Quarter Two
This quarter's highlight was a book study on the novel "Banner in the Sky" by James Ramsey Ullman, a novel regarding a boy names Rudi Matt who dreams of being the first to reach the peak of the Citadel, and infamous mountain where his father, who was considered the greatest mountain guide, passed away due to the extreme weather. This book study included a personal reflection and weekly packets, ending with writing a short-story based on theme we found in the novel. The challenge behind the short-story was to create a story that was under four pages long, which was difficult for me because when I write, I'm not somebody that can hold-back the word count, meaning that I'm a lengthy writer. The first step to writing the story was brainstorming different ideas, and after some consideration I decided on writing based on the theme "inequality" which can be found in "Banner in the Sky" through the way Rudi's peers underestimated him because of his physic, pulling him down, though he might've been better than those that were overestimated because they had big, burly bodies, though they might not be able to accomplish what he does in the book. The inequality that I wanted to discuss deeper in my novel is similar to this, where the protagonist and antagonist are placed in the same situation, but judged differently because of who they are and who they were born as. I then had to further deepen the plot, which was how I ended up choosing a dragon as the protagonist and a king as the antagonist, which was a way for me to show that when kings slay dragons, it's considered mighty, but when dragons slay kings, it's evil; the irony behind that theme is something that I wanted to discuss in my short story, and though it's a bit extreme, it's also extremely similar to the way people judge others differently based on where and who they were born as. Then came the actual process of writing the story, which was difficult because I added another challenge to myself, which was writing in the point-of-view of a dragon. However, once I got the feel of it, it became much easier. Another difficulty I faced was keeping the word count down, which resulted in my essay being three pages and a half. This short story is my best work because it shows an aspect of my creativity, and reflects my interest in fantasy-themed novels. What I did well in this assignment is write it as thought it wasn't an assignment, and a freely wrote it the way I preferred, showing my true writing style (besides the word count). Future improvement would to expand my vocabulary, so the quality of my writing will also improve. This relates to the Global Context "Globalization and Sustainability" because stories (long or short) are a major part of societies today, and through the short story that I wrote I managed to convey one way I view the world, which reflects the way that global concepts and global events have affected my perspective towards the world. My story is also a small contribution to my english-class community, and though it might not have made an impact, it certainly did on my self and let me reflect again on the things that this world has deemed "normal" but really aren't. For this assignment, I received the score of 7/8.