English 2 · Pahomov · E Band Public Feed
Unique-Lily Rivera
I stepped back a bit to let the bus slide in front of me. The doors opened and stepped up, sliding my trans pass through the scanner. I turned on my heel, glancing around the bus for a seat. I noticed an old lady staring at me, face contorted in disgust; I shrugged her off. I couldn’t find a seat, so I instead started to walk towards the back door to lean against the wall. I was stopped by the little old lady sitting in the front.
Without warning, she screamed, “Shave it off, whore!”
I looked at her, frozen in slight shock. The rest of the people on the bus turned their heads at the shout, eyes blown wide. Once I got over the slight shock, I looked at her in the eyes, stomach slightly shaking and eyes watering. My head bowed, slight hiccuping noises escaping my taught mouth; I couldn’t hold it in any longer.
I threw my head back and let out a hearty laugh, extremely amused by the outburst. Her face got angrier and angrier the more I laughed. I laughed right in her face and turned away, going to stand in the back of the bus. I shook my head in amusement, giggling quietly to myself.
The concept of a society is a funny thing, isn’t it? This thing that we call ‘Society’ practically rules our lives and determines our place in the world. The real definition of society, “..the aggregate of people living together in a more or less ordered community,” does not seem to match the definition us as a society created and live by. What we know as ‘Society’ has become its own entity, becoming more of a sort of rule book rather than a group of people. Society tells you how to exist has a human in a society, with rules on: what to watch on T.V., what to eat, who to worship, what celebrities to have a crush, but the biggest ones have to be what to wear and what to look like.
Me? Yeah, I definitely don’t fit into those standards. I have my head shaved in a masculine way, my hair is dyed an unnatural color, I have piercings in places that aren’t my ears, I either wear clothing that is too masculine or too revealing, I am not lady-like in any sense, I swear like a sailor, I’m not heterosexual, and I voice my opinions and stand my ground. All of what makes up me goes against mainstream standards for teenage females. I get comments all the time about how pretty I would be if dressed like a girl, or how I am a sinner for going against God’s ideal for how a woman should look, but, personally, I don’t really care. As I grew up, I grew a thick skin and sense of self-love, so I learned not to care about what people think. I never follow society’s rules, because frankly, they’re stupid. I am a leader, not a follower, and I believe that everyone should be one too. Be your own leader, make your own decisions, screw society. Be your own person, and love yourself.
Prison of Academia
My Love/Hate Relationship with Glasses
Used to Be Afraid of What I Now Love - Meymey Seng
Started from the bottom now im here
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1f6PGIjol58mMcmEoHE0_rXQIZnwe-dI95Yw3hxdKRIg/edit
Little girls are the devil//Amado Alfaro-Allah
Back in the day, when I was a teenager before I had status, and before I had a pager… Nah, just kidding. I’m not that old! But when I was younger and had my super cool afro I usually get asks questions about it. “How long have you’ve been growing it out for?” or “How do you wash your hair?” I also answer six months for the first questions and for the second one I usually say “Well I put my hair under the water and wash it”. Every day I would get asked about my hair I kind of felt like a celebrity. The attention wasn’t always positive, though. I would get easily picked out super easily like small children called me out frequently and usually said “Mommy look at his hair” at the top of their lungs. This was always super embarrassing because It would draw a whole lot of attention to me. This was life for me usually, one of 3 things would happen first, an old person would lecture me on my hair and what it meant and it was usually really cool but when you’re in a rush you don’t wanna be mean so I kind of just sat there and took it. Second, there would be the people who think they’re out of earshot of me and either complain about my hair and how it’s “inappropriate” or say it looks like a microphone. I have been called Q-tip so many times I’ve lost count. One time I remember closely is when I was at the franklin institute doing my thing when another run of the mill runt shouts “Your hair looks like cotton candy!” her mom is laughing trying to cover her mouth and I just take it as another encounter of people that I’ll probably never see again. Then she said something really peculiar “Mommy why are you laughing, I love cotton candy!” Then things got weird. I was trying to escape this situation with a well placed “Welp!” but the little girl kept talking about how she wanted to eat my hair and the mom telling her why she couldn’t. At this point, I was really tired and not that angry. Then the little girl and the mom came to an agreement “At least can I touch it?” The mom looked at me and I nodded and sighed in defeat as I squatted down. The little girl reached her hand out and started touching my hair, then touching turned into rubbing, then rubbing turned into a sharp bite and pulling on my head. A handful of my hair was in her mouth and in the confusion I was stunned. The mother quickly pulled her daughter away “I’m so sorry!” she was rambling and whining until I stopped her and laughed really hard “Don’t worry about it, I’m super flattered.” The little girl didn’t seem phased about what just happened, in fact, it looked like she was confused on why I didn’t taste like she thought I would. She then started to cry, really loud which made everyone uncomfortable. When the mom asked her what was wrong the little girl kept repeating the same answer “He lied!, His hair is a liar!” At this point, I was holding in my laughter so much that I actually started to cry. The ignorance of a child is really funny to me what can I say, but what could I say or even yet what could I do to make this little girl stop crying. It’s not like I could pull cotton candy out of my pocket (as cool as that would be) so I started thinking. This was one of the reasons I cut my hair it was giving me a little too much attention then I would have liked and also it was the middle of summer and my head gets extremely hot. Don’t get me wrong it’s kind of my trademark style but I wanted to try something new. Then it hit me there was a cart outside of the museum that sells cotton candy. So I tell the mom and the little girl and she stop crying and her eyes light up. When I was outside of the Franklin institute I saw the girl and her mom buying her cotton candy. I guess when people point me out I should feel somewhat flattered because I get to experience situations like this.
