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Here are the words that I thought of while watching the SOTU Address.
In no particular order:
1. Fight: Rather than letting the bad things happen while we sit by the sidelines, it is best that we battle adversity and make room for good things. For all of the challenges President Obama presented in his speech, we must, indeed, fight them.
2. Belief: It is important to stand up and fight for what you believe in, even if it creates division among friends and families.
3. Together: Sometimes it’s not enough that something should be done by one person alone. There’s strength in numbers, and that will, therefore, reach our goals and solutions faster.
4. Cooperation: In order for us to improve our nation, we need to assist each other in every step of the way. Any time spent on arguing or fighting will only set our goals farther apart from us.
5. Us: It’s all about us, what we want to do for our nation. Everything that we do in this great country, we do with pride, honor, determination, and perseverance in combat with the challenges and tragedies we face.
6. Challenges: President Obama often said that we’ll be facing challenges as we move forward in the beginning of the speech. As American citizens, we refuse to let the challenges triumph over us, and we intend to do whatever it takes to conquer over them.
7. Forward: We can’t always dwell in the past and focus on the mistakes we’ve made. It’s a matter of learning from them, so that we may face what’s ahead of us and create progress.
8. People: Throughout most of the speech, President Obama spoke to all of us about what we can do as a nation. It is us, the people, that make America a powerful, united country.
9. Innovation: With the rapidly, advancing technology nowadays, it is time that something new is brought to the table, and I believe our nation can just do as better as the other countries around the world. As long as we can put our minds, hearts, and efforts into it, we can surely achieve it.
10. Work: We can’t get anywhere if we just laze around, and we can’t expect others to do the job for us. What comes after hard work is a worthwhile reward, which should serve as a motivation for all of us.
11. Jobs: A very important issue at hand is jobs, and all of us are struggling to find or keep jobs. I’m looking forward to how President Obama will address this problem.
12. Progress: Our country is always in a progression because of the hard-working, intelligent, diligent people who live in the United States. It’s just like what Obama said: progress is measured by people’s successes.
13. Economy: The state of the economy is better than what it was before, but we’re not quite where we ought to be. I’m hoping that the steps the government will take will lead our economy to the right path.
14. Success: We should always strive for success, and never give into unproductiveness. Otherwise, the United States would be a dump.
15. Life: Because we live in an awesome nation, our lives have been made easy, especially for us kids and teens.
16. Opportunities: Fortunately for us, we live in a land of opportunity, and it’s these opportunities that will lead us to new ideas, inventions, and change. However, we must be careful in identifying what is a golden opportunity and what is a false opportunity, for the golden opportunity presents a diamond while a false one presents a coal.
17. Frustrations: There will be times where we’ll come face to face with trials and tribulations, and become frustrated about it. While this may happen to us, this shouldn’t prompt us to trade our nation for another in effort to escape adversity.
18. Change: Ever since our world experienced a painful change, frustrations has come into place of people’s lives. Change can be a scary thing, and some are irreversible, but we should at least try to make the best out of it and not get frustrated.
19. Technology: With the rapid, advancing technology, the media plays a huge role in our lives, keeping us up-to-date with the latest news. Technology has come a long way, and it’s still developing each and every day.
20. Education: President Obama said “nearly half of all new jobs will require education that goes beyond a high school education.” What I don’t understand is why they’re cutting back on education, and our nation is ranking behind so many other countries.
21. Choices: Our choices determine our future and they define who we are. In the current situation that our country is in, we can’t afford to make the wrong choices.
22. Prosperous: I’m proud to say that our country is, indeed, the most prosperous country in the world.
23. Ideas: It’s our ideas that get us out of the dark pits. Some of us are afraid to present our thoughts, leading us to back down from the podium, but who knows what we have could be useful and inspiring to others?
24. Real: We sometimes run away from our problems in hopes of getting rid of them forever, but we must come to realize that everything happening around us is real. As much as we’d like to have escapism, some of us need to suck up and take responsible action.
25. Future: The future is something we’re all concerned about, whether it’s for yourself, your family, your friends, or your country. The choices that we make, as I’ve learned from life, determine our future, so it’s especially important that our president and the government make the right choices for America.
26. Generativity: If we want to make progress, we shouldn’t carry the weight of stagnation. Rather than watching others doing their part in achieving what needs to be achieved, we should actively partake in the events that will lead our country to success.
27. Sacrifice: The current economy has affected me in a couple of ways. I had to suppress my wants and needs in order to make finances work for my family, and hope that our government will be able to fix the economy sometime soon.
