Career day was an afternoon of career exploration for SLA freshmen that exposed them to a variety of paths they could take in the future. In the beginning of the year, I polled the students on their career interests, and I found out that about 50% of 9th graders are interested in a career in STEM. This informed my decision to have a special focus on STEM careers for my project. Next, I reached out to professionals asking them to speak at the event, and coordinated logistics with SLA staff. I got permissions to use 6 classrooms, and talked with Mr. Lehmann and the 9th grade advisors to have them chaperone their advisories in each room. As I confirmed the availability of volunteer speakers and began to make a schedule, I realized I couldn’t run career day by myself, so I gathered some student volunteers to be ushers. Additionally, I had a couple students taking videos and pictures that I later uploaded to the career day website. With everyone’s help, career day was a huge success. All the volunteers and advisors reported that it was a positive experience, and the students mentioned lots of new things they’d learned in their reflections. My biggest takeaways from career day were to always be prepared, have backup plans, and expect the unexpected. Getting to see my project come to life was really rewarding, and I hope someone is inspired to iterate on career day in the future.

Digital representation: career day website https://sites.google.com/scienceleadership.org/careerdaycapstone23-24/home

The staff at the ward depicted in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, especially Nurse Ratched, have a great deal of power over the patients, controlling everything they do. The narrator, Bromden, constantly mentions the extreme power that Nurse Ratched, AKA the Big Nurse, wields over the entire ward. “The Big Nurse tends to get real put out if something keeps her outfit from running like a smooth, accurate, precision-made machine.” (25) Although I’ve never experienced anything like the Combine, I definitely have felt overly restricted at times in my life, particularly in school environments (having to ask someone if you’re allowed to go to the bathroom feels really wrong if you think about it, especially if they say no). In many situations that are restrictive over some people, there are always others who don’t even notice. This idea is represented well in the book.

Although “they’ve made life look very pleasant with paint and decorations and chrome bathroom fixtures,” the Combine is not as pleasant for patients as it seems to outsiders. (111) I thought it was ironic that the public relations man followed this up by saying, “A man that would want to run away from a place as nice as this, why, there’d be something wrong with him,” because it’s a mental institution, and each one of the men there has “something wrong with him.” Naturally, when an able-bodied and strong-willed patient arrived at the ward named McMurphy, he made it his mission to rebel against the staff and rally the other patients to join him. The way McMurphy acts in the face of a controlled environment is how I’d like to think I’d act, but I’m more of a non-confrontational person and I wouldn’t stand up to the authority figures in the ward anywhere near as much as he does.

The first instance of McMurphy’s plans to rebel took the form of a bet with the other Acutes. “‘Any of you sharpies here willing to take my five bucks that says that I can get the best of that woman- before the week’s up- without her getting the best of me? One week, and if I don’t have her to where she don’t know whether to shit or go blind, the bet is yours.’” (66) I’ve certainly tried to get under someone’s skin before, but never someone who had that level of power over me. I thought his bet was a little crazy at first, but after all, McMurphy is a gambler, and he didn’t have anything better to do with his time. As it turned out, he succeeded in ruffling the nurse’s feathers so much that some of the other patients joined him once they saw how much fun he was having upsetting her. When they tried to watch the World Series game on TV and the nurse shut it off, they all watched a blank TV screen just to push her buttons. “‘You men- Stop this. Stop!’” (125) This reminds me of something my sister and I would have done when we were little to make our mom mad if she’d done something we deemed unfair.

The men never would’ve been trying to watch that World Series game in the first place if it wasn’t for McMurphy’s passion and his demand for not one but two votes to move TV hours to the time the games would be on. It hadn’t been easy, but he’d “inspired” enough people to vote his way that he finally got a majority vote. “‘One of you guys, for cryin’ out loud! This is where you get the edge, don’t you see that? We have to do this- or we’re whipped!’” (123) The edge McMurphy spoke of means the upper hand on the staff, especially the big nurse. He’d already caused a scene bringing the matter to a vote once, nevermind twice, and his failure to get a majority vote either time wouldn’t bode well for his future in the ward. Luckily for him, Bromden’s vote made 21 votes and he got his adjusted TV time. Unfortunately, the nurse was angry at him and turned the TV off, so it was all for nothing. This voting scene, especially the first one, reminded me of all the times I’ve been in the minority vote for something I wanted. I usually just go along with it and don’t make a big deal out of not getting my way, but this makes me think that I should push harder for something if I feel really passionate about it.

