Dear Reader, In this essay you will find four different genres of writing: an expository paragraph (following the normal 11 or 8 sentence formula), a haiku, a rhyming poem, and a recipe. Each one describes the theme “forgotten”, but the approach each one takes on the theme varies, for instance, one genre explains how to become forgotten while another one exclaims that no one should ever be forgotten. I hope you enjoy reading this culmination of different writing styles.
Sincerely, Austin
Three Steps to Become Forgotten
Day dream as often as possible. While you are away in distant places, the people in close proximity will refrain from asking you questions, realizing you have wrapped yourself in a void. This creates distance between you and other people, and, ultimately, the distance becomes so great they forget you are even there. Never attempt to achieve any of your goals. You must never accomplish anything of significance, therefore, allowing no one to have any reason to be proud of you. Eventually, this results in people not remembering who you were or what you did because having never accomplished anything, you prevented yourself from being known to society. Do not engage in social activities. When invited to a party or public assembly, decline the invitation because as a forgotten person, you must remain solitary and confined to your own world. Over time, there will be less and less invites, until there are no invites, and by that point you know the community has forgotten you exist.
Haiku
Don’t let them forget Make them remember your name Never be normal
Hoping to be Forgotten
He locked himself in his room, Listening. They would be coming for him soon. His parents were angry; they knew the wrong he had done; He had only been playing around; only been having fun. He wanted them to forget his sin: Just forget all about it; throw it into the trash bin. Forgetfulness is wanted sometimes, but sometimes it is not. This boy hoped and hoped, but his parents never forgot
Expository Paragraph
(TS) Many characters have felt or even feel forgotten in To Kill a Mockingbird whether they wanted to or not. (SD) Boo Radley is one of the few characters in To Kill a Mockingbird that wants to be excluded and forgotten from society. (CM) He is constantly secluded in his father’s home where no one can see him, where no one can hear him, where he hopes he will be forgotten. (CM) Once he left Maycomb’s small and only “gang”, he might have been ashamed of himself, thus he didn’t want society to remember his name, so he trapped himself in his dad’s house. (SD) Dill on the other hand, hates to be forgotten. (CM) When his parents never paid attention to him, he felt like they wouldn’t remember he was even there, and he would just become a lonesome shade. (CM) He had to do something to maintain his sanity, so he found comfort in his friends Jem and Scout; he knew they would always love him and cherish his memory when they went their separate ways. (CS) The theme forgotten plays a big role in To Kill a Mockingbird because just like everyone else, the characters in the novel sometimes need to be reminded that their friends and family love them and won’t ever forget them.
Self Assessment
The genre in this essay that took me the most time to write was the haiku. I find haikus the most powerful of poems because they are short and powerful, but they must be carefully worded and revised or else they lack a lot of potential power. The most significant difference between this draft and the first draft is the detail in my recipe. When I originally wrote my recipe, it contained simple, unexplained steps, but now each step has well-written commentary on it. Because I worked so hard on it, the recipe became the best part of my paper. It contains good vocabulary, and is well-written. The part of this paper that may still need improvement is my often use of pronouns. When I write, I say sometimes say a noun once, then constantly use pronouns afterwards, making my writing sound repetitive and week.
An Overview of my Experiences and Reflections at the Boys and Girls Club
Working at the Boys and Girls Club (BGC) made a drastic impact on my life, and I hope my presence there made an impact on the kids’ lives too. I constantly enjoyed spending time with the kids; they were always cheerful and optimistic. To repay them for such kindness, I tried to be a role model for them so they could have someone closer to their age to look up to. From participating in this service learning project, I have gained a life experience that has changed the way I think of extended day programs and the kids who attend them.
The main reason I chose the BGC worksite was because I wanted to spend time kids. Spending time with kids brings out the young child in me: a character who is fun and playful. I love letting this child out because he is without stress. When I spend time with people my age or older, there is a ton of stress in my life, so it is nice to get away and spend leisure time with kids. The kids at BGC are like most kids their age: silly and amusing: great people to spend time with. They would always humor me when I was having a conversation and they would spontaneously jump on me, laughing hysterically. As if the physical interruption wasn’t enough, they would ask me a question that was so completely random, it brought me to tears of laughter. Not only did I want to spend time with these kids, I wanted to help guide them for the future. When they had trouble with their homework, I wanted to help them understand what they were doing instead of just giving them the answer. I also wanted to be a good role model, so they would grow up behaving well and respecting others. Kids are indeed fun to be around, so when I volunteered for BGC, I was excited to go for my first visit.
During my time at BGC, I faced a few challenges that were difficult to overcome. I wanted to develop an eye-to-eye relationship with the kids, but there were many factors that I had to dwell upon in order to achieve this goal. The reason I wanted this relationship was so the kids didn’t treat me like a counselor who was only there to keep an eye on them. However, I couldn’t just be a silly little kid all the time because then I wouldn’t have any authority at all. Another challenge was the first time I helped a kid with his homework. I sat near a kid during power-hour, which is the time when all the kids sit down and do their homework, and looked at his Math homework and quickly noticed one of his answers wasn’t correct. I didn’t want to be rude but I felt obligated to tell him, and I was surprised at how he didn’t take offense when I told him his answer was wrong, but instead, he was very gracious, so I helped him work it out correctly. My most severe challenge was coping with a kid who lied to me when he said he would save the gum I gave him for later, and then he put it in his mouth seconds after I walked away. At the time, I felt utterly betrayed and sorry for him because I would have to tell a counselor he was breaking a rule by chewing gum. I ended up only warning the kid, but I felt much better I had just warned him when I was shown that these kids were trustworthy because I had the same circumstance with another kid, except he saved the game until he was home. From these experiences, I realized that supervising children creates a lot of difficult challenges, and I only experienced a few.
