Ryan Thomas

Reflection Paper
Through our imitation of Crispins journey, I learned how I was very different
from the other students in Honors. Almost everyone else said they were stressed
out by the imitation assignment because they werent really sure what was
expected of them, but I was quite relaxed about the whole thing. The other students
thought that if they didnt meet your expectations perfectly, they would fail the
assignment. I believe this to be indicative of a pervasive issue in American
education where students write to please their teacher rather than to for their own
learning. If students knew from the start that any attempt to mimic the poem would
be seen as a legitimate effort by the teacher, they would feel much more
comfortable simply expressing themselves rather than feeling constrained by the
ambiguous requirements. Instead, students write as though they have a gun to their
head that will go off if they deviate even slightly from the teachers preconception
of the correct response.
But the fault does not lie entirely with the teacher. In high school, both within
and without AP classes, students do whatever they can to minimize their workload.
This is a necessity when juggling a full schedule of challenging classes along with a
variety of extra-curricular activities, but no teacher wants to get the short end of the
stick. Thus, teachers scrutinize the writing of students determine whether they were
slacking. The toxic environment where student creativity is stifled is just a
byproduct of overzealous scrutiny.
Honors 205 helped me by breaking this paradigm. In this class, I felt that
because you trust me, I can write as freely as I wish without having to worry about
following some strict set of rules. This supporting environment allowed me to

produce an amusing poem about a rolling clementine that met the requirements of
the assignment while also featuring a personal flair.
Conversely, the discussions in this class taught me a lot about restraint; I
became better at knowing when to stop voicing my opinion so that others have the
chance to speak. Typically, I have an abrasive personality and I dont let others get
away with blatantly spreading misinformation. While this is generally beneficial to
others understanding of the material being discussed, it often has the disadvantage
of upsetting whoever I just corrected. In the past this hasnt really mattered to me,
because I have no interest in pleasing people who cant handle being told theyre
wrong. In this class of about 20 students, however, I decided I would contain myself
to maintain the peace.
The primary example of this was during the debate over ways to deal with
climate change that we had prior to the visit from Professor Lauren Hartzell-Nichols.
I got into a heated argument with a few other students about whether we should
take risks now in order to find some way to fight back against climate change, or
whether we should simply research and avoid doing anything that might risk further
damage to the environment. Particularly, they disagreed with me over the safety of
a controlled implementation of biochar. They claimed that biochar is dangerous
because it decomposes and releases chemicals into the soil. I could have
countered this by saying that biochar decomposes about as quickly as a lump of
charcoal and that the so-called chemicals they were referring to were in fact
nutrients, but then we would have debated this single issue for the entire duration
of the class. I decided that I would rather let other students participate in the
discussion than have it revolve entirely around about 3 students.

Looking back after more than a month, Id say that it was probably the right
decision to abandon the argument. Professor Hartzell-Nichols eventually settled the
debate on biochar, and arguing further would have just made people angry.
I also learned about restraint during the aftermath of the biochar debacle,
when Vikas suggested that we would have been better off if we just skipped the
debate and got something done.
This comment didnt make much sense, because if there was no debate, what
exactly were we supposed to do? The only answer was that he wanted some power
to dictate a course of action, and that everyone else would have to follow this path
without room for opposition. The only two ways to avoid debate entirely are to
either ignore any who voice opposition, or to leave the public unaware of the
decisions entirely. The latter option is only a temporary fix, because sooner or later
the public will find out, and the longer the government keeps their actions a secret,
the greater the public outcry will be when the governments actions are brought into
the light.
If this argument is too abstract, consider the case of the Trans-Pacific
Partnership (TPP). The TPP as its being debated in Congress will enforce stricter
copyright policies and allow foreign corporations to sue the US to create laws that
hurt the American public. Its widely regarded to be beneficial to corporations at the
detriment of the public, and the reason it entered Congress in such a state is that
the deal was written behind closed doors, all because the leaders of the 12
countries involved decided that it would be better to get stuff done than open the
doors to public debate.
Its my belief that open debate is absolutely necessary before any major
decision is reached, especially ones like the Trans Pacific Partnership or ways to

stem the tide of climate change. The freedom of information is something I value
very deeply, and something that the American public should be more concerned
with as well. The governments history of keeping secrets is what resulted in
Americans today having so little faith in the government. The most prominent
examples of this are the Pentagon Papers and the Bush Administration exaggerating
their certainty about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
The assignment that taught me the most was my essay about the boy who
joined ISIS. Up until I wrote that story, I assumed that the people who joined ISIS
were basically forced into service. The people who left rich countries like France to
join ISIS seemed completely insane to me. But as I did research I began to
understand the mindset that would cause someone to become radicalized and join a
terrorist organization. Feelings of discrimination combined with isolation from
society and an understanding of Islam derived almost entirely from the internet
could combine to make someone believe that theyd be better off dying for
terrorists if it meant they could be a part of something.
Trying to convey this complex set of emotions greatly improved my ability to
write interactions between characters, as well as conflicts within a persons mind.
Because my story was written from the first person, the reader only heard from the
perspective of the main character. This allowed me to write from a very biased
perspective and let the reader decide how much of the main characters
interpretation of events was actually true. For example, Aamir constantly feels
throughout the story that people are watching his whenever his back is turned. Hell
quickly turn around to check and then think that they must have just looked away
as he turned. But the reader never knows whether anyone is actually watching him,
or whether its all a delusion that resulted from his paranoia.

I thoroughly enjoyed using ambiguity as a narrative tool. Normally teachers

have told us to go into explicit detail about everything, especially in narratives.
They say that we should illustrate the scene with imagery to give our audience an
exact idea of what we were picturing when we wrote the story. In this story,
however, I did the opposite and left a lot of the details up to the interpretation of
the reader. A big part of the story is that Aamir often gets lost in his own head and
forgets about whats going on around him. This tendency to concentrate too hard on
one line of thought is what breeds his paranoia, and a careful reader will come to
take his interpretation with a grain of salt. Its also important to note that Aamir has
virtually no friends at school and also very little connection to his religion. This
means that when he begins developing extremist sentiments, he has no one to keep
him in rooted in reality. Instead, his mind becomes an echo chamber for paranoia
that begins pumping fuel for radicalism and is finally ignited in the climax of the
story. Im extremely grateful for the freedom this class gave me to explore atypical
writing styles and grow through exploration.