Unit 1 Group Projects

The question my group chose to respond to for Chapter 1 was, “How does school affect a child’s sense of who he or she is? Write an essay in which you evaluate the relationship between education and self-discovery.” To begin, I believe that school affects people in multiple different ways, as I’m sure most people believe. It affects them mentally, physically, and emotionally.

Mentally, school affects a student exactly as one would expect. At school, students are supposed to be learning, filling their brains with knowledge that isn’t always needed. I mean, very few students actually choose to become a mathematician but we still have to learn trigonometry in today’s new math system to graduate from high school. Then, of course, there is the extreme stress that schools are pressing onto the student’s shoulders. Studies say that stress levels in students are actually the same as psychiatric patients in the 1950s. This in turn causes depression and other serious mental health problems to rise in the younger generation, which also results in increased suicides. So, a lot of students decide to not try their hardest. Being as I was one of the students who didn’t try as hard as I could due to the fact that getting all A’s in high school was more stressful than it is now, I can tell you wholeheartedly that I am who I am now because I chose to go the route that wouldn’t give me serious mental health problems. Which could be a big deal for me, being as both sides of my family have different problems that could hurt me in the long run. I discovered that trying too hard was too stressful which helped me to discover exactly what my capacity for stress is, and I’m sure that the other students who didn’t try their hardest also discovered their own stress limits.

School can also help people find themselves physically though as well. When people think school, they think learning, but when I think school I think learning and then clothes. The newest fashion trends help people to fit in and make friends that also where the newest fashion trends, but what about the other people who don’t have the hottest fashion trends at their disposal? They become outcasts; tossed away by their peers as someone who can’t even dress right. So naturally, these thrown away outcasts become friends with each other and they make their own fashion trends. And clothing can tell you a lot about a person. It can tell you whether they have money, whether they are immature, or whether they just don’t care about materialistic things like clothes. But the things people wear tells exactly who they are. The outcasts that wear what they want are more unique and creative and don’t rely on other people. While the people that all wear the same exact clothes tend to follow and require help to go through their lives.

And emotionally school affects students as well. Though more in a social way than an education way. Your friends help you grow as a person, they help shape you into who you want to be with encouragement. And in turn you help shape your friends. Friends are an essential part of school that the older generations just don’t understand. I’d like to see one older person who got through school with zero friends and the greatest self-confidence one could have. Older generations now believe that school should only be a place of learning with no social aspects, but without our friends to help us when we don’t understand something, how else are we supposed to get through school? Plus, having friends means you won’t have to worry as much about bullying because true friends will protect you no matter what. And then there’s graduation. You and your friends are happy and excited to finally be out because “I did my waiting! Twelve years of it! In Azkaban!” (Harry Potter) In this case, Azkaban is school. But at the same time you’re going to miss the friends that helped and loved and protected you, and you’re going to miss those teachers that helped you realize that what you want to do in your career is art or theatre or english or biology. And you’re going to miss those amazing days at lunch just laughing with your friends, and doing and saying stupid things. People may hate school, but they always miss the amazing friends and the days you won’t see again. But this also shapes you into the person you will be in the future.

Basically, school is essential. People may not like it, but school shapes you into a semi-respectable person, then work shapes you more, and family, and friends. But without school, you wouldn’t know all the stuff one needs to get through life. All in all, school affects and shapes us in those three major ways.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The question my group chose for the second short essay is, “Can you convey in imaginative writing what you take to be ‘reality’? Try writing your own allegory of the cave, or of the beach, or of the lab, or of whatever scene allows you to clarify your thinking. What kinds of people mistake reality for something else? What distinguishes these people from those who see reality clearly?” For my allegory, I chose to do a rose garden.

Rose gardens; when I think of a rose garden, I think of lush red roses all trapped in their respective fences, but I also think of thorns. The roses start as buds, just as a life does. It's just a baby that needs nurturing and care to grow into its full potential. As the rose grows, its petals and leaves develop, its color becomes bolder, and it develops it's own self. But as the flower continues aging, it slowly starts to wither and wilt, and soon enough, it dies. It goes through this life cycle just as humans do, living as their ancestors have.

While the vines represent society itself. The flowers cover up the fact that society isn't all it's cut out to be. If you don't know what will happen if you pick a rose, you'll get bitten by its thorns. The beauty of the roses cover up the harshness of their home. And all these roses, all these societies, are put inside fenced in areas, aka countries. Some of these areas consist of only red roses. Others only yellow or only white. While few of these enclosed areas consist of all the different types of roses.

Some people, though, will see a rose and think to themselves, “That is beautiful.” And they will try to pick it. What happens, though, when they do this, is the flower’s vine pricks the person. Just as society does. If you don’t know how a society is--if nobody told you or didn’t have the common sense to look into the country--then you will get pricked. You will become stressed and nervous and end up with ailments that could only touch the people who didn’t know what would happen.

The way to distinguish these people from the other people around them, is the same as you would in the rose garden. If one of the roses in the garden is full grown and should be in full bloom but isn’t, then it will get snipped from the rest of the flowers around it. It is looked down upon as incorrect, not good enough to partake in its own society or any other societies.

And that is how reality is like a rose garden. The pain of the actual society is covered up by what we want society to be like and the people living in that society. Reality is harsh; it pricks the unbeknownst souls who didn’t know what would happen to them. And though some aspects of society is good, a lot of it isn’t.

#English2 #Spring2016