Finally, one area where I do see a similarity between me and McMurphy is our stubbornness. When asked by Frederickson, a fellow patient, how he’d bust out of the ward, McMurphy replied “Well, I guess I could knock the mesh outa one of these windows with a chair when and if I took a notion…” (107) and when told a chair wouldn’t do the job, he attempted to pick up an impossibly heavy control panel. He tried so hard to lift it that “There’s blood on the levers where he tore his hands.” (110) I’m guilty of committing way too hard to stay true to my word or make myself look good. I don’t think I’ve physically injured myself because of it, but I’ll go pretty far out of my way in hopes of proving a point.

Falling By Harry Styles

The lines “What am I now? What am I now?” and “I get the feeling that you’ll never need me again” connect to the way Offred feels as a handmaid: useless. She isn’t needed for anything other than her womb, and if she can’t have a baby she’ll never be needed for anything. “I want to be valued in ways that I am not; I want to be more than valuable. I repeat my former name, remind myself of what I once could do, how others saw me.” (pg 97) She feels like her new name doesn’t represent who she truly is, and associates her former one with freedom and possibility. As someone who isn’t valued in Gilead, Offred feels invisible, but often mentions the people who truly aren’t talked about: the Unwomen. When they are sent off to the colonies, nobody speaks of them again. This idea relates to the line “What if I’m someone you won’t talk about?” She doesn’t want to end up in the Colonies because it means she’ll be forgotten.

Mind Over Matter By Young the Giant

This song makes me think of sitting in your room staring at a wall contemplating life, which is how Offred spends most of her time. On page 105 she asks, “Does he know I’m here, alive, that I’m thinking about him? I believe so.” She knows that she must have hope in order to make it through the situation she’s in. As the song says, “Mind over matter, does it matter to any of us?” Offred focuses on staying alive and holding onto hope, even though the odds of having a happy ending are not in her favor. She stays alive partially because she can’t kill herself and partially because she believes that Luke may come back into her life someday, somehow. Ordinarily, she wouldn’t think that way, she’d be more logical, but by putting mind over matter she pushes logic to the side in order to stay sane.

Out of my League By Fitz and The Tantrums

This song’s upbeat melody and quick tempo make it a good representation of the before times described by Offred, the times she had with Luke. The lyrics “Cause you were out of my league, all the things I believed, you were just the right kind, yeah you were more than just a dream” are similar to Offred’s thoughts about Luke. On page 121, she explains the dynamic he had with her mom, whose way of speaking often got on her nerves. “He didn’t mind, he teased her by pretending to be macho, he’d tell her women were incapable of abstract thought and she’d have another drink and grin at him.” Luke’s ability to handle- even entertain- Offred’s mother showed her that he was a keeper. Another line from Out of my League reads “If I die, don’t wake me ‘cause you are more than just a dream.” Not wanting to live without Luke is one of the major things Offred struggles with in the book.

Night Changes By One Direction

While listening to this song, I noticed the line “Going out tonight, changes into something red. Her mother doesn’t like that kind of dress, reminds her of the missing piece of innocence she lost.” It directly voices Offred’s thoughts about her daughter and coincidentally talks about wearing a red dress, which is what the handmaids are forced to wear. Offred, as a mother, doesn’t like the dress and constantly talks about it being too hot or restricting. She also lost her innocence to the system attached to the red dress, as she was pretty young when she was taken to the Center. The song says, “We’re only getting older, baby. And I’ve been thinking about it lately, does it ever drive you crazy just how fast the night changes?” This connects to the way her daughter is growing up without her, and time is passing more quickly than she can believe. On page 228, Offred finally gets to see a picture of her daughter. “My treasure. So tall and changed… Time has not stood still. It has washed over me, washed me away.”

Set Fire to the Rain By Adele

“My hands, they were strong, but my knees were far too weak to stand in your arms without falling to your feet. But there’s a side to you that I never knew, never knew.” This portion of the song made me think of the way Offred views the Commander. She doesn’t quite know how to deal with him, whether she’s manipulating him or whether he’s manipulating her, but at the end of the day he has power over her. After she’d visited him several times in his office, she started to see another side of him, the “silly” side. “His face is a little flushed. I try to estimate how many he’s had… Behind this act of his I sense embarrassment.” (pg 229) When the Commander drinks, it becomes even more obvious that he’s kind of just a regular guy. Even though he’s in a position of power, he isn’t all-knowing, particularly wise, or anything of the sort.

