Monthly Archives: February 2013

Dear Readers,

Revising has never been fun for me, but it is something every writer has to experience at some point. I usually feel that my work, while not perfect in its “final” product, is highly adequate in expressing my thoughts. This time, however, I accepted that revision was necessary – not because it’s a mandatory aspect of the assignment, but also because I knew very well how inadequately delivered my tale came out to be. I wanted to make my writing feel more…solid, so to say. For that I decided to use some of the advice bestowed upon me by my peers and professor first, and then add in personal changes after.

One piece of advice that I found was necessary to follow was to include more information about my “friend,” the guy who essentially allowed this entire story to take place. I tried to add enough details about him to make him seem significant without digressing from the actual events. In naming Adhemar and defining my relationship with him I hoped to give you, my readers, a deeper impression. I also tried to avoid using the phrase “It was” at the beginning of several sentences, in the same space where I identified Adhemar as my friend. My original intent was to create a sense of repetition, but that phrase does seem a bit clunky and non-creative. Instead, I rewrote those sentences with new beginnings while attempting to retain the repetitiveness of the subject, my friend.

To be honest, I feel that my revision could have been stronger with a bit more time and focus, especially the ending. I still have trouble ending any piece of writing satisfactorily. On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the highest, I would give my revision a 7. As much as I am dissatisfied with the ending, I still feel that my story has been given more depth and less formality, a goal  try to achieve in anything that I write.

The-Cost-of-Conflict-Revised

Dear Reader(s),

I must say, this has been one of the most challenging pieces of writing I have ever had to do. Most essays I write are academic ones that require 5 pages, 8 pages, 10 pages, and I have to struggle at times to fill those pages with meaningful words. Here, I’ve had to force myself to exclude as much as I possibly could in order to keep it at 2 pages max! The challenge was to restrict my thoughts and get to the point as quickly as possible without taking away from the significance of the story. I had to decide which sentences were truly important and which ones could be cut. In the end, several paragraphs were simply deleted  before the draft was even finished.

As you swallow the words that my essay draft feeds you, try not to look for hidden meanings or multiple layers. For the most part everything is straightforward story telling, with solid, literal meaning. Perhaps I will incorporate some figurative language later on, but my purpose in writing this draft is to work out exactly what I want to say. Once that task is done I will dress up my words and make them look pretty and have them dance off the screen. In the meantime, take everything as you see it and let your thoughts be based on that. Please, enjoy!

            It was a dark, cold winter night. Seriously, it was dark and cold and all I wanted to do was get home. I had just finished tutoring my class of 8^th grade students for that day’s after school program and my mind was programmed to take the next bus and travel on homewards. Unfortunately the bus in question was the B43, which never seems to arrive when desired – it always leaves just before you reach the stop or it takes what feels like an hour just to show up. On that night I felt the latter. Maybe if it had come sooner I wouldn’t have had to deal with what happened next.

             There were kids playing around in front of the school. Of course there would be, it was about that time of day when all the various after school programs ended and everyone felt like pushing the limits of how long they could stay out before parents started to give trouble. My own friend was one of them. It was his book-bag and jacket that I watched over as he ran around with the preteens, acting very much their age. It was he whom I called out to when I, standing on the short steps leading to the front doors of our old middle school, saw the bus that would take me home. And it was he to whom some random kid mimicked my call, whether in an attempt to assist me or to mock me. To this day I could never be sure what his intent was. To this day, I could never be sure if I would have reacted any other way.

“Oh, shut up,” I told the unknown kid. In the half a second before and after the sounds came out of my mouth, I knew. Trouble was coming. I had to go. Now!

I wasn’t fast enough. That random kid must have been well connected, because one call from him brought a group of his friends over to block my path. They wasted no time in trying to grab me. One of them bashed me in the head from behind with a solid, hard object. I nearly lost consciousness. Thankfully, one of the deans from the school had been called outside. He came just as I started to fall over, and had driven away most of the attackers. The police was called to try to arrest the kids, but they couldn’t do anything. I guess that being directly across the street from a police precinct doesn’t help increase the chances of someone getting caught.

The fact that the police, despite being directly across the street, couldn’t help me was really disturbing. It was so distressing that I relied on outside intervention and couldn’t get justice. Although I wasn’t thinking about it at the time, now I can look back and say this must have been what the citizens of Iraq must have felt. In this same year, 2009, President Obama announced that he planned to bring a majority of troops home from Iraq. Imagine that Iraqi residents had to rely on intervention from an authority that seems so close, and yet not get any true satisfaction. As the American soldiers leave the country, the mess created becomes larger. Families, homes, livelihoods, relations, all damaged or destroyed as a result of the conflict between the law enforcement and criminals.

The next day, going back to school, I found my life to have suffered a similar blow. I suppose that getting the police involved only made a bad situation worse. Half the school had heard about the fight, and rumors were circulating that this was the only time in which two rival gangs put aside their differences to take down one annoying guy – me. My friends stopped associating with me. No one wanted to talk to me. I lost just about every connection I had with anyone in my school. It was unbearable. As many Iraqis were forced to do at some point in recent years, I had to face my loss and start anew. It was difficult, and I doubt I would ever truly heal from the pain of being alone in the midst of former friends, but it was a consequence that I had to bear. It was the price of violence, the cost of conflict. This cost was paid in loss.

The Cost of Conflict – Draft

Voice Presentation

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