Category: Grade 12

Poetry Pairing

 

On Depression, Feeling Worthless, and Finding Your Truth

I chose the pairing of the poem ‘A Worthless Play’ by Cam Foster and  the essay ‘On Depression, Feeling Worthless, and Finding Your Truth’ by Henri really hit home with its views into what you can do to improve your life. He realized that even though he was “living [his] passion, surrounded by people [he] loved”(Henri) he felt empty. The author felt unfulfilled in his life despite the many things that brought him joy. Henri felt this way because despite his many things that he possessed, he was lacking some basic human needs that you could not achieve from the tangible things in this world. The poem hits on may of these points with the metaphors that represent faith, hope, and love. These are the things that Henri discovered through his journal that his life was missing. He didn’t feel like he had a purpose because of the lack of these intangible things that are harder to conceptualize.

“Then a shift occurred. I had the following thought: ‘I give up. I surrender. Let whatever happens happen. If I need to go broke, so be it. If I need to die, so be it.’ After that, I felt the urge to write. Not articles. Not essays. Nothing for the public. Write in a journal. Explore my thoughts. On Feb 6th, 2013, I wrote my first entry. I began exploring what I was feeling. The first lines of that entry read: ‘Any string attached to money comes back and strangles joy when I’m not aware of it. Yet, each strangle teaches. I may be left without oxygen, but filled with wisdom. I try to force [progress] because I fear the changing tide of the future.’

A Worthless Play

Cam Foster

 

So many times it is forgotten why I am here.

Lost in cacophony and forgotten in struggles.

But always remembered with paramount joy close behind.

 

What is happiness?

 

Happiness is diving off a board

with complete trust that the water will catch you

and keep you safe.

 

Happiness is persevering to

Stand triumphant

at the top of an unclimbable peak

 

Happiness is setting free

A bird that never

Was meant to be caged

The South African Storm

 

The narrative essay The South African Storm by Allison Howard has an identical theme to Gandalf’s quote from the movie The Hobbit . In both pieces the main theme is changing the world doesnt require one person and one action, it requires the everyday pursuit of everyday people attempting to better the world. Gandalf explains that fighting evil is not acheived by great, unreachable power but by “small acts of love and kindness (Gandalf)”. Allison agrees with this because of the regret she feels about getting in the white mans’ car; She wants to perform the small actions to push back little by little the instututionalized racism left over by the apartheid for example walking with the rest of the black people in the rain to show her support.

An example of a way we can push back against certain types of social stratification, like oppression of minorities, is to bring about anonymity on courts. When individuals are being sentenced it should not matter what they look like but what they did and have done. The sentencings should be blind to avoid the unfair profiling and ethnic discrimination of  minority groups. This is equally important to make sure that the majority’s are exonerated for their innocence instead of their race.

The Key to Success

Why Most People Will Never be Succesful

This article caught my eye and piqued my interest because the author indicates that he had the secrets to why people aren’t successful. I would like to be successful so I wanted to learn what not to do. I liked the authors writing style because he didn’t seem to be talking from above you. It was a friendly tone as if he was telling you because he cared about you. I connected this article to literary terminology of escape and interpretive fiction. The author is saying that we will need to spend less of our time on mediocre tasks; This is the same as reading solely escape fiction. We will never be able to grow and learn if that is all we read and learn. The article portrayed to me that people are inherently inventive driven. People like to follow insentives even if they are not beneficial to them in the future. The article is working to elaborate on the habits and mindset we must develop. These habits and mindsets will always have to built and improved to marketing us more productive and accomplishing more.

The Solution to Space Trash

https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/255347-nasa-funds-ultra-thin-spacecraft-clearing-space-junk

This topic seemed really interesting to me because it isn’t something that people think about a lot. It is never thought about all the space trash that is sitting in orbit of our planet that we have no good way to collect. I liked the authors style of writing because it seemed to me like we were having an informed conversation. It didn’t seem like he was throwing random facts at me but he was educating me and and enlightening me. He writes in a laid back tone but it doesn’t sound unprofessional. This article revealed to me that humans are very ambitious creatures. We get so excited about future endeavours that we have and we forget that there are sometimes consequences to our actions that we never anticipated. We can oftentimes forget that we have to clean up after ourselves and the problems do not disappear, even in space where it can seem minuscule important but eventually can make a lasting impact.