Introduction:

My goals for this essay was to discuss how we as a society expect men to be strong all the time. My goal was also to discuss how that’s a toxic thing to expect from men. I’m proud of how I was able to write about a hard time in my life. One way I want to improve my writing for the next paper is to reflect better because I feel like some of my reflection is weak.

When I was seven years old I learned that perfect families don’t exist. I always thought that my mother and father would be married forever and that we could live happily ever after. Unfortunately, I was wrong.

My mother and father had issues that a seven-year-old couldn’t “understand”, though I did understand that they weren’t happy. They would argue and yell at each other and I overheard all of it while I hid in a tent I kept in my room. That tent was my safe place where I got away from all of this. Before I knew it, my parents were divorced. My parents tried to sugarcoat things, but I could understand everything perfectly. Then I was given a schedule that consisted of me spending half the week with my mother and the other half with my father.

You would think that after the divorce my parents would be fine but they weren’t. My mom started working long hours to cope. My dad would try to smile through the pain and before I knew it my stepmom appeared in my life. I could tell that at first, my father was using my stepmom as a rebound because I could still see the lack of happiness in his face, but over time he fell in love with her. I wasn’t very fond of my stepmom but I dealt with her for my father’s sake.

My mother and father’s divorce left a dent in me. It changed my thought process and how I loved people. Seeing my mother and father fall out of love made me keep people at a distance. I didn’t want to get too close to people because I feared going through a “divorce”. This toxic way of seeing love didn’t last long because the summer of sophomore year my father and stepmom divorced and I was able to evaluate things.

It was a warm summer night. I was laying in my bed with my pjs on watching “Henry Danger” on Nickelodeon. My air conditioner hummed along with the actors talking on my tv. That was a normal summer night for me until my dad came home from work. I heard a loud noise which was the alarm system going off. My dad’s footsteps were heavy as if he were mad. He hurried up the steps and swung my door open and sat in my computer chair. My dad’s usual joyful smile was nowhere to be found and then he started speaking, “Shawnie me and Fiona are getting a divorce.” I wasn’t surprised for problems were lingering in their relationship for a while. I asked my dad how he was doing and he replied, “ This is nothing.” It was my dad’s second divorce and I could tell in actuality that he wasn’t fine. He was just trying to hold up a front. My dad then got up from the computer chair, kissed my forehead, and continued with his night.

I sat in my bed wondering what would come next. I wasn’t mad because I knew the divorce was the best decision for their strained relationship. I was more or so worried about how my little brother would take it since he was young. I feared that my little brother would grow up and handle his emotions the way I did. I sat in my bed for the rest of the night with my thoughts racing through my brain resulting in me getting no sleep. Then before I knew it, they were divorced.

After the day I found out of the divorce, I had many sleepless nights. I was so afraid of divorce and the fact that I was experiencing another one frightened me, like a monster under the bed. Yet, I came to terms and realized that in life there are two types of relationships. Toxic relationships and stable ones. Both of the relationships my dad were in started off as stable and then turned toxic. It was not one person’s fault, but both in actuality. By me being old enough to understand that I was contempt with things. My father, on the other hand, was not.

Just like the first divorce, my dad tried to hide his emotions. Typically men try to hide their emotions because of what society expects of them. Society expects men to be strong and always be fine. Men are usually taught that showing emotions are weak. When in reality, not showing emotions is weak because you’re not strong enough to confront how you feel. I remember when my little brother would cry and my dad would say, “Son crying is for girls.” That’s the same toxic thing that my grandfather would say to my dad which my dad was now passing on to my brother.

My dad was like a cup overflowing with water. The water, in this case, were his emotions, yet he refused to confront them. Sadly, my dad was never able to come to terms with how he felt because he died not long after him and my stepmom divorced due to a heart attack.

In a crazy way, I feel like if my dad were able to come to term with things, I feel like he could’ve lived a longer life. He had so much pent-up aggression and sorrow that it took a strain on him. The fact that we as a society expect men to be these strong beings is in a way asking for too much, for they are people just like us who need to confront their emotions or else their emotions will comfort them.

If I could go back I would try to be there for my dad more and help take on the burden of his emotions, but since my dad was brought up in a society where men are frowned upon if they show emotions my dad stayed a closed book. We need to normalize men showing their emotions because emotions are an essential part of life that everyone should be able to use to express themselves.

