For my Capstone, I decided that I wanted to make a photo mosaic. It took me a bit to figure out what I wanted to do but I decided that I wanted to make the mosaic a photo of myself made up of my friends. I used a website to upload all of my photos that I stored in a google drive folder. Once I uploaded all of my photos, I messed around with the mosaic to add more photos, change the colorization, and get it ready to print. I got It printed and framed. I hung it up on the fifth floor where all of my friends hang out. I felt like I learned how time consuming creating something like this is and that I need to manage my time better. It was overall a fun experience and I am proud of how it came out.

Throughout The Road, the man and the boy constantly find corpses and limbs scattered around the country. In our map, we have shown their travels and what they have encountered while scavenging for supplies. They first come across a RV littered with corpses that were rotted and dried. Then, they came across a pool of blood and guts inside of bushes in the woods. After that, while scavenging the father found a walk-in cooler full of corpses. They continued moving after that and eventually found a field full of rotted human heads on spikes. After going into a house, the man and the boy discover a man on a mattress missing his legs with the stumps burnt and black. After escaping the house and doing more scavenging, they find a corpse floating in the water that flooded the basement. They then find a decapitated human head in a store. Moving from there, they had a run in with the roadrats where they found an infant gutted and being roasted on a spit. Lastly, they discover bodies burnt and mummified on the road itself which they have to walk through. These bodies that they discover tell us a lot about the world and how society has fallen. It also says a lot about how the environment is destroyed and how humanity was infected. When the world was dying, firestorms swept through and burnt people alive. That is what the man and the boy discovered on the road with the mummified corpses. Every other corpse or body part they found after that had signs of humanity. People began eating other people, even babies. They stuck each other’s heads on spikes and stuffed bodies in freezers. It shows what humans will do when they are pushed to their limit and what they do to survive. The death and destruction in the story represent the fall of society and the loss of morals. It is a dying world filled with the worst of humanity and the death of innocence.

In chapter 11, Offred visits the hospital for her monthly check up. She is told that her time to have a child is beginning to run out. This is obviously because she is getting older and they believe she will soon no longer be able to have children. As the doctor is doing her check up, he comes close to the sheet over her face and whispers “I could help you”. This confuses Offred as she doesn’t know what he means. He mentions he has done it before and begins sliding his hand up her leg. This is a very uncomfortable chapter to read. Offred is very scared and doesn’t know what she is supposed to do. She declines his creepy offer and leaves the hospital feeling fear and confusion. The chapter ends with the line “It’s the choice that terrifies me. A way out, a salvation”.

I believe that this chapter, though short, connects to a much larger theme in the story. Later, the Commander and Offred have a debate about what love is. Offred questions why men did what they do, asserting power over women. The only purpose for women in Gilead is to have children and to be more traditional. The Commander tells her that men essentially just got bored of women and needed something else. They needed to be more powerful over women and show their masculinity.

The connection between these two is that love is an entirely lost concept for these men. There are no more slow burn relationships. There is no more time for these people to get to know each other, go out, or find out what kind of person they are with. The Commander believes that it is better this way as men were bored with doing that and needed to just get it over with. There is no happiness nor pleasure anymore in this society. The concept of consent is something that has been entirely erased. Women no longer have a choice on what happens to their bodies.

The ceremonies are times where the Commanders have sex with the handmaid’s to see if they bear children. Offred mentions that sex is no longer something that has meaning or any pleasure at all. It is a job now, one that she has no power or choice in. She says,”It has nothing to do with passion or love or romance or any of those other notions we used to titillate ourselves with”. She also says that orgasms are not thought necessary anymore. It is a completely pleasureless act for the women and does a lot of harm to them, both physically and mentally. She is not allowed to even look at the Commander. She is forced to have sex with him so that he gets a promotion from a kid she doesn’t get to keep nor name. Another part of the ceremony is that the Commander’s wife must be in the room while he is having sex with Offred. She is forced to hold Offred in her legs as her “husband” has sex with another woman so that she may have a child. When that child is born, it goes to the Commander’s wife, the handmaid has no control over this.

Consent, choice, and love are three major things that have been taken away from these women. The men essentially laugh in their faces about it, or are too numb to it to understand why there is an issue. The doctor offering his “services” to Offred and the ceremony with the Commander are the exact same thing. In both of these cases, she mentions having a choice. That idea of choice is a form of brainwashing put on these women. There really is no choice, regardless of what she feels. No matter what, she is going to be forced to have a baby with a man she does not love in a way that does not give her pleasure. On page 94, she says “Nor does rape cover it: nothing is going on here that I haven’t signed up for”. There was no way for her to sign up for this, this was going to happen regardless. The entire ceremony leads up to this, and the ceremonies are required. There was no choice nor a form of consent. Towards the end of chapter 39, the Commander begins to do the same thing as the doctor. He rubs his hand over her leg and she feels very scared about it. He starts taking their clothes off. She says, “I lie there like a dead bird”. The chapter ends with her reminding herself to fake the pleasure, as there will be none involved.

