For my capstone I decided to address the issues that related to health and the ways you can build and maintain a happy and healthy lifestyle. I did this by adding and documenting my own personal experience dealing with health. I realized that the mind,body and soul is all connected and that’s why I wanted to show my peers that health is not just what you look like on the outside but on the inside as well. In my slideshow you will see the steps I took to get my health in better shape, the challenges I faced, pictures of the foods I ate, of me at the gym and a video of the fitness class I hosted.

Link to slideshow - file:///home/chronos/u-134546276a52aafd9729e622f6a4741ff4ce59cd/MyFiles/Downloads/Capstone%20presentation%20(4).pdf

The Purple Podcast, episode 1.

By : Brielle Thompson, Saniyyah Ray, Mo Kelly, Kayla Kelly, and David Forgrave Literal and Figurative

In this episode we talk about many different things from the way they tell the structure of the book to the relationship between each character. From our podcast we lay out how it is portrayed in the book and we analyze and give our listening insight on how we interpret different pieces. There are many questions asked to get a further understanding of the context. It is very interesting because you get a different perspective from each individual. There is a lot of good content in our recordings and we hope that you guys sit back and enjoy our intake on the book The Color Purple by Alice Walker.

Evidence we used :“‘You got to let them know who got the upper hand’ ‘ They got it’” “But I don’t know how to fight, all I know is how to stay alive” (17) “I won’t leave, until I know Albert won’t even think about beating you” (75) calling him Albert for the first time after Shug says it 76

Link to podcast : https://youtu.be/2Rw3Ev3azXI

The Purple Podcast’s logo.

I N T R O D U C T I O N

In this essay you will be noticing how I explore the misunderstanding of immigrants. What Americans tend to think but is not always the case when it comes to immigrants. Once you read my essay you will have a better understanding about what assumptions and ideas people believe about immigrants.

E S S A Y

Imagine waking up one day not knowing where your next meal will come from, not knowing when the next time you will see your family, not knowing where you’re going but knowing you have to go somewhere. Immigrants deal with this and so much more. To come to a place you know nothing about, and have to deal with people who think they know what you’ve been through is very frustrating. Some people think immigrants have a choice but it is actually a necessity for most of them. Immigrants are in no way shape or from in control of their life.People make false judgments about Immigrants just because they are not american. People have unexplained biases towards immigrants towards fear of the unknown.

Immigrants take a long, miserable, dangerous journey to a place that they know nothing about just to hope and pray that they get a chance at a better life. They put their life in jeopardy just to come to America and be misunderstood. Their experiences and what they have been through get belittled because of people’s judgements. They never really get to fully tell their story and so misunderstandings will happen. Misunderstandings such as, coming here and hurting the country financially because they are taking all american jobs. People all over the country believe that immigrants take american jobs, which is not true. Immigrants need jobs just as much as any american citizen and in fact recent study found that undocumented immigrants alone pay approximately $11.64 billion in taxes each year. Moreover, undocumented immigrants nationwide pay an estimated 8 percent of their income in state and local taxes but since so many angry Americans don’t like immigrants they begin to believe that they are hurting the country financially.

Another thing that is often misunderstood about immigrants or people living in difficult condition is that they need help and/or are helpless, which sometimes isn’t the case. In the movie Beast Of The Southern Wild we see the main character, Hushpuupy, and her father break out of the healthcare place once they were taken there to get help but they didn’t really want it or ask for it. There is a misunderstanding that people in rough places or in places where there are harsh circumstances want help but that is not always the case as we see. Also, in the movie we see how people from these dangerous places don’t want to leave. I mean, would you want to live in your home? Somewhere you loved and lived all your life? It’s hard to get up one day and go.

Another thing that is misunderstood about immigrants is that Americans believe that immigrants don’t belong in America and therefore they shouldn’t feel like they belong. If you are American born or moved to this country eventually you become a citizen. Yes it will take an immigrant longer because of all the certain things they have to do and be eligible for but it doesn’t matter because they are here for the same reason that the American’ people are, to live a somewhat free life.They have a right to be in this country just as much as a person born in America. It is so unfair to treat an immigrant anything less than an American citizen.

Immigrants are often called unsafe or terrorist because of the way they look and the different countries they came from. Sometimes they cannot help the way they look or what country they came from. Imagine how they feel, knowing that once you get to a place where you want to build a better life you get judged and called names.

“Yet, back in Nigeria, I had the irreplaceable experience of feeling connected to an untapped part of myself.” This is what a Nigerian immigrant said as she realized she didn’t really want to be in America because it wasn’t the right thing for her. Which brings me to make the point that some think immigrants come here for a better life and because it’s the best thing for them, but sometimes it’s not. Immigrants think that the United States is the land of opportunity just to get here and get let down and so then they realize that their real true calling is to be in the country where they were born. In the book Exit West Saeed and his father are having a conversation “ your mother is here”
“Mother is gone.” Saeed said. “ Not for me,” his father said. This shows that people have a misunderstanding that people want to leave where they are from.