Introduction:

My goal for this essay was to tell an interesting story using the two memories that I had to write. I am proud of my scenes of memory. I feel like they are very descriptive and they tell an interesting story. One way I would like to improve my writing for my next paper is making my story flow together better.

Advance Essay:

The theme of my scenes is me having mixed emotions about the activities I was about to do. My aunt, brother, and I were on a plane to Orlando, Florida for a little summer vacation. It was the middle of June. The sun was out followed by a million little rain drops. My brother, my aunt, and I just stepped off the shuttle bus to Volcano Bay. The waterpark was temporarily closed due to the rain and lightning. So soon as the park opened back up we went to the first ride we could find. Surprisingly there was no line. We began walking up about 250+ steps and by the time we got up there we were tired but also filled with excitement. We finally got to the top and I saw the sign and realized that this was the tallest ride in the entire waterpark. The ride consisted of twin tubes across from each other at a 70 degree angle. I thought about going back down but that was too many steps to walk up for no reason. So I stepped in the blue tube and my brother stepped in the green tube. The staff worker told me to cross my arms and legs and then look straight ahead. Before I followed her instructions, I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. Out of nowhere I heard a loud metal sound. My eyes popped open instantly and my brother was nowhere to be found. In my head I was thinking where did he go and I got a little more worried. My heart was beating out of my chest and my eyes were looking all around the tiny tube. Then finally I looked down and realized what had happened. I tried to prepare myself but it was to late. A trap door opened from under me and I shot through the tube at about 30 miles per hour. There was water splashing in my face, water going my nose, and water going in my eyes. In this scene I was excited to get on the water ride but then when I saw how it went I got a little worried.

In the second scene I was also excited because bungee jumping looked fun. I was worried because once I got to the top of the platform it looked way higher than I thought. But I decided to get over it by jumping off the platform. My friends and I were walking through the Poconos until we saw a tree that was not like any of the other ones we’ve passed so we stopped and walked over to the tree to see what was going on. When we got there we were greeted by this lady wearing a blue “STAFF” t-shirt. So we asked “What is this?” as we pointed to the tree. The lady replied “It’s for bungee jumping.” My friends and I all looked at each other and said “What y’all tryna do?” One responded with “Let’s do it!” and the rest of us agreed. So that’s exactly what we did.The lady attached the harness to all of us and we all began to start climbing until we heard someone whisper “I can’t do this.” We tried to convince her to keep going but it didn’t work. So we went without her. We finally made it to the top of the platform and now came the decision of who was going to jump first. To decide who was going to go first, we decided to play rock, paper, scissors. Thankfully I didn’t have to go first but after seeing him go first I volunteered to go second. I eased slowly to the edge, looked down, and then I leapt into the air as if I was doing a cannonball into a pool. About 5 seconds later I was dangling from the bungee cord barely above the ground. In my head I thought to myself that it wasn’t so bad I was actually glad that I did it.

One reason why I chose those memories is because I overcame one of my fears. I used to have a fear of heights and I felt I could conquer it by doing those activities. Since I stepped out of my comfort zone to do those activities I realized that I actually had fun and now I like to do things like riding roller coasters. Another reason I chose those memories is because both of those memories occurred outside of Philadelphia. The water slide scene occurred in Orlando, Florida, while the bungee jumping scene occurred in the Poconos.

Intro: The theme of my essay is about dropping out and stress from school. I wanted to write about something that other students could relate to something on a personal level and have it be somewhat entertaining. I’m proud of doing more than the minimum word count and having it not be a formal essay that people wouldn’t want to read. I made this entire essay off of procrastination and now it’s something that connects to the real world. For the next essay, I think I would have the paragraphs be shorter and not a sight for sore eyes. I want something that’s pleasant and easy to read.

September 12. Another ordinary day for me. I was sitting on the MFL, wondering what the day would be like. The train is already crowded, loud, and musty. I didn’t even know who was around me because people kept coming on and off the train. My day couldn’t have started any worse. For a few minutes, I continued to think that, until the english class writing assignment popped in my head. Ugh! Another writing piece. Of course, I don’t know what to write about and would wait until the last minute to do it. Should I write about the assignment itself or my surroundings? This year I wanted to be a changed student, doing my work on time and participate in class. But, it just never happened. Becoming a changed person takes time and can’t be done overnight, that’s one thing I failed to realize. On the first day of school, I thought I was gonna do my work, but my laziness kicked in. “Doors are closing.” The train operator said. I have about 30 more minutes before I get to City Hall and wouldn’t have a chance to write this paper, so what should I write about. When it comes to writing about myself I never know what to do. I think I know myself, but when it comes down to it, I don’t. To others, it probably won’t make sense, but to me it does. You should be able to think about yourself. When someone says to know your limits, you should but limits change every day. Now that a few minutes have passed and the train isn’t as noisy I can finally concentrate. My scene will be about my thoughts!

