about his achievement, even though he tried to downgrade others’ stories by making it less in importance and value. It is a good piece of poem about self esteem and for someone who believes in himself and his abilities even though he got a deformity as far as I concluded from what the poet wrote.

The Natural World

Poets like other people try to get et their inspiration from several sources, and the natural world is one main resource of inspiration. They try to connect it to their works to in many ways, like romantics for example. Furthermore, this natural world is full of samples and images that a poet can admire and link it to his/her idea and link people’s minds to it when they read the poem.
In fact, Blake and the others admired the natural world and its beautiful creation by god, and they even digged into the details of it to enhance and decorate their romantic works. In fact, this world is the mirror that reflects the ideas and words that some poets want to say and highlight
God created this natural world with all its phenomenon , for people to set, look and wonder. It is something that has infinite resources and constant explorations and renewals. The sunrise, the colors, the plants and all the things around us are resources of inspiration that are created for a reason. The poet William Blake used the rose flower and linked it to what is in his mind. He compared and linked love to a rose that is infected by a worm that damages its bed from the inside. The rose will start to fall little by little because of this warm and finally die, but dead or alive it is still a rose. The poet linked his romantics to the life cycle of a rose that is dying. This poem demonstrated the importance of the natural world on the romantics during Blake’s generation
In another piece of poetry, the poet Samuel Coleridge used the natural world to describe the atmosphere he wanted the readers to imagine. Hence, in “Frost At Midnight” he described the quite nights and showed how dark it is and how silence can describe the whole scene. He linked the beginning of his work to the natural world again and went on with his poem with other examples of nature.
In conclusion, the natural world is the theme and the model that the poets used to test their theories on and without the nature, they might not be able to tell what in their minds to people and they will understand what they want by themselves and keep it within them only.

I am Naif, a student at The University of Houston, from Saudi Arabia, and majoring in Management Information Systems (MIS). I transferred on a government scholarship to the University of Houston in the fall of 2006 after completing a year and a half at a private collage in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia. I am doing great in my studies and I hope to graduate in the fall of 2009.

I am a former athlete. I used to play soccer and follow it wherever it goes. From Saudi to Spain, to England, and finally here in Houston after I a go a serious injury that wont allow me play soccer or even run again. I got a car accident that changed my whole life when I was 17 and made me think about my self in a deferent way and plan a new life from the start line again. I never imagined to be in this level in college or do what I do now out of school. I own and manage a couple of businesses and happy with my new life, but to be honest, I still have soccer in my mind and keep on watching it and encouraging children to play the game.

My experience in English writing is great. I wrote some good papers in the past which are related to my courses I took in college which were three classes in Saudi Arabia and two classes here at the University of Houston. I reached a good level of writing where I wrote a technical report about online auctions and got an A grade on it. Another report I wrote was an analytical report talking about the influence of politics on soccer and how the game is controlled by power and money in the present time. Both reports were interesting as I heard from my instructors and classmates. Furthermore, writing isn’t really a thing that I don’t like, but it is not a thing that I would do in my free time. I try to do it if I have some work that should be done, or sometimes I write some papers about soccer and keep it in my folders just incase I need it as a source when I participate in my soccer debates I have with some friends and coaches.

I participated in ENGL 2306 to satisfy the college’s core requirements. I had an option to choose another course, but I had a teacher and a poet in the past who inspired me and made me curious about poetry. He knew how to reach me in a way that pushed my curiosity buttons. I feel like a child still when someone try to keep something blurry from me and let me dig to find out more about it, which never made me board. Hence, I try to read some works of the old Arabic poetry and I find it interesting and makes feel I want to read more. In fact, a good grade in this course as any other in collage is my goal to graduate soon and keep my scholarship active.