Mi Familia-Amaris Ortiz
https://docs.google.com/a/scienceleadership.org/document/d/1n8ZQh2rvytGRdGQZT0faFXyaTk3iB25D9Qxicd8gspA/edit?usp=sharing
Cleaner-Ariana Flores
I’d always heard of people getting poisoned in movies and books. In scenarios where an evil senior advisor wants the power all to themselves & poisons the king to gain it. Taking a life only for the sake of fame seems unrealistic. I had never really heard of people being poisoned in my life. That was until, my mom got an unexpected text message.
I was lounging on the couch in my sweatpants and my favorite old t-shirt. It was yet another bright, sunny Saturday and I was bored out of my mind. There were no homework or projects to do. So, the choices were to either go work on my unfinished poem for club, read a new book, or go watch my brother play video games. Watching Tony play video games won because he was so obnoxiously loud I couldn’t possibly do the other two.
“Hey Ana, come upstairs real quick,” my mom called. I hopped up the steps two at a time and turned right, then jogged to her room before flopping on the bed.
“What’s up?,” I asked with my speech muffled in the blanket. I looked up just as I saw her place her phone down on the pillow.
“I just checked on Brian the other day because we haven’t talked to him in a bit,” my mom stated. It was a habit of ours to see how he was doing because he didn’t live in the same state as us anymore.
“He got poisoned,” she sighed with disappointment coloring her voice. Although Brian is 28, and not related by blood to either of us, we kind of adopted him into the family. So this knowledge was a big blow shock. The fact that we no money, nor time to go and visit him
“What?! How?”, I shouted, my tone full of disbelief. I dove to snatch her phone and went to messages, so I could see his words with my own eyes.“This can’t be happening,” I thought. “Things like this didn’t happen to good people like him who had already been through so much in life.”
Ever since he had lived in Philly, then moved Alaska, I’d had questions regarding his departure. Sure Philadelphia wasn’t the nicest town, but I never found out what his line of work was there.
“His drink was served to him with cleaner in it while he was out at a restaurant…and you know because of his lupus he was put in the hospital. There’s no way cleaner could’ve gotten all the way from a maintenance closet or something like that and into his drink. That means there was most likely malicious intent. What is wrong with people?” my mother declared.
The exact same things were running through my mind. It just didn’t add up unless someone had done it on purpose.He had expressed before that he lived in a town where there was a lot of discrimination towards the African American race. This caused us to presume because he had spoken of altercations between him and Caucasians. However, neither of us thought it would go that anyone would have taken it to such lengths.
I couldn’t come to terms with the fact that one of my family members was almost killed. Neither us nor Brian ever found out who possibly put the cleaner in his drink or how this (what could only be explained as an accident from the restaurant) took place if there wasn’t someone involved.
Eventually, Brian was discharged from the hospital and decided to move back to Philadelphia after much deliberation. I was glad to hear the news, and personally, I wouldn’t blame him for wanting to move back. All people have a choice at some point in their life to something right or wrong.
A few weeks after the incident I looked back and shook my head in shame because this is the society we live in today. I just hope our generation is the one to change it for the better.
Ideas Anyone? - Harlem Satterfield
I’m a programmer at heart. I love making games and code for people to enjoy. Whenever I have free time, I’m usually on my laptop coding on Scratch. In case you’re wondering, Scratch is a free online coding tool for games and animations. I’ve made four games so far, and my friends enjoy them!
I first started coding in fifth grade. It was like any other day. I walked into computer class and sat at my desk, staring at the empty screen before me. That’s when my teacher asked us to log on to codecademy.com. We were doing something new today. He then instructed us to make an account and start the HTML course on the site. ‘What is HTML’ I thought. I remember it saying, “Write anything between the brackets and click Submit.” I reluctantly did what it said. When I clicked ‘Submit,’ my words appeared on the screen. I was blown away. TECHNOLOGY!!!! This was completely unheard of in my life! I was so excited that I went on to finish the entire course. Now, I’m coding in advanced languages like Javascript and Python. I later found Scratch when I was 13.