In The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood makes endless references to real-life issues, creating scenes in Gilead that represent actual events from our world. One of these issues is the sexual harassment that occurs all too often in the medical world, especially between male doctors and female patients. In chapter 11, Offred went to the doctor for her monthly checkup and was sexually harassed by the doctor. After he’d performed the usual examinations, he got way too close to her, touched her inappropriately, and whispered things like “I could help you” (pg 60), “you want a baby, don’t you” (pg 61), and “it’d only take a minute, honey” (pg 61). When Offred didn’t immediately agree, he tried to convince her further by telling her that “lots of women do it,” adding to the pressure she faced in the moment. She didn’t know which was the safer option: saying yes or saying no.

Although the doctor from this scene may seem outrageous in the amount of risk he took just for a chance to have sex with Offred, it’s based entirely in reality. A report about a case against Robert Hadden, a former Obstetrician/Gynecologist who sexually abused patients for decades, reads, “He exploited the power differential inherent in the doctor-patient relationship.” This kind of dynamic is what makes sexual assault by doctors unique; the perpetrator is not only someone who the victim is supposed to trust, but also someone with power over the victim. In Offred’s case, saying yes to the doctor’s offer of impregnating her would be dangerous if they were caught, and she clearly felt uncomfortable with the idea of having sex with him regardless. If she said no, she worried he could fake her tests, make a false report against her, and she’d be done for anyway. Offred did what many victims of sexual assault are forced to do in order to get out of the situation: act polite and try to refuse as nicely as possible. In her case, it worked, but it doesn’t always turn out that way in real life.

As for the repercussions of their actions, plenty of doctors get away with such crimes for many years, like Robert Hadden, who sexually abused dozens of patients from 1987 to 2012 and is now serving 20 years in prison. However, some predators never get caught. It is likely that the doctor from The Handmaid’s Tale who harassed Offred did not face any punishment following the incident, and likely continued “offering his services” to more female patients. Due to the lack of power that women- nevermind handmaids- had in Gilead, the likelihood of Offred speaking out was next to none, and the chances she’d be heard were even slimmer. Plus, the sheet in the examination room that was meant to restrict doctors and patients from seeing each other’s faces would’ve made it very difficult for patients to even know who’d harassed them. Systems such as the sheet that blocked the doctor’s face and the lack of power that women held in Gilead can be compared to the ways that women are restricted in today’s world. These societal structures, plus genuine fear, are some of the reasons that women often don’t report the sexual harassment they’ve experienced, which allows predators to continue abusing more victims until they’re finally found out.

According to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, 63% of sexual assaults are not reported to police. Lots of victims just shrug it off, thinking it’s not a big deal and they shouldn’t make a fuss. After Offred’s encounter with the doctor, she was scared, but had no intention of bringing attention to the case. “Why am I frightened? I’ve crossed no boundaries, I’ve given no trust, taken no risk, all is safe.” (pg 61) She seemed to be less scared of what could’ve happened in the examination room than she was of the consequences that would come with being caught having sex with the doctor. One cause of this could’ve been The Ceremony, where she had scheduled sex with the Commander in an unromantic, dutiful way in an effort to get pregnant. Maybe Offred was somewhat desensitized to having sex with unfamiliar men who she didn’t love, although she definitely wasn’t fond of it. Following the incident, her greatest worry was not her bodily autonomy, but rather what she’d have to do to avoid death. The great stakes in Gilead created an environment where a woman’s experience of sexual harassment seemed insignificant to her, making it a true dystopia.

In my previous post, I explained why obesity is an issue that more people should care about. It can have fatal effects on your health and it disproportionately affects POC, lower class people, and people with less education. After researching the ways that others are helping to fight against obesity, I noticed that there weren’t many people with social media accounts related to the issue. However, I’ve found that there are organizations such as https://www.obesity.org/ that are focused on obesity research. They accept donations, so I’ve included a link to their website in my linktree. This brings me to what I did to be an agent of change!

