Category: Humanities

Writerly Life Post

One thing that made me feel very accomplished this year was when I finished writing my research paper. It made me feel accomplished because I worked for a long time on it, and I worked really hard on it. Finishing the paper made me feel good inside. One thing that challenged me about writing was finding out what protest and resistance did to help the colonies because you have to think a lot outside the box because if you look at it one way, it only hindered the colonies, so you have to think to find ways in which it helped the colonies. That is what I think challenged me and was good for me about writing.

Shabanu forced to marry Rahim-Sahib… but only for money?

I, Shabanu, have been betrothed to Rahim-Sahib. I was gonna be married to Murad, but when Hamir died Phulan was gonna be married to Murad. So now, I won’t be married to Murad, but to Rahim-Sahib, who is a rich person who is buying me over. I will be his fourth and last wife, because the Koran states that a man can have four wives at a time. I am forced to marry him because he bought me.

“”Shabanu,” says Dadi. “He already has bought you. He paid more than a fair price for a troublesome girl like you.””page 196.

He paid a bride price so now they are betrothed and will marry. Even though I need to marry him, he is 55. He could be my grandfather.  I am so mad at father for doing this to me.

This is the cover of the book.

Shabanu, watching Phulan marry in contempt

I, Shabanu am the maddest person when Hamir dies. Everyone is rich and happy, but I wanted to marry Murad, who is marrying Phulan now. She is so lucky. Our life would have been perfect, but Nazir Muhammad ruined it all. The wedding preparations moved ahead. The last thing I wanted to do was to help, but I had to help. Otherwise Dadi would have been mad. He used me to get rich. But that is the role of women in our religion and country. To obey and help the men, or rulers, of our family.

“I’d as soon dump the henna left standing in the ceramic bowls over Phulan as dress her in jewels and silk to marry Murad.”page 218

from Thinglink OY

2nd trimester Humanities

This is Farin and I’s drawing of an Oasis. We did this because we had to illustrate a Vocabulary word and define it on a poster. Farin and I chose Oasis which as you can see is a small green spot in a desert usually having a spring or well. Most Arabian settlements/cities were built on an Oasis.

HONY final draft

Friday, jan 5, 2020:

I am Jim, and Tommy has challenged me to a fight on the playground. This is not the first time that I will fight him, he fights me every friday and wins. I hate him so much. I don’t want everyone to laugh and call me a coward if I don’t show up. I enter the playground and the whole school is there.

“Ready to get beaten to a pulp, kid,” Tommy says. That gets me red-faced because we are the same age.

Everybody laughs and says,

“Fight fight fight fight,”

Tommy punches me and I get knocked prone. He kicks me and everyone laughs and jeers. He steps on my face and my nose starts to bleed. He kicks me again and I get knocked unconscious. I then afterwards decided that I would stop letting him kick me around and I reached into his bag later and was surprised to find a diary. I then decided to hand out photocopied pages of his diary. Not the best action for an 18 year old, but at least it is some way to rebel.

 

Monday, jan 9, 2020:

“Free secrets,” I call out to everyone.

“Why do you give these out?” asks my archenemy Tommy.

“To create discord and hate of course,” I say in a tone that no one will recognize.

He does not know that the secrets I am giving out are his.

“Here, a free secret,” I say and hand him a secret about his best friend.

When he beat me up on Friday I accidentally reached into his bag and grabbed his diary.

Then I got some other secrets by stalking people and going into their kitchens. The rest I got by setting up network of security cameras in people’s houses. I set up the cameras when I was stalking people and now I have around 5000 secrets on paper and I get more every day. I have 2 copies of every secret so I do not lose any. I now know that at least 20% of my neighborhood is plotting to take over the world someday.

 

later:

Time to check the feed on Tommy’s house. WHAAAAAAAAAATTTTTTTTTTT!!!!!!!!! There are robots. They have guns too.

“Good, unleash them to take over the world,” says Tommy.

“Yes, master,” says some random dude. (Obviously Tommy’s servant.)

“The first target will be the school,” orders Tommy.

“Yes, master,” says the other person.

