My Capstone project is a full-size quilt that I made from scratch with the help of my grandmother through WhatsApp phone calls. Quilting is known for being a family tradition that is passed down from one generation to the next. I used 7 different fabrics to create the pattern of my quilt and I did not use any modern-day tools that are shown on Youtube tutorials. I chose to make a quilt for my Capstone because sewing has been a valued skill for the women in my family, and I wanted to be part of this. I was also gifted a sewing machine that I had not really used to create anything and it was a bit sad seeing it be unused which gave me the motivation to take on a time-consuming project like quilting. This Capstone served as a personal project to help cultivate my relationship with my family, especially my grandmother, whom I’ve grown distant to since we live far away from each other. I’m happy to have finished something that took so much time and that physically hurt during the process of making it.

My bibliography: tps://docs.google.com/document/d/14bMY5TswGbNb1gUvqWbE2pOOaTcxrY03q9Wd3dZLNWc/edit?usp=sharinght

The narrator in this book makes it hard for the reader to believe or understand what he describes, but his perspective of things also made me realize how common it is for people to see the world in completely different ways, which can be hard for others to understand. In Bromden’s case it makes him look delusional and unstable, but I also see why he has such a unique take in life. Bromden’s perception of things and how the world functions is way more complicated than how the average person sees the world, but in his delusions of machinery, I noticed how similar it is to how other people see the world. The machinery aspect is very specific to Bromden because it’s connected to his past and the sort of things he was surrounded by, which is why it makes sense that he sees the world with connections to machines and mechanisms. Being in a ward separated from the world and separated from everything Bromden knew before, I can very easily understand how you start trying to make connections to things you already know and understand, which for Bromden it is machines. One example of this is when he’s describing the Big Nurse, which very frequently includes connections to machines. At the beginning of the book, Bromden describes her as a “tractor” when she’s talking angrily to the black boys. He says, “she really lets herself go and her painted smile twists,..she blows up bigger and bigger, big as a tractor, so big I can smell the machinery inside…”(28). Further into the book he then describes her voice as an “electric saw ripping through pine.”(125). He knows how these machines and sounds make him feel, and it makes sense he uses past feelings or memories he knows and recognizes to describe other things, like the big Nurse. It also helps the reader get a closer look into his feelings towards the Big Nurse, which all seem to be negative. He also sees the whole ward as this machine filled with wires and other electrical things. Sometimes his descriptions of machines are a lot more vivid and dramatic, like in page 76 when he was talking about the hospital at night, which we then found out was a dream. “Not a sound across the hospital - except for a dull, padded rumbling somewhere deep in the guts of the building, a sound that I never noticed before-a lot like the sound you hear when you’re standing late at night on top of a big hydroelectric dam.” (76). He sees the ward as this machine that is organized and controlled, which at first I thought made him an unreliable narrator, but he uses these references to express how he feels about things.

Bromden’s perception of the world and his surroundings is very specific to his character, but I still see a connection between how he chooses to view the world and how me and the people I know choose to see the world. I have a couple friends who do wrestling and even outside of a wrestling environment, they’re always talking about wrestling and making references to wrestling even if no one understands them, which reminds me a little of how Bromden talks about machines. I also noticed something similar with my dad. He loves to mountain bike and when we’re walking around in any setting he talks about how a specific spot could be good for a jump, how he imagines himself biking while we’re walking. People are always making connections to things they do or like to do. Bromden’s on a different level because he uses these connections to machines as one of the only ways he expresses his emotions and feelings towards things, but regardless, I think his machine references are normal because that’s who he really is. He sees the world through his own, unique lens as well as everyone else. People, who have found their passions or a strong connection to something, see the world in their own way. I don’t think my perception of the world is so specific to one thing. I don’t find myself using references to a very specific thing I like and I think that’s because I haven’t found something I’m too passionate about like some of the people I know.

The Commander in the Handmaid’s Tale has evolved and has become a bigger character as the story has progressed. When we first got introduced to his character, it seemed like he wouldn’t ever be present in Offred’s life other than the days of the Ceremony and an occasional encounter. He was made to appear unreachable to Offred because he’s at the top of the social hierarchy in Gilead. He then asked Offred to meet him 1-on-1, and it quickly made him seem less powerful and intimidating than he was before. However, this made me question what his motives were. Before their actual meeting, I thought he had harmful intentions, maybe something sexual or some sort of bad news. Instead, he asked Offred to play Scrabble. “I’d like you to play a game of Scrabble with me,” he says. I hold myself absolutely rigid”. From this moment I was convinced that the commander simply missed normal interactions instead of the controlled conversations people have in Gilead. I thought that maybe he missed some sort of romance when he asked Offred to kiss him. We explored various thoughts in class about what his true intentions could’ve been. In the discussion of chapters 21-26, some said the Commander found pleasure in showing off his power to Offred, others said he wanted to give Offred a little bit of power and normalcy. I thought he simply felt lonely and wanted to escape the boundaries and rules of Gilead.

