E1 L165 – Better Notes for an Autobiography

                In my English class, I’ve recently been reading a ton of slave narratives.  I noticed in those books that they’re incredibly detailed, even way back into their early childhood.  How they remember that far back is mysterious, but I know that I can help my future self and take notes on my life now.  That way, if I write an autobiography in the future, I will have the materials necessary to do so, way back to age 14.  That isn’t as far back as the slave autobiographies go, but it’s better than starting at age 20 and going forward.  There are some things that I can do while taking notes that would help even more, such as describing the scene, paying much attention to the many details of the more significant events.

                Describing the scene of the event is critical in any autobiography.  For instance, if someone told a tall tale without scenery, it would be impossible to understand.  Little Red Riding Hood with no woods or Grandma’s house would be confusing. And tall Native American tales would be nonsense. Under the same principle, writing an autobiography without a background would be even worse, especially if the writer moved around a lot.  So taking notes on what’s the scene is especially useful. 

                But there are still five questions: Who, What, Why, When, and How. The “Where” is taken care of by the scenery.  “Who” is not very necessary, beyond the intro.  “What” is probably the next most critical thing, past “Where.”  And that’s also the body of an autobiography.  The “What” is all the adventures, the possibilities, the storyline itself.  If there is no “What” then there is no story.  All that’s left is an intro of the character and the scenes.  There is no action.  Think of the “What” as the acting in a play.  Without it, there is just an intro of the characters, an empty stage covered in a bunch of props, maybe some music, occasional curtain drops, and some more props.  Without any “What,” there is nothing! The character intro is useless because the characters never appear beyond that; the accessories are worthless because there are no characters to use the props and stage.  The music is just annoying because there is no suspense, or heartbreak, or joy, or anything else associated with a good play.  That is what should get the most attention: the necessary information.  The plot, in short. 

    Also, if the details are scarce, it’s a problem of believability. Without minute details, the story seems vague, possibly made up.  And the first time the reviewers decide that it’s fake, the book is doomed to fail.  But don’t put too many details in, like Henry David Thoreau.  He filled two single-spaced pages – describing a tree!  If the details are too numerous, the book becomes longer, the blocks of descriptions look menacing, and the reader is effectively scared away.  It’s a balance – not too much detail, and not too little.

                “When” is also a key element.  A time range is necessary if the exact date is unsupplied.  If the year is missing, the reader has no idea when the story happened, and that can, again, raise a believability issue.  No date equals no proof, no proof equals no trustworthiness, and no sincerity means the book is back in the library.

                Everything else is relatively simple—the How and Why are to be figured out by the reader once the book is published.  Those are inferred from the scene and actions of the characters.  In other words, the writer doesn’t have to deal with them because he can’t control them.  Only the readers can do that.

                So each of the Five W’s and the believability is solved by taking meticulous notes, which can turn into a good autobiography.  The fundamentals are:

                ~ Where,

                ~ What,

                ~ When, and

                ~ Details!

And that’s all anybody needs to make a biography or autobiography, even the ex-slave writers of the 19th century.

B1 L130 – USPs of RPC

By Rosser Reeves’ definition of a Unique Selling Proposition (USP), which is “the most important point in an ad,” there can be more than one possible USP for an ad. Take, for example, the Ron Paul Curriculum. There are a ton of possible USPs, any of the 30+ reasons stated in my essays on the topic [(1)&(2)], and Mr. North’s landing page.  

One of those could be the fact that the course is “98% self-taught after grade 3.” In those first three grades, the student learns the integrity and work ethic to get the work done; then, the parent can altogether drop out and grade the essays occasionally. Even coming from public school, that’s pretty good. It is somewhat expensive, but it’s worth it. Besides, the parent can tell a kid, “Go do your school” and leave them to it in another room. That way, the parent doesn’t have to see the kid for a portion of the day.  

Another USP could be the fact that the curriculum is video-based. This idea is one-of-a-kind. Most homeschool curriculums are book/audio-based, and we all know textbooks are dry as a desert, whether written for a public school or not. They were written for committees and read as such. However, the Ron Paul Curriculum is video-based, so there are slides and a voiceover. This genius notion encourages even better learning. A video can be rewound and watched again as many times as necessary and doesn’t get bored or tired of being played over and over again. A teacher does, however.  

