Who am I?
Unas, of course!
No, who am I?
I just told you…I’m Unas…
Alright, alright, let me rephrase; how about you start off by telling the audience and I about you, your blog, any background information about the blog’s title, and what it means.
Okay first off, I’m a grade 11 student who has a severe addiction to acquiring knowledge about football (or soccer) and cars. If you start a discussion with me on any of these two topics, I promise you I won’t shut up until I see you yawn. My blog has been around for almost a year now, and its name, Against All Odds, represents the following two things: First, it symbolizes the low odds of our existence presently. The amount of miracles and odds that occurred in favour of you and I, just to be born is completely absurd. After every single Biology class, I seem to fascinate myself more and more because I learn how lucky we are to be alive, and alive in a normal way, most of us, fortunately, don’t have an external heart, or fatal allergies from common things such as water. There are so many things that we should be grateful for. Oh, and the original title for my blog was linked with gratefulness. The second representation of my title is associated to the fact that a substantial number of people, (not trying to name any names right now) told me that there’s no way that I’m going to be successful in life. Moreover, that I won’t pass high school/get into University…in a significantly harsher way. Basically, I aspire and desire to disprove them, no matter how many odds are against me.
Alright, I see, how about your writing passions? What’s your blog about, and how’s it different from last year?
Topics I admire writing about haven’t changed, they’ve only developed from last year. In 2019, my blog focused on things that aren’t completely obvious to the eye, but this time around, I write about simple things that are of endless significance to me, and explain it in a way that makes you ‘live through it’ and understand why they are so significant to me; instead of literally telling the readers why it means a lot to me. This is the major change between the posts on my blog last year versus this year.
THOROUGH EXPLANATION:
The first thing you might have noticed was the way these two individuals addressed each other, it was almost as if they were the exact same person. Well, they were. They were both me. It was me interviewing myself, but I stopped saying me and began saying ‘you’ so as to seem to include the audience in the conversation and emphasize the impression of a one-on-one conversation, if that makes sense. Also, you can see that after conversation truly began between the two ‘individuals’ above, the interviewee dove into the conversation right tirelessly. Personally, I’ve noticed that I do this myself a lot. Small talk is the majority of my talk with people who aren’t particularly close to me, and until a topic that I’m familiar with isn’t addressed, I keep to meagre and necessary talk exclusively. This isn’t because I’m an introvert, it is primarily because of past experiences. In the past, I’ve been falsely framed for saying things that I have not said whatsoever, and even though I did not say or do anything wrong, I learnt how cruel people can really be, which resulted in me talking ONLY when necessary. It’s been a while since that event, and I’ve changed considerably, so I’m trying to get used to trusting people again. So, please don’t take offence if I talk scantily because this, in my opinion, is a valid reason. I just need some time to regain trust from society as a whole. All this is said to explain why the odd structure of my piece is how it is. Furthermore, the casual approach to this post represents the honest, true, and natural relations I wish to have with close friends and family members. This About Me is also a visual representation of my thought process while completing this particular assignment, with, of course, a little touch of creativity. Additionally, I believe this is much more complex, and overall, a step ahead of my About Me from last year. Even though it is short, I still believe it is more powerful than anything I could’ve written in 1000-2000 words. This piece checks all the boxes in the rubric, while giving the audience a deeper insight into my style of script, as well as my peculiar personality (Yes, I did just use alliteration while talking about my style of writing).
Thank you for your time.
🙂
About Me 2K19
I am an army, loyal, intrepid and dependable as long you stay on my safe side.
I am a hurricane, rough on the outside, serene in the center, and a danger to those who try to halt me.
I am carbon, I’ve got enough potential to form a diamond, all I need is time.
I am a giant sequoia, one of the strongest trees, yet I never forget the importance of my roots.
I am the time just before you wake up in the morning; genuinely valuable.
I am a shoelace, modifying myself as different terrains and obstacles come my way.
I am stanza of poetry, seemingly ordinary, yet perplexing, astounding and underestimated once understood.
I am the first raindrop, loved by many, but hated by many more. The hatred doesn’t stir me.
I am the North Star, guiding others even under the dark, velvet sky.
I am water, always the same qualities, no matter the situation.
I am the rays of moonlight, appreciated only when absent, yet continuing to help the unappreciative.
I am a liberated prisoner, free at the moment, but full of regrets from yesterday.
I am a torn down soldier, persisting despite previous wounds and scars. Eager to do everything it takes to reach my aim.
I am Unas.
In the About Me above, I hoped to display my strengths, my weaknesses, my passions, and a minor part of my intrusive and competitive side. I attempted to hint a little at what content would be in my blog as well. I also referred to the beauty of nature a lot in instances such as the trees, the north star, the moonlight, and the diamonds. The main idea that should be derived from this piece is the idea of being grateful for the things you have and don’t have in your life. Many of us are grateful for the former, but forget about the latter. Health issues, drug addictions, family matters, unsupportive friends; these are things we should always acknowledge.
Be Grateful.
Dear Unas,
Your description and word choice created really detailed imagery. Your ideas are communicated very vividly and this gives great insight to you and your writing style.
