Adolescence Project
The adolescence project was about showing others what adolescence is like as well as gaining a greater understanding ourselves. Everyone in my class studied the development and general aspect of adolescence and how teens and the teenage brain works. We also talked about challenges that teenagers have like when we read a book called Diary of A Part Time Indian. We also created masks and essays that reflect the things we learned about adolescence and our personal and emotional experience with adolescence. Then our parents and other adults and even peers could read the essays and look and the masks and gain a greater perspective of the teenage years from our point of view.
Mask
This is the mask I created for my project the point of this mask is to convey a certain message I have about adolescence:
Mask
This is the mask I created for my project the point of this mask is to convey a certain message I have about adolescence:
My Adolescence Essay
Adolescence And Assignments
All throughout middle school I struggled with my grades. Honestly in high school I still do but I have found ways of working through it. I feel like in the middle school years of my life I did not really care or even have the motivation to care about my grades, and I believe that reflects negatively on the goals I have now. I feel like I have to re-learn so much from middle school. But let's face it during adolescence we all have our struggles. So let me give you an example of a struggle of mine in middle school. It was bright outside and the sun poured through the windows illuminating the bright colors of the classroom. The students sat tapping their pencils, maybe even looking at the clock, and others eyes locked on the teacher while she spoke in front of the class, we all sat there listening to my teacher introduce our big assignment. She walked across the classroom from table to table passing out the instructions. Once it got to me I looked down and my heart sunk. It was like that thing was looking back at me with a grin. Looking at the clock, not doing anything, taping my foot, still not doing anything, this was procrastination. I did this day after day until finally there I was sitting in front of the school computer. There right in front of me was my science write up which included not only the completion of an experiment of my own creation but an advanced and specific and detailed scientific lab report. And the only thing on my page was the little blinking mouse cursor, I looked to the right of my computer which was a rubric I did not understand, and then looked back at my blank document, and began to type. After a few long days of this, I sit in the same spot but this time my teacher comes to check on my progress. She bends down to the left of the computer and reads my hard work. She looks back and says why don't we meet tomorrow to work on this? The way she said it, there was only one explanation I could draw, I still have a lot of work to do. The truth is I was definitely right! But it's not only me with these struggles during adolescence, it's most teens.
An example of hard times as teens is that our brains go through a series of changes that cause us to present others with our teenage stereotypes. When we started studying adolescence we read a part of the book called the essence of adolescence. In this book, the author talks about these brain changes in adolescence (Daniel Siegal 7 - 8) The author says one of the changes is called novelty. This is when the adolescent brain has an increased drive for rewards. Novelty seeking can result in dangerous consequences because the sensation which is triggered in the brain is more present in adolescence, this is the increased drive for rewards which can cause dangerous behavior and a teen can end up in various troublesome and dangerous situations. But experiencing different situations and new things leads to learning new things just like an assignment. While working on something hard you learn a lot of things throughout the experience, both about the content of the work but also about yourself and what works for you and what doesn't. This is true for adolescence too and for novelty seeking because this change in our brains is what sparks new experiences and learning from them just like we learn from our work and our mistakes. But a lot of times it's important to have someone to help you through moments where you need it.
In my story, I needed help too. There were quite a few times where my teacher had to sit down with me and help me through this project. It usually went like this. I sat down at the school computers, took a deep breath, and then came my teacher from across the room. The only thing in the back of my head was that this was two weeks overdue. She sat down next to me and I showed her the document for the write-up. She would lean in towards the boxy computer and start reading. It only took her about 20 seconds to look back at me and suggest some change. I was not satisfied but yet I reached for the keyboard with intimidation in my fingers and included her suggestions. Looking back on this experience I was very worried about the due date, but during adolescence, there are a lot of things that we worry about. And even if I was kinda frustrated that I needed her help and she suggested so many things I had to change. I was grateful that I had someone to help.
