Poem
The obvious goal of this project was to write a poem. We could write our poems about anything that we wanted. The poem would include poetic devices like rhyming and alliteration, I had the impression that we were supposed to have devices such as similes or metaphors.
I’m tired…
I’m tired of being
And thinking,
Of how
And why
And what.
I’m tired
Of the people that surround,
Those who yell
And laugh
And act
To attract,
Those who brag
And claim
And lie
To impress,
Those who ignore
And tap
And smile
As if they’re
Above following.
I’m tired
Of myself
The judgment
The overthinking
The lacking
The possession
The vessel
And function.
I’m tired
Of existence,
The constant
Binding
And unbinding
Of molecules,
The spontaneous
Mixing
Of elements
And energy.
Wasted energy.
I’m tired
Of the
Passing time,
Each second
Hour and year
A waste of presence
And mine.
I’m tired
Of selfishness
My own
Others’
Life’s.
How could
I be
So tired?
But I hope..
I hope for
Wonder
And time
And love.
I hope for others,
Their humor and excitement
Their brightened eyes and rosy blossoms
Their freedom to express
Their satisfaction in life
Activity and present.
I hope for the presence
Of acceptance
Awareness
And differing design,
Of starry skies and peaceful walks.
I hope for openness
To education
To new ideas
For safety, maturity, and understanding.
I hope for the dissipation of
Scowling blizzards,
Optic tempests of judgment.
And I hope for
That friendly little lizard
To find the perfect sunbathed rock,
And that clumsy bee
A safe return to her hexagon ridden hive.
How could
I be
So tired..?
I’m tired
Of being
Tired.
I…
I should
Get more sleep.
I’m tired of being
And thinking,
Of how
And why
And what.
I’m tired
Of the people that surround,
Those who yell
And laugh
And act
To attract,
Those who brag
And claim
And lie
To impress,
Those who ignore
And tap
And smile
As if they’re
Above following.
I’m tired
Of myself
The judgment
The overthinking
The lacking
The possession
The vessel
And function.
I’m tired
Of existence,
The constant
Binding
And unbinding
Of molecules,
The spontaneous
Mixing
Of elements
And energy.
Wasted energy.
I’m tired
Of the
Passing time,
Each second
Hour and year
A waste of presence
And mine.
I’m tired
Of selfishness
My own
Others’
Life’s.
How could
I be
So tired?
But I hope..
I hope for
Wonder
And time
And love.
I hope for others,
Their humor and excitement
Their brightened eyes and rosy blossoms
Their freedom to express
Their satisfaction in life
Activity and present.
I hope for the presence
Of acceptance
Awareness
And differing design,
Of starry skies and peaceful walks.
I hope for openness
To education
To new ideas
For safety, maturity, and understanding.
I hope for the dissipation of
Scowling blizzards,
Optic tempests of judgment.
And I hope for
That friendly little lizard
To find the perfect sunbathed rock,
And that clumsy bee
A safe return to her hexagon ridden hive.
How could
I be
So tired..?
I’m tired
Of being
Tired.
I…
I should
Get more sleep.
My poem features the topic of what I hate and how I wish the world, especially the people in it, to be. It features two main sections, the first being everything that I’m tired of and the second being about improvements that I hope will come, with one-stanza transitions, a short introduction, and a conclusion. The introduction started off with the line that would repeat, “I’m tired”, repeated the line within the stanza, then listed the beginnings of questions that I’m tired of thinking about. The Annoyed section of the poem is the longest, featuring the topics of peer wrongdoings, my own flaws, existence itself, time, and a short stanza about selfishness. The transitions between the two main sections and conclusion both have the same repetition, the second having extra lines. The hopeful section of the poem features longer lines than the previous stanzas, with a tonal shift. And the conclusion could be interpreted as a joke, irony, maybe how I was overthinking again, etc.
Before I started writing the poem, I had been thinking a lot about my annoyances with the world and the people in it. I had the idea of repetition at the beginning of every line, the simple words; “I’m tired of..” I also liked the idea of being able to read and speak the poem quite fast. When I began to write, I was able to have an ending within an hour, I could spout off all these things that I was and am still very annoyed about with barely any deep thought. I tried to make each miniature topic vague yet specific in a way so that anyone could interpret it differently.