In conclusion, the men in Gilead have no care for these women. They don’t care about consent or what the women are actually feeling. They only care about themselves, their promotions, and the pleasures they feel. The women are left with nothing but pain and the faint hope that they have control over what happens to them.

In “The Handmaid’s Tale”, the women of Gilead don’t control what happens to their bodies. Their only purpose is to bear children for the commander’s so that they can get promoted. Men run essentially everything in Gilead. They are the guards that watch over the women, they lead them into the towns, and they are the ones in charge. The society is also built on very religious christian beliefs.

In chapter 19, it is mentioned that women are not given anesthetics anymore for child birth as it is better for the baby. They use the bible quote “I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children” to justify it. When a woman is pregnant, she is seen as lucky and the other women are envious of her. The way that women conceive is called the ceremony where the commander attempts to impregnate them. In chapter 21, Janine is giving birth to her child and the women around her are feeling very intense emotions. “It’s coming, it’s coming, like a bugle, a call to arms, like a wall falling, we can feel it like a heavy stone moving down, pulled down inside us, we think we will burst. We grip each other’s hands, we are no longer single”.

When reading these chapters about Janine, it sounds like a religious cult. The way women are brainwashed into believing that something regular like being pregnant is lucky. It reminds me of the Christian Rights movement in the 1980s. This movement tried to limit access to the medication that women needed for childbirth. They also fought against abortion. They were trying to take away the rights of a woman’s body to control them. The belief is that women really are not important past their reproductive abilities.

The society of Gilead is also a patriarchal society in which the men run everything, as I stated before. The patriarchy is a belief that man should be the gender running everything. The women should have no power at all and only exist to serve the men. They should be more traditional. The man in charge of the “household” is the commander. What is really interesting is that he actually has no real clue about what the women are going through. In chapter 25, he mentions that he had no idea they check the handmaid’s rooms to see if they are hiding anything. It is very ironic that in this patriarchal society, the man in charge has no clue what is happening in his own household.

Another side of the patriarchy is believing that women shouldn’t just not have power, but they should only exist to serve the men. They shouldn’t have jobs, they shouldn’t have a source of income, and they should only be there for the men. They should have dinner when the man gets home, they should be there when the man is feeling sad, and they should have as many kids as the man wants. They must also alway look presentable and pretty. The house should always be clean and nice. The children should also always be looked after by the wife because the man is too busy to care for them. This is called being traditional. They also go against the LGBTQ community. It is very misogynistic and goes against the freedom of women.

In “The Handmaid’s Tale”, the character Moira exists to be the direct opposite of these views. She goes against the patriarchy and misogyny. She exists as the embodiment of freedom for women. Chapter 22 focuses on the escape of Moira and how she got out of the red center. At the point of writing this it is unclear if she actually is free or if she is dead but she did escape. On page 133 they mention the women were afraid of her. They are afraid because she got out. “She is now a loose woman”. The society of Gilead has essentially brainwashed them into these traditional views that anything outside of that is terrifying to them. They are scared to be themselves and who they were in the time before.

Another important part to mention is that for some of these women, this is not their first time having kids. On page 125, it reads “It’s her second baby, she had another child, once”. This is referring to Janine. Offred also had a child before this. The patriarchal society has truly changed these women so much that the time before is almost like it doesn’t exist. They get so excited to see childbirth that they forget how common it was.

In conclusion, Gilead is a society built on extremely misogynistic, traditional views mixed in with religion. It creates a society that goes against women, believes they don’t deserve rights, and that they only exist to serve the men and have their children.

So my project was a little different. It wasn’t a problem I could really change but I still feel it was important. I did mental health changes during quarantine. For my previous post, I did research on mental health changes in quarantine.I discussed multiple sources that I researched to see percentages and rates. It was surprising but at the same time expected to see the percentage of good mental health go down. I decided to do an instagram page where people could talk about their experiences.I got a lot of people to send me messages about how they changed or didn’t change with consent to post. I posted them on instagram and I thought they all looked good. I related to almost all of them and it was very interesting to see a lot of the answers. I followed some mental health pages but I sadly didn’t do much to promote my page. I really only posted whatever piece of writing I was given. I made 6 posts total and they all were meaningful.

[This website] (https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/issue-brief/the-implications-of-covid-19-for-mental-health-and-substance-use/) has some more info on mental health percentages during the pandemic.

The reason I have decided to do this is because my mental state had actually gotten better in quarantine. It was the most free I had ever felt and I was surrounded by things I loved. I know others didn’t feel that way so I was curious to see how. That was basically my whole motivation for this. I learned mostly new information through this which I am very proud of. I made actual progress with this project and learned a lot. I am very thankful for people helping me as well.

