Mental Health Documentary

Where I created this was in my head, the questions I asked were what I would’ve thought to ask myself if I was in lock down. These questions are made for everyone, since everyone is different. I created this was with my friends, I wanted to do a person to person interview, but unfortunately due to COVID 19, that wasn’t possible. Mental health relates to this usual year because everyone was battling great loss in the country. Love ones were at risk of getting the most contagious viruses, not to able to see your friends or family either. Dealing with wearing masks, doing mostly everything virtual, that’s a lot for the mind. It’s important to make sure that were mentally doing okay this this crazy year, so many ups and downs through the year, we need to be positive about it! So that’s why mental health is so important when these stressful events happen, it’s important to say, “Hey I’m here for you”.

Quarantine 2020

This piece of work was produced over a span of a month, from end of september to the end of october. I didn’t have to travel anywhere to create my work, I was able to use the pictures that I had taken over quarantine. I also didn’t have to take any new pictures. I used google slides and WeVideo to create this piece of work. I first put all the pictures I had on slides then I filmed myself presenting the slides. I created this piece of work because I wanted to show the good things in 2020 that happened in my life. I wanted to show that the good outweighs the bad things that happened. This piece of artwork very obviously relates to your theme of being a teenager during 2020 because i’m a teen and I talked about things that I did this year. I experienced it all.

Room Quarantining

IMG-3701
IMG-3701

This year has been really hard on all of us. During this time in quarantine, Many people have been doing so many different things to cope or to keep themselves busy to not worry too much or be bored. Some people like being inside more than others and some people even like it better than not being in quarantine, but I think for most people I know this is not the case. These past few weeks of November there have been a rise in COVID cases where I live which is scary but I understand why. I’m not saying that it’s smart or the right thing to do, but I understand where it’s coming from. I would have probably done the same thing if it weren’t for my parents (who are on the older side). I try to keep myself distracted while I’m not talking to people so I don’t get super lonely, but the things I do seem really pointless and there’s not much of a sense of fulfillment when I complete them. One of my hobbies that I do enjoy and that I do get fulfillment out of is drawing. So I decided to draw how I feel and what I do with visual images to show what It’s like for someone like me to be in quarantine. This drawing is a watercolor and pencil drawing of my room. I chose to make it a really purple theme because I think purple is a sad color, not as sad as blue but more a peaceful kind of sad. It shows how quarantine has really made me think about being alone.The yellow coming in from the window and the hanging moon are symbolic of how my sleep schedule is so messed up. My sleep schedule was never that great to begin with, but over quarantine it’s gotten so bad that I sometimes sleep during the day and am awake the whole night. I’ve heard that I am also not the only one thrown off their sleeping schedule. I believe that many people are struggling to keep pushing through quarantine and don’t have a solution yet. I don’t have that solution. But just know that there’s others who are feeling the same as me and I’m not alone in this.

The 2020 Experience

I made this project in my office, aka my bedroom. When I heard about this project from my English teacher I immediately knew I would write about my problems with 2020. My project is about my own experiences being a teenager in 2020. I don’t really have much to say in this artist’s statement. Though I wish the word limit for the project wasn’t so low. I think I could’ve written more descriptively. But anyway thanks for the chance to express myself in this essay. I hope you enjoy it.

How My Brothers Arrest Changed Me

I started to write this piece sometime around the end of October. I worked on it in my home because I don’t go to in-person school anymore. I wrote it on a laptop often with my dog’s snout getting in the way.

My writing relates to being a teenager during this year because nowadays most teens that I know have strong opinions about my topic which is racial injustice and police brutality. I thought sharing my experience would show people that teenagers are aware of police brutality and the broken justice system. We teenagers are angry with how police are handling things. We want to see things change.

I don’t want to live in a world where as a person of color I have to keep my hood down, my hands out of my pockets and my eyes on the ground. That is why I wrote this piece.

Coming of Age

A tough year to grow up in

So for this project it was kind of hard for me to spend time. I usually worked on it during English class and only sometimes after. I think the reason I had bad time management was because of work from other classes and a little bit of procrastination. Other than not working on it, this project wasn’t too hard. I did have some difficulties writing it though. The biggest problem was the word limit. I had to cut down lots of words because I did not know there was a word limit. I had about 900 words before I cut it down to 450. I wrote all of this in my room at my desk. It was a perfect place to write it and I felt very relaxed.

