journey through junior year

During this week, one of the pieces we read were letters sent back and forth between Abigail and John Adams. Although it is an important piece of history, I couldn’t help but feel like we were intruding on their privacy by reading and analyzing and discussing what were just two letters they had meant to be written to each other. I guarantee that when they were writing these letters, they never would’ve imagined high school students all over picking it apart nearly three hundred years later. But, it still happened. They both left their mark on history in ways they probably didn’t imagine to do so. Relating this to life today, I started wondering what high school students will be studying three hundred years from now. Are they going to find President Trump’s tweets and start analyzing those (good luck with that) like we did with the letters? What if all they find from the 2000s are meaningless memes? I tend to overthink and often focus on hypotheticals but honestly, this is something ...

Throughout this week, my favorite piece we read was definitely “Just Walk On By” by Brent Staples. It describes Staples’s experiences with racism and how it has affected him in all sorts of different scenarios. He tells terrible stories of being mistaken as the “bad guy” solely based on the color of his skin and what he looks like. At the end of the story, he explains different tactics he has come up with to make the people around him feel safer and more comfortable. Although considerate, this to me, is just outrageous. Why has it become HIS job to change the way he acts in order for the strangers around him to not jump to conclusions? Staples says he often keeps his distance from others and even hums happy tunes for the comfort of others. This reminds me of the school system regarding dress code. In middle school, at Boulan Park, the dress code was so strict to the point where girls couldn’t even wear leggings to school because boys would be “distracted”. To most girls, leggings ar...

During this week, one of the most interesting things we did (in my opinion) was reading the different lenses of The Great Gatsby . All the different perspectives just blew my mind because I had never thought of the novel in that way before. However, once I read the perspectives, they all somehow seemed to make sense to some extent. The writer of the lenses had picked apart each sentence of the book to make it match the topic they were focusing on. This reminded me of something I had previously learned in my AP psychology class: confirmation bias. This is defined as the tendency to see, only what you are looking for. For instance, for the psychoanalytic lens- there might've been parts of the book that contradicted the idea of all the relationships being fear of intimacy based. However, because the writer was only looking for evidence that proved her point, she didn't include any of that. Personally, I thought some of the ideas were a bit of a stretch and the writer was just tr...

The novel The Great Gatsby is told by Nick Carraway as a first-person narrative. Although this type of narration allows the reader to gain a lot of insight into Nick's mind, for all the other characters, it's very restricted. Personally, I would be really interested in reading this story from a different character's point of view, specifically, Daisy's. Throughout the novel,  Daisy was caught up in a dilemma, forcing her to choose between Gatsby, who she is, and has been in love with but was never allowed to pursue a life with, and Tom, who she has been married to for a couple of years and knew she would have a safe, predictable life with. Especially during the big argument between Tom and Gatsby about who Daisy really loved, I often found myself wondering: what is Daisy thinking right now? Furthermore, in the second sentence of the entire book, Nick is thinking about a quote his father told him: "Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone, just remember that all t...

When we were assigned to research facts about modernism this week, it was very apparent that once I started looking online, there were a few specific things modernism was known for. For instance, every website I looked at included that modernism was characterized by industrialization, rapid social change, as well as advances in science and art. Thinking back to my past history classes, it seemed like every time period I had ever learned about could be simplified and summarized with just a few keywords- so in that case, what would be used to describe the time period we are living in at the moment? Up until this point in my life, the biggest events I can think of are presidential elections, school shootings, and natural disasters. In terms of technological advancements, what comes to mind for me are Tesla cars, virtual reality devices, and the development of robots. In another couple thousands of years, are these the things the beginning of the 2000's will be known for? Or will ...

Throughout the beginning of the novel, Guitar is shown as a sort of role model for Milkman. However, after finishing the book, we learned that Guitar actually tries to kill Milkman. After this murder attempt, Milkman chooses to not bring it up to his friends and instead, says he accidentally shot with his own gun. Why did Milkman not tell his friends the truth? Was he just in shock of what had happened? Maybe he just couldn't believe that the person who he thought was his close friend just tried to end his life? While thinking about this, I made a connection with celebrities and their fanbases. Nowadays, many kids look up to and admire famous people (singers, actors, models, youtubers, etc.). However, often times, these celebrities start using drugs, becoming addicted, and therefore, not a very good role model. When this happens, there always seems to be a group of fans who become very defensive and start making up all kinds of excuses and cover-up stories. For instance, I used...

While discussing this passage in class, I learned that the male peacock is meant to represent Milkman because just like how the male peacock is unable to fly due to his large, extravagant feathers, Milkman is also weighed down by his wealth. On the other hand, peahens are symbolism for Pilate. Female peafowl can fly because their feathers aren't so big; Pilate "has wings" and is free because without a lot of money, she is forced to be independent. This made me think about the current lotteries that are going on- the Mega Million and Powerball. I often find myself just in awe and unable to grasp the concept of just how much money those lotteries are. Curious, I looked up some follow up stories to those who won the lottery. To my surprise, quite a few of these stories are actually super sad. For instance, one average individual named Evelyn Adams won $5.4 million dollars, spent it all on gambling and slot machines, and now is broke and living in a trailer park. How d...