Reflections

In the Reflections unit, we tried to answer the question, “Who am I?” by writing our personal essay for college applications. In English class, we focused on writing the essay, while in Digital Media, we wrote a rant and recorded it. We also chose pieces of art from our SF MOMA trip and wrote about what we liked and what we didn’t like. In Design, we worked on multiple projects. One was a painting when we were studying Aboriginal art, another was a collage that we made from magazine cutouts. And the third was a digital collage. All of these things helped me learn more about myself. Although if you asked me, I still couldn’t tell you who I am. If I learned one specific thing from this unit, it’s that I am a more complex human being than I thought.

Personal Essay

Writing my essay was difficult because I knew that I’d faced many challenges throughout my life and those challenges had already shaped me to deal with what I had and make it work. Although the topic that I chose is still an emotional part of me, I’ve grown to be removed enough to talk about it and explain how I grew from this challenge.

I learned a lot from writing this essay just because I was digging up experiences and emotions that I hadn’t really thought about before and it helped me to look back on the past few years of my life and see how much I’ve grown.

My dad is almost eighty-two, my mom is sixty-two. Their reasons for having kids so late in life are their own but despite their choices, my twin sister, Rachel, and I were born into a good life yet also a life that would bring hardships. My parents knew their place in the world and we were financially stable.

As Rachel and I grew older, so did our parents. Not long after entering high school, my dad was diagnosed with bladder cancer. It was the kind that is fast growing and almost always deadly. While he endured the misery of weekly chemotherapy, my mom started showing signs of Alzheimer’s. I knew it was coming because it runs in her family but I noticed it when she was frantically searching the house and when I asked her what she was looking for, she said she couldn’t remember where we kept the plastic bags. It only got worse from there. Soon she would forget what she was saying all the time; she couldn’t remember this and that. New conversations became impossible. She could only talk about things she remembered and making new memories was very difficult for her.

Rachel was scared. We both were. But unlike me, she didn’t want to think about our problems and she shied away from them. She spent most of her time at her boyfriend’s house and neglecting her family. She was scared of the reality; she didn’t want to believe it was real, that maybe if she buried her head in the sand it would all go away and that we’d be alright again. So it was left to me to take care of my family.

Just as my parents took care of me as a child, I was taking care of them at fifteen. My dad sat in his chair in the living room at all hours of the day but when he was awake, I learned what I could from him. He taught me how to do our taxes and so much more. He always remarked on how I never cease to impress him. I made lunch for him before I left for school and made dinner when I got home. I did the grocery shopping on weekends and kept track of all the doctor’s appointments. Two years ago, when I was living alone for a summer at our vacation cabin, I installed an AC unit by myself in 110 degree weather. Over the past Fourth of July holiday, while the family and guests were staying at the same cabin, I got up at the crack of dawn to haul around a tank of insecticide that weighed as much as me to spray all the pine trees on the property. Even though my dad was usually the one who took care of these tasks, I knew that he would be straining to accomplish any of them, so I took responsibility for my family and did them myself.

I’ve been taught to be independent and self-reliant for my entire life. Growing up with military parents, I was taught to put my big girl pants on and do it. No matter the challenge, I was raised to learn from mistakes and failure and keep trying. I was taught that it’s okay to be stressed and worried as long as I never give up.

Perspective Piece (Rant)

The Perspective Piece was a short rant that wrote when I was really stressed about college applications. I recorded it in the studio and then I brought it into After Effects and made a video to go with it.

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Design Projects

We did multiple projects in Design as I explained, but I chose my Aboriginal inspired painting to display because it was a new realm of art that I had explored and I learned that it was one more kind of art that I love.I had never really worked much with acrylic paint before this project. I only really used watercolors so this project was a bit different than anything else I’d done before.