Posted on by Greyson Young

The Final Chapter

I’ve heard the saying “April showers bring May flowers” all my life, but I’m starting to see a new meaning to the old phrase. I know that most of us think that whoever created this catchy tune was talking about the typical weather patterns of Spring but what if they were really talking about college. Yes, college! April is a tumultuous month for a college student with assignments piling up in front of our eyes and the threat of finals looming in the back of our minds. There aren’t enough Red Bulls and Starbucks triple-shot frappuccinos in the world to get college students through the month of April. But just like the old saying, after dealing with a month of pure hell, we have been rewarded with our May flowers of summer break. I know, it’s crazy to think that this is my last post in my commonplace book — it feels like my freshman year just started. Now that I have realized how close I am to ending my first year as a college student, I’m filled with so many different emotions. Of course I’m happy that the burden of assignments and exams will be gone but I’m also going to really miss some of my teachers. I also can’t help but see how much I have changed in just a few short months. Not only have I changed in the ways that I maneuver through classes, but I’ve slowly grown comfortable to the college environment.
There’s no doubt in my mind that I’ve become more comfortable at Ole Miss. I’m an EXTREMELY shy person, so let’s just say moving away from home and leaving all of my friends was not an easy task. The first week on campus was awful to say the least. I knew no one and didn’t feel comfortable going up to complete strangers trying to make friends. For an entire week before classes started, I couldn’t go anywhere without feeling uncomfortable. When classes began on Monday morning a new feeling of anxiety hit me hard. I walked into Mrs. Forgette’s writing class and wanted to vomit. The tables were two to a table and it was an extremely small class. I knew that meant there would be a lot of group discussions — boy was I right. Writing class was the only class that wasn’t in a lecture hall type setting for me, so I can honestly say that for a while I hated the class. I loved the writing, don’t get me wrong, but I loathed having to openly discuss my ideas and writings in front of others. As the semester progressed, I started to learn more about my classmates in my writing class. Once I began to think of these people as more than just strangers who were going to hate everything I said, I started getting more comfortable in writing. The moment that I truly became comfortable in the class was during the PowToon peer review. I was partnered with Hunter, Madelyn, and Megan and I was extremely paranoid with how my cartoon had turned out. Instead of hating my PowToon, they loved it. I will never forget when a student in another group said that they had a pretty good cartoon and Madelyn turned to them and said that they should watch mine and see what they thought. Since that moment Writing class has been so much fun. I don’t think twice now when Mrs. Forgette tells us to partner up; it kind of feels normal now.
Another change that I can see in myself from first to second semester is how much I trust myself. When classes began in August I was still in a high school state of mind. I was doing all of my classwork exactly by the book just as I has been accustomed to in high school. I realized that I wasn’t putting that much creativity in my work but I didn’t think that it was appropriate for college material. In my papers in writing I was putting my own voice on mute to try and sound intelligent. Even in my biology lab, my TA told me that the example projects that I had made were too similar to the ones in the book and that I needed to be more creative in my future designs. This was all a shock to me. I mean, I thought the whole point of college assignments was to sound as sophisticated as possible, even if that meant having to google a lot of synonyms. I think I finally realized that my voice was the one that I should be listening to when I was composing my PowToon script. I had just written the biggest, most academic paper in my life, about alcoholism of all things. When Mrs. Forgette told us that we were going to have to make a cartoon about the same paper I was thinking that everything was set. Then the bombshell dropped. We had to make the uber-academic paper into an engaging cartoon that a regular day imbecile could understand. I remember coming to class with a draft of our voiceover for peer review and after one student listened to it she just looked at me as if I had just baked a pie that was half frozen in the middle; it wasn’t even close to being done. I rewrote the entire script that night and was all but certain that it was the worst thing that I had ever done in my life. I don’t know if it was the sleep deprivation or what but I just started writing down the first things that came to my head instead of tooling over my word choice for minutes as usually did. I talked about Seth Rogen in my PowToon script for crying out loud! Because I had broken through my comfort zone, I was expecting an awful grade from Mrs. Forgette but she actually loved it. This semester I have pushed myself to unleash all of my creativity. The multimodal website for the synthesis paper is a great example of how much my creative expression has increased. There is not a single thing on that website that is written in an academic sense, instead it’s all written as if I’m giving a very unprofessional speech to a group of middle schoolers and I desperately want them to laugh. If we had done that project at the beginning of the fall semester I would have failed. I would have been so set on sticking to the high school norms and academic language that it would have been more boring to read that website than the source list on Wikipedia.

The rollercoaster called “Freshman Year” has come to a stop and all we are left with are the memories. From the highs of new friends and social gatherings to the lows of late night study sessions and struggling GPAs, this year never had a dull moment. As I leave campus on Wednesday, I’ll keep in mind a quote from the great Dr. Seuss, “Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened.”

