Year— Freshman Portfolio Category— Social Awareness For this assignment, we were asked to interview someone we knew who was over the age of $0. After we finished our interviews, we were supposed to write a page on what we had gathered from the interview. We then performed our Papers as monologues, or as interviews, but they were to be memorized, and we were by ourselves. | interviewed my uncle, my moms older brother, about his experiences as a child when he and the rest of my family took refuge in the United States near the end of the Vietnam War. My uncle, as the oldest child of his family, left a day before the rest of his Assignment/Activity Title— Mentor Sage Monologue Skill— Public Performance family to come the US. ‘Through this assignment, I leamed more about what it was like to be a Vietnamese kid in the US when there was so much controversy about the United States involvement in the war and Asian immigrants! refugees. I also learned effective interviewing techniques and more about my family’s experiences. This project also helped illustrate some of my strengths and weaknesses. I discovered one of my weaknesses is public performance. I’m much better at simply writing than [ am at performing what I, or someone else, has written. While I’m not bad at public performance, I do fear it, and ‘much prefer not performing, which is a considerably big weakness. My strength in this project was interviewing my uncle and writing my paper after the interview. Writing this was much easier than actually performing it This project has provided me with skills I can use in the future. In the future, I will have to write something and then most likely present it. I now understand that I will need to overcome my minor fears of performing and use this, knowledge as I move forward. This fits in with the prior knowledge I had of my myself. Ihave always been nervous before presentations, which is normal, but speaking publicly, like when performing a monologue, is something that will ‘occur often in my future, and something that I need to stop fearing One of the challenges of this project was simply memorizing the monologue. I knew the main points I had addressed in my interview, and I knew the story, but | was afraid of leaving something out, or forgetting something during the presentation. I thought that if I could memorize my monologue word for word, it would be easier to present, This may have been the case, but | wasn’t able to memorize my entire monologue. I stuck to the main points, and while I tried to stay on script, I improvised my lines every now and then, trying to make it sound more real, and adding in fragments of information I thought would be interesting or should be inciuded in the story. This challenge changed me because I now know that I can trust myself to speak, and despite the anxiety I might have beforehand, public speaking is really not. something that I need to fear. I know that it’s hard to memorize a script and it can be scary because you fear forgetting something, but if you can keep your head and remain calm if you do forget something, you'll be fine. If you know what your talking about, there is no rieed to memorize your script word for word, and improvising is not something to fear. If I could do this project over again, I think I would have spent less time trying to find ways of memorizing my script. I would've also tried to actually practice my physical movements, or plan more of them. I think I would have also liked to have vocally practiced my monologue. I repeated my monologue in my head many times, but I never actually practiced my monologue out loud until the day I performed it. Since it was my first time really running through my monologue, I hesitated frequently, saying things like “Um” or “uh”. I also think I would have put a bit more effort into my costume, but there isn’t much room for improvement in that category. Despite a few minor setbacks to my performance, | am proud of my final product. The project helped me deepen my views of myself, performing, and even my family history. I learned about my strengths and weaknesses, and I acquired new skills that can help me in future projects and presentations. Madden, ©: Owlos Ie Date Student Signature ie Teacher Sighature Advisor Signature