And that was how I started off my day. Writing a paper in less than 25 minutes trying to make it seem like I put effort into it, but I’ve already gotten to the point in my life where I no longer care about school. I’m ready to drop out of school and become an illegal exotic dancer and become famous or something. I think some people my age are at that stage too. No longer caring about school or the future, just living in the moment for the moment. Of course, I’m still going to continue to do my work because I do want to go to college and get my degree and have a career. Even if I was to stop doing my work, it would show on my report card.

During the last quarter of my freshman year, I had completely given up. Teachers kept assigning work until the last minute and I wasn’t willing to do it. In English class, we had to write an essay that used ethos, pathos, and logos. I did have a few ideas in mind when I started, but none of them were good enough to get a B on so, my English teacher at the time helped me come up with better ideas. The argument that I stuck with was “artists of the hip hop and r&b genre deserves as much respect as artists from others.” At the time, it sounded like a great idea but it wasn’t. I ended up bs-ing the whole thing because there wasn’t enough research and energy put into it. It also reflected on my report card. A grade too embarrassing to mention in an essay that no one is going to read. My mom and advisor were disappointed. I could tell by the tones of their voices and by their facial expressions. Moral of the story: bs anything you want as long as you’re able to face the consequences, unlike me.

Even while writing this essay I was ready to give up and write about anything. It’s something that we do in life, give up and forget or finesse.

High school is supposed to be the best and hardest part of our academic careers but we tend to focus on the difficult parts. It’s not fair to us that we’re forced to go to school and have people say “you’re here to learn not to have fun.” It’s not like we have a choice in the matter. We should have an option. If it was up to me, I would probably show up to school ⅘ days and have a job. It would be nice to say let’s just not go to school today and have fun.

Teachers like to say, I don’t like grading your homework, but continue to give us a lot of work. Here at SLA, we have 5 class periods and most of the teachers give us homework every day and it’s not even something we could do in 10 minutes. The stress and workload can cause students to drop out or become depressed depending on what’s going on in their life. Having this mentality can be a phase, not only for teens but for all students.

My goal for this essay was to make it the best I could. I had to overcome my fears about this story and share it. My other goal is to share it with the class to see how people feel about it. I’m proud that I really worked on it out of school and that shows how much this means to me. I wanted to tell this story to put out there , that things might be real even if you don’t see it. One thing that can help me improve on my writing is to ask for help and ask for people to read it as well, because if people read it, they can give me feedback.

When I was in 7 grade I would always watch movies and shows about ghosts but I knew that it was fake or that it was made up like cartoons. I would make jokes about it over and over. My dad would tell me that there was a ghost in our house so that I should stop playing. So because I was a kid I didn’t believe him. I kept playing around about the ghost until the day I heard my sister telling my dad that there was something in the basement that pulled her hair. I started to overthink this way too much and tried to find a way on how can this can be real. So I said to myself, they might be playing because this just can’t be real, but something hit me and said to myself they think I’m sleeping in the backroom so that must not know. I also heard my mom talking to both of them about it, something that my mother does not play around is about dead people so that made me believe them even more. All the events are happening in the basement from what I heard, and that’s where I play video games and play down there for hours so why haven’t I noticed anything, I told myself. I would hear movements upstairs but I would not mind it because it was someone upstairs moving. Until the basement door open and close behind me at least 4 times, but I didn’t give it any mind. I turn around on the 4th time and no one was there to open the door and close it, I went upstairs to check if any of my family was downstairs trying to play around with me. When I checked upstairs I asked everyone if they were downstairs and they all said ‘’No.’’ A week has passed and I heard my mom telling my dad that ‘’something closed the door on her and she said it was like someone breathing on her face. She also said that no one was in the house but her.’’ I had a gaming setup in the basement so I would be the one that would be downstairs the most, and that means I would have a higher risk of being hurt from this thing. I wanted to move my gaming setup so fast but my dad said ‘’that there is nowhere to put it so it does not have a setup or stay downstairs.’’ I would feel like someone is breathing behind my back but I would try not to think about too much because I didn’t want to go crazy because of something that is not real. I would try my best every day to not look back because it would make me go crazy and overthink it. I didn’t think of it that much because it didn’t harm my family or me yet so I would try to overcome it and forget about it.