Teens need someone to help. When you face hard times it's always better to have someone who can guide and work through them with you, right? Let me give you an example in the Essence Of Adolescence the author says: “Teens isolated from adults and surrounded by only other teens risk behavior and total rejection by adults” (Daniel Siegal 8) If adolescents accept adults help they can get through the hard times with positive lessons learned, if we accept their help we will stop separating ourselves. But adults need to understand the teens side too so both can understand each other and remove that disconnect. Adults now imagine you are an adolescent in today's world. You have the stress of school, you have the stress of parents and other adults and have to deal with the changes both within you and all around you, you are now exploring this newfound social engagement and are now navigating the teen social world. All these things are just a few of the stresses of an adolescent. This is where teens learn and grow when you take these risks during adolescence you will learn from your mistakes, when you have to deal with the teen stereotypes you will need to learn how to navigate the adults in your world which a lot of times can be very frustrating especially if you feel like you don't understand them, and on top that dealing with other stresses and feelings which you experience as a teen. I had someone to help me through a tough assignment just as other moments in adolescence. If you have trouble with adults, you can talk to your friends, and if you have problems with your friends you can talk to adults. That's why it's important to have someone help you so you can persevere through something hard, even from an adult, because like that quote says we need to take in the advice of adults and not continue isolating ourselves. But we also must take that advice in a way that works for you and learn to persevere through something and that can be achieved with help. This reminds me of the story I started with. I am looking at this story as an example of persevering through something and getting help. I persevered through a hard assignment. That's a simple example that I think almost everyone has gone through, and everyone has experienced. In the end, it felt really good to have accomplished something I thought I could not do. Even though my story is a small example, what about looking at perseverance in a greater sense? Like adolescence. When you go through adolescence, when you experience and learn from mistakes you will grow. Through all of the mistakes and risks and crazy moments.
Now after a lot of help and a lot of work. There I sat at that same old computer. As usual, my teacher walks over to me. I open my document and she reads it. Her eyes look back and forth, back and forth. Then she looks at me. Hmmm, she says I think you're done! Seriously? I say. As she walked away I looked at it one more time. I pressed the turn-in button and then looked back at it proudly.
Maybe it was not my best work ever, maybe it was days over the deadline, but I was done. I finished something I felt like I could not do, something that was really hard. Maybe I feel like I could totally do this now no problem, it was great to just have it done and be proud even if it is such a small thing. Another way I like to think of the stages of completing something is like when you are working through an essay, there are 3 stages which you mainly go through. Like writing anything for school, even a science write-up thing, there is a certain process which you need to do. The first thing I know that I do is write everything on the page as we talked about in class, the rough draft, like adolescence. These are the mistakes we make as we grow into adults. Secondly, you revise your work, you grow and learn from the mistakes you made in your first draft. And finally, you make your final draft where you have learned from the grammar errors and the bad writing, but every moment you work on it is a moment in which you are persevering through something hard. Both adolescence and a hard assignment are both like this, it's like a tree. It can be hard when you are climbing a branch, you have to move your feet so that they can clamp onto the tender bark, you have to reach your arms and wrap them around each branch, extend your hands to grasp hold of the tree. And with every branch, it takes more effort and more breath, adolescence is a very tall tree. Every branch is an experience that you have to persevere through, but the most rewarding part about climbing a tree is when you're at the top. When you are proud of yourself for all you completed, you can now see the world. But you have to make sure you enjoy climbing each branch because half the fun of climbing a tree is the way up.
Works Cited
Siegal, Daniel. Brainstorm: The Power and Purpose of the Teenage Brain. Jeremy B. Tarcher/Penguin, 2015, pp. 1-37.