I decided to write in essay form because that was probably the best way to express myself. I could write everything that happened to me with words to express my feelings and emotions. It was hard to keep it under the word limit because so much has happened this year. I basically put everything that was important to me though. I am very happy with how this turned out because it gave me the opportunity to write my feelings and it gave me a better understanding as to how this year has been. It definitely helped me relieve stress by talking about this year.

In conclusion, This project helped me see the bad side of this year but also the good side. I had a lot of happy thoughts when writing this because it made me remember early quarantine. It’s odd to feel “nostalgic” about the early months of this year but I do. I am happy with this project and I hope other people like it as well. Thank you for this opportunity.

English benchmark

COVID Climb - Adrie Young

COVID Climb

School has always included a lot of social activity. Rock climbing, on the other hand, is more of a solo sport because, while I work with teammates, I only rely on myself when I’m on the wall.

When COVID hit, school transitioned to online, and I lost touch with a lot of my classmates. As an eighth grader in a K-8 school, my last real school day with the classmates I’d been with for nine years came and went without any of us realizing. Our big eighth grade trip to Costa Rica, which we’d all been looking forward to since kindergarten, got cancelled. While normally I would have celebrated graduation next to all of my classmates following meaningful traditions, I instead spent the day squished into my living room couch in front of a screen with only my family.

Climbing was almost the complete opposite. An activity I’d always done for myself became one of my only ways to see people face-to-face. Though my climbing gym shut down, I was able to spend time rock climbing outdoors safely with friends.

During the summer, I played digital games with my friends, went to zoom calls with my family, participated in remote camps, and even had an online summer institute for my new school. But through all of this, climbing was a constant, and a way to see people in-person.

I created my project on Adobe Spark. This layout makes it easy to weave pictures and text together. It controls the photos people look at so they see one at a time and it is clear what text goes with which photo. I used images I took during the pandemic, but I wrote this piece specifically for this submission.

Recently, it’s been easy to focus on only the bad. Yes, I missed out on the last three months I’d ever have at my school, my entire summer was upended, and I had to venture into a new high school remotely. But I was still able to do the sport I love and use that activity to see my friends. Through these hectic and overwhelming times, climbing has truly been my rock - no pun intended.

A Letter to 2020 Poem

When creating my poem, I sat on my bed, the place where I spent majority of my 2020 year. It was at night when the idea struck me that I should do a poem since I have a nice interest into that type of literature. Every thought and feeling I could pull from my brain of how 2020 went made its way onto my computer as I typed. Struggling with mental health, BLM movements, and of course the pandemic. As a teen I have a lot going on for me and the world most likely already has one story stereotypes on teens. We have a voice that needs to be heard by everyone. From ideas of how to fix schools to how to help our community. We can stand hand in hand (Figuratively because of the pandemic) and help our world with each step we take. But for that to happen we need everyone’s voice heard. My poem relates to the theme of being a teen in the year of 2020 because during quarantine a lot of people changed and a lot of teens have either become mature or struggling with mental health problems. It also talks about the BLM movement within this year and how as teens we can help. Overall, my poem shows that as teens we should not be overlooked because we can do so much more than what others think

Coming Of Age NY Times 2020 Fanta Dukuly (1)

Sleepless Nights

final project
final project

I started this piece halfway through October and finished it on 11/11. I used an application called Krita to create it. This piece shows a lot of my experience with 2020, especially the pandemic. It shows how schools closed and I had to take learning virtually, how I slowly started getting disconnected from friends, and the insomnia I suddenly had to deal with. And during those sleepless nights, I would think. I would think about the time when I could go to school and see my friends every day, about the time where I could go in public not having to worry about what I’m touching and breathing, about the time when people didn’t seem so divided, but most of all, about the time when everything was alright. These sleepless nights lasted forever, every time leaving me more empty than the last. And the moment everything turned completely dark, the sun would rise. Every day the sun kept rising and that would keep me going. A new day meant a new opportunity. The sun would always remind me of how beautiful the world is and it would push me to keep going, to see what the future holds for me.