My opinions on the Commander didn’t change until the day he took Offred to the club. All of their meetings before this had seemed harmless, even though they were dangerous for both since they were breaking the rules. Despite this, the Commander’s true intentions weren’t clear. But at this point, I felt like if he had any bad intentions, they would’ve been shown already. All he had done so far with these meetings was give Offred a form of escape from her strict routine and entertainment by letting her read books, and magazines, and play Scrabble.

When the Commander explained what the Latin saying was to Offred, and she found out that the girl from before had also been in this situation with the Commander, I then thought that he had this whole thing planned just so that the handmaids wouldn’t try and find a way out such as killing themselves. “If my life is bearable, maybe what they’re doing is all right after all.”(187). While this seemed like it was completely for the benefit of the Commander, I still found that it was a good thing for the Handmaid’s as well.

It wasn’t until chapters 36 and 37 when the Commander took Offred out to the club that his character took a complete turn and some of his thoughts were revealed. “Nature demands variety, for men. It stands to reason, it’s part of the procreational strategy, It’s Nature’s plan.”(237) When I read this I was surprised to see that what seemed to be like a character in Gilead that didn’t believe in the beliefs of Gilead, only didn’t believe them for his own messed up sexist ideas. He showed his admiration for the club and suggested working there as an alternative. “You might even prefer it yourself, to what you’ve got.”(238). What really made an impact on me while reading this was that I believed he thought the complete opposite of this, and he ended up being the embodiment of everything Gilead stood for. Gilead tries to make it seem like this way is better than what they had before. Women are “safer” and more respected but men are the only ones who actually benefit from Gilead. Even after seeing all this, Offred ignored it. “I remind myself that he is not an unkind man; that, under other circumstances, I even like him.” (254). I think the Commander’s role in this book and how he’s perceived by the readers really says a lot about our society. What the Commander believes can be seen a lot in what men in real life believe. As a woman, I feel mad that I didn’t think anything necessarily bad of him until he made it completely clear what his beliefs were. How Offred reacted to this also shows just how much women are susceptible to these things.

In The Handmaid’s Tale, the narrator described a scene when the Commander was reading to a group of women and all eyes were on him. “To be a man, watched by women.”, she said on page 87, as she went on questioning what was going on through his mind as he was being observed so closely by women. As a woman in the real world, this is an image that’s strange and a little uncomfortable to try and visualize. When I thought about this quote, the first image that popped up in my head was a painting done by Waldemar von Kazak called “Daily Portrait of a Woman”. It shows a group of pigs looking at a woman sitting in the subway. When I first saw this artwork, I felt a bit uncomfortable and the absence of the woman’s face made me feel like I was the one being watched. I wanted to portray this in my drawing.

While it’s the complete opposite situation, I still thought about feelings of awkwardness, fear, and uncomfortability. Offred also thought about similar feelings when trying to decipher what the Commander might’ve been feeling in that situation. “To have them thinking, He can’t do it, he won’t do, he’ll have to do, this last as if he were a garment, out of style and shoddy, which must nevertheless be put on because there’s nothing else available.” (page 87). She compared him to a garment, an object, which is never really a comparison one makes to a man. She’s putting him in her shoes. However, there’s still a very clear power dynamic between the Commander and the women that makes it hard to really understand what is going on through the Commander’s head. The Commander holds all the power over everyone else in the household. He’s looked up to, so it’s hard to think of him as feeling scared of being watched because that would mean that the women hold power over him, and that’s not the case in Gilead. In the real world, women are often observed by men in a way that belittles women and creates many negative emotions, which makes Waldemar von Kazak’s painting feel so familiar.

I have a clear understanding of what being watched by men feels like. I know the sort of feelings it creates, but what does it mean when it’s a man that’s being watched? I couldn’t draw a face for him because I don’t know what he’s truly feeling, but I wanted to see if the women I drew created a different feeling than the feeling I got from seeing the pigs in Waldemar von Kazak’s painting. I also chose to only use the color red because red is a harsh and intimidating color. Gilead is plain and colorless, and still, the Handmaids wear this color that sticks out and catches attention. Trying to visualize what the Commander could actually see, the color red and the faces of the women were the two things that were clear in my head so these were the things I chose to show in my drawing.