All throughout middle school I struggled with my grades. Honestly in high school I still do but I have found ways of working through it. I feel like in the middle school years of my life I did not really care or even have the motivation to care about my grades, and I believe that reflects negatively on the goals I have now. I feel like I have to re-learn so much from middle school. But let's face it during adolescence we all have our struggles. So let me give you an example of a struggle of mine in middle school. It was bright outside and the sun poured through the windows illuminating the bright colors of the classroom. The students sat tapping their pencils, maybe even looking at the clock, and others eyes locked on the teacher while she spoke in front of the class, we all sat there listening to my teacher introduce our big assignment. She walked across the classroom from table to table passing out the instructions. Once it got to me I looked down and my heart sunk. It was like that thing was looking back at me with a grin. Looking at the clock, not doing anything, taping my foot, still not doing anything, this was procrastination. I did this day after day until finally there I was sitting in front of the school computer. There right in front of me was my science write up which included not only the completion of an experiment of my own creation but an advanced and specific and detailed scientific lab report. And the only thing on my page was the little blinking mouse cursor, I looked to the right of my computer which was a rubric I did not understand, and then looked back at my blank document, and began to type. After a few long days of this, I sit in the same spot but this time my teacher comes to check on my progress. She bends down to the left of the computer and reads my hard work. She looks back and says why don't we meet tomorrow to work on this? The way she said it, there was only one explanation I could draw, I still have a lot of work to do. The truth is I was definitely right! But it's not only me with these struggles during adolescence, it's most teens.
An example of hard times as teens is that our brains go through a series of changes that cause us to present others with our teenage stereotypes. When we started studying adolescence we read a part of the book called the essence of adolescence. In this book, the author talks about these brain changes in adolescence (Daniel Siegal 7 - 8) The author says one of the changes is called novelty. This is when the adolescent brain has an increased drive for rewards. Novelty seeking can result in dangerous consequences because the sensation which is triggered in the brain is more present in adolescence, this is the increased drive for rewards which can cause dangerous behavior and a teen can end up in various troublesome and dangerous situations. But experiencing different situations and new things leads to learning new things just like an assignment. While working on something hard you learn a lot of things throughout the experience, both about the content of the work but also about yourself and what works for you and what doesn't. This is true for adolescence too and for novelty seeking because this change in our brains is what sparks new experiences and learning from them just like we learn from our work and our mistakes. But a lot of times it's important to have someone to help you through moments where you need it.
In my story, I needed help too. There were quite a few times where my teacher had to sit down with me and help me through this project. It usually went like this. I sat down at the school computers, took a deep breath, and then came my teacher from across the room. The only thing in the back of my head was that this was two weeks overdue. She sat down next to me and I showed her the document for the write-up. She would lean in towards the boxy computer and start reading. It only took her about 20 seconds to look back at me and suggest some change. I was not satisfied but yet I reached for the keyboard with intimidation in my fingers and included her suggestions. Looking back on this experience I was very worried about the due date, but during adolescence, there are a lot of things that we worry about. And even if I was kinda frustrated that I needed her help and she suggested so many things I had to change. I was grateful that I had someone to help.
Teens need someone to help. When you face hard times it's always better to have someone who can guide and work through them with you, right? Let me give you an example in the Essence Of Adolescence the author says: “Teens isolated from adults and surrounded by only other teens risk behavior and total rejection by adults” (Daniel Siegal 8) If adolescents accept adults help they can get through the hard times with positive lessons learned, if we accept their help we will stop separating ourselves. But adults need to understand the teens side too so both can understand each other and remove that disconnect. Adults now imagine you are an adolescent in today's world. You have the stress of school, you have the stress of parents and other adults and have to deal with the changes both within you and all around you, you are now exploring this newfound social engagement and are now navigating the teen social world. All these things are just a few of the stresses of an adolescent. This is where teens learn and grow when you take these risks during adolescence you will learn from your mistakes, when you have to deal with the teen stereotypes you will need to learn how to navigate the adults in your world which a lot of times can be very frustrating especially if you feel like you don't understand them, and on top that dealing with other stresses and feelings which you experience as a teen. I had someone to help me through a tough assignment just as other moments in adolescence. If you have trouble with adults, you can talk to your friends, and if you have problems with your friends you can talk to adults. That's why it's important to have someone help you so you can persevere through something hard, even from an adult, because like that quote says we need to take in the advice of adults and not continue isolating ourselves. But we also must take that advice in a way that works for you and learn to persevere through something and that can be achieved with help. This reminds me of the story I started with. I am looking at this story as an example of persevering through something and getting help. I persevered through a hard assignment. That's a simple example that I think almost everyone has gone through, and everyone has experienced. In the end, it felt really good to have accomplished something I thought I could not do. Even though my story is a small example, what about looking at perseverance in a greater sense? Like adolescence. When you go through adolescence, when you experience and learn from mistakes you will grow. Through all of the mistakes and risks and crazy moments.