I got some feedback saying that I would have to learn to change it up and not talk about the same thing over and over because you told us to talk about something else. I also got told that my writing was good but I will give to learn to put bigger words to make seem like a pro. I will have to learn to remember that it’s a story so it can sound like I’m writing at the period. I also got asked to learn to re-read it learn from my mistakes so that I can look at what I might have missed and that needs to be added so that the story can make sense, or that it would look way better. Something that I noticed is that my group used the same words and that makes it more notable and tells me what they want us to know about their work. Ethan also told me that I would have to put hints in there to give the readers an idea If the theme and what the story is trying to tell the readers.

What I’m trying to point out is that everyone has a problem in their house and if you can do anything you can do to stop it or to get away from it, you should, because it can get even worse for you and the people around you. How we make sense of things that we don’t know about. This can happen to people all over the world and people would not care or pay good action to it until it happens and people should try to learn about this because if you move and something is there, you might have a problem. Movies and shows are fake but they get it from real life and make it into entertainment and that is not good because this might be happening to people.

Introduction: This essay explores the difference between a home and a house. I told the story of my family coming to the United States to find a new home, after fleeing a war-torn country. I used both scenes of memory and artwork description. I am proud of the amount of description and I hope to carry that for my future pieces of work.

Essay:

I grew up in a home which was an escape from the bustling and rustling of Philadelphia. A home that always smelled of turmeric and cardamom. A place where we ate Manoushe for breakfast and washed it down with Hibiscus tea. A place where we would make a Lamb Ouzi for a celebration. Anytime there was the Lebanese Festival we would throw on our kaftan and play the Darbuka with Joey Tayoun. On our walls, we had art from the Hurriyah movement, and the blues of the Meditteranean were painted. One of my favorite piece of art is a photograph of a young girl kicking a soccer ball. The soccer ball is very rugged and not pumped up with air. She is wearing clothing that is too big for her, and her curly hair is wrapped up with a ribbon in a ponytail. You can’t see her face, just her tiny eight-year-old frame. The wall behind her is filled with trash and graffiti in an unknown language. She’s a Palestinian refugee playing in a refugee camp. A tent had become her new house, while her home was covered in bullet holes and crackling bricks. The home had always been very important for our family. Home didn’t just mean the place that you lived for a certain amount of time, that was a house. The home was the place where you felt yourself, a place of constant comfortability. We found the sense of feeling home always came when we were together, especially for my father and his siblings. My father and his siblings grew up in Beirut Lebanon. My father loved growing up in Lebanon. It was his paradise. It was a place where you can visit the white peaks of Mount Lebanon, learn the deep history of Byblos, and visit the beaches of Tyre. A place rich in culture and diversity, where you can see a mother covered head to toe in a niqab and her daughter right next to her in shorts and a t-shirt. He loved being with all his uncles, aunts, cousins, and grandparents. He never thought he would leave. One problem with Lebanon was that it never had a stable democracy. In 1975 a civil war broke out. After six months of seeing parts of Beirut crumble, my family left in search of a new safe home. They eventually came to King of Prussia a suburb outside of Philadelphia. They thought that this was a temporary move and that they would be able to go back home, but the civil war didn’t end for another fifteen years and they had to adapt to having America as their home. Right after college, my dad moved straight into Philly into a house in Society Hill. The first day that he moved in, a neighbor of his introduced himself. As they began to start talking he realized that this neighbor was Egyptian who grew up in Lebanon. He found someone that went through the same things as he did. He realized that it was very similar to Beirut a loud city where people honked as much as they talked, a place where people would yell at you instead of talk, and a place which had so much city pride. With the many years that he has spent in Philly, he found a place where he belonged. A place that he didn’t feel like an outsider. This was his new home, but his true and original home was still Beirut. One day I was looking at Airbnb, my dad came up to my room and asked to look for Airbnb in Beirut. I did a quick search and hundreds of apartments and homes came up. I clicked on one that had pictures of the sea which happened to be in a neighborhood called Mar Mikhael. We looked through the pictures and then I read the description for him. “This apartment is a 1950’s inspired apartment on a small street called Armenia, located in the beautiful Mar Mikhael neighborhood. Do you know where this is?” I asked. “ Our home was a block away from that street,” he replied with a smile. A moment passed and the smile stayed on his face, he was reminiscing on the memories from his life on Mar Mikhael. Just looking through the photos he made connections with every little thing. “ Under that apartment used to be the best Manoushe place.” “And we use to race our bikes over that street.” With just a few pictures he was able to give me a tour of his childhood home. He was able to answer any questions I had about his life before the United States. But most importantly, even if it was just for those few seconds he was able to feel at home again.