My Covid story

I started this project when it was assigned in my english class during the first month of my freshman year. It was a wild first year project but I expect nothing less from 2020. I created this piece in Philadelphia and the entirety of the story takes place here in philly, my home. The beginning of this pandemic started almost a year ago now so it’s hard to pin point exactly how my story began, but I can safely say it started as any normal cliche pandemic movie or book starts. “I never expected it to end up like this, but I guess we just didn’t want to think what this plaque could really turn out to be” Type Deal. If it wasn’t already obvious as to how my story relates to this, this story reflects on my thoughts and experiences during the pandemic. It encompasses the coming weeks before lockdown and how my school reacted to these sudden closings of schools through out the district.

My Covid Story

Dear Maple Amber Wood Guitar

Dear Maple amberwood guitar, I never knew I could be so infatuated and in love with music until I met you. Maybe it was when you caught my eye in the corner of that guitar shop, with your handsome honey like gloss an

When I was younger, I wanted to be a rock star. I wanted to be a teenage rock star living a double life. But here I am now, a teenager, living in a time during covid-19. I decided to write a love letter to my electric guitar because when I think about covid, the first thing that comes to mind is growth. I feel like in some ways my electric guitar has taught me so many things. It taught me to find beauty in a hopeless place. When covid first hit the world, I was terrified. I would sit at home overthinking everything. Over thinking about death, my family and friends, and thinking about everything that can go wrong. I have really bad anxiety and usually how I cope with it is by hanging out with my friends, but now with covid, I can’t escape. There was no one I could turn to and covid was was corrupting my mind. This was also the time when I haven’t played my electric guitar for a little over a year. I remember I’ve always been interested in music, ever since I was about two years old. When I decided to learn electric guitar, I was so passionate about it I would put all my time and energy into learning new songs and melodies. But once school started, my electric guitar was left untouched. I wanted my letter to capture how much music helped me get through these hard times that were extremely rough for me. My passion will always be my safe place, and covid really amplified that hypothesis making it more true every single day. When I first played my electric guitar during quarantine, I was really rusty. I was so focused on getting it right that I perfected a song in one sitting. I wasn’t thinking about covid for the first time ever. I was at peace for the first time in forever and that’s when I realized that music was truly my first love. When I was younger, I wanted to be a rock star. But who would have thought that I would just be a normal teenager, playing her maple amber wood guitar in a world full of catastrophe. So if I ever fulfill my childhood dream of being a rock star, thank you covid for helping me fall so deeply in love with music all over again.

6 Feet Apart

SofiaRahmanComingofAgeIn2020
SofiaRahmanComingofAgeIn2020

I don’t think anyone imagined 2020 being like this, keeping 6 feet apart from each other, not having normal in-person classes, and staying inside almost all day. Along with a pandemic, the crumbling of the rest of the world & economy is there too. In this image, my mom and my younger brother are standing apart from each other while wearing masks. I decided to take this photograph at a school that’s been under construction since I was young, since it shows how things take a long time to be repaired. This school is walking distance from my home. I have seen this building almost every single day on my way home, and I’ve always wondered when it would finally be finished. The day I took this picture, I actually saw a construction worker’s car leaving the premises. Finally, this place is being fixed up!

I know things take a while to be put back together if they are deeply damaged. For example, people are fighting for their religions, their people, their rights, and themselves. People are making their points through actions instead of words. The BLM movement has been a really big part of 2020, and to make change, some people would loot businesses. I live in West Philadelphia, and some places that were raided and looted happened very close to my home; this hurts, because these are places the community go to shop and live their daily lives. It brings sadness that people have to show their feelings through this type of action. If nobody listens, they have to take action. Still, my family supports this movement, because equality between all races is right, and everyone should be treated as an equal no matter their status, skin color, or ethnicity.

When I took this picture, the weather was chilly, and the sky wasn’t as bright, which caused the color of the image to be more dull. I was satisfied with this, because this year hasn’t been very bright from the pandemic and the personal and political conflicts we’ve faced. It has been a year for change and coming together, and hopefully things will be fixed so we can live normally next year. 2020 has been a building that’s been in repair for far too long, and slowly we’re working together to put it back together.