I must form a plan. I cannot tell the police because the police will arrest me for stalking people. I call my friend Timmy and tell him the situation. I tell him to meet me at the machine gun shop. I go in.

He is already there.

“I would like to buy 2 machine guns and 1,000,000 bullets please,” I say.

“That will be $100,”says the cashier.

I hand him the money and we leave the shop. Then we went to the jetpack shop and bought 2 jetpacks for $20.

“Alright, let’s ambush him outside the school,” I say.

“We should probably buy some grenades,” he says.

“Good thinking,” I agree.

So I go to the arms shop and get many types of grenades. (the grenades are in the hand of the arm) I have to pay $90 and this is getting pretty expensive. But we are ready.

 

Tuesday, jan 10, 2020

We wake up at 5 0’clock and do some scouting. We are ready to shoot Tommy. He comes to school with around 100 robots.

“Open fire,”I yell and we start shooting.

The robots step in front of Tommy and we do nothing to the robots. I throw a grenade and red stuff comes down his leg, his belly, and it soaks his clothes. He clenches his fists and says, “Destroy him now,”

Two of the robots turn to me and aim.

“Throw the grenades,”I tell Timmy.

He turns to me, smiling evilly. I throw a smoke grenade and run away.

“Leave him,”says Tommy.

“Okay,” says Timmy casually.

I think that I should probably buy a rocket launcher but I don’t. I go check on the feed of Tommy’s house. Plenty of police there, but everyone is talking about how they will become powerful once Tommy becomes king of the world. They are all weird in my opinion. Tommy will just destroy them later. He does not want to get caught so this is what he does with the police. I tell my mom about everything that happened. I call Tommy from a phone booth.

“Hello, Tommy speaking,” says Tommy.

“Have you really thought everything through,” I ask.”I mean about taking over the world?”

“Of course,”

“What will you do with all the paperwork?”

“I will make my minions do it,”

“What about warring nations?”

“When I am king, there will be no wars,”

“If famine strikes a country, what will you do?”

“Maybe I will do nothing,”

“Then you will have a whole country rise against you, because they have nothing left to lose,”

“Then I will destroy them,”

“In which case you will have the neighbors fighting over the remains,”

Then he hangs up. Well, that didn’t work. I look around and see a tank. The guns are all aimed at me. Bummer, I think to myself. I throw a grenade at the tank that electrocutes it and kills everyone inside. Yes! Let’s go! I one-shotted a tank.Then I feel something like a brick hit my back. I feel warm blood gushing down my back. I turn around and see a sniper on a rooftop. I throw a grenade onto the roof and crawl away with the strength I have left. I go into my house and ask my father, (who is a doctor) to heal me. He injects me with something and I black out. Next thing I know, I wake up and cannot move. I can feel myself slipping away.

“Oh look, he woke up,” my dad calls to my mom.

“Oh, sweetie, you woke up,”she says,”the bullet punctured your lung, so you do not have long to live,”

“Way to calm me down,”I say in a voice so soft so she can barely hear me.

I am trying to stay awake but there is only so much I can do. My eyelids feel like 100-pound weights.

“We’ve always loved you,” they say.

I am almost at the permanent rest. My eyelids are open, barely. I try to keep them open, but fail.

I go into a deep slumber for eternity. Now, you may think Jim, you are dead, how can you be dead and tell this story? My parents apparently went to some guy who knows witchcraft and resurrected me for five days. He can only go on for five days because that is how long he can sleep for. So I wrote this story in my last 5 days on earth. Goodbye world. 🙁

When I was revising this piece I was asked what is the difference between revising and editing? Revising is when you add a new character or a scene, and make a big change. Editing is when you make grammar or spelling corrections, so you make small changes.

My revision goal was to add a scene at the beginning about why the characters hated each other. I achieved this goal, so yay! I think now the whole story makes sense now.

