Prompt: What is Art?

What qualifies as
art to you?

An Ocean or a Stroke, Its All Art

Moments are special, moments are unique to everyone. Everyones
interpretation of something that happened will be different. Their life
experiences will change the way they view these moments. The past events
will determine things like whether a person liked a moment or hates it,
appreciates it or wishes it would have never happened, or even whether it
was just an ordinary moment or an extraordinary one. The same is true with
art.
Every person will view an art piece in a unique way. For this reason,
people are even able to debate whether art is actually art. What makes art an
art anyway? By one definition in the Merriam-Webster dictionary art is
something that is created with imagination and skill and that is beautiful or
that expresses important ideas or feelings, however just after that definition
is another which says that pieces of art are works created by artists:
paintings, sculptures, etc., that are created to be beautiful or to express
important ideas or feelings, (Merriam-Webster). It seems that even the
dictionary cannot define art. In the first definition a 1 st graders drawing could
be considered art by the fact that it might express important feelings such as
how much that care for their family. By the latter however, the child would
have to be considered an artist to have their drawing be considered art.
At the SAMA, in San Antonio, I found a piece of art that spoke to me
immediately, however I was one of two people who even stopped to look at it.
It seemed to be just another painting to almost everyone in the group. To me
and a friend however, it was a masterpiece that captured our eyes. Once I
had seen the name of the painting, I wasnt surprised at all to see why it
spoke to me so much. Ocean Park had captured the memories of my past in
a way that made me stop and admire Richard Diebenkorns work. All of my
memories at the beach every summer with my family made me jolt to a stop
to recognize the landscape of an abstract beach. The way he captured the
landscape in a way that wasnt obvious, by using just lines, made people who
maybe hadnt spent so much time at the beach walk right past it. In fact,
when I called my friend over, she didnt even really recognize what it was
until she saw what it was called. To her it might not even have been an
impressive piece in any way.
It is these things that make me feel as though art is an interpretation
of each and every person who looks at a beach painting, or a sculpture of a
Roman, or a sketch of a lion, or even a pot made in ancient China. Art is
everything that touches someone. If it even makes a single person think, or
believe something, or even just appreciate the piece of art for its magnitude,
or even its simplicity, it is art. To me, Ocean Park was a painting that
brought back such strong memories that I could smell the salty water and
feel the sand beneath my toes, and the joy that came with those memories,

but to someone else it was a bunch or strokes. Whatever they may think, art
is anything that makes anyone think, believe, remember, or appreciate.
Whether someone thinks of memories of the beach in the summer, or that it
is a bunch of random strokes, its art. Its all art.

Prompt: Write an essay on the TGPLAN

project.

Saving The World

TGPLAN: a semester long project for the Academy for Global
Studies students at Austin High School. Our job: save the world -wellstart saving the world. Seems impossible, I know. Trust me, when our
English teacher first got up and said that, I had almost given up
already. About 150 students in the AGS sophomore group and I wasnt
sure that any of us could do it. The thing is: we did.
The project actually started in Costa Rica. AGS has a trip for all of
its sophomores that lead them to visit Costa Rica. For every person,
Costa Rica held a different experience. For me in particular it was really
interesting learning about the education system there, like how they
were required to go to school as children. However, Costa Rica wasnt
the only trip that led me to care about the quality of education. I had
gone on a mission trip to Peru in which I was part of a group that went
to an orphanage with over 800 kids from as little as a few weeks old, to
18 years old. This orphanage has its own school and library, and when I
saw the school I was in shock. Concrete rooms held nothing but desks,
dirt, and children that were eager to learn everything they could. The
children there have such a little amount of materials that when we
brought the teachers there materials for their classrooms they were so
joy filled that they cried because they could finally give the eager
children some of the things they deserved. Their library is one room,
about the size of a bedroom, with old, torn books, and not very many
for the younger ages, a critical learning period. It was there that I knew
I wanted to help, and TGPLAN allowed me to do that.
The first task of TGPLAN (Think Globally, Problem-Solve Locally,
Act Neighborly), was to form a group of about 6 people. Every group
would then choose a global issue that we wanted to change. My group
chose to work with the quality of education. Research came first; which
included hours spend finding websites, articles, personal stories, what
things people were already doing, and interviewing. Everyone in the
group had to find someone to interview, and my group even managed
to get an interview with former superintendent of AISD, Dr.