On my last post, I explained the problems with having snakes as pets. This is a topic that needs to be brought way more attention. Snakes are captured from their natural habitats and transported to different places, this process can cause them a lot of harm. Then, for the rest of their lives they are kept in tanks that don’t even have the space they need to stretch. Not only their physical body gets harmed but so does their mental state. They can feel a lot of stress and anxiety in captivity. Most snakes are very cheap, which gives more people a reason to want to buy them. When I was looking for organizations that are doing things to help stop this, I couldn’t really find a lot, but the one I found was World Animal Protection. They have made articles informing people why this is such an important issue. They also have a wildlife pledge that people can sign to share support and help stop this issue. They receive donations to stop all sorts of animal cruelty, including my topic. And they also have an instagram account to raise awareness to this type of stuff. I think these are very effective ways of helping snakes and other animals. However there’s way more that needs to be done because there’s still not a lot of people know about this.

*A screenshot of my gofundme link

For my Agent of Change part, I decided to set up a Gofundme link so I could raise money in order to donate to World Animal Protection. Since the least amount you can donate to World Animal Protections donation link is $30, I thought it was best to set up a gofundme for people who still wanted to donate, but couldn’t exactly contribute with that much. I reached out to the organization so I could inform them of my plan, but I got no response. My gofundme actually didn’t turn out to be very successful, since I only got very few donations. I will still be donating to World Animal Protection but with my own money, and the donation money I received. Even though I didn’t get as many donations as I hoped for, I got multiple people to sign the wildlife pledge.

Screenshot of one of my friends signing the wildlife pledge *

Overall, I really enjoyed working on this project. I really liked being able to work on something I actually care about and having to do something to help. I also thought it was cool how everyone had such interesting topics, and helped in many different ways. I thought everyone’s topic also let me know a little more about the person and about what type of topics they cared about. I think there’s a lot of things that could have gone better if I was to do this project while I was in the country. Since I wasn’t, I had to change some things so I could still try to help in a virtual way. If I could do things in person, I would’ve loved to do some type of fundraiser in person since a lot of people that wanted to donate couldn’t because they had no way to pay virtually. There’s not much left for me to do but I want to wait a little longer to see if I can raise a little more money so I can donate more to the organization.

Annotated Bibliography

My topic is about something I don’t think a lot of people really care about. At first, I didn’t really care either. Actually, I just didn’t know anything about snakes and what they went through. A couple of months ago I really wanted to own a snake. I was super close to getting one. My dad and mom didn’t think it was a good idea but I still wanted one. I did a little research and everything seemed fine. Snakes are very cheap too, so I thought it was perfect for me. Then my mom started sending me articles about the things snakes go through and why it wasn’t good to have them as pets. I chose not to get one because I didn’t want to deal with my parents, not because I had realized it wasn’t good to own snakes. When the Y&TW project was introduced, the first topic that I came up with was this one. Why people should stop getting pet snakes. I thought it was going to be the easiest since I already had a couple of sources, and it was something I thought not many people would pick. However, I wasn’t personally very passionate about it. After a while of doing research for this project, I actually started caring more and really understanding some of the horrible things that pet snakes go through that not a lot of people actually know about.

Snakes are captured from their natural habitat to be transported to different continents, this process is sometimes very cruel and they are treated with very little care. Many die in the transportation process. Once they are sold to people that most of the time don’t have all the information needed to be able to provide their pet snakes with all of their needs, they are put into their new environment that is nothing compared to the experience they have in the wild. Tanks can’t provide snakes the necessary space they need to stretch, hunt and roam freely.

Example of the small enclosures snakes are kept in.

A lot of snakes sometimes try to escape their habitat which can be bad for them and the environment in multiple ways. They can experience trauma due to failed escape attempts and they can get hurt trying to escape. If they do successfully escape, they can cause the killing of native wildlife.

Breeders selective breed snakes in order to make different scale patterns, skin colors, and fur. This has various negative effects on snake’s physical and mental health. People that want to get snakes most of the time want them because their appearance is interesting or they just look cool. They don’t really pay attention to their needs. They view them as a “new hobby” or a “new collection” but not as a wild animal that isn’t meant to be domesticated.

Picture from a pet store.