Speaking of textbooks, that’s another one. The Ron Paul Curriculum does not use textbooks. Everything that isn’t a free PDF on the site is a literature book that can be obtained pretty cheaply on Amazon. And none of the PDFs are textbooks either, except maybe a page that explains something exceptionally well. In my three years on RPC, I have only seen one page of a book in a PDF.  

Another plus-one is that the Ron Paul Curriculum is NOT Common-Core based. In short, it doesn’t follow the public school procedures. It follows three different tracks: Maths/Science, Business, and Government. Each of those is a category of classes; for instance, under math/science, there’s all the math courses, chemistry courses, active science, biology, and all that good stuff. Business includes the Business I and II courses, which teach how to start a business, write advertisements, and explain everything necessary to make it successful. 

In conclusion, all of these are possible USPs for the RPC. Self-taught, video-based, no textbooks, and no common-core! Sounds pretty good to me. If you’re still not hooked, there are some more reasons here, here, and here. And to order now, go here! 

B1 L125 – Nothing beats this amazing curriculum!

Do you spend hours forcing the kids to do school? Is your kid bullied in public school? Id he bored of his current curriculum? Does a non-common-core curriculum interest you or your kid? If the answer to any of the above is “Yes,” the Ron Paul Curriculum is here to save you time, effort, and possibly even money!  It’s a common-core free curriculum, with NO TEXTBOOKS OR MP3s! Instead, it employs a UNIQUE METHOD — Video lessons. The advantages: Teachers can’t rewind, Textbooks are boring as nothing else on earth, and MP3s are challenging to focus on. Videos take the pros from all three: audio for disabled readers, text for read-learners, and rewindability for both. Also, the courses are pay-by-course, and there’s a 100% MONEY BACK GUARANTEE! That way, if the kid thinks it’s too easy, he can swap to a more challenging course AT NO EXTRA COST. Plus, that $500 decreases per kid with more kids in the family. As a bonus, the Ron Paul Curriculum has some other unique features, such as Government I & II, Business I & II, Western Civilization & Literature, and a Public Speaking course.  The Western studies parallel each other for higher retention, and the other classes can be turned into life skills, such as the ability to speak in public, start a home business, and tell what’s what in politics. Plus, there are forums for each class if a kid’s stuck, and a discussion forum for everything else. The teachers aren’t always available, but the students help each other out if they can. And bullies can get kicked off the forums, kicked off the curriculum, or even blocked from rebuying, so no worries there. And to paraphrase Ron Popeil, “But Wait, there’s a LOT more!” If all that isn’t enough, check out more reasons from a student’s point of view here. AND TO ORDER NOW, CLICK -> HERE <-!

E1 L160 – Effective Events

The most recent book I’ve read for English is Frederick Douglass’s autobiography, and I noticed that learning to read had a massive effect on the rest of his life. For instance, he learned the meaning of certain words, which changed the way he thought, such as abolition, freedom, Canada, North, friends, and many more. It also taught him the ability to write, which allowed him to spread his story and, thus, another compelling argument against slavery. He surely wasn’t the only one to have such breakthrough changes, but am I in that category? I honestly don’t think so, because nothing in my life has done that for me. At least, not one event all by itself.  

There have certainly been ones that come close, such as my learning to read at age three, the death of Pop on Dad’s side, and the advent of swimming, but no single event did that. However, there was a very long string of events, induced by my want to do whatever I wanted, that did it. If you aren’t acquainted with my Years of Terror yet, here’s the story.  

 It all started seven years ago when Aden and I got our very first computers. Two E-machines, running Linux, that were already old at the time we got them. Then one day, we discovered that we could play a simple game called SuperTux, which was incredibly similar to Super Mario, except the main character was a penguin. I found it first and played it whenever Mom wasn’t in the room. Then my brother caught me playing and got it on his computer too. Then, one night, we both got up at around 2 AM, turned on our computers, muted the volume, and played the game on our respective computers. The machines were old, and the keys clacked like chalkboard erasers, but we tried to play silently. About two hours later, Dad woke up and came upstairs to shave his beard in the upstairs sink, and he heard keys clacking from the schoolroom. We had slowly forgotten to play quietly and were hitting the keys as hard as we could with our reflexes on twitch mode. Dad peeked into the schoolroom, and both of us, five and six years old, sitting in our underwear, playing videogames at 4 AM, were there. He then walked in, gave us both a spanking and a lecture, and sent us to bed again. That was the beginning of the Years of Terror.  