Karstarphen. We found a principle to come to our Showcase night, as

every group needed to have one expert come to the event where we
would present everything we had done, aka, Showcase. The night
where we told people what we had done, and what they could to do to
help to improve the quality of education as well.
All of our research led us to realize just how big of a problem
quality of education is. In 2012, 31 million primary-school pupils
worldwide dropped out of school. An additional 32 million repeated a
grade, (Do Something). These children may think that school comes
after helping their family, and stay home to take care of younger
siblings or fetch water, but it doesnt change the fact that 61 million
primary school-age children were not enrolled in school in 2010. Of
these children, 47% were never expected to enter school, 26%
attended school but left, and the remaining 27% are expected to
attend school in the future, (UNESCO). These large numbers are awful
to hear, and even worse to hear when, in developing, low-income
countries, every additional year of education can increase a persons
future income by an average of 10%, (Do Something). If these
children stayed in school it could not only help their own future, but it
has also been shown that children who are born to educated mothers
are less likely to be stunted or malnourished. Each additional year of
maternal education also reduces the child mortality rate by 2%,
showing just how much the problem of quality of education is a cycle,
repeating over and over again until someone makes the decision to not
let it continue (Do Something).
The second part of our project was to Take Action locally, with
which my group decided (since we were doing quality of education) to
go to a school. Actually, we went to a Pre-K because kids in Pre-K begin
to learn how to read, and, after seeing the orphanage in Perus library,
I felt strongly pulled to help locally with giving kids the materials (like
books). Most people think that giving a child a book wont change very
much, but even a materialistic item like a book, or a pencil, allows kids
to have an extra resource to learn and grow. It was for this reason that
my group collected books, if fact, we managed to collect over a
hundred book to give to a Pre-K called Mainspring School. In order to
go to Mainspring school, both parents have to be making minimum
wage. By having their child go to a Pre-K, their child can start learning
earlier, the parents can continue to work to provide a better home
environment for their family, and their kid receives 2 of the 3 meals
that that child needs. We took the books to Mainspring and read to the

kids there for an hour. It was absolutely amazing to see the teachers
delight at the books we had brought, and to see us reading to their
students.
For the final part of the project was that we had to advocate to
our community. This included Showcase night, where we would share
our research, our take action, and our individual advocacy projects. Our
group had a website people could visit, a video, a sculpture, brochures,
and more. The three parts of TGPLAN were presented at Showcase
night where we told people all of the things we had done, and what
they could do. In fact, we are still doing this. You, reading this, have a
job to do to improve our community, and our world. Collect books,
donate materials, read to children, encourage education, and spread
the word that quality of education affects us right her in Austin, Texas.
You too can change the world. We too thought it impossible, but we
did. Continue this project and repeat these words. I can change the
world, AGSs TGPLAN project showed this, and now its your turn to
make this world a better place.

Bibliography

DoSomething.11FactsaboutEducationAroundtheWorld.
<https://www.dosomething.org/facts/11factsabouteducationamerica

>April2014.

USC. US Education Spending and Performance. University of Southern

California. Feb 8, 2011. <http://rossieronline.usc.edu/u-s-education-versusthe-world-infographic/> April 2014.

Prompt: Write about the Neolithic, Industrial

and Digital Revolutions and which of the three
you think is most important

The Start of It All

There events that happened that changed our world forever, it may
have been small or big, one or 50,000 people, one invention, or one
discovery. What most historians focus on are the bigger events, the ones that
not only redirect our future, but have a mass effect on our lives, finances,
cause war, etc. Historians have named some of the timed periods that we
have advanced most enormously the Neolithic Revolution, the Industrial
Revolution, and the Digital Revolution. However, by far the most important
revolution has been the Neolithic Revolution. The Neolithic Revolution led the
human race to become what it is, and without this revolution, no other
revolution could have ever happened.
In the Digital Revolution (the most recent of these three revolutions,)
things such as the computer, smart phone, and Internet have been created.
These inventions have improved upon the way that people live, but without
the Industrial revolution, there wouldnt be the factories to produce the
iPhones even if they were invented. It is also interesting to think how, in this
revolution, only things with technology were really improved, however in the
other two revolutions, many aspects were improved upon.