The lines, “Those who ignore, And tap, And smile, As if they’re, Above following” were actually referencing students’ disrespect towards teachers who had calmly asked them to stop doing something. I noticed, while my poem was being critiqued by peers, that a few students, who have certainly disrespected teachers’ askings of them, said that ‘they totally get those lines’. I suspect that they either weren’t referring to those last few lines in that stanza, were recognizing that they do just that, were being hypocritical, or they thought that those lines meant something entirely different.
As I wrote the poem, I started to break the sentences into multiple small lines, each sentence would be a stanza. This made it easier for me to read the poem and interpret how I would read it
Before I started writing the poem, I had been thinking a lot about my annoyances with the world and the people in it. I had the idea of repetition at the beginning of every line, the simple words; “I’m tired of..” I also liked the idea of being able to read and speak the poem quite fast. When I began to write, I was able to have an ending within an hour, I could spout off all these things that I was and am still very annoyed about with barely any deep thought. I tried to make each miniature topic vague yet specific in a way so that anyone could interpret it differently.
The lines, “Those who ignore, And tap, And smile, As if they’re, Above following” were actually referencing students’ disrespect towards teachers who had calmly asked them to stop doing something. I noticed, while my poem was being critiqued by peers, that a few students, who have certainly disrespected teachers’ askings of them, said that ‘they totally get those lines’. I suspect that they either weren’t referring to those last few lines in that stanza, were recognizing that they do just that, were being hypocritical, or they thought that those lines meant something entirely different.
As I wrote the poem, I started to break the sentences into multiple small lines, each sentence would be a stanza. This made it easier for me to read the poem and interpret how I would read it
From the start, I wanted to have a poem about what I’m annoyed by in the world. When it was first mentioned to the class that we’d be doing a poem for our final project, I had the words “I’m tired of…” in my mind, setting the base for the repetition within my poem that shaped what my poem would be about. On the first day of writing our final poems, I was able to write a 14.1 stanza poem within 1 hour and 22 minutes. Revisions were done to the poem with proofreadings and critiques; a few letters capitalized, stanza pacing edited, lines deleted, and new stanzas added. I originally was going for the general everything that I didn’t care for, but now that I look back at it, there are a lot of stanzas relating to human wrongdoings. I’m still keeping the stanzas relating to time, existence itself, and the safety of seemingly insignificant creatures because they’re scattered throughout the poem and even it out at least a little bit.
The most important changes made were probably the slight changes in line organization. In multiple places of the poem, lines may have been too long, causing significant inconsistencies and annoying hitches in stanza pacing when read. So, lines like “Of the passing of time” were split into two or more lines and had words taken out. Other groups of lines like “Those who stare, And judge, And frown, Like we’ve done something wrong” were entirely removed because they didn’t sound good and just lengthened the already longest stanza in the poem. Then, a whole stanza; “I’m tired, Of these edgy, Mary Sue, Wannabes, That brag, And claim, And lie, To impress” was taken out and repurposed into the previous stanza, because it hindered the seriousness of the surrounding stanzas.
Another impactful change was adding onto and lengthening the more positive, lighthearted section of the poem. The “I hope” section only had 3 stanzas while the “I’m tired of” section had 7.1 stanzas, quite unbalanced. With the very short bit about what I hope for, compared to the long ramblings of what I’m irritated with, it felt lacking and almost out of place. I took balancing the sections out to a greater level by making them both 6 stanzas long.
I’m satisfied with the finished product of my poem, but I do feel like I could add even more. Maybe, I will add more after school is over.
The most important changes made were probably the slight changes in line organization. In multiple places of the poem, lines may have been too long, causing significant inconsistencies and annoying hitches in stanza pacing when read. So, lines like “Of the passing of time” were split into two or more lines and had words taken out. Other groups of lines like “Those who stare, And judge, And frown, Like we’ve done something wrong” were entirely removed because they didn’t sound good and just lengthened the already longest stanza in the poem. Then, a whole stanza; “I’m tired, Of these edgy, Mary Sue, Wannabes, That brag, And claim, And lie, To impress” was taken out and repurposed into the previous stanza, because it hindered the seriousness of the surrounding stanzas.