Knight Monologue

The king is before me. I am in a grand room. Will I die? I do not want to be killed on crusade or in battle. What is my fate? My armor is heavy. I can feel the sweat running freely down my back. I am excited, happy, anxious, nervous, and regretting my life decisions. Hopefully I won’t die. I feel the sword, and the king has tapped me with it. I feel the sweat more where he touches me. I do not want to go on Crusade. Crusade is going out and conquering places where God is not worshipped. I highly regret all my life choices. It is my first time holding my sword, as a knight. It’s terrible to be me. My family was all knights, making me a knight automatically. I hate being a knight. I want to say stop, to stop the ceremony, but I don’t, because that would be disrespectful. Why? I feel like I am signing my death warrant. Hello, heaven or hell.

“Rise, sir knight,” says the king.

The ceremony is over. I am a knight. A bloody knight. I don’t have the heart to kill.

I am scared about Crusade. I am scared I will take mercy and not kill everyone. Especially on innocents. Why do I have to be a knight? “God, please take mercy on me and don’t send me on Crusade.” I pray. I realize I am still on my knees after he said “rise, sir knight.” How embarrassing. I rise to my feet feeling bad for myself. Then everyone starts cheering. I force a smile onto my face. I try to hide my feelings. I feel like why am I even doing this?

My coat of arms

aloncoatofarms

This is my coat of arms. In medieval times this is what I would be known by. Each element represents something. I used blue because I believe in truth and loyalty. I left half of the shield white because white means peace and sincerity. The star of David is in it because I am Jewish. I put in the stag antlers because it means one who will not fight unless provoked which I think is a really good trait which I believe in so I drew the antlers. At the bottom is a motto with which I agree because I do believe that violence is bad but sometimes it is the only option.

Book Partner Reflection

Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry

My partner and I read Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry. Our partnership was fun because we read the book together and discussed it well. This book is really sad and really hard on their family. The n word is used a lot.

Docent Talk Reflection

My topic was : Canopic Jars. My experience giving my docent talk at The Brooklyn Museum was a good experience . I felt good because everyone in the group was listening to me. We started at the part closest to the back and worked our way forward. My topic was the one farthest back and I got to go first.

Personal Narrative

Six kills each fight before dying. Statistics in Camp Half Blood show that if you have more kills than deaths, you are a good fighter. The hardest thing to deal with is being surrounded. It is hard because you can’t escape and you will get backstabbed. My proudest moment as a swordfighter was when it was Apollo versus all, so a five cabin versus one cabin battle. Back then there were six cabins but now there are 8 cabins.

“Charge,” Kai yells.

“Attack,” yell the other cabin leaders.

Every swordfighter in camp charges into the hill. I then get split up from my Apollo cabin mates. I think to myself, Oh no, I will get slaughtered. Then I hear,

“Kill him.”

Suddenly three warriors attack me and I dodge their attacks. One of them even has a shield<–(complaining voice). I think to myself, this battle did make us outnumbered 5 or 6 on one, but still it seems impossible to win this battle, and we will need a lot of pick offs, but at least we have the top 4 sword fighters.

“Help,” I yell.

But nobody hears me over the chaos of the battle.  We fight every cabin battle in the valley, which is down a 15 foot hill that is not steep but is covered with leaves and woodchips. These battles are fought by sword fighters in camp with wooden shields and foam swords.I know I won’t survive forever. I see a moment and get a kill on the shielded warrior. I then am able to just barely dodge the wave of attacks. I felt helpless, but now I am a bit more confident after that kill and I need at least two kills in this battle for good stats. So I chop off one of an enemy warrior’s legs. I then immediately stab his chest and kill him. I feel lucky for two kills and am more confident. At this point in the battle, most warriors have been mowed down but we still have some elite warriors left. But the guy I was facing was also an elite warrior so I chop off one leg and then immediately go for his sword arm. Without his sword arm this guy is helpless and I stab his chest for the kill. I then am reunited with my cabin and we mow down every other warrior. That was my proudest moment as a swordfighter. In that year we had the highest quality sword fighters so we won the battles. We only lost one battle that entire year.

A challenge for me writing this piece was writing 2 pages just out of 1 sentence. I chose to  share this piece on this blog because I worked hard not just to write, but to pick out the right seentence. I perservered in that piece because I just came in and pushed through the entire thing. It was mainly hard for me because writing for me is one of those subjects where I  have a hard time just putting what is in my head on paper.  I learned that I can do something if I set my mind to it.