As a part of our satire unit, I worked with Isha to develop an original satire intended at promoting some level of social change. The topic we chose to focus on was road rage and impatient drivers, due to our shared experiences with radical driver behavior reported by family and friends. To satirize this topic, we created a New Yorker-style highlight, where fake personas, representing the people of New York City, would describe their experiences on a road famous for its chaotic nature and poor driver ability. As a reversal on the true nature of road rage and driver impatience, these vignettes provide a glimpse into the experiences people have had on Blissful Boulevard, an outlier among other busy roads all over the nation that are notoriously slow, busy, and prone to road rage. This assignment was incredibly enjoyable to create, and I enjoyed being able to create New Yorker-style cartoons intended at visualizing this famed road. To read more of our original satire, click here.

The education essay allows students to question and reflect on the education system through the development of a prompt and subsequent essay response. This assignment uniquely approaches writing by allowing students to develop their own questions and structures for a formal written rhetorical piece. The question I asked was, “What are the impacts of the college application process on students?” I chose this prompt due to my personal curiosity regarding the college application process and the effect it has on student wellbeing and self-perception of value. I was confused and critical of how I had seen the college admissions process portrayed in the media, and I felt that it was unfair to students to emphasize results-based success in both schools and in application resources due to the impact it had on how students perceived their own value. I found this topic to be interesting, and enjoyable to develop a piece that reflected my true opinions towards a relevant topic. To read my essay, click here.

Through our reflections and inspirations from Tom Stoppard’s play Arcadia, this assignment focuses on creating a written or artistic piece related to Arcadia’s main themes of chaos, entropy, irreversibility, and love. Although I had little experience with creative writing, I decide to write a piece, which I titled “Milkshake,” which dives into each theme through an increasingly chaotic storyline. I really enjoyed being able to develop a style and come up with crazy ideas and random decisions as to how the story should go. This piece was one of my favorites of the year, and allowed me to develop a new passion for creative writing. Click here to read the story!