Our skin, their fear

Our skin, their fear

This piece of writing was created on Wednesday, November 11th at 10:00pm. I created this piece on a laptop at home, with the help of google docs. I made this piece come to life, by applying my thoughts and feelings into a brief, yet powerful, essay. My writing relates to the theme of being a teenager during this tumultuous year, because I was able to dive down into the core of a topic that’s not being talked about as much as it should. This topic of racism is being ignored, yet pushed to the point where people want it to be forgotten: ignored. Being a teenager in this generation is not as easy as one may think. There are a lot of consequences, injustices, oppression, chaos, and much more that my generation faces. I have chosen to use my voice to speak on something that others may fear to speak on; afraid of the threats and hatred that will be planted onto them making the eyes of the oppressor watch them. I have decided to speak on the world pandemic, no not the coronavirus but the other racism. I want you and others to know that BLM is more than a trend, that we are just as worthy as our oppressors.

Dear Mr.President

Dear Mr.President

I started this Contest I wanna say in early October for a school project. I worked on it, really the only place I could right now, at home. I was originally going to do an essay but then it started to become mostly informational and not my feeling, which isn’t how I wanted it to turn out. So I did a letter (as you can tell) because I felt like I could really put in information and then mold my feelings around it without sounding so formal. Instead of completely focusing on how 2020 has affected me (Gen Z) I chose to write about the ways that Donald Trump has handled 2020 and how that has affected me (Gen Z). The way he has handled 2020 has not only affected out now but also our future. That’s really an awful thing. If things like corona had been handled with more care so many would still be alive and we wouldn’t be in the place we are in now. If he had just taken one second to actually hear what we have to say about police brutality then maybe, just maybe it would have gotten just a little bit better.

SORRY, COULD YOU SAY THAT AGAIN?

The pandemic has been an emotional ride. And since so much emotion can be shown in music, I wanted to make a dynamic composition that represented my own feelings throughout these past months. The beginning of my song represents “normal” life. For this, I took one of the most common “pop” chord progressions: I-V-vi-IV, and played a basic rhythm on guitar, with some simple drums. It’s a boring, basic resting place, but we accept it as normal. I then abruptly cut the intro so the happy music spins down and is replaced by distorted drums and a mood of confusion. This is the time of chaos where the song creates a “wait, what?” feeling, like when I suddenly couldn’t go to school or see my friends. After this section it switches to an uncertain mood. In the beginning of the pandemic during lockdown, I remember my parents being scared that they or our friends were going to get COVID. I remember sitting on the couch and feeling like all of the chaos was circling around me and I was just confused. I didn’t understand what was really happening, to be honest I was just inconvenienced. At the end of the third section it starts to speed up, creating a very unpleasant feeling. Each bar the tempo increases which makes me feel really unsettled, and reflects the weird “what?” moments of the pandemic. The fast tempo also creates a scared feeling. I remember being out in public with my parents around people, and finally being really scared. I was scared that my family was going to get COVID and I couldn’t stand that. At the end of my song I took the opening guitar, but reversed it to make it sound sadder and more emotional. I also pitched it up to create a kind of spooky uncanny feeling. What we’re in now is like a mixed up, reversed way of normal life. I go to virtual school and everywhere with a mask. This is our “new normal,” and I’ve fallen into a new rhythm.

Lost of Time

Lost of Time- Tina Zou

My concept is that we have so much time being trapped at home but once you start to think about it, you can’t recall what you’ve done. It’s like it never happened. I am a reflective person and when I can’t remember what I did today, then did today even happen? Everyone is in quarantine nowadays, so there is more time to reflect on yourself. It’s not something many people do on a day to day basis. Then there’s other things going on and it makes it even harder to focus on yourself but then we can’t block out everything and pretend it’s not happening. Sometimes it’s like we have nowhere to run. It feels as if this is never going to end. It’s been hard to constantly have a positive mindset being thrown into a situation like this. As a freshman, I lost my chance of making friends and walking into my school to meet all my kind teachers. I’m stuck with awkward zoom calls everyday with people that I never met before. I definitely know I’m not the only one that is going through this. I have a sister in senior year and she lost her homecoming. It was something she was looking forward to and I bet many others were too. We are all at loss. We can only go up from here. We all know social media has been a lifesaver during this crisis but it’s not always as helpful. Social media has definitely gone more toxic during this time period. We are all constantly breathing down each other’s throats trying to find some sort of drama or entertainment, and if there isn’t any, make some. For me personally, I have seen toxicity gone up and it has affected me. Teens of our generation rule social media. If someone is not as educated then that’s their problem but once they bring it to a platform and speak about false claims, it’s everyone’s problem now. It’s just if you engage or not. I wanted to write about our “loss” time because it’s not something people think about. I believe we can all be productive during this crisis in our own ways but sitting there isn’t going to help. Time is precious especially now. There is no going back so moving forward is the only path we have.