The Industrial Revolution allowed for factories (which let production

skyrocket), cities, and things that improved trade (such as railroads, canals,
and roads). The creation of cities was the biggest step in this revolution as it
then allowed for other advancements, but none the less, still couldnt have
occurred without the first and most important revolution: The Neolithic
Revolution.
There is an order to the way that things must be created, such as this
essay. There is an introduction, which sets up the rest of the essay, then
paragraphs that explain what I believe, and finally a conclusion. These must
come in that order or the rest just wont happen. The order for these three
revolutions is the Neolithic Revolution, the Industrial revolution, and then
finally the Digital Revolution. The Neolithic revolution was the beginning of
communities, farming, towns, written language, higher birth rates, and even
the first games. Though all of these things may seem simple, the basis of a
process can be simple, and as it evolves, each layer will become more
complex. This is the effect that can be seen with these three revolutions. The
Neolithic revolution was the start to it all, with basic ideas, then the Industrial
Revolution allowed development in all of the areas, with the Digital revolution
focusing on technology and advancements in that specific area.
It is for these reasons that the Neolithic Revolution is the most
important of the three revolutions. The Neolithic Revolution was the basis for
advancements in the future, without this amazing start, what we have today
wouldnt even be here. The first step was the most important, and it allows us
to run stronger,
faster, and
Prompt: Write about what it was like
further than ever
before.
after the Hiroshima bomb went off.

Sunsets and Blackness

Sunsets are beautiful, but this one wasnt. Sunsets are calm and
peaceful, but this one wasnt. Sunsets are my favorite part of the day, but I
wish this one never happened. This sunset wasnt real, it was too fast, too
loud, too terrifying. I was walking, out to buy some fresh fish for that night. I
heard a plane, but there were so many planes those days that I didnt think
anything of it. I saw the bomb before I heard it, I was looking to the left,
checking to make sure the coast was clear before crossing the street, when I
saw the sky fill with the brightest orange, the most vibrant reds, and striking
yellows, the colors that I think of as sunsets. But these started and they
didnt stay, slowly fading out of view over the horizon, sinking deeper and
deeper, these colors were there for only a few seconds, not long enough for
there to be fear, before turning a putrid black. There was so much black.

The black was the signal. Everyone everywhere was screaming, a most
pitiful sound, like the persons world was ending, but maybe thats becausefor a lot of them- it would. The black caused the fear. It caused the shouts of
Jikk! or Run! No one stopped to help the lady with a cane; no one helped
the man who was on crutches. Black was everywhere, in the fumes where the
bomb had gone off, in the sky raining down like oil upon the people in the
distance, black was in our hearts, pumping the adrenaline to keep us running,
to keep us terrified, to keep us going further and further away from the cause
of all of the fear, all of the black.
I ran up the hills, down the hills, and even though I shouldnt have, I
grabbed a child on my way. Stupid, everyone told me, but no one told me
they regretted that I had saved him. Stupid to stop for a second for a boy I
didnt know, but I saw him standing, 5 years old, just staring at where the
colors had been, and where the black was coming from, and I picked him up.
The fear was the worst part, the constant fear, but its what kept us alive,
kept us running, hiding. The boy was in too much shock to move, and would
have died. The building fell just as I was turning the corner. Metal landing,
twisted, demolished, right where he had been, and I just held him tighter.
We stayed outside of the city. I found a farmhouse and set up camp
there, a while out of the city. It had 2 bedrooms and more people found it and
joined us. We ended up having 14 people live there for the next day. The boy
and I were the last ones to leave. We ended up staying there 2 days. When
we finally went back to Hiroshima, the smell was sickening, but the sights
were what ended up making me sick. I threw up after seeing a family
crouched under a building, dead. They were the boys family. He started
running to the mom bawling, but she was too dead to embrace him. His dad
was beside the mom, and 3 siblings. I pulled him away and started running
again, but this time, running to the city, frightened on who else we would see,
what else we would learn. 2 blocks later we found his grandparents, this time
he just stared in shock mumbling O bchan? Ojchan? Grandma?
Grandpa? So we tore away and kept running harder, further into the city. As
we went, I hugged him tighter and tighter, knowing that I was all he had left.
This sunset wasnt the end of a day, but an end to our previous lives, so we
just kept going,
needing
Prompt: Write about the medical experiments
to keep going,
knowing
and discoveries made by Nazis in WWII.
that our past was
gone,
and hoping the future would be better than the present.