Some areas for improvement are playing with greater imagery, use words that are are closely related with each noun and don’t be afraid to go into more depth. I suggest you use literally devices like personification to elevate some of your points. For example your second line describing a hurricane could really be elevated by using personification and comparison between the movement of a hurricane with emotion.
If you have any questions feel free to ask me.
Sincerely,
Kemi
Dear Kemi,
First and foremost thank you for taking time out to read my blog. I think the advice you gave me is one of the best I’ve got all semester. I think opening up more and going into more depth in my writing would bring out more raw emotion and make my writing more interesting. I also believe that I could have used better words to go with the metaphor of each line, which would make the poem just better overall. Thanks for the advice!
Sincerely,
Unas
Dear Unas,
After reading your poem I want to acknowledge that it takes a lot of courage to recognize your own personal weaknesses and most importantly sharing them with other people; I would really like to commend you for your level of bravery. Through your poem I found it interesting how you were able to take your own personal interests, and have metaphors that reflect them. Also your title Occultātum is very interesting as I have never heard of it before I found it quite fascinating. Just as you did for your personal interests I liked how you were able to connect your poem with the elements pertaining to your title.
Some areas where you could potentially improve your writing is by being able to apply a larger variety of figures of speech for example personifications, alliterations, and imagery. Using these other tools will allow you to develop a greater depth in your writing so, it does not have one consistent path you would be able to expand on it and explore larger themes. For instance your poem was great, but if you would have considered different topics then the reader would have felt an even larger mood from your piece than you had originally intended. Moreover, with a variety of ideas within your poem will also allow the readers to further understand more about you and who you are as a person. Finally, with the addition of different uses of speech it also allows the reader to have a vivid idea of what you are trying to convey. For example, when you explained at the end that the use of the shoelace was to symbolize your love for soccer may be you could have elaborated more about it in your poem so your love for sports is shown.
All in all this was a great piece of writing that you have composed and I am looking forward to reading more of your work as we progress through the course of this semester!
Sincerely,
Kshef
Dear Kshef,
I would like to thank you first and foremost for taking time out to read my blog. Yes, I did hesitate before uploading my blog because everyone wants others to know their strengths, not their weaknesses. Also, I was thinking of naming my blog something to do with “hidden”, so I found out what the literal word was in different languages and the one in Latin, Occultatum, sounded cool and I ended up using it. About your constructive criticism, I completely agree with your advice, also another peer of mine commented with advice similar to yours. I do believe it would give my poem a deeper meaning if I used more variety and mentioned my passions in the poem to help the audience understand the poem. Once again, thank you for your time, and I’ll be sure to incorporate your advice into my writing.
Sincerely,
Unas
Dear Unas,
I enjoyed reading your poem, it was very interesting, especially the mini – imaginations that you had created stood out to me. I loved getting to know you even more and get a look at your great qualities that have been “hidden”.
The only suggestion that I would give is to reduce the redundancy of the “I am” in your poem. Other than that, your poem was great on the whole and I really enjoyed knowing more about you.
Thanks for sharing this amazing piece for the whole class to view. I can’t wait to see your next upcoming piece.
Sincerely,
Muhammed
Dear Muhammed,
Thank you for your comment. I appreciate the time you took out to read my About Me. Also, the repetition in “I am” was supposed to be intentional, but I can see how you would think a little more variety in my poem would make it better. Once again, Thanks for reading my blog.
Sincerely,
Unas
Dear Unas,
The poetry at the beginning of your About me was astounding and really did create a better understanding for me on who you are as a person. I also like how you mentioned the Audi logo in your poetry but not by speaking about a car but about the rings. I found that was very interesting and different. As I am a car enthusiast as well, I would like to see what you could write about relative to cars and see how you can create a piece that talks about cars not being appreciated enough.
As for feedback, watch out for GUMPS and making it so that your sentences flow together nicely.
In conclusion, I think that I learned more in this About me, about you then I have learned about you in the past 3 years. Which I think is amazing.
Sincerely,
Amit
Dear Amit
Thank you for your commenting and taking time out to read this, I appreciate it. Making sentences transition smoothly is something that I am and will continue to work on. As for the GUMPS, I haven’t always paid enough attention to, but I’ll fix that for sure. Thank you for the advice, and I hope my blog continues to interest you.
Sincerely,
Unas
Dear Unas,
As someone who knows you pretty well, I felt very honoured to be able to read this About Me piece and see the connections to you. I thought it was very true to who you are as a writer, and I like your focus on gratitude. I understand that’s very important to you, and so it was a good idea for you to establish that theme in your about me. This was a great piece that really showed not only your strengths but also your weaknesses. I know this is very difficult to do when you want to present a strong image of yourself, but I salute you on that.
My one bit of criticism would be in your format. I think that you should have stuck to one sentence per line in the poem, as this would bring more emphasis to certain lines.
As it stands, however, this is an excellent piece. You have grown so much since last year, and I hope to read your ever-improving writing even more.
With admiration,
Zaid
Dear Zaid,
First of all, I just want to start off by apologizing that I couldn’t completely re-do my About Me before you read it. Also, I think you, above all others, would fully understand what I precisely mean in this About Me. In regards to your constructive criticism, I agree with the fact that if I kept one sentence to each line, there would be more emphasis on each one. The piece would as well seem a little more organized
Thanks for the advice!
Sincerely,
Unas