Now after a lot of help and a lot of work. There I sat at that same old computer. As usual, my teacher walks over to me. I open my document and she reads it. Her eyes look back and forth, back and forth. Then she looks at me. Hmmm, she says I think you're done! Seriously? I say. As she walked away I looked at it one more time. I pressed the turn-in button and then looked back at it proudly.
Maybe it was not my best work ever, maybe it was days over the deadline, but I was done. I finished something I felt like I could not do, something that was really hard. Maybe I feel like I could totally do this now no problem, it was great to just have it done and be proud even if it is such a small thing. Another way I like to think of the stages of completing something is like when you are working through an essay, there are 3 stages which you mainly go through. Like writing anything for school, even a science write-up thing, there is a certain process which you need to do. The first thing I know that I do is write everything on the page as we talked about in class, the rough draft, like adolescence. These are the mistakes we make as we grow into adults. Secondly, you revise your work, you grow and learn from the mistakes you made in your first draft. And finally, you make your final draft where you have learned from the grammar errors and the bad writing, but every moment you work on it is a moment in which you are persevering through something hard. Both adolescence and a hard assignment are both like this, it's like a tree. It can be hard when you are climbing a branch, you have to move your feet so that they can clamp onto the tender bark, you have to reach your arms and wrap them around each branch, extend your hands to grasp hold of the tree. And with every branch, it takes more effort and more breath, adolescence is a very tall tree. Every branch is an experience that you have to persevere through, but the most rewarding part about climbing a tree is when you're at the top. When you are proud of yourself for all you completed, you can now see the world. But you have to make sure you enjoy climbing each branch because half the fun of climbing a tree is the way up.
Works Cited
Siegal, Daniel. Brainstorm: The Power and Purpose of the Teenage Brain. Jeremy B. Tarcher/Penguin, 2015, pp. 1-37.
Project Reflection
I grew as a writer in this project. Creating the adolescence essay was a hard task for me because I am not very good at including evidence in academic writing. I find it difficult and overwhelming because it usually creates a break in my thinking and it usually confuses me when I have to relate a topic to something completely different. In this essay I talked alot about the adolescent brain which was information that came from a chapter of a book we read for an assignment. I found myself constantly referring and paraphrasing from this book and it was a challenge to translate the information from there to my essay. But I actually learned a lot from this and was able to have strong evidence in my essay. You could tell from all the previous essays my evidence was not as strong simply because it did not involve actual information from a text (it was more almost made up but still factual). However in this essay you could tell the evidence was stronger.
I also grew in my story telling. Here is an example of how I started my story in my first draft: When I was in middle school I remember very specifically I had one experience with this science project, which was a big deal grade that I needed to pass my science class. As I wrote more I eventually created much better stories from draft to draft but I think this example is the most dramatic change. Here is the beginning of my story in my final draft: It was bright outside and the sun poured through the windows illuminating the bright colors of the classroom. The students sat tapping their pencils, maybe even looking at the clock, and others eyes locked on the teacher while she spoke in front of the class, we all sat there listening to my teacher introduce our big assignment. I think I grew as a writer in many ways but I think I grew the most in showing and not telling, as well as just improving my story telling in general. There is a large difference between how I started my story in my first draft and what it looks like in my second draft. I am really happy how my second draft story turned out. I am also happy I was able to figure out how to have a strong analysis of my topics. These are really important skills that I would like to continue to cultivate in further writing projects.