I have been reflecting on my project and these are my thoughts: I feel very good about this project for the most part. People cooperating with me felt very nice and I also learned a lot about the people around me. It was also a great experience to see what other people had done in quarantine and how they changed. Without saying names, I learned that one friend had worked on themselves in quarantine and that it was a great time to do so. This person should be proud of themselves for their work.

I learned that I wasn’t alone about some of my thoughts. Some other people also didn’t change too much and thought it was a good reflection time to work on themselves. I also learned that there were other people who struggled with quarantine and didn’t have that good of a time during it. So I found some information about other people and compared it to myself to see the differences or similarities. I definitely learned new things about myself and others.

The only things that I regret are not having good time management and not promoting my page. I didn’t ask anyone to repost or shout out my page. I also only followed a couple of people. I definitely would have managed time better as well. I would probably have more post if I didn’t wait as long to start as I did.

[Annotated bibliography] https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wGSNZbk9LJ9G478gjohRBqlmtA-TvlFW1ECYdrPpGdQ/edit?usp=sharing

These are a couple examples of the writing pieces I posted. If you want to see the rest then please check out Quarantinehealth24 on instagram. If you want you can also follow the account.

Everyone’s mental health has declined in this pandemic. Even if you feel like it hasn’t it most likely has. Quarantine was a very tough time for the world. We were all trapped inside with nothing to do and we couldn’t socialize. People are still afraid to go out just to get groceries because they are scared of Covid.

Quarantine started on March 13th, 2020. Basically everyone knows this since we all went through it. Mental stress and anxiety percentages have essentially skyrocketed among people in the US and the UK. The US depression rates went from 11% to 42% by December of 2020. By June of 2020 UK depression rates went from 11 to 19%. Psychologists think that we may still have these problems even after covid. OCD and multiple other problems have been caused because of quarantine. There has also been lack of sleep and massive changes in eating habits. Such as people eating more or eating less and changes in diets.

The reason I have chosen this topic is because I was curious about how mental health changed during quarantine. Personally, I was not really affected by quarantine. I had already been very stressed from 8th grade so it felt like a massive break and was very relieving. I had a lot more time to myself but most importantly I got closer to my family. Though my experience was actually mentally helping me, I know others did not go the same. Many people got very depressed and went through multiple changes. People went through different sleeping habits, diets, medicine changes, weight gain or loss, and multiple other things. This was all very interesting to me so I decided this to be my topic. I think that the biggest change personally has been school.

I am very dependent on having school physically. I get distracted very easily and have a hard time learning virtually. I have been very stressed out and due to this my mental health has been changing. I am not depressed but I am often stressed out. I am a lot more anxious about many things now as well. I know that I am not the only person going through this. People all around the world are dealing with these same exact problems. Even people close to me are experiencing the exact same thing. It somewhat makes me feel a little better to know that I am not alone. My friends and family are great motivators. The sad truth is that not everyone has supporting family and friends. Lots of families were affected by covid so people have lost supporting members.

In conclusion, mental health has changed in multiple ways. Some for the better and some for the worst. People now have more anxiety and are scared of the outside world. I hope everyone that is suffering can be healed and get better. Hopefully, these effects are not permanent and recoveries start to happen to people all around the world soon.

Tengo mucha gente en mi familia. Tengo dos abuelos, un hermano, una hermana, dos padres, un gato y varios tíos y tías. También tengo varios primos a los que veo mucho. Tenía un perro pero falleció. Vivo en mi casa con mi mamá, mi papá, mi hermano y mi gato. Mi hermana se mudó el año pasado.

Mi tío Manny Tiene el pelo corto y blanco, y se siente áspero. Creo que sus ojos son marrones. Es muy alto y flaco. Tiene temperamento pero puede ser muy agradable. A veces puede ser muy grosero. No es una persona horrible, pero definitivamente puede ser molestoso.

Mi otro tío Stephen tiene el pelo negro corto, liso pero rizado. Él tiene ojos marrones. Es alto y delgado. Es una persona cómica, y puede ser muy agradable. Su rasgo de personalidad más fuerte es el amor por su familia. Muestra mucho ese lado de él. No es una mala persona en absoluto.

Me estoy describiendo a mí mismo. Mi nombre es Elijah Lopez. Tengo el pelo castaño liso, rizado y largo. También tengo ojos marrones. Soy alto y delgado. Soy una buena persona. Siempre hago todo lo posible por ser un buen amigo y una buena persona. Soy muy amable. No creo que soy una mala persona o un mal amigo.

Mi tío Manny y yo somos altos y delgados. También tenemos el mismo color de ojos. Realmente no puedo pensar en los rasgos de personalidad. Realmente no compartimos ningún rasgo de personalidad y no me parezco a él. Mi hermano se parece más a él que a mí. Supongo que compartimos el amor familiar. Mi tío es hispano y yo también. No sé su edad exacta, pero definitivamente tiene más de cuarenta años.

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.

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1eFZta-U3Ytin-alHxbAU_psQEvPSf7trDkNIcRvXcC0/edit#slide=id.ga122ece460_0_15