Jewish Lab Rats in World War II

Medicines today go through many tests before actually being
used on any person. One of the first tests on living animals is to test
these experimental medicines and procedures on rats and other

animals before moving on to tests on people. In World War II, Hitler

decided to make it okay to skip this process and start testing all
different types of medicines on the people kept in concentration
camps, leading to many deaths, medical problems with these test
subjects, as well as various medical discoveries.
There were two main goals for what the Nazis wanted to learn
about. Their first was to help the survival of their military such as
altitude experiments and freezing experiments to test treatment for
hypothermia. Their second goal was aimed at testing and developing
treatments for injuries and illnesses such as bone grafting, malaria,
typhus, tuberculosis, and yellow fever (The Doctors Trial).
One of these medical fields that the Nazis wanted to learn about
was Malaria. The Nazis held experiments on the immunization for,
and treatment of, malaria. More than 1200 inmates were experimented
on. During the course of the experiments, healthy people were infected
by mosquitoes, or by an injection from the glands of mosquitoes. After
the victims had been infected, they were treated with quinine,
neoarsphenamine, antipyrine, and combinations of these agents. Many
deaths occurred from overdose, from these drugs that were injected
into the test subjects (Nazi Medical Experimentation). This was the
direct cause of 30 deaths, and 300 to 400 others died from resultant
complications, showing how their research not only hurt, but killed
many people simply because they were Jews and were forced to be
subjected to these experiments (Nazi Medical Experimentation).
Nazis also experimented with Mustard gas, a type of chemical
warfare used in WWI. The reason this gas is so dangerous is because it
causes blisters, which can damage skin, eyes, and even lungs if
breathed in. It also damages DNA, a vital component of cells in the
body, especially in the bone marrow. This causes decreased formation
of blood cells or decreased red or white blood cells and platelets,
(CDC). This is one of the seemingly pointless experiments as Sulfur
Mustard is rare and is not natural, so it served neither of their main two
goals.
Another one of their experiments was with bone, muscle, and
nerve regeneration, and bone transplantation from one person to
another. Sections of bones, muscles, and nerves were removed from
the subjects. As a result of these operations, many victims suffered
intense agony, mutilation, and permanent disability, (Sterilization
Experiments). These tests were brutally carried out by shattering
various bones into several pieces with a hammer, two examples of

these types of bones are the fibula and tibia (two bones in the lower
leg) and some test subjects underwent these excruciating experiments
not just once but several times (Nazi Medical Experimentation).
These awful experiments were continued to the point of freezing
experiments in which the Nazis immersed victims in vats of freezing
water or left them out in the winter cold, all the while monitoring
changes in body temperature, heart rate, muscle responses and urine,
(ListVerse). Though these tests were first performed on volunteer
soldiers, the Nazis wanted more data and began to test on
concentration camp victims. They attempted to formulate methods to
bring the bodies back to a safe temperature, including the Rapid
Active Rewarming technique that seemed to be the most effective
method of revival and is used today in the west, showing how some
of experiments have actually helped researchers in todays world.
(ListVerse).
All of these experiments were absolutely disgusting, but it turns
out that the discoveries that the Nazis made can provide information
to researchers today about experiments conducted on humans in the
concentration camps. Even though these records of medical
experiments can provide information, it doesnt change the fact that
these experiments were hugely negative. Not only were they
extremely painful for those people, but they also caused tons of deaths
that could have been avoided by testing these things before injecting
them into humans. No matter the benefit, a life is a life, and there is
absolutely no reason to ever repeat this type of destruction.

Bibliography

CDC. Facts about Sulfur Mustard. Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention. http://www.bt.cdc.gov/agent/sulfurmustard/basics/facts.asp

"Nazi Medical Experimentation". US Holocaust Memorial Museum.