I created an Instagram account to help educate people about obesity, encourage people to drink water, make healthy meals and snacks, participate in healthy challenges, and learn ways to relax and de-stress. Some of my posts include reminders to drink water, so I researched the benefits of doing so in order to make sure I had my facts straight. Giving people a reason to do something is always better than just telling them to do it! I’ve been designing my posts using PicsArt, an artsy app. It’s very easy to navigate and there’s so much I can do with it! My goal is to have my posts look simple and professional while also being colorful and fun. As stated earlier, I also make a linktree with links to places to donate, a relaxing music playlist, and any information mentioned in my posts. Although I tried putting it in my bio, Instagram is currently not letting me edit my profile! This has happened before and it usually works after a day or so.

Making my profile picture in the PicsArt app!

Creating a custom color in the PicsArt app for the background of a post!

So far, my experience with the account has been positive. I sent an email to everyone in my stream to gain followers and my first post did well! I plan on starting a week-long challenge this coming Monday, but I’ll have more posts up before then! In addition, I’ve been keeping an eye out for healthy snacks to post about, especially snacks that are healthy alternatives to unhealthy foods. For example, I recently posted a recipe for frozen grapes with lime juice as a healthy alternative to sour patch candy!

My account’s profile before sending the stream email

My account’s profile after sending the stream email

Overall, I love how my project is turning out. I think the ideas are there, but I wish I’d started posting earlier. I learned that orange stream is really supportive of everyone’s ideas and projects! I think we all pushed each other to create great projects and everyone was ready and willing to help their classmates out. There is still more work to be done for my Instagram account to be successful and I think I can really make a change if I continue to post! Please check out my account @fight__against_obesity if you haven’t already!

Annotated Bibliography

I wanted to focus on obesity because I can help not only educate people about how to stay healthy to avoid obesity and its negative effects, but also about how much obesity prevalence varies based on race, income, and even education. In addition, this issue is important to me because obesity cases are going up every day and they will continue to do so unless we make a change. Although it may seem easy to prevent obesity, it really depends on the person and their unique situation. There’s way more things to factor in than you might think, but I’ll explain more about that later.

To start off, what is obesity? How is it different from just being overweight? How do you know if you’re obese? Obesity is diagnosed based on someone’s weight in comparison to their height and age. This is called BMI, or body mass index. It’s used to find out how much body fat a person has. Because this system doesn’t directly measure your body fat, it can sometimes be inaccurate with muscular people, such as athletes. Generally though, obesity is diagnosed when a person has a BMI over 30. To put that into perspective, a 5’5 woman would have to weigh a minimum of 180 lbs to be considered obese. She’d have to weigh 150 lbs to be considered overweight. If she weighed between 115 and 145 lbs, she’d be at a healthy weight. As you can probably tell, being obese and being overweight are not the same thing. You’re at a healthy weight if your BMI is between 18.5 and 24.9, you’re overweight if it’s between 25 and 29.9, and you’re obese if it’s 30 or more. Simply put, obesity is just a more severe version of being overweight. If you want to find out your BMI, the quickest way to do so is by using a BMI calculator. It multiplies your weight in pounds by 704.5, divides that by your height in inches, and then divides that number by your height again.

A combination of weight and height makes up your BMI

Now, I said before that obesity cases are going up and it’s becoming a bigger problem every day, but just how many cases are there? According to State of Childhood, “[In America,] adult obesity rates now [September 2020] exceed 35% in 12 states, 30% in 35 states and 25% in 48 states.” 23 out of 50 states had an adult obesity rate between 30% and 34.9%. That’s a lot of obesity cases! But why is this bad? What’s the worst that can happen to someone with obesity? NIDDK says that “Overweight and obesity are risk factors for many health problems such as type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, joint problems, and gallstones, among other conditions.”

Chart from State of Childhood Obesity

So what causes obesity? How can it be prevented? Very Well Health has some tips. In addition to the more well-known strategies such as staying active and following a healthy diet, getting adequate sleep every night is vital to having a healthy lifestyle. Some basic principles of healthy eating are limiting processed foods, artificial sweeteners, and saturated fats; drinking more water; and eating five to seven servings of fruits and vegetables a day. It’s recommended that the average adult gets at least 150 minutes of exercise per week, or 30 minutes a day, 5 days a week. This seems like a lot, right? What about things to avoid in order to prevent obesity? Well, chronic stress has been proven to cause weight gain, so it’s important to take time to relax by doing yoga, listening to music, or meditating. Also, a late bedtime is known to have bad effects on the body, one of which is weight gain. The recommended nightly amount of sleep for adults is 7 or more hours. Lastly, Mayo Clinic says that “the number of hours you spend in front of a screen is highly associated with weight gain.” This is part of why some people have started using standing desks or biking desks during the pandemic. This is a great way to stay active if you have to be in front of a computer for many hours a day.