I had a major takeaway from this project which came from the exhibition. There is one story I would like to tell that explains this takeaway. At the exhibition I was going over the different parts of the labeled brain poster my group had created for a presentation at the exhibition. Ande eventually came to talk to me as the crowds visiting started to die down. And he asked me what my biggest takeaway from my project was. I did not know how to respond because I wasn't really sure. Ande said as a teenager it was relieving to him to know that bad decisions are just a result of our brain still not being developed. But at the same time it still feels overbearing that your decisions might be labeled as bad just because you're a teenager, even if it is not. After having this conversation, I realized that this whole talk was my big takeaway, what Ande said had crossed my mind but when he said it, it totally made sense to me. I think this perspective is a really interesting way to think about adolescence, and I like how it requires deeper thought. This idea transformed how I think of adolescence and myself because it makes me think, huh am I not capable of making good decisions because I'm a teenager? Is this the reason teenagers do things like drink and do stuff like that? Questions like this filled my head and in a way led to a greater perspective of adolescence.
I have grown as a student in terms of how much work I am able to take at once. At the beginning of the first semester just doing one assignment was overwhelming. As the semester progressed it grew to taking me 2 and eventually 3 assignments before it got to be too much. I feel like as this process of resisting my work less and less went on I was able to be more predictive. I still feel like I have a lower work tolerance than I should but I feel I have grown in this area. An example of this was my writing throughout the semester. On my first reflection I did, which was my first piece of writing this year, I did not do very well. But in my last essay I feel like I did really well, at least in terms of the quality of my academic writing. I felt really good about this and it continued to build my work ethic. But I sure hope that I am able to continue to build that tolerance as the year progresses.
For my exhibition group I did brain development, and I feel like I was a good participant in the group. It was only me and one other person, so it created more work for both of us. I know I was confused during this project because I was not able to find much information about the brain related to adolescence beyond the frontal lobe. This was an issue because the project we were creating was location specific. It ended up not being, but the lack of information pushed my group into a small window of time before the exhibition to finish this project. Eventually Lori helped me find an article and this allowed us to have the proper information we needed to finish the project. This is why I feel like a good group member because I was able to get all the information we needed and work hard during the time crunch which contributed to the overall success of the exhibition. If I were to do this project again I would have asked Lori to help earlier and have took time constraints more seriously. I think that I had a good group and I am happy that we ended up creating a cool project.
I grew as a writer in this project. Creating the adolescence essay was a hard task for me because I am not very good at including evidence in academic writing. I find it difficult and overwhelming because it usually creates a break in my thinking and it usually confuses me when I have to relate a topic to something completely different. In this essay I talked alot about the adolescent brain which was information that came from a chapter of a book we read for an assignment. I found myself constantly referring and paraphrasing from this book and it was a challenge to translate the information from there to my essay. But I actually learned a lot from this and was able to have strong evidence in my essay. You could tell from all the previous essays my evidence was not as strong simply because it did not involve actual information from a text (it was more almost made up but still factual). However in this essay you could tell the evidence was stronger.
I also grew in my story telling. Here is an example of how I started my story in my first draft: When I was in middle school I remember very specifically I had one experience with this science project, which was a big deal grade that I needed to pass my science class. As I wrote more I eventually created much better stories from draft to draft but I think this example is the most dramatic change. Here is the beginning of my story in my final draft: It was bright outside and the sun poured through the windows illuminating the bright colors of the classroom. The students sat tapping their pencils, maybe even looking at the clock, and others eyes locked on the teacher while she spoke in front of the class, we all sat there listening to my teacher introduce our big assignment. I think I grew as a writer in many ways but I think I grew the most in showing and not telling, as well as just improving my story telling in general. There is a large difference between how I started my story in my first draft and what it looks like in my second draft. I am really happy how my second draft story turned out. I am also happy I was able to figure out how to have a strong analysis of my topics. These are really important skills that I would like to continue to cultivate in further writing projects.
