1. How has social media affected the way teenagers interact with each other in person and online?
2. How has rap and hip-hop culture affected the way teenagers act?
3.  How has the pandemic affected the way NYC students learn and perform in school?

Alright so this is a pretty popular show that a lot of people have already watched, but Ik that there are some people that still haven’t watched it or continue to hate on it. Usually, the people that hate on it, hate on it just cuz people have created a rivalry between which show is better, Friends or The office.  I gotta admit that the first season is pretty bad and is the part where mostly all of the new viewers tend to stop watching. But trust me, once you get past the painfully awkward scenes and the dry humor in the first season… the rest of the show is significantly less painfully awkward and has a little less dry humor. It’s so worth getting through the first season. The show takes place in a small office in Scranton Pennsylvania. There is a camera crew that is making a documentary on Dunder Mifflin, the paper company they work for, that consistently follows them whether they’re working or not. The boss, Micheal Scott, is a very childish, self-centered, and awkwardly funny person that tends to annoy everyone in the office. He’s kind of the main character in the series. He has numerous employees, each with very different personalities, that work together to make sure their clients are satisfied with the paper they receive.The layout of their office is separated by department. We got the sales department, accounting, human resources, reception, and product quality. The show gets a glimpse of every department and every character has a closer bond to each other if they work in the same one. A character that is very loved in the series is Jim. Jim is the chillest and one of the more important characters in this series. We get to see him slowly get with his crush, Pam, the receptionist. Some episodes he would spend the whole day spitting game to her or pranking Dwight Shrute. Dwight is my personal favorite character. This guy takes his job a lil too seriously, acts kinda psychotic, and is constantly trying to impress Michael. He loves having authority over all of his colleagues, even though he has no real authority, he likes to think he does. Since he’s very gullible and naive, Jim tends to pull off a lot of pranks on him every day throughout the series which makes for some of the most hilarious moments. The show has a bunch of more characters that you’ll grow to love. Another underrated character in my humble opinion is Kevin. The big, fat, dumb accountant in the office who only gets work done if food is involved. He is often the laughing stock in the office and has some of the dumbest moments in the whole show. I can go on and on about every single character but it’s better if you just give it a shot yourself and watch it. I promise you, you will grow to love this show and become attached to the characters in it. Sadly, it’s no longer on Netflix, but I’m sure you can find a way to watch it since it’s very popular. Remember, once you get past the first season, you’ll become addicted to the whole thing. Hope you enjoy! 🙂

After reading Should Writers Use Their own English by Vershawn Young, I was surprised by the way the essay was written and the messages he tries to get across. Vershawn Young wrote in English that is not proper. He wrote this essay in his own tongue. The tongue that he uses to write this essay is the same tongue he would use if he was around friends or on the street. In Jamilia Lyiscotts video, we see her explain that just because she can speak a different type of English, it does not mean that she is below anybody. She brings up the idea of being trilingual. One tongue being her proper English, the other being her Jamaican tongue, and the third one being the English used in the streets. Young and Lyiscott both used their own tongues in order to get their message across because they did not feel like they had to speak ‘proper’ English to do so. Vershawn Young grabbed my attention when he said, “If he meant everybody should be thrilled to learn another dialect, then wouldnt everybody be learnin everybody’s dialect? Wouldnt we all become multidialectal and pluralingual? And that’s my exact argument, that we all should know everybody’s dialect, at least as many as we can, and be open to the mix of them in oral and written communication.”(Young) It grabbed my attention because Young ‘s argument is that if we can all learn to accept others’ English, then we can get rid of the singular form of English that is expected from us. I agree with both writers. A persons level of intelligence and literacy should not be determined based on whether or not they can speak or write in proper English. Everybody has the right to express themselves how they would like to. I enjoyed reading Youngs essay because it was the first time I had read a text that used his type of vocabulary. I’m so accostuned to reading in proper English, just like all of my past teachers have told me to do so that I found Youngs writing to be more interesting.

Both “Shitty First Draft” by Anne Lamott and “Rethinking the Shitty First Draft” by George Dila describe different methods of creating a first draft. Lamott’s method of pouring out every idea you get into your first draft and then fixing it up once you are complete was the way that I use to write my essays at first. Later on, as I learned new forms of writing and expanded my writing skills, I began to take Dilas’s approach. His approach is a much more tedious approach to writing a first draft because he thinks hard about every sentence he writes. I tend to do the same thing while writing. I’m always rereading every sentence I write, making sure it looks good and thinking hard about what direction I want the next sentence or paragraph to go. I find that this works perfectly for me because I hate looking back at all of my mistakes and having to fix them one by one. Sometimes I do get an influx of ideas that I want to write about in my essays but I never let them pour out into my writing. Instead, I write the ideas down somewhere else and then come back to them when I am ready to articulate them into my writing. The one thing I tend to struggle with the most in writing is introductions or how I want to start my writing. It is the part that I spend the most time on during my essays but as I’ve progressed in my writing skills, I’ve slowly gotten better at them.

Amy Tan elaborates on her experiences with languages and becoming an Asian writer in her essay, “Mother Tongue”. A language is a form of expressing yourself, sharing ideas or beliefs, and is part of who you are. Amy Tan titles this essay “Mother Tongue” because of how she grew to learn to accept her mother’s imperfect English. Even though not everyone could understand what her mother was trying to say at times, she could. Amy Tan looked at it as a way for her mother to express herself and created a strong connection with her mother’s form of English. We learned about her experiences as a child growing up with a mother who did not speak perfect English. I myself was one of those children who had to speak on behalf of my Spanish mother. I learned at a very young age how to speak to adults, how to translate words from Spanish to English quickly, and how to understand what message my mother was trying to send. Just like Tan, I saw how people discriminated against my mother because of her struggles with speaking English. When I was very young I saw retail workers, government officials, nurses, doctors, etc, all stray away from helping my mother simply because they did not want to deal with trying to understand what she was saying. Today, I help my mother out with everything because I know how much she struggles with the language barrier. Even if no one she talks to in English comprehends what she is saying, I understand her imperfect English perfectly.