Another impactful change was adding onto and lengthening the more positive, lighthearted section of the poem. The “I hope” section only had 3 stanzas while the “I’m tired of” section had 7.1 stanzas, quite unbalanced. With the very short bit about what I hope for, compared to the long ramblings of what I’m irritated with, it felt lacking and almost out of place. I took balancing the sections out to a greater level by making them both 6 stanzas long.
I’m satisfied with the finished product of my poem, but I do feel like I could add even more. Maybe, I will add more after school is over.
MUN Project Reflection
The MUN(Model United Nations) project is where a group of students, (the size of the group should be large enough to support needed UN roles), participate in a depiction of a UN conference. Each student has a role, most individually representing countries and and a couple/few being chair members. The students that have been assigned a country need to research their country's political views and opinions, while chair members will be in charge of the conference itself once it occurs. The simulated conference will have a political topic, a crisis that's actually happening. The topic of the conference that our class did was the Humanitarian Crisis in Afghanistan. I was assigned the country, Egypt. During the conference, each country representative needs to stay in character according to their country.
The most difficult thing that I’m not sure I overcame was my lack of interest in the subject of this project. I had tried to be as engaged in the project as I could, and by the end I somewhat succeeded in finishing each part of the project (not so much on time). I wouldn’t consider my work any sort of masterpiece. A contributor to my disinterest would be how I could never see myself as a leader, much less over a nation. I don’t have very good social skills and I tend to disconnect from reality by losing myself in thought or fictional media, which contributes to the disinterest in the topic of something that is actually happening.
The second most difficult part of this project was finding the opinions of my assigned country. I was assigned a country that wouldn’t have as much involvement with the Afghanistan crisis, which was great for me because I wouldn’t have to talk or participate as much. The downside to my assigned country was that it didn’t have as much involvement with the Afghanistan crisis, it was quite difficult to find my country's opinions on the crisis, I had to fill in many blanks.
Moving onto what I had learned from this project; I suppose I now know how world leaders connect to solve conflicts between themselves and others. We got a taste for what it would be like to attempt to solve a major conflict in a slightly lighter and less serious way. It was almost enjoyable to witness fellow “delegates” break into a flurry of heated semi-laughing arguments and passive aggressive comments being thrown across the room.
The second most difficult part of this project was finding the opinions of my assigned country. I was assigned a country that wouldn’t have as much involvement with the Afghanistan crisis, which was great for me because I wouldn’t have to talk or participate as much. The downside to my assigned country was that it didn’t have as much involvement with the Afghanistan crisis, it was quite difficult to find my country's opinions on the crisis, I had to fill in many blanks.
Moving onto what I had learned from this project; I suppose I now know how world leaders connect to solve conflicts between themselves and others. We got a taste for what it would be like to attempt to solve a major conflict in a slightly lighter and less serious way. It was almost enjoyable to witness fellow “delegates” break into a flurry of heated semi-laughing arguments and passive aggressive comments being thrown across the room.
Adolescence Essay
Vista Rain DeMarco
“Adolescent Fear” Essay
I have a belief that nothing, other than decisions made by living things, is intentional, including the appearance of life on Earth. Life has absolutely no meaning, no purpose. It’s just here because, according to a theory on RNA, a few molecules conveniently merged. So, with no true purpose, the human species have created their own, whether it be through religion, discovery, invention, entertainment, protection, reproduction, world domination, the possibilities are practically endless. Being a human myself, and living in a controlled civilization where there will be judgement and punishment if I don’t follow the spoken and unspoken rules, I do the same thing in order to survive. This reasoning has brought me to want to use my favorite emotion.