I had a major takeaway from this project which came from the exhibition. There is one story I would like to tell that explains this takeaway. At the exhibition I was going over the different parts of the labeled brain poster my group had created for a presentation at the exhibition. Ande eventually came to talk to me as the crowds visiting started to die down. And he asked me what my biggest takeaway from my project was. I did not know how to respond because I wasn't really sure. Ande said as a teenager it was relieving to him to know that bad decisions are just a result of our brain still not being developed. But at the same time it still feels overbearing that your decisions might be labeled as bad just because you're a teenager, even if it is not. After having this conversation, I realized that this whole talk was my big takeaway, what Ande said had crossed my mind but when he said it, it totally made sense to me. I think this perspective is a really interesting way to think about adolescence, and I like how it requires deeper thought. This idea transformed how I think of adolescence and myself because it makes me think, huh am I not capable of making good decisions because I'm a teenager? Is this the reason teenagers do things like drink and do stuff like that? Questions like this filled my head and in a way led to a greater perspective of adolescence.
I have grown as a student in terms of how much work I am able to take at once. At the beginning of the first semester just doing one assignment was overwhelming. As the semester progressed it grew to taking me 2 and eventually 3 assignments before it got to be too much. I feel like as this process of resisting my work less and less went on I was able to be more predictive. I still feel like I have a lower work tolerance than I should but I feel I have grown in this area. An example of this was my writing throughout the semester. On my first reflection I did, which was my first piece of writing this year, I did not do very well. But in my last essay I feel like I did really well, at least in terms of the quality of my academic writing. I felt really good about this and it continued to build my work ethic. But I sure hope that I am able to continue to build that tolerance as the year progresses.
For my exhibition group I did brain development, and I feel like I was a good participant in the group. It was only me and one other person, so it created more work for both of us. I know I was confused during this project because I was not able to find much information about the brain related to adolescence beyond the frontal lobe. This was an issue because the project we were creating was location specific. It ended up not being, but the lack of information pushed my group into a small window of time before the exhibition to finish this project. Eventually Lori helped me find an article and this allowed us to have the proper information we needed to finish the project. This is why I feel like a good group member because I was able to get all the information we needed and work hard during the time crunch which contributed to the overall success of the exhibition. If I were to do this project again I would have asked Lori to help earlier and have took time constraints more seriously. I think that I had a good group and I am happy that we ended up creating a cool project.
Model UN Project
The purpose of the model United Nations unit was to learn about and collectively solve the Afghanistan Humanitarian crisis, which is a current issue in todays world. Each person took on the task of becoming a delegate for a country in a model United Nations conference, which was our exhibition to show off our understanding of the topic. Before the conference everyone studied their specific country which they were assigned and were asked to convey their nations perspective in the conference. I personally was responsible for representing the United Kingdom. I really enjoyed researching and representing this country in the unit because it was interesting to see how other nations form their perspective of a crisis.
We had to create a policy paper which would prepare us as delegates, this helped us state our countries intentions and polices. I will link this document in a button below. I will also include one for my reflection where I elaborate more about this project and my personal experience with it.
We had to create a policy paper which would prepare us as delegates, this helped us state our countries intentions and polices. I will link this document in a button below. I will also include one for my reflection where I elaborate more about this project and my personal experience with it.
Sophomore Inspire Week
Sophomore inspire week was a really cool experience where students did various community service projects within the city of Durango. I participated in a group who went to a place called Weaselskin Equestrian Center. Most of the community service options were more project based by that I mean with an end result they were working towards. The equine center was more focused on intensive community work to better the overall workings of the farm. We spent time caring for animals (mostly horses) as well as completing various farm chores. I played my part in the community service by being an active participant along with my group as we completed the hard work. We all had fun got very dirty and enjoyed the outdoors as we completed the various small projects, like fencing, feeding horses, farm chores, and organization.
I wrote a reflection for my community service project below. This reflection will give more details and insights into my experience.
I wrote a reflection for my community service project below. This reflection will give more details and insights into my experience.