In the book We Need New Names Darling, the main character has to move from her country, Zimbabwe to America. She doesn’t necessarily want to but she has to because it is safer for her. When she gets here she instantly tries to fit in and do things that are apart of american culture.

As Americans we create these bias against immigrants that shouldn’t even exist. Immigrants are human beings and should be treated the same.

Hamid, Mohsin. Exit West. Penguin Random House, 2017. Bulawayo, NoViolet. We Need New Names. Vintage Books, 2014. “Beasts of the Southern Wild.”

Intro paragraph : My goal for this essay was to show and try to get my peers to think about this idea of living a life with no worries and living a life where all someone does is worry and think about the bad things in life. I think that in this essay I did a good job of explaining and giving reasons as to why people would and could live both type of lives(carefree and concerned, so that’s what I’m proud of in my essay.

Painting with a twist for the first time. It was such a nice, sunny, summer day, a little hot but a calm breeze blowing just right.I was going to paint today. Painting for real for the first time ever, not just getting a little messy with paint like I did back in middle school art class. I’m going to paint,yay. Sitting in my seat not knowing where I will start from first, Lauryn Hill’s soulful voice filled the room, singing under my breathe so only I can hear. “Strumming my pain with his fingers.” There I was, listening to the instructor as she tells me what to do first. “Pick up your paintbrush and gently dip it into the blue paint, once you have done that start to paint side by side at the top of the canvas,” she says. I pick up my paintbrush and as slowly as possible I dip only the tip of the brush into the paint making sure I didn’t get too much on it so that it wouldn’t drip. Once I do that I put my paintbrush down and wait for some more instructions. The instructor begins speaking again“ now this background has three colors in it blue, which we already did, purple and pink. This shouldn’t be too hard I say in my head as I pick up my brush twirling it in a container of water to make sure all the blue paint is off. Then I begin to paint smoothly onto the canvas with the purple paint covering the whole middle of the canvas. I then finish the background by putting the pink all at the bottom. I look around to see how everyone else’s painting is going and now I’m ready to move to the next part. I wash my brush and dip it into the black paint moving upward making two lines that meet in the middle onto the canvas. It’s smooth and the lines are just about the same size. After gliding my paintbrush on the canvas adding my finish touches I smile from ear to ear very satisfied with my painting. My painting was one of the best and I would love to do painting with a twist again.

I can never understand how so much good can go on but then there can be so much bad as well. Living in a world where anything can happen is pretty scary. Never knowing if something bad will happen at anytime is absolutely mindblowing. I know that people are supposed to look on the brighter side of things and live a happy life but can that really happen when there is so much to worry about in the world? For me causing awareness and being aware of things is very important. Some people may not necessarily care or are worried about it but at least they know about it and can speak on it if they want to. I say all this to say that when I found out about the Paris attack in 2015 I was not only brought to a point of concern but it made me realize how much more aware I need to be about certain things and situations that are worth knowing about.

Sitting in the living room while my mom, who’s in the kitchen filling the whole room with the smell of crispy fried chicken. She takes a break from cooking and comes to sit next to me. I see from the side of my eye that she turns on the news and all I hear is BREAKING NEWS PARIS HAS BEEN ATTACKED. I immediately looked up from my phone and I am locked into the tv. My mouth drops open so big and then a cold chill swifts through my body. “ Oh my goodness,” my mom says as she turns up the television so we can hear it better. What would make someone do this, is what I think in my head as look down back into my phone checking to see if anyone has posted about this. On every news channel you turn this is what they were all talking about. Shaking a little because I was now wondering what does this mean for the US. Are we next? Do they want to attack us for any reason? I honestly didn’t even want to think about it.

How can I be so carefree only thinking about me and painting, but then concerned and worried about the people and Paris and all the different things that are going on in the world. Which brings me to this interesting debate of living a carefree life or living your life with worry. Like Simba said “Hakuna Matata” which means no worries for the rest of your days and a lot of people live their lives by this motto, but some people might think how can you possibly have no worries when there are so many things going on in the world you have to always be on your P’s and Q’s. In life you go through so many different emotions and things ,so you can’t really compare your life to someone else’s same thing with beliefs and worries. Some people just don’t find certain things worth worrying about, Look at life this way, be aware, know what is happening and that my friend is a very fine way of living.

In my 1 slide I used a variety of colors to draw the audience attention. I made my letters big so that they stand out. I tried not to cramp my 1 slide up so I only put 4 pictures in my slide to tell about myself. Of course I wanted to add many more pictures but I did not want my classmates eyes to roll all over the place. I decided to use bright colors for my background because bright colors tend to make people happy. Also these four pictures strongly describe who I am and what I like.