My 2020

coming of age project
coming of age project

Creating this piece was such an amazing experience and a great way for me personally to reflect on this crazy year. My first step was to read through a journal I had kept, starting January 1st 2020 and writing in it everyday since. I decided on entries that I thought really reflected my 2020, entries from the day George Floyd was murdered by the minneapolis police, or the day I found out school shut down because of the Coronavirus, or starting high school online, and the last time I hugged a friend before quarantine. I took pictures of all of these entries and with my dads help printed them out, along with a few news headlines that I had found that I thought tied the journal entries together. After I had glued down my journal entries, in a format similar to a timeline of 2020 and added the news headlines I began to annotate my entries, seeing if any predictions I had were correct, and answering questions my past self had about the future, or really describing some of the things I had been feeling at the time I wrote the entry. The final piece I added to the board was an old mask of mine, with one of the straps connected to a headline I had written on my poster board, “new normal” because wearing a mask is the new normal, it’s something that I never leave the house without, so while certain things have gone back to the way they were before the pandemic a lot will never be the same. Being a teenager during this year was so hard in many ways. And I think that my project does a very good job of showing both the good, the bad, and all of my other feelings as a teenager in 2020. Keeping a journal this year was something that really helped me get through some of the bad times and emotions I was having. So I think to use some of those journal entries as the center point of my project really relates well to theme of being a teenager in 2020. During this year a lot has changed and I have had to adjust to a new normal of life, doing this project was such a good way to show all of my feelings and thoughts about this year, and to illustrate the good and bad.

Pandemics and Change

Many can say that quarantine has been hard, and we have all been forced out from the busy nature of our daily lives. However, I can say that quarantine has humbled me, grounded me and allowed me to realize that there are many pockets of peace in our daily lives, but it is up to us to appreciate them and hold onto them for as long as possible. Furthermore, quarantine has allowed me to learn a lot about life that I wouldn’t know if this pandemic didn’t happen. For instance, I have learned that sometimes you have to put others before yourself and this speaks true to me because I understand that some people have higher risks and that I shouldn’t be irresponsible and selfish. Sometimes, when I think about my experience before the pandemic I realize that sometimes good things and blessing come in disguise and that although the pandemic is a horrific thing it has changed me for the better. Making me more open minded, selfless and hard working in order to navigate the new world that has been presented to us.

pandemics and change

Pandemics and Change

Many can say that quarantine has been hard, and we have all been forced out from the busy nature of our daily lives. However, I can say that quarantine has humbled me, grounded me and allowed me to realize that there are many pockets of peace in our daily lives, but it is up to us to appreciate them and hold onto them for as long as possible. Furthermore, quarantine has allowed me to learn a lot about life that I wouldn’t know if this pandemic didn’t happen. For instance, I have learned that sometimes you have to put others before yourself and this speaks true to me because I understand that some people have higher risks and that I shouldn’t be irresponsible and selfish. Sometimes, when I think about my experience before the pandemic I realize that sometimes good things and blessing come in disguise and that although the pandemic is a horrific thing it has changed me for the better. Making me more open minded, selfless and hard working in order to navigate the new world that has been presented to us.

pandemics and change

Pandemics and Change

Many can say that quarantine has been hard, and we have all been forced out from the busy nature of our daily lives. However, I can say that quarantine has humbled me, grounded me and allowed me to realize that there are many pockets of peace in our daily lives, but it is up to us to appreciate them and hold onto them for as long as possible. Furthermore, quarantine has allowed me to learn a lot about life that I wouldn’t know if this pandemic didn’t happen. For instance, I have learned that sometimes you have to put others before yourself and this speaks true to me because I understand that some people have higher risks and that I shouldn’t be irresponsible and selfish. Sometimes, when I think about my experience before the pandemic I realize that sometimes good things and blessing come in disguise and that although the pandemic is a horrific thing it has changed me for the better. Making me more open minded, selfless and hard working in order to navigate the new world that has been presented to us.

pandemics and change