Poetry Project-
In this project we learned all about poetry and the poetic devices and skills needed to create a powerful and impactful poem. We were tasked with creating various poems throughout the unit each with the goal to put the skills we have learned to test. For our final project we needed to each make an individual poem where we go through a critiquing and draft writing process to create a piece we are proud of. In this poem we used what we learned about poetry. we then had to make that poem into a impactful presentation of some kind in my case I did a video where I added images to my poem.
Spring To winter
Spring brings new meanings
The young expand their field of vision as they grow from blurry to clear
They learn how to walk
And they learn how to run
Like a rhythm of life
Like wind blowing across a open field there is slight noise in silence
Deep blue water sparkles in the sunlight
Like a wave crashing on a timid shore
Where people sit filling their toes with sand
And on a toasty day under the restful willow
As you grow and play, right beside is a riverway
Grass fills every crevice as you roll from the hill
But soon the summer light turns to fall dusk
As the days grow slower
Fall colors fill the skies
Bright colored leaves are seen across forests and fields
When you are a child and you jump in a pile of leaves
It fills your cloths with joyous messes
But as you grow its your turn to make the leaf pile
If you choose to rake or choose to let the mess stay still
Do you take advantage of the pretty colors or let them go
And after the summer sun turns to the winter clouds
A chill carries the tempo of a old winter day
Like a bear going back into hibernation
It closes its eyes to the old way
Snow covered pines cast a chilly gust
Across the closing flowers
Wind is like a breath of life moving under the winter sun
Spring always comes again
Like buds reopening on trees
Like birds finding their way back home
They have to build a new nest from sticks of the past
The chilly refilled with the warmth of a new time of year
Artist statement-
Christopher Bonde
My first step in the process of creating my poem was to brainstorm an idea for a message. It was challenging for me to brainstorm ideas on what that message would be. Eventually, I had a rough idea of a positive message I could communicate through my poem. My inspiration was to talk about nature and this eventually led me to talk about the seasons. Unfortunately, the idea was too basic. I realized this because at the time we did a lesson in class about “duh topics”, topics that did not have a deep. The idea of nature and seasons was just a “duh perspective” as there was no deeper thought-provoking idea behind it. This led me to the next step in my brainstorming process, I took the idea of seasons and gave it an underlying meaning which was that each season is a stage of life. So with each stage of life, there are emotions and experiences I hope to provoke through the imagery of the change in emotion within seasons.
I want people to take the topic I have and be able to apply their own meaning to it. After the challenging step of brainstorming meanings, I entered a more tough stage of creating the rough draft. My original outline was very vague and too open-ended. It actually had a rhyme scheme which was less prevalent in my later drafts. I was not necessarily proud of this draft, so I kept working. Eventually, I revised that draft, but found it was going nowhere, so I began to reformat my poem. I structured it in a new way where the stanzas were shorter and more clear, which was important because the clarity of the message was hard to find in my first couple of drafts. The simplification of the poem included cutting a lot and only including lines I more or less liked. This really helped me to create a more flowing piece. Soon after I went on to make my second to last draft, which in my opinion is where I made the most progress and also included more lines to really emphasize the idea of the poem and create more imagery. This draft also included fixing a lot of spelling errors.
It was relieving to create a draft I felt a lot better about since throughout the process I felt unsure about how much I liked my theme. I took this draft and presented it to a critique group in which I used the advice to finalize my poem. I really tried to emphasize imagery that captures the moments we remember in life. My hope is that people will find their own way to connect with the poem. I hope they will see the world around them in a new light by thinking about how life is delicate and how things are beautiful, just like nature and the process of life. Whether it's the moving seasons or the moving stages of life. My intention is that people can connect with childhood and positive emotions throughout. I enjoyed learning how to make a poem and poetic devices.
I hope people can find the same sense of joy through experiencing this poem.
Growth As a Poet Reflection
At first the perspective that I was trying to convey in my poem was vague, the message was less thought out and gave a less emotional impact. Eventually my poem grew from kind of boring to more sophisticated. An example of this is the line I included in my first draft “The wind blows the breath of life across a valley of trees, glistening in the spring sun” While this line communicates the message it lacks the emotional connection. From my final draft here is what this line looks like “Like wind blowing across an open field there is slight noise in silence” This line not only brings you into the poem by imagery sparking imagination it gives you that feeling to connect with emotionally. This is what helped with my perspective and message. I was able to show the power of every line through improvement of my wording and imagery to effectively create a more impactful meaning and perspective.