Introduction: My goal for this essay was to show how baseball-related to life. More specifically how baseball has taught me how to deal with wins and losses in life. I have found that keeping the same mindset that I do when playing baseball, I don’t get stuck on failures and stay humble with successes. I am proud of the descriptive language that I used in this essay and how it helped tell my story with detail. Next essay I want to finish it earlier so I can review more and get more peer reviews.

Final Draft; Wins and Losses As I waited my turn I felt the tension rising. The game was getting more intense as the score between the two all start teams went back and forth. I stood behind the batter watching the pitcher throw strikes right past him hitting the catcher’s glove causing a loud smack. This is when I started to feel nervous, the pressure was on me as the batter struck out and the 2 runners advanced on base. As I took my last practice swing I could feel my coach put his hands on my shoulders as a sign of reassurance that I was prepared. I stepped out of the cage feeling both nervous and eager to hit the ball. I positioned myself parallel to home base and took a second to take everything in. At this moment I could hear my mom in the background; “Let’s go Jackson!” and my team starting a chant. Seconds later it was silence, a split second when it only felt like it was me and the pitcher. He threw his first pitch and it sped by me, “STRIKE!” was the only thing I could hear after that. I repositioned myself, watched carefully as he gripped the ball and then “STRIKE!” another one before I knew it. This is when I felt the pressure like never before, I took a step back and knew what I had to do to make sure we won the game. I returned to the plate and played what felt like a starring game with the pitcher. I was ready this time, two fastballs went by and I wasn’t letting the third. The pitcher lifted his leg to start his throw and I started moving my bat. In an instant, I felt my bat make contact and watched as I sent the ball flying over the left fielders head. “RUN RUN RUN” is all I heard my coach screaming as I rounded first base and headed towards second. As I ran I noticed my teammate running to home plate so kept on running towards third base. As I approached my third base coach gave me the signal to slide and I did headfirst into the bag. When I got the chance to stand up and wipe the dirt off of me I realized what happened, I hit a triple and got two RBI’s. I felt a great feeling of pride knowing that I helped my team take the lead.

That story is significant to me because of the feelings I remember after finishing that game. I felt happy and accomplished and celebrated with my teammates which made it even better. That win felt so good because of how many times my team and I were the ones that lost and after that game, we left the field with our heads high. Another story I have about baseball is when I was on the losing side, and to be able to win you have to learn to lose first.

It was a windy day with a light drizzle. I had been up to bat countless times before but this time the stakes were high. It was two outs in the last inning and we were down two runs. With my teammate on third, we had a chance of scoring and continuing the game if I hit. I took my last practice swing, took a deep breath and stepped to the plate. As the pitcher started to wind up I could feel the tension building. The first pitch he threw passed me before I eve started to swing my bat. I took a step back, adjusted my feet, and focused on the baseball and the baseball only. This time I had a great swing, I lifted my foot just on time and twisted my hips in order for the best possible hit. Once again the ball flew past me and my bat threw me off balance because of the amount of power I put into the swing. Now I knew I had to hit, my team was counting on me and the fate of the game was up to me. I walked back to home base with ambition and focus. I knew what was at stake and tried to block it all out as I watched the pitcher dig his spikes in the sand. My team started a chant as I tried my hardest to ignore everything around me. As the pitcher released the ball coming towards me I knew it was a good pitch, right down the middle. I squeezed the bat as hard as I could and swung it around me waiting to hear the crack of the ball hitting the bat, but it never did. All I heard was the smack of the baseball hitting the catchers glove and saw the opposing team rushing the field to shake hands and celebrate.

I chose to write about these two experiences because they have taught me a lot about how to deal with wins and losses in life. Although baseball is just a sport I think that the emotions and mindset when dealing with successes and failures relates to other aspects of life. I also feel that I have had a lot of first-hand experience that no one is perfect through playing baseball, I have seen the best player on the team make stupid errors and the last batter hit a triple.