American Dream 2.0
To start this project we started off learning the basic history of the American Dream. We learned some real statistics and how people struggle to achieve their dreams. Everybody has the basic dream of the big house with a nice family and nice car, but the reality is only a small percentage of people actually get to live out that dream. The idea of being able to own a house or a car is also one of those things that most people don't have. A lot of people are basically borrowing because they are either renting or taking out loans or they are still making payments. After learning all of the info behind the American Dream we then found someone that we know and came up with a series of questions about how they were brought up and what their Dream was and wrote a 4 page story based off of the answers that we recived.
Writing Process
The steps for the Biographical Narrative:
- The Notes and Quotes is the answers that we got from our interviewee's and some important quotes
- We then drafted the first 2 pages of our biographical narrative, which is basically the intro and start of our interviewee's journeys.
- The second 2 pages is a combination of the end of the story with historical facts from whatever the interviewee's story was apart of.
- Combining the first and last pages we made a complete 4 page biographical narrative.
5. After putting the essay together we then did a numerous amount of peer reviews to get the stories into book quality.
6. When done with the peer reviews we finally joined all the decades together to see how it sounds. Based off that we then made whatever tweaks to the stories that were left to make the overall book better.
Reflection of the American Dream
Before this project my opinion on the american dream was probably the same as almost anybody who had a dream. It was the dream of waking up being able to do your dream job, which basically isn't a job because it is something that you love and enjoy doing. Being able to have a nice car with a big house and a family to come home to.
The things that I learned from this project are reminders that without education, you will not be able to do much. We learned that the 1 percenters and the upper 20 percent are getting more and more wealthy while the middle class is just diminishing.
The American Dream is actually all put together by who you are and where you come from. If you come from a wealthy family you will be fine, if you don't then that makes your American Dream two times harder because of the opportunities you will have. It’s like Meritocracy; if you work hard you will get the things you want but if you don’t and you fail, that is your fault. My hopes are to go to college study kinesiology and things like biomed so that when I am done with college I can be a trainer of some sort or open up a sports medicine store.
Writing Process Self Evaluation
I feel like throughout this whole process I have grown a little bit more as a writer. I think my essay was good but it wasnt the best because there were some things that I just did not do good on. For example, Showing not telling was hard for me because I have been so used to describing any types of details in my stories by telling what happened and it was pretty challenging for me to explain details by showing what happened or showing how the person in the story felt. But other than that I felt like I deserved at least a B and that is exactly what I got but I feel like I can better improve as a writer.
6. When done with the peer reviews we finally joined all the decades together to see how it sounds. Based off that we then made whatever tweaks to the stories that were left to make the overall book better.
Reflection of the American Dream
Before this project my opinion on the american dream was probably the same as almost anybody who had a dream. It was the dream of waking up being able to do your dream job, which basically isn't a job because it is something that you love and enjoy doing. Being able to have a nice car with a big house and a family to come home to.
The things that I learned from this project are reminders that without education, you will not be able to do much. We learned that the 1 percenters and the upper 20 percent are getting more and more wealthy while the middle class is just diminishing.
The American Dream is actually all put together by who you are and where you come from. If you come from a wealthy family you will be fine, if you don't then that makes your American Dream two times harder because of the opportunities you will have. It’s like Meritocracy; if you work hard you will get the things you want but if you don’t and you fail, that is your fault. My hopes are to go to college study kinesiology and things like biomed so that when I am done with college I can be a trainer of some sort or open up a sports medicine store.
Writing Process Self Evaluation
I feel like throughout this whole process I have grown a little bit more as a writer. I think my essay was good but it wasnt the best because there were some things that I just did not do good on. For example, Showing not telling was hard for me because I have been so used to describing any types of details in my stories by telling what happened and it was pretty challenging for me to explain details by showing what happened or showing how the person in the story felt. But other than that I felt like I deserved at least a B and that is exactly what I got but I feel like I can better improve as a writer.
Exhibition
For the first part of exhibition we were asked to write a 50 word poem based off the theme of arrival. For example this was my poem
"I remember arriving at high school freshman year. I was finding myself at the time. I was learning my interest and the things I don’t like. I didn’t really want to go to High Tech High but eventually I found a way to overcome my problems and deal with reality" In my opinion I thought that exhibition was great. The venue was nice and all of our work was nice too. I feel like it was a perfect blend because of how much stuff we had on display and how much stuff was actually being interactively displayed. There was people reading their poems with the cranky boxes and bands performing but at the same time there was another room full of things that were pretty much self explanitory. |