One of my games is called ‘Boulder Dash.’ It’s where you have a little character collecting coins while avoiding falling boulders. Each coin equals 100 points and the boulders will drop faster for every 5 coins you get. Sounds simple, right? Good. I like keeping things simple. ‘Boulder Dash’ has an easy concept that can become so difficult. In fact, no one has been able to get past 1700, the high score. I have reset it a few times, but only if I’m testing it for bugs or something. I want my games to be the best they can be.
An older game I made was called ‘Ship Brawl’ (I should give it a better name.) It’s a space-themed two-player game. Basically, there are two spaceships; a player controls each. The goal is to shoot your opponent’s ship five times. I put a lot of work into this game. It’s coolest feature is the speed mechanism, which allows players to have their ships travel in speeds ranging from -10 to 10. You have the power to go super fast and chase your opponent, or show off your skills by flying in reverse! However, I’m not writing to explain my accomplishments as a programmer. A few weeks ago, I went on Scratch, eager to create a new game. I got right to work, but something was wrong. I wasn’t feeling inspired about anything. I was drawing a blank. I tried to think of the things I liked, but nothing came up. My mind was deadlocked and it’s like I was in show hole or something.
For days, I was pacing around my room, desperately searching for an idea. A few came to mind, but I later decided that they’d be too hard or too bland. Among these bad ideas were a pizza-making game and Pong. There was so many things I wanted in a game- multiplayer modes, secret levels, power-ups, you name it. The thing was, I didn’t know what I could do to combine them all. I didn’t show it, but besides my school work, this was a serious situation.
Eventually, I decided to take a little break for game making and focus more on other things. I gave myself a few days to think, and of course, nothing came of it. I didn’t know what I was going to do. I don’t get it, I thought, why can’t I think of an idea? If I have no inspiration, my brain begins to hurt, and when my brain begins to hurt, I can’t focus on anything! To this day, I’m still waiting to be inspired, but I do keep myself alive by actually playing games. Hopefully it’ll help.
P.S. If you want to play my games, look up “UptownAxe” on Scratch. That’s where they are.
Time cannot be gained - James Adams
“You may delay, but time will not.”-Benjamin Franklin. I have never been good with time, partly because i procrastinate and partly because I lose track of it. The more i grew up the more I understood how time works but I still don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. Being focused on time caused me to be forgetful of other things, but being not focused on time made me late and uncaring.
“Jimmy wake up you’re late for school!”
Oh boy. Here we go again. As soon as I hear those words, I already know that I’m going to get slapped and get water thrown on my face because I’m a heavy sleeper. My Dad takes waking up very seriously for some reason even though we’re usually late so it really doesn’t matter
“Ok ok I get it I’m up!” I exclaim. During my 8th grade year, I was late every day so it wasn’t a surprise when I got woken up like this.
“Were gonna be late get up! If your mom finds out about this, you’re not the only the that will be in trouble,” The worst part about being late wasn’t getting beat up by my Dad or being talked to by the principal or the teacher, but it was my Mom.
“Jimmy this is your 4th lateness in a row. You need to pick it up this is your 47th lateness. You need to realize that being on time is important. It interrupts your learning and everybody else’s, I also need to tell your parents,” My advisor explains. Unfortunately, this information went in one ear and out the other, the only word i heard was parents.
When I got home, I was preparing for the inevitable. I heard the door opening a little earlier than usual and I was not ready.
“‘Beep Beep Beep…’ Jimmy wake up it’s time for practice,” I hear my alarm and my mother at the same time, which means it’s time to wake up for practice again. Fortunately, I did all my homework except for one. Usually, when I do my homework, I do all of it except for one and I have no idea why. What this means is that I do it in the car on my way to practice or at school. This usually works out fine for the most part.
“Jimmy, are you doing your homework in the car again? It looks like you’re not done and we’ve arrived,” my Dad says. Sometimes when you plan things out, it doesn’t work out in the end, and this is a perfect example of that. When I said saving my homework for later usually works, I lied. It never works but almost always I can finish it at school.
“Rockets on three family on six!” It was the end of practice and we did the usual chant. We, unfortunately ended a little late, but what I had was faith. Taking the bus to school is the fastest but I Already knew it was probably going to make me late. I also knew that taking the trolley was going to get me there and was consistent, so I decided to take that.
“Of course I get here at 8:10,” I say with a sigh.
Turns out it didn’t work out. Sometimes when you think things out, time just doesn’t go your way. If only time didn’t flow then you wouldn’t have to worry about being late or early, you could have time for anything you wanted to do, but I don’t know if it would be a good thing or a bad thing.
ENG2-022
- Term
- 2016-17