Contemporary Literature Class Reflection - Adam Todd

Why Did You Sign Up For This Class

I signed up to take this class because Mr. Davidson was teaching the class, and he's a very slayful teacher. I also wanted to bring back my reading and study habits. I typically I hate to read for class, but this class brought back my love reading and helped me become better at retaining information from books.

Favorite Novel Of The Semester

My favorite novel of this semester was The Art Of Racing In The Rain, because it was truly one of the most emotional books I've ever read. And as a person who gets emotional quickly, this story hit me really hard seeing it from a dog's perspective. 

Favorite Project

My favorite project was definitely the TED Talk. I got to be creative and personal with everything I said and the way I did it. I also got to include some of my favorite things in my talk and connect with people in a way that I truly connect with.

Why Others Should Sign Up

I think other people should sign up for this course because it reinforces reading skills and Mr. Davidson makes the class extremely fun and interactive. This class will also help you in the long run to gain better skills and study habits for retaining information for a quiz or a test.

TED Talk Reflection - Adam Todd

My Topic 

What I Knew 

What I knew about my topic were the basics. That music can often be used to calm people down. That it's good for people who struggle with anxiety. I knew these things because I struggle with them every day, and I’ve seen other people who deal with it. I also knew that Music Therapy is valid in the minds of many people in the psychology field. I knew some of this through my brother who studied psychology for his first year in college.  

What I DIDN’T Know 

I didn’t know any of the factual information. For example, I had no clue that Music Therapy was more effect than sedative medication, or that it has many positive effects on cancer and stroke patients. But more specifically I didn’t know about any of the methods of Music Therapy. I had a general idea of the Cognitive Behavioral Method, but that was only because it’s kind of a basic one that most of us use without realizing it. But I didn’t know that there was an actual name to it. Before this project, I thought that Music Therapy was just listening to music and connecting on a deeper level, or just playing instruments as a way of expressing your emotions. 

 

Why I Chose My Topic 

I chose this topic because it’s something I hold extremely close to my heart. As a person who struggles with Social Anxiety and Anxiety in general, music has always been my escape. It was always my way of understanding my emotions when I was experiencing Alexithymia. Alexithymia is the feeling of not knowing what emotions you’re feeling. And I experience that all the time. For me, I’m able to navigate my emotions through the kind of music I vibe with most at the time. When I’m sad I begin leaning more towards somber and slow music. But when my emotions are jumbled and I can’t understand what I’m feeling, I just shuffle through my songs until I find a song I feel like listening to over and over again. A song that just feels right. I do everything in my life with music playing. My homework, driving, sleeping, cooking, and even in my darkest times. I use it to feel less alone when I sit in my room at night paranoid about my future. As I learned through my experience leading a K130, people can connect to music on a deeper level, when a song is directly linked to an experience that left them traumatized or scarred. I am also a theatre kid, so I have a natural tendency to pay attention to the lyrics of a song more than most people, and that allows me to connect with music a lot more. 

 

What I Learned – Research 

As I mentioned before, I learned a lot more about the official facts about Music Therapy. As I found out in VeryWellMind’s article, “Music therapy can be an active process, where clients play a role in creating music, or a passive one that involves listening or responding to music.” This source was my main source for finding my information, as it gave me my main points I talked about; the different forms of Music Therapy. For me, the most rewarding part of the research process was reading up on each method and thinking about real life examples in my own life for how I use them. I already had a pretty deep connection with music, and this research helped me put into words why it was so important to me. I’d say I have a pretty nice work ethic (most of my teachers say the same thing), so this project was easy for me. Having a topic that’s meaningful to me helped out greatly. And wanting to learn more about it made the experience and overall research process a lot more fun. It felt less like it was an assignment and more like a personal endeavor. I also wanted to perfect everything for this project; the slideshow, the notecards, and the way I spoke. I wanted people to see music the same way I do. 

 

What I Learned – Presentation 

I learned more about how to actually be prepared for a speech. As I learned previously in Mr. Davidson’s 21st Century Media Class, it helps to practice a speech and have notecards with the general points you want to hit. Reading off of a piece of paper word for word makes for a bad presentation. It becomes easy to get lost in the paragraphs, forget to flip a page, and forget to make eye contact with the audience members. Even though I fell victim to many of these things in my presentation, I’ve learned from those mistakes. Body language is also a very important factor to consider, but in this case it was hard because we were confined to a very small space for these presentations. So we had to adapt and stand in a way that tells people we’re open and not closed off people. With my slideshow, I’d say I mostly learned more through the other presentations. For example, in my slides about the connections I made for each method of Music Therapy, I originally only wanted to use one picture for each one; the poster for each show or movie. But I learned that I needed to have more than that. Which is why I chose to include pictures directly from the scene I was talking about. It adds more emotional depth and allows to audience to be able to visualize what I am talking about. I feel as though I need to work on my body language and tone when it comes to these speeches. But I would like to say that it was more excusable in this case, because we were being recorded for these presentations and it becomes easy to get awkward. But in terms of rehearsing, I quickly realized I wouldn’t be able to make this presentation smooth if I didn’t have detailed notecards for each example I spoke about. When rehearsing I found myself stumbling and getting stuck trying to think of how to word the next sentence. So these note cards were a saving grace for me. 