Inspiration, a treasure. I spend so much of my time mining this resource. The equivalent of fossil fuels for machines, inspiration fuels creativity. Creativity helps in the manufacturing of interesting media; books, films, music. Interesting media, or inspiring media, gives consumers new ideas. New ideas may come with inspiration, and the cycle continues. The feeling continues, that wonderful feeling. The sense of excitement and adventure, as if I could grow wings and actually feel them, every muscle and moveable joint. But when I don’t know what to do with it, I fall, my chest feeling as if every breath can rip my ribs off of my sternum like a wishbone. I need to release this amazing, yet desperately urging feeling into art. If I don’t, I may just lose my mind.
I have a fear, a fear that I have only realized in my adolescence. The fear of not being able to make a mark or inspire others in my lifetime. Every time I’ve been inspired, I feel a great rush of what feels like adrenaline (it probably isn’t). It makes me want to create. And though it is a fear, it almost drives me to continue pursuing a good life.
There may be many ways the fear has accumulated in my mind, both sides of which I would call good and bad. But the more obvious and expected reasoning for why I have this fear would be how my anxiety plays into it. Whether it be my anxiety or the not so prominent paranoia, I realize that life is very limited, a human life amounting to nothing compared to the vastness of the universe, I realize that my adolescence is only a few years from coming to an end, and I realize that life could also end any second. The problem with this and how it plays into my fear is how my short adolescence, my time to learn more and think about what I can do in the future, will end and if my life ends with it or before I can do what I want, my fear will have won.
On the other hand, something else has created this fear: Inspiration, my most valued emotional resource. It gives the ability of creativity, without it, intelligent life could not exist due to the inability to learn and create new things. Inspiration being the product of knowledge, and creativity being fueled by inspiration. I want to give the same feeling that I get from inspiration to others, through any means.
As a 15-year-old, I am in my adolescence; That time of discovery, starting to discover oneself and what one wants to do with their life. As mentioned before, how limited adolescence is can cause problems with how much time I have left to organize what I want to do with my life.
In my early years of adolescence, the fear appeared because of my interests and the problems that come with not having enough experience. I have always been obsessed with character design, interested in world building, and with a love for writing or reading sci-fi/fantasy stories. These hobbies have been a base for what I want to do later in life, but as an ever-learning adolescent, I’m not good at committing to a storyline without ending up hating the idea after a week of planning or writing. The fact that youths are constantly learning new things can be both problematic and uplifting, even in adulthood new knowledge is being learned. I may even have the same fear after I’ve finished school, but I’m sure that what comes with adolescence is one of the reasons I can’t get rid of my fear.
The downsides of having this fear should be obvious, it’s a fear. Sometimes I’ll have a glimpse of a thought that grows more strong and recognizable, and with it, anxiety. Any day, hour, second, I could meet my end without getting a reasonable chance to do or give what I wish, my fear would be real.
With all the ways this fear healthily and unhealthily affects me, there are also ways to defeat this fear, and that’s what I plan to do. I’d have a great deal of anxiety out of the way, I could even be confident. The thing is, I don’t want to get rid of it yet. Even if I did rid myself of this fear by, say, writing a book, my infinitely limited knowledge and inability to commit to a single storyline would make my accomplishment seem mediocre. Yes, I would have fulfilled my goal, thus defeating my fear, but the growing shame for the book as I gain more knowledge would only allow the fear to be veiled temporarily. To delve deeper into the possibilities of me losing the fear, if I genuinely did so prematurely or just never had it in the first place, I wouldn’t be myself.
I like my personality, I’ve used every fear, interest, pleasure, displeasure, mistake, and accomplishment as a mold for it to fit my standards of myself. In the end, I will need to go at my own pace when getting rid of this fear, but as an adolescent that hasn’t even finished school yet, I should only hope that I don’t die before I take the right chance to inspire others, maybe even helping them through their adolescence and hard times.
“Adolescent Fear” Essay
I have a belief that nothing, other than decisions made by living things, is intentional, including the appearance of life on Earth. Life has absolutely no meaning, no purpose. It’s just here because, according to a theory on RNA, a few molecules conveniently merged. So, with no true purpose, the human species have created their own, whether it be through religion, discovery, invention, entertainment, protection, reproduction, world domination, the possibilities are practically endless. Being a human myself, and living in a controlled civilization where there will be judgement and punishment if I don’t follow the spoken and unspoken rules, I do the same thing in order to survive. This reasoning has brought me to want to use my favorite emotion.