Instead of trying to help these kids in lot of little ways, I tried to help them in a few big ways. I attempted to establish myself as a good role model for them. Everyday, I would behave politely, greet every single adult and kid I came in contact with, and, unlike the kids, was never out-of-line crazy. I think these methods worked because kids tend to look up to older kids, and if they see older kids behaving well, that is what they will do. Another issue for some of the kids was the difficulty of their homework. When they had a hard time solving problems on their homework, I would intervene with their struggles and try to help them understand as opposed to simply giving them the answer. My methods succeeded because I would help them with a problem, then, let them do the next one and see if they comprehended what I was trying to help them understand.
The simple, but most important thing I helped them with, was just being a friend of theirs. These kids didn’t need another counselor to tell them what to do and what not to do; they needed someone older to talk to and who would listen to what they had to say. Being their friend was advantageous too because when the kids weren’t listening to the counselors, I would ask them to be quiet and listen, and it worked because they listened to their friends. I may have only been a counselor for a week, but I think the kids will remember me because of the differences I made and the academic help I provided.
After researching about extended day programs, I learned how necessary after school programs are in society. There are 15 million children who leave school and arrive at an empty home everyday. If after school programs had never been developed in their community, the kids might have become bored and started bad habits. The aloneness could also cause the kids to become forlorn, feeling detached from society because there’s no one to greet and comfort them when they get back from school. That is why extended day and after school programs were created, and these programs have a positive effect on kids, especially ones ages five through nine. Those young kids spend time being supervised by adults and hanging out with kids their age, improving their social skills but also increasing how well behaved they are. The adults also aid them with their homework, helping them understand how to do it, immensely improving their academic performance. Not only are these programs beneficial for young kids, but they help teens as well. Since teenagers aren’t spending their time alone, they don’t have an opportunity to get into drugs or develop other bad habits. The adults are also a positive influence on the kids because they encourage them to succeed in school, so when they grow up, they will have careers that can support families. At this age, a kid’s mind is being molded, which is why it is important for kids to go to after school programs because they have a positive influence on kids.
In To Kill a Mockingbird, a character named Scout slowly grows up learning and questioning new things, similarly to the kids at my service-learning sight. Scout learned that adults are crazy sometimes, and the kids I worked with would also notice that from time to time. In Scout’s case, she wonders why her third grade teacher hates people who are prejudice towards Jews but doesn’t hate when people are racist to blacks. The kids at BGC think that the counselors are crazy because sometimes they get in trouble for something when they didn’t start it. Like Scout, the kids at BGC have learned a lot about when it is necessary to speak and when it is necessary to hold their tongue. Scout was once going to ask her father Atticus an irrelevant question, but when she realized he was in a frustrated mood, she knew it was best to save it for later. In the same way, kids at BGC sometimes choose not to be a “tattle-tale” when they notice the counselor they were going to talk to is busy or frustrated. As kids grow older, they learn and become more mature, which is what happened to BGC kids and Scout. Earlier in the book Scout acted like a little girl, but as proof she has matured, she acted like nothing happened when she heard of Tom Robinson’s death, and instead, went back to the tea party and acted like a little lady. The older kids at BGC were also mature young adults; they introduced themselves to me and usually understand when it was alright to be silly and when it was time to be serious. Throughout their lives, kids will continue learning and becoming more mature just like Scout was once immature, acquired a better perspective of the world, and became more mature.
Looking back on what I did and accomplished at BGC, I should have been stricter with the kids. The reason I didn’t want to be strict initially was because I didn’t think the kids would want to be friends with me. If I was a kid and someone was telling me to not do something constantly, it would prevent me from liking them. If the kids didn’t like me at all during my visits, I would have had an unpleasant experience. As a matter of fact, not only was I not strict enough, I was almost never stern. That made it hard, for when I was strict with the kids they wouldn’t take me seriously. When I warned them that they were doing something bad and they ignored me, they ended up getting in much worse trouble with a counselor. I conclude that a yin-and-yang balance of strictness would have been most beneficial. This method would have included a system where I would have warned the kids to stop misbehaving, but if they continued, I would inform a counselor. This method would not apply to mistakes that were miniscule like not talking with an indoor voice, so I could still be casual with the kids when they were behaving. Being strict is a key component when supervising kids, but too much austerity, can break the key.
From this service-learning project, I learned three major subjects that I will use throughout the remainder of my life. First of all, I learned that in a children’s environment, there has to be a balance of strictness. If there is too little stringency, the kids run wild because they don’t take your threats or concerns seriously. However, when there is too much sternness, the kids are in constant fear of getting in trouble. The BGC kids also taught me how much potential is in children. There are kids who are incredibly well behaved and social, being polite, respectful, and friendly always. Other kids I conversed with had genius potential; they were little-Einsteins that knew more about technology than I did. Unfortunately, some kids also taught me never to expect too much from someone. At one point, I expected so much from all the kids because every single one I had talked to seemed honest and friendly. Later, after one kid had betrayed my trust, I knew I had come to expect too much from these kids because as soon as one betrayed me, I was downhearted and disappointed. I will bring these lessons with me throughout my life, hopefully, preventing me from making similar mistakes or ever underestimating a kid again.
Memories and experiences happened at my worksite that I will remember for years to come. I learned so much here, and this knowledge I can, and will apply to future events. Not only did I learn from the great experiences here, these experiences show how I had a fun and exciting time here, being welcomed so warmly and befriending the BGC kids. I doubt anything like this will ever happen to me again, which is why I appreciated the opportunity to do something wonderful.
