12. The last book.

Books, especially prose fiction, have become an integral part of my life since the time when my mother taught me how to read. I’m a real bookworm, and, therefore, I can hardly wait to start reading the third but, unfortunately, the last book on this semester’s English syllabus. Without any hesitation I have decided to choose Aleksandr’s second topic for my today’s post, and, so, I would like to dedicate it to Mark Haddon’s book The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time. As I haven’t read even the first page of this novel, my post will fully consist of the guesses that I made looking at the cover of this book.

On the cover of the book we can see some short responses to this novel, and these positive comments make me hope that The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time is an extremely interesting book with an unusual, breathtaking plot. I think the colors of the cover and the pictures on it are more typical of the books which are intended for children. Nevertheless, I hope this novel amazes both children and adults. According to the preview on the back cover, this novel is a first-person narrative book. However, the narrator, Christopher Boone, isn’t an ordinary person. He is a fifteen-year-old boy who has Asperger’s Syndrome. As I know, this disorder affects social skills. I suppose Christopher, as all people with AS, has problems with understanding and using nonverbal communication such as gestures, facial expressions and eye contact.  He may also find it difficult to understand jokes, irony and metaphors. As the narrator is a child with AS, I think the main aim of this book is to show the feelings, thoughts and perceptions of the world that a person not similar to most of the readers of this book has. By the way, as the narrator is only 15 years old, I believe that the vocabulary used by him will be easy to understand, and, therefore, using the dictionary won’t deflect me from enjoying the book.

For me, the preview on the back cover seems to be extraordinary. This short description really attracts my attention. So, my expectation is that I will be really amazed at the plot of this novel!

11. A fabulous day.

As I’m really tired of thinking about my education, university and homework, today I would like to dedicate my post to an amazing day which I spent with my close friends and a little cousin on the 13^th of April.

To begin with, I should mention that I initially planned to spend that day preparing for the linear algebra exam, which was supposed to take place on the 15^th of April. Fortunately, on Saturday all our students were pleased with the news that our exam would be postponed. So, I decided to relax and forget about being a perfectionist student, nerd and bookworm for a while. I phoned my best friends, Sveta and Nastya, whom I hadn’t seen for some weeks and whom I really missed, and offered to go for a walk. The weather was fabulous! After some depressing months of waiting, I finally felt that the real spring had come. The sun was shining brightly, giving its tender warmth to everybody and making me smile all the time. My friends and I spent about 3 hours just strolling along, chatting, making jokes, laughing, and enjoying the weather. Then we suddenly had an idea of going to the cinema with my little cousin. The cartoon which we saw was called “The Croods”, a funny 3D comedy about the people living in pre-historic times. After watching the cartoon, we went to the nearest café, and everyone ate a delicious ice-cream. Unfortunately, after that, as it was about 11 o’clock, Nastya, Sveta and I had to see my cousin home and also went home.

As you can see, it was a wonderful day, one of those rare days when I didn’t think about studying, relaxed and felt absolutely happy. 
(David's topic # 3: Free choice)

Topic choices for Blog #10.

    1.  How can parents encourage lazy children to study well? Do you think that giving extra pocket money for good marks is a good idea? Is it possible to make a lazy child study by just having a conversation with him or her?

    2. What, in your opinion, is the most important invention in the history of humanity? Explain your point of view.

    3.  I have the idea of adopting a child from an orphanage when I become an adult.  Have you ever had this idea? What difficulties can a person who adopts a child face?

9. Changes in my life.

This time very quickly, without any hesitation I made a decision about which topic to choose. Ruslan’s second theme accurately reflects the thoughts that last month I was often tormented by. In today’s post I would like to write about similarities and differences between my carefree school days and a difficult life that have started since I entered HSE-NES.

Firstly, I want to talk about the changes that have come into my life since I became a student. For example, when I was a pupil, I usually spend maximally 20 minutes to get to my school by bus. On the contrary, now I have to waste almost three hours a day using different kinds of public transport, such as electric trains, buses and the Moscow subway. This long way to the university really exhausts me and, moreover, deprives me of the valuable time. What is more, the amount and complexity of the assigned homework increased greatly when I entered HSE-NES. Therefore, it’s logical to expect that the amount of time which I spend on sleeping, communicating with my friends, going for a walk and just relaxing decreased to 3-5 hours a day. Because of the increased tenseness of my living, a bad mood and feeling of being close to a nervous breakdown became my constant companions, although at school I was an amazingly cheerful, joyful girl. By the way, when I was a pupil, I usually spent not more than 3-4 hours a day using a computer. However, now I am almost never seen without my laptop, and regular using of this device has a bad effect on my eyesight. Finally, I have new teachers and subjects, a new social life and classmates.

To say the truth, I can’t find any similarities between my university life and school days. I can only say that entering HSE-NES turned my whole world upside down.

8. Wikipedia.

For my eighth blog I would like to choose Vladimir’s topic and to write about Wikipedia, the website which I have been using since the first time I got the access to the Internet. I should notice that I have been using mostly the Russian version of this encyclopedia and only few times looked up the necessary information in the American analog. 

Wikipedia is an Internet resource where you can easily find an article on almost whatever theme you want.  Many Russian pupils consider this website to be the storage of accurate, credible information, which they trust completely and implicitly. I remember doing my homework and giving oral presentations relying only on this encyclopedia when I was in school. However, when I became a student, I began finding serious mistakes on this website, and, firstly, these mistakes really shocked me. For example, last semester our biology teacher asked us to write a little dictionary which had to contain the definitions of some biological words. As usual, while I was doing this exercise, I used Wikipedia many times. And it was a real shock to hear my teacher saying that he had found some important mistakes in my work. 

Though I still look up some not very serious information in Wikipedia, now I have a clear understanding of this encyclopedia’s disadvantages and never use it thoughtlessly. I found out that articles on this website can be written and edited by ANYONE. Even a pupil can create his own theme in Wikipedia! For me, this fact damaged the credibility of this encyclopedia as a good source of accurate information.

All in all, I want to warn my readers about some doubtful information that Wikipedia includes.