 

What The Audience Learned 

I chose to introduce a new and fresh Idea in my TED Talk. The idea that Music Therapy is a valid form of therapy. I think I did a good job of instilling this new idea into my audience. I used personal experiences that I knew my audience would be able to relate to. Being teenagers living in this world, I know we all use music in our own different ways, but they all ultimately link back to our emotions. So I explained things in a way that would hit people on a deeper level. I can’t say that they gave me an obvious sign that my TED Talk was successful, but I do believe that it genuinely got to them the way I wanted it to, 

 

Advice For Students 

The most important piece of advice I can give them, is to practice your speech over and over again. This way you’ll be prepared to get back to the main topic if you ever go off topic. You’ll know your speech inside and out, and know how to word it differently according to your audience. But aside from that, I would say just choose a topic you know a lot about. This way you’ll never run out of things to talk about. And you’ll be able to show your audience how important your topic truly is to you. 

Vera Dietz Book Review

  Toxic Family Relations in Please Ignore Vera Dietz 

A.S King’s Please Ignore Vera Dietz Is a wonderful depiction of the hardships many families struggle with, and how they often get handled. The book follows the story of a girl named Vera Dietz, a highschooler whose father is a recovering alcoholic and whose mother abandoned her family. The audience follows her journey as a high school student working a job at a pizza place as she deals with the trauma of losing her best friend Charlie, and the fallback of the events that occurred before he died. All the events that occur throughout the story push her to frequently rely on alcohol as a way of numbing the pain. But she ends up hating herself for it, because she fears she’s going down the path that led her father to becoming an addict. As if all of this wasn’t enough to handle, she is also dealing with withholding the knowledge of how Charlie died, and the fact that he was framed for burning down a building.  

The overall realistic feel of this story is one of the biggest highlights of the book. From the abuse Mrs. Kahn goes through, to Vera’s struggles of alcohol and want to make her family proud, each one of these topics hits the reader even harder than they could possibly imagine. This story gets the message that “Sometimes the greatest strength lies in vulnerability” across in the most blunt, yet sensitive way possible ( ). In this case, for Vera it means being open with her father about her life and everything she’s been going through for the past few months. Having those hard conversations most high schoolers dread having with their parents. Through all of her hardships, it becomes apparent that Vera is just like the readers. She’s arguably the most relatable character in the entire book. Her struggle with grief and survivor’s guilt can be difficult for teenagers today to handle. Whether it be not knowing how to express your emotions when events like these occur, or not having emotions when they occur. The different perspectives and points of view within each tragic, happy, or confusing event, hit close to home with the reader at all times, because they live lives like this all the time. 

The strongest feature this book has to offer its readers is the characterization of characters like Vera, Charlie, and Ken. But the main focus of this will be Ken. Ken is a recovering alcoholic who struggled to raise Vera before Sindy left, but this struggle became even harder for him after she left. Because of this, he didn’t want Vera to go down the same route he did when she was younger. He could easily identify the signs of Vera’s growing drinking problem, and because of his experience, he knew how to handle it in the best way for a teenager. This shows his character growth and also his determination to be a better father after the incident. It’s almost as if Ken took to heart the quote; “If we’re supposed to ignore everything that’s wrong with our lives, then I can’t see how we’ll ever make things right” ( ). This quote means that in order to grow and actually make a better life for ourselves and others, we must first face our own faults.  

This book is one of the most realistic books I’ve read in a while. The way the story is told is done in a way that the readers can relate to most of the choices made by each character. I also applaud the Author for including such mature topics and themes in this book. These are things that people need to be made more aware of and the author did it in a way with such care. They were sensitive and aware of everything they said when describing or discussing each of these. And it’s obvious that they did their research because they speak so well on these topics. For example, when talking about Mrs. Kahn being abused, he includes the reasons why it can often be dangerous to call someone out or put them on the spot with things like these. Overall, I would say this is an amazing book. It may not be for everyone because of the strong themes that could be triggering to some people. But the story, characters, writing, and general feel of the book will truly keep you invested in the story. I would recommend this book to anyone who is at least 14 years old.