Introductory Note

Hello! My name is Tara Popovic´, and I’m a Design student at Freestyle Academy. Over the last two years, I have learned how to utilize various pieces of equipment and software to open my creative mind and feed my passion for self-expression and communication through art. Outside of my Freestyle work, I enjoy reading, horseback riding, playing badminton, learning new things from InDesign to the events that lead up to WWII, and hearing different people’s stories.

I selected my lyrical essay and Zenith writing to showcase because it is not only the work that I am the most proud of in terms of process and product, but because I feel it has the strongest connection to my life as an individual and writer. These works are important to me because they gave me an opportunity to explore identity through multiple different perspectives in my writing. With my lyrical essay, I had the challenge of figuring out how to write about someone else’s identity struggles in a lyrical format. My focus was on how to take the emotions from someone’s perspective and symbolize them verbally in a way that would make others feel the experience(s) the way my subject did. My Zenith writing was very similar, except I was writing from different perspectives within myself.

I am hoping to get feedback on the reader’s experience of these pieces, to better understand whether I have been able to effectively tell these stories in a compelling way. Were my organizational choices consistently appropriate? Was the style compelling? Do the occasional insider references/terms add to the personal and authentic feel of the pieces or only add confusion that should be further explained? Is the tone overly dramatic or adequately emotional?

After graduating from Mountain View High School and Freestyle Academy, I plan to attend the University of California, Santa Cruz where I hope to ask and answer these questions in the context of many other pieces of work. As I continue to study English literature, I am eager to understand how the art of the written word helps us understand our world. I am excited to study writing at a college level, explore other subjects not offered in high school (such as linguistics), learn from and work with my professors, and meet peers with the same intellectual curiosity and passions as myself.

 

You can reach me at popovic.r.tara@gmail.com

Piece #1: Lyrical Essay

My lyrical essay is about the experience of a teenager who moves from a Communist country to the United States in the ’80s.  I thought this would be an interesting experience to write about because it is not a story that we hear very often. I used the open ended nature of the lyrical essay to create purposeful space for thought between the sections. My main focus, however, was on the creation of organizational metaphors – or symbols – that would hold the piece together.

This project surprised me in a positive way because I did not expect to enjoy it, but when I came to the finished work I was very satisfied with it and received a great response from my peers. Writing this piece really helped me appreciate the lyrical essay form and even compelled me to write my winter research paper on the essay form.

Piece #2: Zenith Letters

My three Zenith letters are about racial and cultural identity.  The subjects I wrote about – or rather wrote to – are purposefully individuals who I know well so that I can comfortably write about them through the lens of race and culture.

This assignment was extremely surprisingly difficult – especially for a seemingly simple 1-page per piece – because it was very personal and required me to reach pretty deeply into my life and expose stories and feelings that I have not shared before. In the end, I feel extremely rewarded by the result of my letters both in content and literary style. Additionally, I feel that I have learned an incredible amount about myself as a person and a writer.