Kenneth

Kenneth's Writing Portfolio
Introduction:

I walked into this course afraid that I was about to be inundated with reasons why women are the superior gender and why men are mindless and shallow. However, I was happily surprised when we immediately began discussing assumptions made about both genders. This course holds men and women on equal grounds and finds gender stereotypes and destroys them. I have always known that I am not the stereotypical male. In fact I sometimes feel that I am pretty much the opposite of one. When coming to class, I look forward to hearing my classmates' opinions about gender issues and learning to think more deeply about gender issues in order to not make assumptions about people. media type="file" key="kenny.m4a" width="300" height="50"

Blog: [|Kenneth's Blog]  This has been my first time doing any sort of blogging. It was fun writing short pieces about my thoughts on a certain subject or posting questions I had about gender issues in general. While I always had certain opinions on different issues, I have never been asked to put into words my definition of a boy or girl or what assumptions are made about each gender. By doing these blogs, I have not only completed my homework assignments but also organized my own thoughts so that I can formulate educated opinions. In this way, the blog about gender assumptions was the most meaningful to me as it allowed me to be careful not to make such gender assumptions.

Writing Assignments:

Kenneth's Coming of Age Essay (Description)  Through the "Coming of Age Essay," I organized my personal thoughts on what differences there are between a boy and a man. I also organized my thoughts on the transition from boyhood to manhood. Through writing this essay, I learned about what changing from a boy to a man entails and how I will need to ready myself for this eventual change. I also got the chance to see how my peers view the transition from childhood to adulthood and how they feel about this process. Many of us held similar viewpoints about what the difference between the two was, but we many of us had different ideas on how the change occurs.

Kenneth's Media Paper (Description)  By writing the "Media Paper," I was able to better understand one of my favorite television stations, Food Network. Previously, I absentmindedly watched this station seeking entertainment. However, after learning about media literacy and doing research to write this paper, I came to the understanding that even a television station about cooking can have major issues. The issues involved in the Food Network are gender-related issues as certain genders are portrayed a certain way. In my research, I found patterns in each gender that seemed stereotypical. The women generally hosted the family-oriented cooking shows and the men generally battled in cooking challenges.

Kenneth's Poem (Description)

While brainstorming ideas for the "Song Imitation Poem," we first thought of people whose pasts we would like to ask about. Eventually, I narrowed my list down to just my grandparents and their experience during the Cultural Revolution. I had previously heard about how my parents were affected by the revolution, but my parents were only children at the time so they may not have understood the severity of their situation. My grandparents on the other hand knew exactly what was going on and had to take care of my parents, so I am curious as to how they felt back then and what they went through. Through the writing of this poem, I gained an appreciation for the pasts of my elders.

Kenneth's Final Panel Writing (Description) When doing my "//Persepolis // final panel," I had to think about the author's writing and drawing style throughout the book. Based on the kinds of things she had done in the real story, I tried to add in something at the very ending to show how she would end the book if she were to write up to the very end of her life. In my panel, I chose to draw the author as an old lady as God walks in to talk to her again. In the story, she ceased to talk to God as a young girl due to her anger. I thought maybe as an old woman her anger may have dulled and she would choose to speak to him again.

Final Project:

A) Kenneth's Proposal B) Kenneth's Editorial C) Kenneth's Research Paper D) Kenneth's Product E) While this topic seem trivial to most adults, to high school students this is a serious issue. Next to marriage, prom is possibly the most important social event of our lives. And even marriage can occur multiple times while it is only possible to have ones senior prom once. For generations, high schools have been holding proms and students have been slowly altering them until current proms and the earliest proms seem completely different. As each prom is held, it reflects some of the social ideas that are widespread at the time. When men held complete dominance in society, the boys had all the power and responsibilities involved in prom. The boys would have all the power to choose who to ask, but they also bore the responsibility of actually asking. The boys also traditionally paid for all the expenses involved in prom. As society's women gradually gained more power, girls began to take on more responsibilities in prom. Nowadays, many girls do the asking and many girls split the costs for prom with their dates. In the future, as men and women become more and more equal in society, boys and girls will gradually hold more equal responsibilities and powers in the prom experience.



Self-Assessment: Through this course, I have learned to be more thoughtful in my activities in the future. Rather than watching television or reading books purely for entertainment, I have learned to see what kinds of stereotypes and assumptions they make, gender-related or not. I have also learned to carry myself in a way that defies the negative stereotypes about men. These stereotypes are formed through generations of men who have acted in similar ways and created an image of men that groups us all together. One of the aspects of this course that I enjoyed was the current events that we did in pairs. These current events provided us with interesting gender issues that are matter now. While looking for a good article to use as my current event, I found a site for Elle Magazine. This site had many articles that I found interesting even if I would not be able to use them for my current event. I read several of the articles just to see what they were talking about. While the magazine is for women, many of the articles could really work for either gender. Even the female-oriented articles could be interesting for males. This is the link that leads to the Elle Magazine site: []

Another interesting aspect of this course has been the final project. While it is very time consuming, we were allowed to choose our own topic so we would not grow tired of it. My topic was about prom, how it has changed, and the roles of each gender in prom. I became interested in this topic because we chose our topics around the time when junior prom bids were going on sale. As a result, I began to think about my prom and about prom in general, which led me to want to research the subject. While I was researching, a new movie about prom and its significance to teenagers was released. Below is a link to its information and a video of its trailer. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1604171/

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