As the first unit of my senior year, Reflections was a powerful way to remember what I believe in, what makes me unique, and what I can contribute to the world. It gently forced me to reflect on ways to communicate my thoughts, experiences, and beliefs. In English, we wrote personal essays that dove into hard experiences we’ve gone through and how we’ve overcome them, tying values into career possibilities, weaving words of hurt, growth, strength, and wisdom. In film we created slightly more experimental short films about our unique experience and the perspectives we bring to the table. In digital media, we created a perspective piece, a video with our voice overlaying relevant images about a topic of our choice and how we feel about it. Overall, we answered the question of “Who am I?” and dove into the core values of what makes us unique.
Personal Essay
The purpose of the personal essay was to create a creative and meaningful piece that could be used as a Common App essay in the college application process. I chose to write about my experience with living in Germany for three years, how I grew as I started to overcome culture shock and more importantly, learn German. Because of this experience, I have been able to communicate effectively with others and teach others German. Now German and my experiences from when I lived in Germany have become an essential part of who I am and who I will be.
Not There Yet
It was my second day of school in Germany and I probably had understood a total of five words. I listened to the slow, steady tick of the clock’s second hand while I doodled with my new fountain pen and stared at my classmates.
That was it. I hated it. I hated monotonous classes. Even though I tried to listen, I constantly became lost with my vocabulary of an average toddler.
I was frustrated at my parents and their decision to uproot our sunny Utah life on a block with family friends and our natural fence of roses around the yard. We landed in a neighborhood where I heard strangers shouting out of open windows and where our garden consisted of two rosemary plants that grew only because it constantly rained.
But by the end of the school week I decided that my only chance would be to give it a shot. I brought my English-German dictionary to school and tried to look up unknown words that I heard during lectures. I asked my teachers for help when I got lost. I decided to excel where I could, math, because all I needed was to understand numbers. I listened to a girl in my class talk to me about what I later learned were chapter books about cats in fantastical worlds.
Just as I started to get the hang of it, people started making fun of my accent. Sometimes they laughed because I couldn’t pronounce the German “r” and ended up sounding like the hapless foreigner that I was. When my classmates laughed about something, even if it wasn’t about me, I assumed it was.
Although frustrated with my lack of progress, I continued to take notes and ask people for help. And I people watched. I listened to how they spoke and after a few short months my German and accent progressed to a proficient level. Misunderstandings were not infrequent but I was able to talk to my friend about books and even invite a girl over to study for an upcoming test. When I met new people, they often remarked that there was no way that I could be my parent’s child because their accents were still painfully American and I resembled a German girl in both mannerisms and speech.
When we moved back to the United States after three years in Germany, I knew that I didn’t want to lose the work ethic and language that I had learned while living abroad, so I made the commitment to teach my one-year old sister German. Not only did this expose her to German, but it helped me retain it. I desperately wanted to be able to communicate with my friends when we went back to visit and used that as my motivation when I got tired. I was frustrated when I forgot the word for teeter-totter or got weird looks from the moms on the playground while I played with my younger sisters. But most of the time one of us remembered the word and moved on.
Last summer we finally made the trek, all seven of us, back the house with the rosemary bushes. Family friends have since moved into the house, so children’s laughter still fills the air. With welcoming arms and lots of questions, we shared precious hours under the green umbrella in my best friend’s backyard, visited my other friend’s bedroom that still has cat posters on the wall, and saw our German “Oma” and “Opa” again.
I had to ask for vocabulary I had forgotten, and my accent isn’t as good as it used to be, but I had a lot of fun picking up right where I left off. I might not remember the German word for struggle, but I still remember what Fortschritt means: progress.
Perspective Piece
For my perspective piece, I did a podcast about the pressure and uncertainty of knowing what I wanted to be as a child when I grew up but also now that I am looking towards my future more, applying to college, and becoming more interested in career fields. I first roughly wrote it out, then I continued to draft and revise. I recorded my final piece, which I then edited for content slightly, but more so to polish it off. Afterwards, I imported the final audio file into After Effects along with relevant free to use images which I then compiled into a video. The video includes a voice over recording of my perspective piece along with the visuals and some supporting text.
A screenshot of my project in Adobe After Effects while I was editing it.
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Video Essay
In film, we created a video essay which is similar to the perspective piece except that it was compiled with video footage and was drafted from our personal essays. I chose to continue to explore my experience of living in Germany and how I felt about it. I filmed footage of objects, like marbles and dice, to represent how I felt, the uneasiness yet progressiveness of the situation. A friend also filmed some footage of myself. I value that film has the ability to show more rather than tell about not only the facts or the events, but more of how people have grown through it and how they feel about it.
A screenshot of my video essay project in Adobe Premier Pro.
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