This was supposed to be our most important work, our opus of History IB. Those three cannonball essays at the end of IB? Don't worry about those. The problem was that I was operating on less than 6 hours of sleep a week at this point as I had spent the first part of the month scrambling to finish two similar essays for English. I started getting some sleep and reading done in time to write something coherent. However, I doubt it breaches anything of interest unless you are totally new to the entire issue at hand. I was pretty green behind the ears and everything Herbert Bix said in his book was pretty much taken as gospel by me. Mr. Bix, if you are reading this, forgive any incidents of plagiarism, I was young and your book was really cool! Oh I suppose I should inform you of the essay topic. It basically examines the reasons for Japan's entry into the Second World War and does a little bit of elaboration on to why the incidents before the war led to the eventual mismanagement that resulted in Japan's eventual military defeat.

We read The Tempest by William Shakespeare. I can't remember what the essay topics were offhand, but as my argument seems contrived I supposed that the options were slim. I flip flop around like flapjacks or knickers in the wind during this essay, but I think I manage to figure out what exactly happened between Prospero and Caliban.

Part of the course was a free presentation on a topic of our choice. Initially I was planning on doing a rehash of an old high school presentation on communications espionage in World War II, focused on Operation Ultra and how it basically screwed over the entire German war effort. But I couldn't find it and the assignment had a qualifier of 'not being too academic.' So I lounged around for a week thinking on what I wanted to do and came up with this. The final presentation doesn't quite follow the plan outline before, I attacked concepts earlier or later which I think both helped and hurt my presentation. If you are interested in learning linux or getting a copy of Knoppix go to my Knoppix/Linux FAQ Page.

I wrote an essay supporting the views in Donald Hall's "The Four Kinds of Reading." The essay choices were essays which countered the views in "The Four Kinds of Reading," something on a story we read, and a free choice. Guess which one I chose. An amusing piece to write, I had trouble doing the piece within the word count. In the end I chose to lose marks due to length than to lose marks due to having a shitty essay because I had to hack my original down.

This was in-class. Essay topics were contrast/comparison of East vs West stuff (Orientalism), some woman-studies, and a comparative essay. I wrote on how Transylvania represented a negative vision of England's past and the battle with Dracula was a metaphor for combatting the evils of the past. With this essay I begin having the chronic problem of not enough time to write everything. My essay subsequently is slightly fractured with half-formed thoughts and conclusions.

None of the topics were particularily interesting. My essay this time was one Hawthorne's "A Rose for Emily" and how it was some sort of modern vision of gothic literature. Solid essay, nothing particularily exciting unfortunately. This essay is very short and assumes that you are aware of gothic signs. I never say that x is an example of y element of gothic fiction. This makes the essay less accessible to the beginning scholar.

I will be examining King Rat and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof for situations which shed light on the informal but critical pact between parent and child. The common idea will be prefaced with a very good quote from Frank Herbert that helped me think up a decent topic. Unfortunately I could not find the quote in question and thus procrastinated severely on this essay.

I am examining the relationship between Magic Realism and King Rat in this research essay. Topic matter ranges from obvious examples of 'magical' phenomenon to examining the subtler core issues that are the heart of magic realism.

Having lost my rather wry comments thanks to a hard drive crash I am left to merely say that I thoroughly enjoyed writing this essay. Its failing point is how brief it is. It seemed longer when I wrote it because I crossed out and rewrote huge swathes of the essay. I got somewhere between 60% and 70%, due primarily to the essay simply being too short.

This rather simple essay discusses the dystopian elements found in Futurological Congress by Stanislaw Lem and a Canadian film called Cube. The instructor desired a more "conceptual perspective" and more discussion on its place/purpose as a whole in literature

Initially this essay was going to be a discussion of gender issues in Ursula K. Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness. However, with the deadline within 24 hours and still nothing good written down, I requested an extension and began writing a new essay. This essay is a discussion not just of cyberspace's interpretation of itself as a utopia or dystopia, but also of how settings very similar to cyberspace are envisioned.

You know your in a rut when the first question you answer on the final exam is about dystopia in science fiction. Fortunately the second piece I worked on was a little less obsessed, however, the time limit made it less than it could potentially have been.