Posted on by Greyson Young

Bridge Project

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Being from the Mississippi Delta, I know the true value of farming. When I’m home, I can’t go more than five miles without seeing farm land. My family doesn’t raise crops like many Mississippians, but livestock instead. Farming has been the foundation of American living ever since the Indians passed on their knowledge to the early settlers. Many people in our country look at their dinner tables and just see food, but I see the product of another person’s hard work. I know that farming is essential to the American dream; without it, none of us would be here.

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One of the biggest contributors to the American Dream is our freedom of religion. So many immigrants flock to this country because of this one particular characteristic. We are one of the few countries that isn’t supposed to judge or persecute because of your choice in religion. It’s so amazing to know that we live in a place where you can be Baptist, Catholic, Mormon, Jewish, or Muslim and not have to worry about hiding our beliefs. One of the reasons that many middle eastern countries dislike us is because we are open to all religions instead of a specific one.

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I hate watching the news and seeing other countries with horrific leaders with people that are helpless when it comes to deciding who holds political power. Another reason I love being an American, is that we have a voice. Some of us may not think we have a voice, or choose not to use theirs, but it’s there. If we are unhappy with something or someone, we have the ability to voice our opinion to those in charge and allow it to be heard. We also get to choose our leaders, at all levels, instead of living in a modern dictatorship.

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A little over a year ago, my parents purchased this business in our small town. I can’t think of another country where two college dropouts with little to no money have the freedom and backing behind them to successfully run a business. My parents are true examples of the American Dream. They didn’t come from money. They worked their hardest their entire lives, sometimes enduring multiple jobs at a time, until their hard work finally paid off.

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Our soldiers are the only reason that we have the ability to live the American Dream. One of the greats of being an American is that we get to comfortably live our lives without the worry of the chaos overseas. We hold our veterans at the highest respect. We celebrate their wins and share their pain. We wait up at night until they come home, and honor them with are greatest capacity when they don’t. We do all of this because we know that without them, our lives would not be what they are now.

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Many people believe that once a soldier stops serving, that they are no longer cared for or respected like they previously were. I have come to realize that this is completely false. My grandfather hasn’t served this country in decades, but he gets more care now than he ever has. America may get a bad wrap from many, but I know how big of a heart it has. Without the VA Hospitals, my grandparents would not be able to afford healthcare, and my grandfather probably wouldn’t be alive. This picture was taken during the winter break at the VA Hospital right after their amazing doctors and nurses saved his life. I don’t know of another country that treats their veterans the way that America does.

Posted on by Greyson Young · 1 Comment

Literacy Guide Unit Reflection

While I was was writing my Literacy Guide to The New York Times, I learned an exponential amount of information about the writing process. One of the biggest things that I came to realize was how awful the drafting process truly was. Usually in high school, you write the first few facts that come to mind and you have yourself a decent paper – this is not the case in college. After meeting with Mrs. Forgette in conference, I realized that going through draft after draft is actually a good thing, and a vital part to the writing process. Several mandatory components of this guide caused me a great amount of stress, most particularly the writing analysis. In high school, my teachers stressed that we could read a certain story and be able to analyze what the author meant; never did I think of how they wrote. In the few weeks in this writing class I have realized that determining how an article is written and analyzing the rhetoric is what I struggle with the most. Throughout my writing process, I would have all of the “must-haves” except for these. This caused me to take a step back and thoroughly read through my guide and go back to the articles that I had included to try and get a good grasp on where an ideal location would be to insert these analyses. Although I had trouble with a few “must-haves”, some were vary favorable. After I completed the numerous homework activities about searching and selecting different article forms from The New York Times, I actually came to enjoy the differences between a news piece and an op-ed piece on the same subject. After completely disregarding my first draft and settling on four new sections, I can easily say that sifting through article after article deep within The Times was my most enjoyable part of this whole project. My Donald Trump section was the easiest to find different article forms, to no surprise. I knew that I could find the bulk of my “must-haves” with Mr. Trump because of the plethora of information that is circulating about him, but at the same time I knew that my guide would be at its best with the “must-haves” spread throughout. During class Wednesday, I came to fruition that I had written more of a “how to” guide than a writing analysis guide and that I had to start over. I wanted to have the majority of my guide written so that Mrs. Forgette could tell me how everything was coming along and possibly steer me in the right direction, so I knew that I had to act fast. That night, however, was the Presidential Debate which was something that I had been looking forward to for weeks and did not want to miss. At first I thought that attempting to watch the debate and write my guide would be disastrous, but then it hit me that I was writing about all of those people on stage so how could it hurt me. I will admit that I got distracted multiple times throughout the debate, and how could you not with all of those entertaining politicians. If I had just locked myself in my room with my earbuds in, I probably could have finished my entire draft that night with time to spare, but I don’t think that I would have changed a thing. I actually heard things during the debate that caused me to search subjects on The New York Times which I ended up including in my final draft. If I had to give myself any advice for future writing situations, I would tell myself that sometimes it is okay to write crap and go back and try again and again until you finally get it right.