Summer School

The past few months I've been working on my last semester of college. It hasn't seemed like summer at all--I'm white as a ghost and we haven't even been on a picnic yet! School takes up most of the hours of my day; sometimes I even work after Jeff gets home just to stay on top of things. However, I've loved it. I've learned so much, and have reached all of my goals that I first set at the beginning of the semester. I can't remember the last time I've done so well and learned so much in school before.
Here is the beginning of the week:

And the end of the week:

One of my huge projects this semester was an Author Portfolio for my British Literature class. I chose to research Sir Walter Scott and wrote a few papers of him and his works. I've only read "Ivanhoe" and a few of his poems so far, but he is really an admirable man. Many of the poets/authors we've been studying have had appalling backgrounds. Most of them are immoral and extreme in everything that they believed and did. Walter Scott was a Romantic and wrote about knights and chivalry and honor, etc. He tried to live that way, too. He's awesome.

When Scott was a baby, he had polio and lost the use of his right leg. As he grew he was sent to his grandmother's or aunt's house because they were situated in places that had pleasant weather that was good for his health. They had him memorizing poems before he could read. Then they read with him a ton since he was inside so much of the time because of the illnesses and infirmities from his leg. Scott loved stories that were told orally. At school the boys usually played outside (Walter was on crutches). However, during the wintertime they came in by the fireplace and listened to him tell stories.  As he grew older he only had a limp and got to over six feet tall.

Jeff thinks I like him so much just because he looks like a "Larson."
We think he looks a little like Dallin.

When Walter was older he traveled Scotland in order to get all of the songs that he could from shepherds and older folks that still knew the old tales. He put them into a book called "The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border." He's done a ton of other novels, poems, and ballads. At first, he published the famous "Waverly Novels" anonymously. They were considered the best selling English novels ever at the time. It wasn't until later in his life that he claimed to have written them.

Here is a link to a youtube video of Abbotsford, Sir Walter Scott's home. It's amazing--like a museum--and it gives a little more information on Scott and his good character. I wouldn't bother watching anything past 2:10 though. That part is about adding visitor centers and things...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I09Gvjqi8VQ

Anyway, as part of my Author Portfolio I had to do a Creative Response--what does this author's works inspire you to do? I made a children's book. I summarized the tournament from "Ivanhoe" into a little poem and illustrated the whole thing. It may look like a 5th grader's sketches, but this was my first attempt at doing cartoons, and I didn't have anything to look at or copy!