Humanities is a single class, taught by Ms. Small, that encompasses many aspects of liberal arts, such as writing, history, geography, and more specific topics such as satire, race and ethnicity, and science fiction. The class serves as a good balance with the other mostly STEM-focused classes at the Academy.
For this assignment, we were to write an essay with a prompt of our choosing, the only guideline being the general focus of the piece. Previously in class, we had been examining satire and how it has been used in different situations. For this essay, I chose to compare and contrast the efficacy of a satirical piece versus a serious, non-satirical piece. The articles I compared were from The Onion and The New York Times, respectively, where the first was a satirical look at climate change and the second was a serious presentation of facts about the same topic.
Early on in the year, we explored some key ancient civilizations in the world. I was in a group with Rachel Bunsick, Anush Shah, and Bella Doyle. We researched and presented information about the Shang Dynasty of China, which was formed in the year 1600 B.C. and lasted until around 1050 B.C. Other groups were assigned different major civilizations, and it was a good way to learn about many different ancient groups.