Stressed!!

Ay, I am feeling stressed right now. I just learned from my brother that we have a reflection on "The Great Divorce" due on wednesday, (It's monday night.) I have to finish reading "Descent into Hell," (Not nearly as good as Lewis' books...) do my Logic homework, memorize my Direct Examination answers, study for the PSAT's on Saturday, and Blitz is limping!! I feel so bad for the little guy. He keeps looking at me like, "Why does my foot hurt so bad??" And I'm not big in the vet department, so all I can do is wait for the vet to call back.

To give you an idea of what a reflection essay is, here's one I did last week on Mere Christianity. The paragraph at the top is the reflection question, and below is the answer. The word count has to be under five hundred words, which is alot harder to do than it sounds. (Torrey is actually for tenth and eleventh graders, but I'm doing it this year...)

Kasey Nash
Miss Romero
Thousand Oaks II
Inklings
Reflection Essay
17 October 2007
Word Count: 486
Mere Christianity

What is the difference between learned conventions and learned truths? How can we tell them apart? Is Chivalry a convention or a truth? Family roles/gender roles? Manners? Prohibition? Dancing?

A learned convention is something that could have been learned different, depending on our ancestors, such as grammar and spelling. It might just as well have been that we spell the word “Ball” with one L, but as it turns out, in school, we learn to spell it with two. A learned truth, however, is something that could not have turned out any other way, such as the Moral Law. We may have had small differences in the Moral Law throughout the years, but the main idea of it has remained the same. As Lewis says in Mere Christianity, we have disagreed whether or not a man should have one wife or four, but we have always agreed that he should not have just any woman he wants (6).
Chivalry is a truth. Some logic behind this statement is that chivalry is an instinct, an instinct we don’t encourage often, because the instinct to protect ourselves is stronger. Chivalry is a very small instinct that tells us to protect other people, and to put those people before yourself. What we learn in our life about chivalry is when we ought to encourage it. We should not always be chivalrous, because that would get us into plenty of trouble, if we used it at the wrong time and for the wrong reason. Lewis gives the example of a man who is in trouble. Of course we want to protect ourselves more than we want to be Chivalrous and help the man, but we have learned that we ought to encourage the small instinct to help (10).
Family roles and gender roles are truths. The father is always the authoritative figure in the family, and families who do not have fathers are incomplete. Given enough time, I do not believe that this fact could change, that God placed fathers to be the head of the family, and mothers to be the caregivers. As for the gender roles, these have much to do with the family roles. The man is the one who instinctively provides for his family, idealistically following the role of his father.
Manners are a convention. In some places in the world, it is considered polite to slurp your food, burp at the table, or stand very close to the person to whom you are talking, though in our culture, we consider these things as very rude and impolite. Prohibition is a convention. It is evident that it is not in our human nature to prohibit someone from stealing a piece of candy from a store, but we learn from our parents, school teachers, pastors and other people of influence to us, that we should stop that person from stealing. I would say that dancing is a little harder to tell whether it is a convention or truth. We have always danced, no matter what the culture, but we have differed on our styles of dancing.



Anyway, I've got alot to do. Just a quick update.