Inspiration, a treasure. I spend so much of my time mining this resource. The equivalent of fossil fuels for machines, inspiration fuels creativity. Creativity helps in the manufacturing of interesting media; books, films, music. Interesting media, or inspiring media, gives consumers new ideas. New ideas may come with inspiration, and the cycle continues. The feeling continues, that wonderful feeling. The sense of excitement and adventure, as if I could grow wings and actually feel them, every muscle and moveable joint. But when I don’t know what to do with it, I fall, my chest feeling as if every breath can rip my ribs off of my sternum like a wishbone. I need to release this amazing, yet desperately urging feeling into art. If I don’t, I may just lose my mind.
I have a fear, a fear that I have only realized in my adolescence. The fear of not being able to make a mark or inspire others in my lifetime. Every time I’ve been inspired, I feel a great rush of what feels like adrenaline (it probably isn’t). It makes me want to create. And though it is a fear, it almost drives me to continue pursuing a good life.
There may be many ways the fear has accumulated in my mind, both sides of which I would call good and bad. But the more obvious and expected reasoning for why I have this fear would be how my anxiety plays into it. Whether it be my anxiety or the not so prominent paranoia, I realize that life is very limited, a human life amounting to nothing compared to the vastness of the universe, I realize that my adolescence is only a few years from coming to an end, and I realize that life could also end any second. The problem with this and how it plays into my fear is how my short adolescence, my time to learn more and think about what I can do in the future, will end and if my life ends with it or before I can do what I want, my fear will have won.
On the other hand, something else has created this fear: Inspiration, my most valued emotional resource. It gives the ability of creativity, without it, intelligent life could not exist due to the inability to learn and create new things. Inspiration being the product of knowledge, and creativity being fueled by inspiration. I want to give the same feeling that I get from inspiration to others, through any means.
As a 15-year-old, I am in my adolescence; That time of discovery, starting to discover oneself and what one wants to do with their life. As mentioned before, how limited adolescence is can cause problems with how much time I have left to organize what I want to do with my life.
In my early years of adolescence, the fear appeared because of my interests and the problems that come with not having enough experience. I have always been obsessed with character design, interested in world building, and with a love for writing or reading sci-fi/fantasy stories. These hobbies have been a base for what I want to do later in life, but as an ever-learning adolescent, I’m not good at committing to a storyline without ending up hating the idea after a week of planning or writing. The fact that youths are constantly learning new things can be both problematic and uplifting, even in adulthood new knowledge is being learned. I may even have the same fear after I’ve finished school, but I’m sure that what comes with adolescence is one of the reasons I can’t get rid of my fear.
The downsides of having this fear should be obvious, it’s a fear. Sometimes I’ll have a glimpse of a thought that grows more strong and recognizable, and with it, anxiety. Any day, hour, second, I could meet my end without getting a reasonable chance to do or give what I wish, my fear would be real.
With all the ways this fear healthily and unhealthily affects me, there are also ways to defeat this fear, and that’s what I plan to do. I’d have a great deal of anxiety out of the way, I could even be confident. The thing is, I don’t want to get rid of it yet. Even if I did rid myself of this fear by, say, writing a book, my infinitely limited knowledge and inability to commit to a single storyline would make my accomplishment seem mediocre. Yes, I would have fulfilled my goal, thus defeating my fear, but the growing shame for the book as I gain more knowledge would only allow the fear to be veiled temporarily. To delve deeper into the possibilities of me losing the fear, if I genuinely did so prematurely or just never had it in the first place, I wouldn’t be myself.
I like my personality, I’ve used every fear, interest, pleasure, displeasure, mistake, and accomplishment as a mold for it to fit my standards of myself. In the end, I will need to go at my own pace when getting rid of this fear, but as an adolescent that hasn’t even finished school yet, I should only hope that I don’t die before I take the right chance to inspire others, maybe even helping them through their adolescence and hard times.