Humanities Final Portfolio 2013
Reflection teaches you that things in life aren't perfect...
"How do you define freedom?" my teacher asked our class. "Provide an explanation for your definition."
I believe "freedom" is the ability to live by your own words and the ability to make your own decisions without being controlled physically and/or mentally by one's decisions. I also believe it is being able to express yourself freely.
This was one of my first discussions we had in our mid world history class. I thought that every word had one meaning and one interpretation, but I was wrong. I always thought that I had the perfect definition and only, the right definition.
"Yes, anyone else would like to add?" he said.
I was confused. How could one add to this definition? Doesn't every word has its own definition? Twenty minutes went by and there we had it, a chart full of definitions for the word "freedom." From that moment, I began to realize that not everything meant one thing, it's what you make of it.
In my Short Story Letter Assignment that we had to do for English class one time, I quoted, "Your mom is really looking out for you, and you should appreciate it because there are moms who don't even care about their kids." I use to always think that I had the perfect childhood but when we were told to write a letter to someone we truly loved about making the right the decisions. I began to realize that I didn't have a sister who was perfectly fine. She was going through an emotional time and wasn't making the right decisions. Once I created this letter, I learned that perfection doesn't exist, part of living is to understand and deal with the environment you was brought into.
One time for English class, we were given an assignment called the Detailed Study. For this assignment, we had to pick an author and analyze their writing styles. I chose to focus on Marge Piercy because she’s an observer. She sits back and observes an object or something at its natural state. Here's a stanza she writes:
The bonsai tree
in the attractive pot
could have grown eighty feet tall
on the side of a mountain
till split by lightning.
This stanza teaches us that things don't always turn out as plan and that things aren't perfect even if we had envisioned them to be such. Marge Piercy help me to understand that even objects like the bonsai tree can't be perfect but the idea that it is living is the most important part.
Although things may not be perfect, I realized that I'm not perfect even in the way that I speak after completing my Language Auto-Biography assignment. In this essay, I wrote, I am from the roots of slang where we speak with emphasis and where you can only find the best cheesesteaks. This assignment made me realize that I wasn't perfect in the way that I speak. It made me understand that everyone has their own way of speaking whether its a different cultural language, an accent, or just a form of slang. After I analyzed myself, I knew that I wasn't perfect, but this wasn't something to make me feel less of myself. In fact, I felt better that I understood who I truly am. This assignment taught me that you don't have to be perfect nor does anything has to be perfect in order to unique.
Throughout my World History and English class I've learned many things that helped me realize that things in life aren't perfect. Here are a few more links to different assignments I've completed over the course of the year.
Manal Ali Sharit in comparison, was the ideal “Rosa Parks of Saudi Arabia.” She is a women's rights activist from Saudi Arabia who helped start a women's right to drive campaign in 2011. (Arab Spring Video Project)
It is unfair to be hypocritical to our allies and promise partnership but then slowly overrun its government. (OpEdAd)
My first sentence of my scene grabs the reader’s attention with no formal introduction.
(Descriptive Writing)
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