2005.
http://www.defence.gov.au/health/infocentre/journals/adfhj_apr06/adfhealth_7
_1_33-37.html

"The Doctors Trial: The Medical Case of the Subsequent Nuremberg

Proceedings". United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Retrieved 23 March
2008.http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005168

"Sterilization Experiments". Jewish Virtual Library. Retrieved 23 March

2008.http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/medtoc.html

ListVerse. Top 10 Things the Nazis Got Right. January 31, 2011.
http://listverse.com/2011/01/31/top-10-things-the-nazis-got-right/

"Introduction to NMT Case 1: U.S.A. v. Karl Brandt et al.". Harvard Law

Library, Nuremberg Trials Project: A Digital Document Collection. Retrieved 23
March 2008.http://nuremberg.law.harvard.edu/php/docs_swi.php?
DI=1&text=medical

Prompt: Write about this past week and its

effect on you.

Chalk Drawings
In the last 2 weeks everyone in Austin High has suffered a loss. Two of
our Maroons have passed away and one is in Brackenridge getting medical
treatment. These last 2 weeks have been tremendously tough on every
Maroon at Austin High.
Personally I knew Andrew Newton from being in Musical Theatre all last
year and this year I continued to see him through plays he was in and from
the friends who were in them with him. When I found out Friday I was running
around crying, lost, looking for one of my friends. In this difficult moment I
needed a friend, a companion, and one of my fellow Maroons. As the days
continued forward, my friends and I continued to be a team when the week
seemed impossible to get through. I have also been blessed with amazing
teachers who have made this week enormously easier. They moved back
tests, canceled work that could wait, allowed for extensions, and have been
there for everyone. I have been very impressed by my teachers specifically
during this week. To know that they understood how hard the week was going
to be meant the world to many of my friends.
A little over a year ago my Moms best friend past away in a car
accident as well. Alicia and her family were simply a continuation of my own
family. Not only were my mom and Alicia best friends but also my brother and
her son were best friends. In the crash Alicia passed away immediately and
Steve (her husband) was in such critical condition he had to be Life-Flighted
to a hospital, but the two sons were unhurt other than bruises and a pair of
broken glasses.
After finding out on Friday, I called her sobbing, to tell her that there
had been in a car wreck as she had called me to do so a year earlier. She
later told me that her first thought even before I had said anything, while I
was still crying, was that I had been in a car wreck and it had gone badly. For
her worries to be so true terrified her, and she pulled closer to me to relieve
that anxiousness. We were originally supposed to go down to Rockport (near
Port Aransas) that weekend, and I told her Friday I didnt want to go, at least
not yet, and so we waited until Saturday morning to leave. The drive to
Rockport is about 3.5 hours, and I wanted to have some time to think to
myself so I put ear buds in, but my mom got frustrated because this shut her
out too much, and so she took up the ear buds and didnt give them back for
another 2 days. This frustrated me on a lot of levels, but for the most part I
wanted my own time to think without someone else trying to talk to me
asking if I was okay, and to filter through my feelings. Sunday was difficult

in a way I never knew it could be. I missed the vigil as I was out of town, I still
hadnt had time to myself to think and just be alone, and my dad continued
to try to simply ignore the whole thing as though it never had happened,
which made me furious. Monday was the worst and the best in a whole
different way however. Math was first and I left right after the music came on,
and went to cry in the hallway, where I found more friends, and we went to
the band hall together. In History everyone was talking about the crash in a
way that seemed arrogant and completely detached of feeling, causing me to
be angry at the way they were talking about it. But 4 th period Ms. Finney had
us outside, sitting on the benches, doing whatever we needed to do, and
since I had a pair of ear buds to block out everyone and enable me to think
alone, thats all I did, and helped me enormously.
I continue to worry about some of my friends who are still deeply
depressed, and yet wont reach out to anyone. Mostly though my life right
now is full of appreciation for what Andrew had, what Alicia had, and what I
have right now. I have life, and I am at least glad that I can appreciate that.
The best thing this week have been looking at things people wrote out in the
circle drive, and being inspired by everyone who cared for Andrew or Alyssa
in their passion to see things happen that werent all bad. The setup for a
meal train for the families, the creation of Stars for Andrew, and the chalk are
all examples of this appreciation for life, and love for our friends, and our
fellow Maroons.