The Final One

This year has been such a wild ride – both in terms of my classes and my friends. I think the best way to describe it would be to say that there was some drama and there was some trauma. Honestly though, I’m really thankful for so many people for getting me through the school year.

First off, my parents. I have no words to explain how grateful I am for you guys. I know I don’t ever really tell you this but thank you so much. Thank you for keeping me accountable with my classes and grades (cough calc cough). Thank you for making sure I ate whenever I forgot to because I was studying. Thank you for forcing me to get involved with things other than school, which led me to making new friends and experience things that I would normally not. You guys are such an inspiration for me and who I want to be.

Of course, I can’t forget my friends. Angie: thank you for keeping me company in chem and just for being your regular spontaneous self. You’ve literally kept me grounded all year with your wild comments and you always know how to make me laugh. Gayatri: thank you for keeping me up to date with all the brown gossip and staying up late (3 am is late, right?) to do homework with me. You’re literally awesome bro – especially since you’ve forced me to learn to manage my schedule better because staying up too late would “take years off my life”.

Thank you to my wonderful table – Ivana, Sara, Kat, and Bismaad. You guys have made second semester so much more fun with all of the random comments and insight. Ivana – thank you, specifically, for having the same handwriting as me and being the writer for all of our in-class writings (I’m still surprised that Mrs. Valentino didn’t catch us). Bismaad – thank you so much for being my gum dealer and voice of reason. You are the ONLY person who keeps our table sane. Kat – thank you for being my last brain cell and the person who is socially awkward with me (we both need to participate more). Sara – my favorite multi-colored gremlin, I must begrudgingly admit that you have been my main source of entertainment this semester (your comments are so offhanded) so thank you for that. Regardless, you guys are so entertaining and have made the whole class enjoyable.

I would also like to give a special shoutout to two of my past teachers who have had quite an impact on me – Mr. Verhelle and Ms. Foster. To Mr. Verhelle, thank you for reminding me that my GPA doesn’t define me (I’ll let you take the win this time around). On a serious note, however, thank you so much for putting up with my random creative pieces and always having more advice for me in regard to how I can improve them. You are, whether you know it or not, the cultivator of my love for writing and quite frankly, the reason I enjoy creative writing instead of feeling like it’s something that is being forced on me. Speaking of being forced into writing – Ms. Foster. I genuinely didn’t think that I would thank someone for forcing me to write about things that I am not passionate about and yet here we are. I want to thank you so much for every piece that you have forced me to write. It’s truly helped me build a stance free of bias in my own writing. I have been able to improve my style of writing into something more sophisticated and factual than opinionated so thank you for that!

My biggest thanks in regard to teachers, however, has to be reserved for Mrs. Valentino. To be honest, English was supposed to be the class that I disliked the most – my senior friends have never been able to quite veil their hatred for the essays and as a result, I too was prepared for the worst. What I didn’t expect was the sheer chaos that came with this class and that is primarily thanks to Mrs. Valentino. Don’t believe me? Enjoy this list of iconic quotes:  

But genuinely, I don’t think I have actually learned so much about the real world in any other class other than this one. And I never through that it would be as entertaining as it has been and that is thanks primarily to Mrs. Valentino.

The only think I have to say is that I never saw the purpose of half the homework assignments (did we really neeeeeeed to do all those questions on passages?), but I can attest that a lot of the things that we’ve done in class – especially the Friday essay review days – have been extremely helpful in improving my own essays and writing style. For example, my first rhetorical analysis essay was quite put together, but lacked explanation regarding the author’s purpose. In one of my paragraphs, I mentioned that “this comparison shows off how a single word can create two very different realities”. While this is an interesting notice, I have come to the realization (thank you Mrs. Valentino) that this is a vague idea and that the effect of what this does is more important than the actual feat of accomplishing it. In contrast however, my final rhetorical analysis essay is one that I am most proud of. My favorite part in that essay, and the place I showed most growth in, has to be when I stated that “Price suggests with this understatement that Americans had begun to brush aside their morals for something more “flashy” – a backhanded remark on the culture as a whole”. This statement really explores Price’s reason for writing this piece rather than just the effect of the use of the word “flashy”. It also sounded really cool which made me somewhat proud of it.

I also have to admit that I never thought that the weekly blogs we were mandated to do were going to be as fun as they became. My top two posts have to be the ones titled “Charming, really?” and “A Letter From My Mind: What is left for us?”. Both of these posts really let me explore my inner creative writer and write about things that actually interested me. In the first post, I got a chance to explore Cinderella and the American Dream that she became a symbol for. The thing about this post was that I was trying to incorporate how many women feel oppressed by others in what is normally considered insignificant ways, and to undo that, I started to address Cinderella by her actual name, Ella, instead of the name that was given to her by people who wanted to take away her power. I really thought this idea gave Ella back some semblance of her own identity. I have to credit this idea to all the conversations that we’ve had in class regarding gender and the way people often feel inferior because of the social expectations that come with identifying as one of them – in particular women feeling a sense of powerlessness when facing men. As for the second post, it was really fun to write because I was able to take everything that we had learned in class about how we were working to save the planet, like urban rewilding, and then flip it and see what would happen if we didn’t do any of that. It was a great way for me to explore the extent of my creativity as well as create a call for action in regard to taking initiative to save our very fragile world.

As mentioned earlier, a lot of the ideas that I have come up with this year have been a result of the discussion that we have had in class and it makes realize just how valuable these lessons have been, so from the bottom of my heart, thank you Mrs. Valentino for creating a space where we can freely explore these topics and really understand them.

And last but not least, I am thankful for all of the authors that we have read about this year and all the things we have learned from them, but the two that really connected to me were Firoozeh Dumas and David Sedaris. The piece “The F Word” by the former author is something that I felt that I could relate the most to since I too have a long name that is often butchered. Through this piece, I was able to gain an insight to how Dumas felt the need to change her name which is very contrasting to my own decision to be addressed by my actual name. It revealed to me the importance of perspective, especially when it comes to a topic as versatile as a name and the culture that lies behind it and, in that sense, I am really thankful for Firoozeh Dumas for exploring this topic. As for the latter mentioned author, his piece “Me Talk Pretty One Day” really left a lasting impression on me because it was about how sometimes you have to struggle to be able to fully learn and I think I went through that a lot this year – especially with my slightly crazy class schedule and constant tests (or as Mrs. Valentino so kindly told us “you guys are so scarred from school that when you hear the word test you go AHHHHHHH!”). Through this piece, I was able to learn that there is actually a light at the end of the tunnel, no matter how dark it feels right now, and in that manner, this piece became a tiny spot of light indicating that I’m going the right way so for that, I am so thankful. The final author that I feel the need to thank is one of my childhood favorites and the reason that I started reading for personal enjoyment again in high school – Rick Riordan. Specifically, the Percy Jackson series, which has been such an anchor for me and no matter how far I seem to drift from liking to read, I always find myself being drawn back. This series is one that I picked up in elementary school and I have probably read enough times to have the books memorized. Riordan’s writing style: from the plot to the sarcastic remarks made by the characters keep the story really interesting and this is something that I really strive to achieve with my own writing, so I feel the need to thank him for his work.

I just want to say that these are just a few general thanks and that if I were to thank everyone, we would be here for a while. So, to all my friends and teachers that I haven’t mentioned – I’m really grateful for all of you and every impact that you have left on me (good or bad cause we don’t judge here) because you’ve given me so much inspiration towards what I write. This school year has been something else entirely and when it ends like everything inevitably does, I think I’m going to miss this year the most out of all my previous years.

Signing off for one last time,

Reality sucks