A biking or standing desk is a convenient way to avoid sitting at a desk all day while still getting work done.

According to the CDC, the problem with obesity isn’t just the effects and the overall number of cases, but also the disproportionality in cases based on socioeconomic status. As a reminder, “obesity-related conditions include heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes and certain types of cancer that are some of the leading causes of preventable, premature death.” Obesity isn’t bad only because it comes with some major health risks, but it also contributes to inequality in the US. There are, unfortunately, certain factors that can unfairly influence whether or not one ends up with obesity. Take race for example. As of 2017-18, non-hispanic black adults had the highest obesity prevalence (49.6%), followed by hispanic adults (44.8%), non-hispanic white adults (42.2%), and non-hispanic asian adults (17.4%). In terms of education, the CDC reported that “overall, men and women with college degrees had lower obesity prevalence compared with those with less education.” In addition, the CDC found that income directly affects obesity rates. A pattern was observed: people in the highest income group had a lower obesity prevalence compared to that of those in the middle and lowest income groups. All of this shows that obesity is dangerous not only to the health of the American population, but to the people who are at a disadvantage solely because of race, education, or income.

To sum things up, I’ve learned a great deal about obesity in the short time I’ve been studying it. I find it fascinating how differently each individual is affected by it because of how different their situation is from the next person. In the future, I want to learn more about how genetics affect your chances of being obese. I didn’t focus as much on that as I could’ve because it was more important to learn about how dangerous obesity is, but I’m happy with the amount of research I’ve done overall. It’s helped me understand obesity in depth and I’m glad I chose it as my topic.

Annotated Bibliography

I was influenced by Trevor Noah’s stories about people making assumptions about his culture. He was often seen as threatening because he was colored, like when he went to jail and put on the stereotypical tough colored guy persona in chapter 17. Some Jews choose to keep kosher, which means that they won’t ever eat meat and dairy in the same meal or even use the same dishes to avoid mixing them. People often assume that because I am Jewish, I keep kosher, which is often confused with being vegan. I don’t keep kosher, nor am I a vegan, yet people tend to make assumptions based on my culture just like they do about Trevor. On page 154 of Born a Crime, Trevor explains that there is a code for mothers in the hood. If you’re not busy and they ask if they can “send you,” you always say yes. This resonated with me because Jews have a similar code. When someone is part of your culture, you don’t have to know them personally to be kind to them. Just like Trevor Noah, I used my vignette as a way to inform my readers about my culture while also using some humor to make my story interesting. I also focused on my perspective of the story and didn’t use much dialogue. I think that humor plays a big part in both Trevor’s and my writing. It makes the reader want to continue reading the story because it eliminates any dull moments. I explained my culture to the reader by defining Hebrew terms clearly, like I was describing them to a friend, which I have plenty of experience with. I also highlighted some of the negative aspects of my culture in order to make my description more personal. My vignette explains the way that culture can affect a person’s identity by providing real-life examples of what it’s like to be part of Gen Z Jewish culture and showing the way it affected my identity through my writing style. I tend to use formal vocabulary with a casual tone, which I feel represents my personality perfectly.

Click above for a look at my project!

Artist’s Statement- For this project, I wanted to create something that highlighted the imperfections of 2020. A calendar, I thought, was the best way to do this, because calendars give an overview of the events in a given month. As I gave it more thought, I decided that it was the way to go because, using a calendar, I wouldn’t need many words to sum up 2020 from my point of view. I think it’s really cool to be able to tell a story using very few words and not even complete sentences! As you may have noticed, I used 3 different colors of text on the calendar. Blue text means it was scheduled to happen already, purple means it was scheduled or rescheduled because of the pandemic, and red means it was a bad thing that was scheduled or rescheduled because of the pandemic. I made my calendar by reflecting on the events of this year and writing everything down along with their approximate dates. Next, I created a calendar template and filled it in according to my memories of 2020 so far. In true calendar spirit, I added my own pictures for each month that help tell the story of what happened that month. I hope there are no more red events to add to my catastrophic calendar this year!