ipl-logo

Life In Billy Collins Poem, Schoolsville

718 Words3 Pages

Life is like a movie. It can be overly filled with joy or as serious as a math final exam. The world is made up of elements like happiness, sadness, joy, sorrow and with these elements comes a time in life where it can be related to certain situations such as times in school. School is like a having second life and in the poem “Schoolsville,” Billy Collins portrays the idea that school is related to life itself as it is comical, serious, memorable, and poignant. It shows how life itself can be like school and how the comical, serious, memorable, as well as poignant elements of life are represented.
Life is filled with duties and things that we have to do to show our progress with the tasks we have been given. In school, assignments are given every day to give the students in order to receive a grade and progress in the class. Collins states “The A’s stroll along with other A’s. / The D’s honk whenever they pass another D” (Page 535). The …show more content…

In life, there are so many wrong doings and temptations that cause us to lose sight of what is right and should be done instead. “One in a while a student knocks on the door / with a term paper fifteen years late” (535). This quote shows that regret can weigh heavily on someone’s life and if not fixed it can continue to haunt you for years to come. Choices are made a million times a day and thought about a thousand times an hour but still can cause us to later on regret those small decisions we didn’t put enough thought into.
In this poem “Schoolsville,” Collins explains how life can relate to school, as well as using the elements of comedy, seriousness, memory, and poignancy to express a general idea on life. Life’s experiences can be happy or sad, serious or funny but in the end we all know what we have accomplished within our time. Trials and tribulations may shape us but we all are responsible for the outcomes of our

Show More
Related
820 Words | 4 Pages

Walter Dean Myers dropped out of school at the age of 15, due to family problems. He loved school, and he loved literature. Being unconnected to the world of learning, and becoming tired of not being able to read, he decided to visit the public library. Until he could no longer bear the fact that he was not getting an education(his one and only dream), he silently cried in his bedroom every night. He needed help and seeked attention from others until one day, a “do-good” counselor called his house and got him put back into the school system.

Read More
282 Words | 2 Pages

The story talks about the kid in school, in which we can imagine us going to kindergarten in our early childhood. We used to hate going to the school and

Read More
180 Words | 1 Pages

In “The Sanctuary of School” Lynda applies her personal life to the fact that some people think cutting down budgets for public schools will benefit when times get tough. Also that art, music and the creative ideas will be the first to go when budgets are cut. Lynda had a rough childhood where her parents had money issues and family members that needed temporarily to stay at her home (Barry, 721). The lack of attention from her parents made her look for attention elsewhere in this case the school. Lynda saw her teacher Mrs. LeSane as a mother figure.

Read More
358 Words | 2 Pages

What is school really trying to do with our lives? The article “Against School” by John Taylor Gatto is an article that talks about the problem of schools and how the goals are not what they say they are. First. the author talks about how the school system creates boredom and what could be done to fix it. He then talks about how school is not needed in its required class times, what the schools say the goals are for the students, and where our school system originated from.

Read More
1346 Words | 6 Pages

In Alfie Kohn’s essay, the argument of grade expectations being too overvalued rests on a chain of assumptions, but can be argued. Alfie Kohn’s essay portrays that he wants students to find a variety of different purposes in school, and questions the idea of grades being too centralized. In detail, Alfie Kohn explains how students go to school not for the right reasons, but for the wrong reasons instead. For example, the author writes, “They’d scan the catalogue for college courses that promised easy A’s, sign up for new extracurricular-activities to round out their resumes, and react with gratitude when a professor told them exactly what they would have to know for the exam so they could ignore everything else” (para. 8).

Read More
742 Words | 3 Pages

Billy Collins appropriately created the title “Schoolsville” for this poem. The title is broken down and is imagined by readers of a little town occupied by former students who still act as they did in high school. From the beginning line, it is clear to the reader that the speaker is reminiscing his past by “glancing over my shoulder at the past,” (Collins 534). By stating, “I realize the number of students he has taught is enough to populate a small town,” also adds to the image created by the title (Collins 534). The speaker has taught so many years that his former students could populate a town.

Read More
860 Words | 4 Pages

The poet Ted Kooser illustrates the agonies which every 3 to 25-year-old must come toe to toe with. In this nine-lined poem he narrates the tormented journey of a young boy who 's faced with the overwhelming weight of liabilities that he must carry to his library. The uniqueness of this poem is derived from comparing a student to a turtle, which I will elaborate further on. The purpose of the poem is to use the melancholy of many students in order to reveal their hardships . Every apt pupil understands being immersed in stress and strain of academia in order to persevere into a brighter future.

Read More
877 Words | 4 Pages

To him summer was a time for fun, and there wasn't a reason it shouldn’t be. But, through hard times and growth, Douglas had discovered a new meaning. Life is a cycle that never stops repeating. Douglas states: “‘Next year’s going to be even bigger, days will be brighter, nights longer and darker, more people dying, more babies born, and me in the middle of it all’”(Bradbury 235). To Douglas there is still a bright side of things, there’s fun, but with it comes loss and worry.

Read More
1707 Words | 7 Pages

The

Read More
1011 Words | 5 Pages

In the “Against Schools” article, author John Gatto describes the modern day schooling system and its flaws. He uses several rhetorical strategies in trying to prove his point. He successfully uses all three types of rhetoric in writing this article, which includes ethos, pathos, and logos. He establishes these strategies very early, and often throughout the article. He believes one issues with today’s schooling system is boredom, and that there is a distinct difference between what it means to be educated and schooled.

Read More
630 Words | 3 Pages

Lisa needs that support as she goes forward in her life. We all need that safety net as we struggle forward; this message of the safety in the middle of the uncertain change is true and descriptive of our early college years today as well. IV. Conclusion: Reflections on Reading Poetry A. Reading poetry is often not as specific as prose, and it leaves more to the imagination; different words hold different meanings for different readers. B. In changing and moving into our own adult lives; our parents and grandparents often already know of the struggle we are going through.

Read More
563 Words | 3 Pages

In her narrative essay “The Sanctuary of School,” Lynda Barry recounts a story from her childhood that illustrates her relationships at school vs her relationships at home. She tells us how public school was her sanctuary from her unstable home life. It was a stable environment that she depended on. She tells us this when she says ,"[F]or the next six hours I was going to enjoy a thoroughly secure, warm and stable world." Unlike at home, her school was a place she was noticed and cared about.

Read More
944 Words | 4 Pages

Lynda Barry in her work The Sanctuary of School, wrote about her life as a kid with a toxic family life where she relied on school to be a place she feels secure. She tried to escape from her toxic family by going to school; was the only way for her to relieve her mind. The school granted her freedom to draw and provided her a safe place to stay. Painting and drawing was the only activity that made her happy. By doing these activities were the only way to express herself.

Read More
1300 Words | 6 Pages

George Saunders, a renowned American writer is a graduate of Syracuse University. So it is no surprise when the University asked him to give the convocation speech to the graduating class of 2013. George delivered an eye-opening and touching speech. The speech is speaking to the graduates, but also to everyone in attendance. It is not your average speech on how to be successful in the real world, but instead, it is how to live a happier life.

Read More
526 Words | 3 Pages

Someone once said, “ Life is all about making choices. Always do your best to make the right ones and always do your best to learn from the wrong ones”- Anonymous. Choices can always look instructive whether they are great or bad. Often, a string of good choices makes it easier to continue down the path, good consequences paving the way to more good choices. However, poor choices often have unlimited consequences.

Read More

More about Life In Billy Collins Poem, Schoolsville

Related Topics

Open Document