New Semester-New Start!

This is the beginning of quarter 3, second semester of my freshman year. We are currently reading A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare, we are in the middle of act 3, but will soon be reading a story called Into the Wild. So far I have learned a lot about John Carroll like what the expectations are for the students and such. The exams we took last weak were hard but I did okay on them. For the second half of my freshman year at John Carroll i'm going to make sure that I do all my work and studying at a good pace and put enough effort into them. I've changed since September because i realize what the school expects of me and what i should expect from myself.

Character Sketch Essay

Alena Stoots

Mrs. Zurkowski

English 9/Greens

January 12 2011

A Devastated Teenager’s Heart

            Studies show that, “there are two sides to every breakup”. In a healthy relationship, couples are expected to have disagreements, but as for this couple, the last thing this head over heels in love teenage girl expected, was for her boyfriend to lie to her. In the novel Two-Way Street, by Lauren Barnholdt, Courtney McSweeney is a smart, attractive high school student, and like every other girl, dreams of having a perfect boyfriend. Courtney meets a boy named Jordan, they date, and eventually she thinks she’s fallen in love with him, but what Courtney doesn’t know, is that Jordan has a huge secret he’s been hiding the entire time.

            Courtney McSweeney is an only child; she is 18 years old and a senior at her high school. In the beginning of the story, Courtney is approaching the end of her senior year, and starts preparing for college. She is set to attend a college in Boston. Courtney received good grades all the time. She has long brown hair, tan skin, and brown eyes. Her parents are still together and married, and she lives in Florida. When Courtney meets Jordan, they date for six months; soon enough all she knows is that the next day he broke up with her for some random girl he met on an internet user called MySpace. This is devastating to Courtney, especially since she doesn’t understand why he would have dumped her for someone else. Courtney, is a very laid back character, she is intelligent and headstrong. Throughout the book she changes in a variety of ways. 

            Six months ago, when Courtney and Jordan scheduled their college trip together, they were a couple, and in love. However, now they are broken up, they day of the trip has arrived, and Courtney’s parents are forcing her to go whether she likes it or not. In Courtney’s mind, she’s thinking, “I guess my parents are trying to teach me some kind of lesson. They don’t think it is right that they would have to pay more than five hundred dollars for a last-minute plane ticket from Florida to Massachusetts, when I’m the one who convinced them to let me go on this trip.”  Courtney begs and begs to convince her parents to not let her go on this trip, but she does anyway. During the trip, her best friend Jocelyn calls her and reveals confusing information. Jordan’s best friend BJ told Jocelyn that Jordan made up the MySpace girl as an excuse to break up with Courtney. This made Courtney very upset and made the tension between them even more awkward. Courtney has been looking for ways to try and get back together with Jordan, but after hearing that he lied to her about something stupid like having another girlfriend, she lost interest in him. She realizes she doesn’t deserve that from him so she decides not to talk to him the rest of trip. Later on, when they stop at Courtney’s friend Lloyd’s dorm room, she doesn’t really want to be there anymore, but looks and sees that Jordan is nowhere to be found. While she’s looking for him, she gets a call from her dad. She is worried because he says has something really important to talk to her about, and this is what he says, “Courtney, I’ve been cheating on your mother for the past six months.”  He explains that the woman he’s having an affair with is Jordan’s mom. Courtney is shocked beyond belief. “Jordan’s known for a while, Courtney, he caught me with his mom a few months ago.” At this point, she wants absolutely nothing to do with Jordan, he disgusts her and she never wants to see him again. A couple hours later, they both crashed at the same motel without knowing it. Jordan calls Courtney trying to talk to her about it and explain himself, after he received a phone call from her father saying the deal was off and that he already told Courtney. Jordan tells her that he loves her and at this point her heart is torn and she doesn’t know what to do.

            The final event in this story is what changes Courtney the most. After her and Jordan arrive at the college campus, they go their separate ways, meeting their new roommates, etc. During the orientation/lunch Jordan spots Courtney talking to another guy, so he decides to go out to a party with his roommate later that night and try to forget about her. Courtney and Jordan end up going to the same party, they both get upset and jealous of each other. When Courtney gets back to her dorm, she received a voice message from Jordan saying he doesn’t want anything to do with her and that he never wants to talk to her again. She is madder than she is upset about this message, being that she barges over to his room and demands to talk to him. Eventually he opens the door and they get to the problem, “Just because I don’t want to deal with you, doesn’t mean I’m running away from things.” Says Courtney, “I look at him then, and I see how hurt he is. I think about how awful it must have been for him to find out his mom was cheating on his dad, and even more awful that he felt he couldn’t tell me. I think about how people make mistakes, how I lied to him about the Lloyd thing, and how emotions and heartbreak and love can really screw with your head. Most of all, I think about how it is to be with him, and how if there’s even a chance we can be together, I can’t be afraid to find out.” Courtney changes by realizing that everyone makes mistakes, by everyone also deserves another chance. She forgives Jordan and feels sorry about how stubborn she’s been and should have listened to his side of the story because she jumped to conclusions.

             In the dramatic love story novel, Two-Way Street by Lauren Barnholdt, Courtney McSweeney goes through obstacles of emotions with her dream boyfriend Jordan, she’s completely in love with him one moment, and the next she’s saying she never want to see him again. She has a lot going through her head throughout the entire book, but she never denies her true feelings for Jordan. In the end, she finds out the actual secret of her heartbreak, but realizes there’s nothing she can do about it, and has to learn that not everything is always going to go her way, and that no one’s perfect