In my first blog post, I talked about how suicide is the second leading cause of death in teens and adults. I explained how the problem was that people ignore the problem and don’t like to bring attention to it. After I posted that blog, I did an interview with a therapist that specializes in teens and young adults. In this interview I learned more about what may cause these thoughts, why these thoughts may occur, and also some coping mechanisms and ways you can help people who may be considering suicide. Along with an interview with her, I also interviewed a teen who has tried to commit suicide before. With this interview we talked about the thoughts that may have been going through her head and why she might have felt that way. Both of which have helped confirm my beliefs and research from my first post. I have also found new website sources on suicide awareness to make sure all of my information and facts were on point. My first source includes many different ways that you can make a difference in your own neighborhood.  My next source explains how to help someone who is suicidal. This source also shows facts and myths about suicidal people. In my interview with the therapist, it helped me confirm that teens and adults feel alone in the world and don’t feel like their being heard enough. Also, I was able to understand more about what people could od do cope with thoughts of suicide. I also had an  interview with a teen girl  who has tried to commit suicide before. The interview helped me understand the thought process of the people that this affects. My opinion on this topic has stayed the same which is that suicidal people often feel alone and detached from everyone else and it's a subject that needs to have more recognition instead of ignoring it. I still have some questions on this subject in particular. My first question is why some parents will brush off their kids problems so easily. I have had friends talk about how commiting suicide is selfish and how suicidal kids or kids with depression are selfish. They talk about how kids don’t deserve to have depression or feel that way. My question is why. Why is it that parents and adults will say that a kid can’t feel sad or depressed because there are people who are worse off than them. Even in my two interviews, Especially with the girl, it was mentioned how easily some people would brush off the problems of their kids feelings. I would like to know the reason some people do this and the thought process. In my agent of change project, I am still uncertain of what I would like to do however, I was thinking about starting a social media campaign about suicide awareness to spread information about depression, suicide, and other mental illnesses. In conclusion, I believe that I, along with many other people, can make a difference in the small steps we take now.

Did you know that suicide is the 10th leading cause of death overall, in people ages 10-24 it is the second leading cause of death. My goal in doing this is to bring light to a subject that a lot of people don’t like to talk about and generally push it under the rug. However, pretending it doesn’t exist doesn’t make it go away and will most likely make the problem worse. This topic is important to me because it is a very close and personal topic for me to talk about.

My friend has recently tried to commit suicide and I’ve battled with the thought of it for years because of my anxiety and PTSD. It’s hard to go through that problem and it’s even harder when people just tell you to stop feeling that way or pretending that it’s not happening.  Even my own family have done this, it is not an uncommon reaction. This is a significant problem because more people than you think have tried to commit suicide. It is an important topic to talk about because a lot of people give off warning signs to other people that go unnoticed. This is either because people ignore it or simply don’t pick up on the hints that the person is giving.

My research has validated a lot of things that I have felt throughout this time and have been able to put it into words. People who are suicidal could be around so many people but still feel so alone.  Family conflict, relationships, grades, sexual identity, and the loss of important people can seem impossible to deal with. Many people just feel alone and need a shoulder to lean on for a little bit.  I want to research further into what causes these feelings and why certain people have them. For example, two people in the exact same traumatic event could react significantly differently and I want to figure out why that is. In conclusion, suicide is a terrible issue in which we have to learn more about t be able to fix. If we shy away from a problem like this, It will only make it harder to find a solution.

annotated bibliography

For our creative project, we chose to do a board game. By we, I mean David Forgrave, Hayden Myers, and myself. We started out with a simple design with the concept of the players starting at Birnam Wood and racing against friends to get to dunsinane and take over Macbeth. This connects with act 5 scene 4 when the English army  starts in birnam wood to hide themselves from macbeth as they make their way up to his castle. Up to four friends, playing either Macduff, Malcolm, Siward, or Young Siward would roll dice to see how far they go in the conquest against Macbeth. However, after planning this out, we realized that this board game was way too simple for our liking so we decided to add another interesting and creative component into our game.

We decided to add power cards into our game. What we wanted these cards do have is power up that you can use on yourself at any time to give yourself an advantage, but we also wanted to add power down cards that that could be used on any opponent that is in the lead, or just a friendly rivalry. These cards can be used at any time to give an opponent some sort of disadvantage.  We connected the cards to Macbeth by taking certain situations that happen in the book, and turning them into cards. For example, We took the scene when Lady Macbeth jumped out of the window, and turned it into a power down card that you can use on friends. There is a prince of cumberland card that will give a very good power to whoever owns it, but is able to be cursed by the dreaded “Macbeth” card. These cards are retrievable all over the map, on any yellow space.

For the board we didn’t want to have just one straight path going to dunsinane. Therefore, we added multiple paths that intertwine with each other so the players are able to land on opponents, while choosing their own route, and collecting cards independently. We decided to do this because we felt that one road was going to be mundane or boring. However, with multiple paths, there are some strategy aspects, and the game would become a little bit more interesting. When we designed our game we  wanted to have a party aspect to add to our game so it would look like a silly, cartoony kind of game, mixed in with things that happened all throughout Macbeth We decided to do this because we felt that one road was going to be mundane or boring. However, with multiple paths, there is some strategy implemented in the game.

In conclusion, we think that we designed the game that we wanted, and we have come out with a strong game that displays the ideas of Macbeth, while being able to give whoever is playing it excitement and a fun time with friends. We all worked very hard to design this game, and that hard work shows through in our final product. My entire group is very proud of our game, and we can’t wait to see what people think about it.

Tech script

In this project, I knew I wanted to go for something minimalistic, like the billboards in the presentation zen video, but to still be able to have my point be done and made to the best of my abilities. For my layout, I made sure to keep the rule of three in mind. I kept all of my text in the first part while having my images in the second and third part. I wanted the font to have a bright hue with a high intensity. I’m really interested in art and aesthetic so I went with a colorful mandala design for the centerpiece of the slide. I am also, really interested in travel so I added a small barcode with a quote saying “travel is in my blood”. I loved the barcode idea because the barcode represents a label of some sorts and if someone wanted to know what I thought was most important to me, my mind would instantly go to travel. Also, because of my love for aesthetically pleasing photos, I chose to have a flower to also represent me. It kind of shows a delicacy that I feel I have a lot. Kind of like one touch and all the petals would fall off of me. For placement, I wanted to have the flower bleeding into the bottom corner as if it was kind growing there in a way. For the background color, I wanted to have that negative space that black gives off and I knew that the colorful pieces I chose to be on the project would pop with that negative space.