 Five years after that incident, and many times caught, I was the only remaining sneak. Aden had decided pretty early on that it wasn’t worth it and stopped playing and sneaking. Pop had given up the ghost, and there was a Vizio TV in the room. The TV was a smart TV with the YouTube app installed, so I got up that night after I was sure Mom and Dad had gone to sleep, grabbed the baby monitor that they had placed pointing at them, and turned on the TV. A few hours later, I missed Mom getting up from the bed. I heard her in the hallway and managed to deactivate the baby monitor and shove it somewhere before she walked in. She took one look at me, her eyes went to the Tv, then to the remote in my hands, then her face turned purple, and I almost got strangled on the wall.  

 Fast forward two more years, and it’s 11 o’clock, and I’m under the covers with the Wii U gamepad playing MarioKart. Twenty-eight minutes later, Dad storms into the room, uttering a curse and rips the blankets off me and the game. I quickly shove the gamePad under the pillow, but not before Dad sees it. He yanks it back out, grabs me by the ankle, and drags me yelling out of the bed. Two seconds later, I’m pinned against the wall with Dad’s forearm on my neck, losing air. By the time I’m tomato red, Mom comes up. Luckily, she doesn’t quite know what’s happening, though she has a general idea. She stops Dad from strangling me, though I’m turning blue by that time. I ended up just getting my rear beat up and down the hallway until my entire rump is black and blue, and a good portion of my thighs and lower back too. I couldn’t sit down for the next two weeks, and my near-death experience made me stop for about two years. I still do it every so often, and they always trust me at about the level of nil. So it had a pretty significant effect upon my life.

However, I don’t think it had as much of an effect as Douglass’s learning to read did. The reasons for this are because I haven’t lived under such extreme conditions as him until the event happened. My case is precisely the opposite of his – I was fine, then the incidents occurred, then I lived in some pretty miserable conditions – at least for me. And it still wasn’t as extreme as his circumstances were. He had to face hunger, torture, whipping, brutality, animal treatment, and death. I only had to face constant trouble, a lot of mistrust, and a ton of envy at my brother, who walked free and got away with a lot of non-allowed things, while I had to do my work by hand because they were so focused on patrolling me that they ignored Aden’s sneaks. Also, my time was significantly shorter. He held up against years of his conditions, while I only had to face three years of almost straight Blackout. (For those of you who don’t know, Blackout is a punishment that involves no electronics, toys, fun, games, or anything good except clothing and food. Basically: all work, no play, and if sneaky, add more time. At one point, I had one straight year, four weeks, and five days of Blackout ahead.) I still mess up occasionally, but I’ve been trying to take it down to the bottom notch and then stop altogether.  

In conclusion, I had it pretty bad; Douglass had it worse. My trigger was not a single event; Douglass was. My case was the opposite of Douglass’s, in that I ended up worse after than before. And my story did not have as much of an impact on my life as Douglass did.

B1 L120 – Benefits of the Ron Paul Curriculum – From a Student’s Point of View

Benefits are critical to any product. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a vacuum, a toy, a computer, or a curriculum; it has to have benefits to sell. It is not “features” but expressly “benefits,” which are vital. Features are the “nuts and bolts” of a product, whereas the benefits are the good things that happen because of the features. An excellent way to express this is, “Sell me my beautiful lawn, not your ‘technologically advanced grass seed.'” And testimonials are a great way to show those benefits. Testimonials are the feedback of a consumer to the other consumers and company.

A hypothetical example could be Flashlight company A, and its competitor, company B. They both sell through Amazon. Somebody buys a flashlight from A, then leaves a review a week later after some testing. If this review is five stars, or “Great product,” the company may get more buyers due to honest approval of the product from the fellow buyer. However, if the review is caustic, (1 star/”Not good product”), more people will swap to B.  That also forces A to make better products or file bankruptcy. (Unless the government intervenes, of course!) That’s the power of a testimonial. Most small businesses depend on them – even offline. That’s because word of mouth can be just as powerful as Amazon.com’s testimonial area.  