28. Struggle: Greil Marcus said that the greatest American struggle is the struggle to set oneself free from the limits one is born to, and to learn something from the value of those limits. Once we come to understand the struggles we had to go through to get to where we want, we will become amazed of the challenges we’ve triumphed over. Struggle is needed for progress.
29. Plan: Before the United States begins to make positive changes, there must be a blueprint to guide us through the steps needed to obtain the goals. The U.S. citizens deserve to be well-informed of the government’s plans, so that we can agree or disagree on the process of it all.
30. How: This is the one question we should all ask ourselves in every time of situation: how. How will Obama make the changes we want for our country? How will the government execute its plans? The “how” question serves as an initiation; to get things done from start to finish.
31. Possible: Rather thinking of the impossible, we should always think of the possible, as long as it’s realistic. This is a certain characteristic that the president, the government, the army, teachers, and scientists should especially have.
32. Sputnik: President Obama said that we have reached our Sputnik moment, but I’m not talking in the sense of scientific research and the Space Race. It is now our time for us to shine and take the advantages to bring our nation to the highest level that has not yet been attained.
33. Reinvented: There’s a certain point where we must come to realize that the use of ourselves is not contributing to the progress of our nation. The Allen brothers, as mentioned in Obama’s speech, reinvented themselves by the use of a government loan and their factory after being hit hard by the recession. Part of their factory used to be empty, but it is now being used to manufacture solar shingles, which are being sold across the country.
34. Oil: The price of oil is affecting most drivers and the economy. I like the proposed idea by Obama of having to cut taxpayers’ money that is put on oil companies to be transferred in the innovative scientific research for better fuel efficiencies for cars.
35. Electricity: According to Obama and his little scientific research, there will be millions of electric vehicles by the year 2015. I wonder how these vehicles will be distributed.
36. Performance: The time and effort put into school determines our performance. Because some schools are lagging behind their expectations, we’re not ranking at number one in the world.
37. Difference: Obama said that if one wants to make a difference in their country, he or she should become a teacher. I agree with this because, without teachers, how will we be able to do math or read and write? These are essential skills needed for long term careers and life in general.
38. Competition: It’s everywhere. You see in schools, sports, jobs, etc. for one main purpose: a paycheck. I’m interested in seeing how the program “Race to the Top,” as mentioned in the speech, will make an impact on education.
39. Inspiring: I simply enjoyed Obama’s method of delivery. His speech possessed several key, clever points.
40. Immigration: Although many people seem to be against illegal immigration, Obama makes a good point by saying that many foreign students come to our schools to get the best education, and then move back to their home countries to compete with us. Smart immigration is what we should allow in our country.
41. Rebuild: Whenever the most unfortunate events happen to us, we need to step up and make serious changes to our American culture. It was, indeed, a terrible and traumatic event when terrorism stepped into New York in 2001, but that shouldn’t shake us and prevent us from rebuilding the American spirit.
42. Network: We have a large and widely distributed group of people or things such as stores, colleges, or churches that communicate with one another and work together as a unit or system. We all work together to keep our country running with efficiency.
43. Health: Health is one of the important priorities of a person. The majority of the U.S. disapproves of the healthcare reform bill, and they hope that President Obama and the government will do their best to make a bill that will benefit the majority.
44. Debt: Being inundated with debt is everyone’s fear. I’m looking forward to seeing how our government will reduce the amount of debt people have.
45. Information: We need good information so that we may make good choices for our country. We shall hope that it will positively affect the choices that our government will make for our future.
46. Try: We can’t let the idea of impossibility take anchorage of our minds. One must at least take the effort to try, so that the resulting factor may be seen.
47. Help: By nature, humans can be a bit stubborn, only wanting to do things themselves. We need to face the real fact that everyone needs help, and by helping each other we can reach our goals.
48. Journey: After hearing the plan President Obama mentioned in his speech, it sounded like America has a long journey ahead of her. Let’s hope that what we find in the end is something rewarding and worthwhile.
49. Hope: Obama’s speech was rather inspirational. His method of delivery seemed like it gave hope to the American citizens.
50. Listen: It’s pointless to talk over one another because we wouldn’t be able to clearly understand what others are saying. That’s why it’s important that we stay silent and give our undivided attention to President Obama’s speech.
51. Blessed: I am simply blessed that I live in the greatest country in the world.
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Mr. Palo, I forgot to turn in some of my other work. I scanned them, wondering if maybe you can grade them from here. I hope it's not too late. Click on the images for a larger view.