One of the most important changes I made to my poem was changing the length of the stanzas and individual lines. In my very first draft my poem was way too much. Every line was long and confusing, and made the poem very monotonous. While the reason I did this was to create an effective rhyme scheme, unfortunately it was still not very prevalent (or noticeable) in the draft. It took me some time to realize how much of an issue this was and finally by poem draft 4 I extensively recreated my poem, I deleted lines that were long, pointless, and that did not contribute to the poem, and wrote new lines to match this criteria. For example in my first draft my first two lines looked like the following: “ The wind blows the breath of life across a valley of trees, glistening in the spring sun, a tender fawn moves its hoofs into the dirt of a brand new day”. However in my 4th draft here is what my first two lines looked like “Spring brings new meanings, Infants expand their field of vision as they grow from blurry to clear” It is clear to see how much better and how much simpler the lines have become. The switch from wild animals to infants (humans which we are) became more relatable. So now on this draft the improvement I made was visually clear. The poem's flow and message were much more apparent after this change, the lines were shorter, and the rhyme scheme had been mostly eliminated leaving more room for creativity in the poem. The shift between draft one and draft 4 was very major and is a really good example of how my poem grew, this change is what took the poem from ok to a whole lot better, and though it is hard to tell how drastically my poem changed between the two drafts simply giving quotes if you read though these two drafts it would be very noticeable. The change made it better for the reader to feel and connect with the message I am trying to convey because it is easier to process and understand once something is simplified it leaves you with more to wonder and triggers the intellectual side of your brain more. Much like how simplification can clear some of the blurriness of the things we wonder about and open the doors for us to emotionally connect with a piece. So I think by making this change I have opened doors to these experiences within my poem.
Another very important change I made was including more relatable imagery. At first the imagery I had was partly there but was not very relatable for example in my first draft “Sometimes the days may be hot, but cooling comes as you make your way” This line emphasizes a point I want you to take away from my poem, but it does not give you something to feel and relate to. I changed this line and in my final poem draft this is what it was: “Grass fills every crevice as you roll from the hill”. This is a lot cleaner and more reliable. It creates imagery that you can feel which is the biggest impact a reader receives. The imagery changed the emotional impact by creating this feeling. So I think this change as well as other changes I made to improve my imagery improve my poem because it gives the poem an emotional aspect as opposed to just being told what the poem means directly. It adds more depth to my writing while keeping the poem simple. So now intellectually this change gives you something to think about and feel. It improves my poem because it gives a feeling of nostalgia which is important when talking about the stages of life which is key to my message. When the reader gets this feeling where they can relate to the poem through imagery I think it gives them more to like about it, and by making this change I think it positively impacts the reader in this way.
My final and one of the biggest changes I made to my poem was adding a final stanza. At first my poem felt like it was cut off and needing something to tie up the cycle of life aspect I included. So after the critique stage of my poem I learned from other people's feedback that I needed to add this. This change actually ended up being a nice addition and improved my poem because it added a powerful way to close which impacts the message the reader is left with which is really important. You can see evidence of this though the last line that I originally ended my poem with which was “Wind is like a breath of life moving under the winter sun” But now my last few lines in the new stanza I added were “ Like birds finding their way back home, they have to build a new nest from sticks of the past, the chilly refilled with the warmth of a new time of year.” It is very apparent how much better the last few lines were after adding a closing stanza it offers closure to the ongoing change of seasons. Adding this line gives a powerful emotional tone which helps close my poem in a memorable way because it gives you more to think about intellectually and gives the reader a way to process the emotions they felt in the poem while creating more emotion as the poem ends. Overall making this change drastically makes my poem better simply because it completes the cycle I was aiming for in a way that is impactful.