Persepolis Essay Test
In first quarter this year, we read the book Persepolis, by Marjane Satrapi. This book was about a little girl’s perspective on the Iranian Revolution. Every week or so we would have socratic seminars about what we were reading and a quiz. The culmination of reading this book was a test. This test writing an essay answering one of the essential questions we were discussing in class. These questions were: How did Marji (the main character) form her beliefs? How did Marji move from childhood to adulthood? and How did Marji cope with conflict? During the preparation for the test we had on the book Persepolis, I grew in persistence by making thorough annotations of the book and by creating outlines for each of the three essential questions even though it wasn’t required.
During the preparation for the test we had on the book Persepolis, I grew in persistence by making thorough annotations of the book. Annotations are basically little notes about facts in the book. These can be important events that occur, changes the character goes through, or anything related to any of the essential questions. I made my annotations on color coded post-it notes. They were color coded so I would know what the post-it note was about. Although this doesn’t sound like a lot of work this is really hard for me. I don’t like it at all and think it just takes too long. It also makes it hard for me to follow the story since I’m constantly starting and stopping reading to right something down. I can’t see it in my head, so this slows down my reading a lot. Even though it was annoying and I really didn’t like it I still spent the time to annotate every chapter I read. That is what persistence is, doing something you don’t like and pushing through difficulties. These annotations made my job much easier when I created the outlines for the test, because I already had most of the content I needed to write about. I also could use the annotations during my test, which helped me ensure my information was accurate and made it easier since I didn’t have to remember everything. This process helped me grow in persistence because it showed how hard work and persistence pays off. I will remember this experience in future situations where I have to do something I don’t really want to do.
During the preparation for the test we had on the book Persepolis, I grew in persistence by creating outlines for each of the three essential questions even though it wasn’t required. As I said before, the test was writing an essay about how the book answered one of the essential questions. We didn’t know which question we were going to be writing about until right before the test. It was recommended that we make outlines for what we would write for each question even though we would only write about one. I took my teacher’s advice and made all three outlines. Even though I had the annotations on what was important in the book, I still had to sort through all my annotations, figure out where to use the information, and go back in the book if my annotation was too vague. This took a long time to do and I got tired of it pretty fast. It was kind of hard to do since I had to condense a whole book into one outline. I wanted to include as much information as possible, but make the outline and essay as concise as possible. This was because I wanted to have enough time to write the essay. I was so glad I made the outlines. I knew I was prepared for the test and was able to easily write my essay. Having persistence, in addition to pushing through boring or annoying situations, it also means that you solve problems and don’t give up until the job is done. My outlines are on the right if you would like to take a look at them. This process helped me grow in persistence because it showed how hard work and persistence pays off. I will remember this experience in future situations when I have to do something I am having trouble with or that require a lot of work.
My greatest learning from this project is that hard work pays off and that hard work now makes things easier later. In this situation, my hard work making annotations on the book and making the outlines for each question made taking the actual test very easy and helped me get an A on the test. As I said before this experience will help me in the future know that hard work pays off.
The biggest things I learned in this project were the 8 stages of genocide and the value of talking with others to come up with new ideas. The 8 stages of genocide are the steps to a genocide. Just because the first few steps have happened doesn’t mean that there will automatically be a genocide. These are just signs. The 8 stages are: classification, symbolization, dehumanization, organization, polarization, preparation, extermination, and denial. If you would like to learn more about each of these categories please visit this website. After creating the posters, we had an auction to sell these posters in order to raise money for UNICEF, which is a United Nations lead organization to help children in countries that are impoverished or involved in wars. This way, other people who I will probably never meet will be helped because of my work. This whole project has benefited me greatly. I am so much more aware about the terrible things that have happened in the past and the terrible things happening right now, like the conflict in the Congo. This has helped me realize that I really want to help people in countries that are going through very difficult times. The quality I used the most in this project is communication. Simply put, communication is being able to express an idea or information to another person. This can be through speaking, writing, pictures, etc. In our poster, we thought long and hard about what we wanted to communicate about the Armenian Genocide and how we would do that.. We decided to focus on the fact that the Armenian Genocide still isn't recognized as a genocide by the government of Turkey, the country in which it occured. We used words themselves and then used a website to create a picture out of the words we wanted to say. I think it turned out very well and communicates a clear message.