But what about the Ron Paul Curriculum? Does it have testimonials? It sure does. But there are some benefits that they apply to, as well. For instance, there isn’t a set time when school starts and finishes; I could start school at 9:00 AM and finish by lunchtime, or I could start at 6 AM and finish by 10 AM.  

There isn’t any homework to slow this down, each thing is done in the class it belongs in.

The classes are a lot more fun than public school, except for a few things.

Nobody has to wait for somebody else to finish to move on. Because that gets boring pretty quick.

There are no bullies. This is one of the biggest things about the Ron Paul Curriculum, there are no bullies. As a kid with a little bit of experience being bullied in sixth grade, it sucks! (And I only got a taste – I was only a laughingstock. I wasn’t the unlucky kid who ended up as the punching bag.) 

There is a lot of extra family time. I admit, it may drive some people’s parents bonkers having the kids in the house 24/7, but sometimes it’s kinda fun. Plenty of extra time for ‘Game-day’ all around the week.

Also, the RPC teaches the fastest methods, and don’t treat the kids as if they’re all mentally disabled. For an idea as to what I mean, check this out. -> Click Here <- 

What do people think of when they hear the word “School bus?” Probably a hot, stinky, sweaty, big yellow cylinder on wheels. With RPC, there is none of that – or the travel time associated with the buses. All that’s necessary is to finish school, walk out of the room, and be done for the day.

Crowds are also negated – virtual has no limited space, so nobody gets jostled.

Textbooks are not required, nor will they ever be. The only books anybody will read in RPC is the literature for various classes.  

There is no dedicated time for a specific subject, like in public school. So there isn’t any sitting around at the end of class, being bored, waiting for the bell to ring. None of that. The classes are not timed, so somebody can spend more time on one thing and less on another.  

And if they get stuck, there are forums to help them get unstuck and back on their feet.  

And on top of everything else, there is a 100% money-back guarantee. How’s that for a stopper? All of these benefits could be yours… for the low price of… haha, just kidding. But hey, that’s not bad. So I could start a class, realize it’s too easy, then get the money back to take a different course.

In conclusion, benefits are crucial to any product. And the Ron Paul Curriculum has as many as a curriculum can have. No time minimum/maximum, no bullies, no textbooks, no slowpokes, no boredom in waiting, and even a money-back guarantee! Who could ask for more? 

If this got you interested in the RPC, click here for even more reasons to buy the RPC, and the way to buy. -> HERE <-

B1 L115 ~ Pros – and Cons – of RPC

As a student in the Ron Paul Curriculum for three years, I experienced many of the benefits as such. Some of those may not be as blatant as others, but they are advantages nonetheless. However, it has some drawbacks. For instance, With homeschooling, anybody can start at 6 AM and get done four hours later, then have the rest of the day free. However, this is negated by that some days somebody could start at 6 AM and finish at around 8 PM. Here are some other benefits, followed by the few negatives that I can think up.

       1.) No printer is necessary. It’s just videos, and at a very minimum, Evernote can store the questions and answers in case of worksheets.

       2.) Some of the classes are especially fun and exciting, such as Mr. Dignan’s Science series. Also, the Entrepreneur Spotlights in Mr. Terrell’s Personal Finance course. It will encourage kids to keep learning, especially if they’re interested.

       3.) The fundamental courses, such as ABC, teach the use of YouTube, Evernote, WordPress, Screencast-O-Matic, and more, all of which are useful tools in life.

       4.) The course also requires posting those end-of-week essays/assignments on either WordPress or the forums. That would encourage the writer to better their writing so as not to look bad on the forums. It’s a little competitive, but they support each other.

 5.) No bus rides.

  6.) No homework.

  7.) No bullies.

  8.) Kids can work at their own pace – they can be way ahead or way behind, but with RPC, they’re always where they’re supposed to be.

Now for the disappointing part.

       1.) If the parent decides to enroll their kid partially in public schooling {1}, they have limited options because the kid has no transcripts. Homeschool grades don’t transfer to Public schools, so opportunities are highly limited.  

 2.) Standardized testing at home sucks.

 3.) Sibling rivalry, if 4+ family.

   a.) This can be an advantage if harnessed correctly.

That’s all I can think of, and that’s probably about it. If you want to enroll, click here for the other 26 benefits of the Ron Paul Curriculum.