It’s so normalized to have snake pets. You can just walk into a pet store and there are snakes sold there as if they were hamsters or dogs. My dad used to have snakes when he was little, and I have a couple of friends who have had or still have snakes. I think if people were more informed about everything a snake can go through from the moment they’re captured to when they’re bought, not as many people would buy them. They’re not an easy pet to have. They have complicated needs that most people just can’t provide for. I want more people to know about this because it’s really sad to know that this snake industry is so common after knowing the things snake pets go through.

Annotated bibliography

Artist statement:

One part of Noah’s memoir that really inspired me to write about my topic was when he spoke about being new to his school. How he had to pick a group to be with and how he felt like he didn’t belong. I really liked the way he explained how he felt and what he went through. I can understand how he felt because I felt a lot of the same things too. That feeling of not belonging somewhere really stuck with me. He talked a lot about being an outsider on multiple occasions which is most likely something that impacted his identity today. In chapter 11: Outsider, he talked about his school experience, how he felt about not belonging, and always having to pick a group even when he didn’t really have any to choose. I really enjoyed his writing style. He made his stories funny and entertaining to read even when some of the moments he talked about were traumatic. He also included a lot of his own culture and identity into his writing. For example, when he wrote in the language his mom yelled at him. It made the reader connect with him. His stories were very descriptive too which I loved, I imagined everything that he wrote about in my head, and so it made me want to make my story as descriptive as possible. Some storytelling techniques I used were visual descriptions, a little bit of humor, and some reflective moments. I didn’t add a lot of humor to my story. I just used it I felt like maybe it didn’t fit right with my story or I didn’t know exactly where to add humor. Even though I tried to add a little bit of humor when I described what I wore to my first day of school because I always thought it was funny. I talked about where I came from, my culture as an immigrant, I talked about myself, and how I had to learn and live in a whole new culture. That explains my culture and identity to an outsider. One of the essential questions of this unit was “ How do our various cultures influence our identities?” in my vignette, I talked about how being influenced by different cultures affected me. It was like stepping into a whole new world and that changed my life completely. Being influenced by American culture as well as my own influenced the way I am now. It taught me so many new things that maybe I wouldn’t have learned if it wasn’t such a big part of my life.

Essay - Quarantine Through Different Perspectives

Quarantine has affected every single one of us in different ways. Some changes can be positive and negative. I think that for most teenagers, quarantine has been a negative thing. It has caused us to miss out on important events in our lives. I think our teenage years are some of the most important, and interesting times of our lives. This is a time when we grow, meet new people, and make great impacts on our lives. Quarantine has made us miss a lot of things that are important to us, exciting things. Some teens might have had a good experience with quarantine. Maybe they like being isolated and with more time to themselves. I have personally not met any teens who actually like quarantine but I know there could be a lot of kids who think like this. I decided to ask some of my friends about their experience during quarantine. These are some of the questions I asked them: Do you feel like you’re missing out on important events of your life/ like your wasting time? What’s one word that best describes your quarantine experience? Has quarantine been good for you or not?

I got 8 people’s responses and they all ended up being very similar. Six of them said that they felt they were missing out or wasting their time because of quarantine. Some of the words they described their experience as were boring, lazy, unmotivated, stressful, lost, “meh”, and fun. Seven people said their experience was bad and only one person said their quarantine experience has been good. My own experience with quarantine hasn’t been pleasant at all. I feel like quarantine has made me waste valuable time. I’ve missed my 8th-grade graduation and the beginning of my freshman year. Those are two things I’m very frustrated that I’ve missed out on. I’ve looked forward to those two events for years. Maybe since 5th grade. I always expected my freshman year to be filled with excitement and joy. This is not at all what I expected it to start off as, but it won’t be like this forever. I also go to Colombia every summer to visit my family and sadly I wasn’t able to go this year. It’s already hard enough for me not being able to see them for 10 months and now it’s doubled the time. This has caused a lot of stress and frustration. Quarantine feels like being grounded for an incredibly long time. I just can’t wait until it’s over.

Author’s statement.

I wrote this essay the day before it was due. To be honest it was hours before it was due. I finished writing it at around 11:40 PM. I had an idea of what I wanted to do weeks before the project was due but I actually sat down and wrote it on the last day. This might seem like I was irresponsible with my time management (and it probably is) but I know I wasn’t the only one who did this. I know a couple of people who participated in this contest that did exactly what I did. Since quarantine started, and before, I struggle with my time management. I do a lot of my work a little while before it’s due. I also don’t think that because we wait last minute to do it, it’s gonna turn out bad. I’ve done a lot of projects that ended up looking awesome the day before they were due. I think this relates a lot to being a teen in these weird times but also it relates to being a teen in general.