The War Against Myself : Chapter 1

For the first action project of my last Humanities course, Endurance, we were asked to write an auto-biography 50 years into the future. The purpose of this action project is to help us find who we are as human beings. This unit helps us explore our limits and begin to understand what type of people we are.  We went through a number of different endurance challenges throughout this unit. It seems right that I will get to talk about myself on this action project, right? I've learned a lot about myself so why not share with you guys! Really digging deep and self-reflecting is not always easy. I think I'm proud of the way things came out though. Thanks for viewing my project! Always remember to be selfless, but you cannot be passionate about anything else if you're not passionate about keeping yourself together!

"ETP" JO. 18 Mar, 2017.

It felt like I was in a void. From ages 17-20, there was this emptiness. Who am I? That question drove every decision I made over those three years. There are so many things I regret, but if I hadn't made every decision I did, I wouldn't be where I am now.

At 17 years old, I was attending GCE Lab School in my hometown, Chicago, Illinois. GCE was a crucial part of my life. I think it was honestly the best thing that's ever happened to me. It's ironic because my mother put me there. What would I do without her? She's 83 years young, and she still finds time to be the best person in my life. She guided me through my high school years. She was my Captain America. My teenage years weren't even that bad. Why did I need a hero? I wasn't bored. I wasn't starving. What I was doing, was fighting the greatest battle of them all. The fight against myself. My junior year of high school is when I began writing poetry. Shortly after that, I began my music adventure. Both of these things immediately became very important to me. Poetry was bliss. The writing wasn't even my favorite part. Whenever I met other artists, I couldn't wait to exchange art. I'm addicted to good energy! Louder Than A Bomb (LTAB), a poetry organization based in Chicago, was the start of my artistry. Thank you.

At 18 years old, I started thinking. A lot. There wasn't a lot of people on the same level as me. My views and daily thoughts got very philosophical and abstract. I started challenging, not only my beliefs but other peoples' as well. How did our kind get here? No one really knows. Are we not making assumptions based on educated guesses? No one was there when we were created. But I'm not here to preach to you about how your beliefs are wrong or anything like that, but I wanted to bring attention to the fact that somehow someway, we are meant for something. You have to find that something. This was my call. Shortly after that, I was accepted to Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia. This was a huge change in momentum because I was going to stay in the city and study audio engineering and business, but I didn't want to turn down Morehouse. The opportunity was once in a lifetime. Music still seemed right. Music was powerful. It was creative, original, breathe-taking. I didn't understand the greatness of music for a while. When I started writing and making music, I quickly became more sensitive to art. I started respecting other artists a lot more. I began to understand the broadness of "artistry." I understood music was bigger than sound. Music is silence as well. Music is everywhere.

At 19 years old, my first hit single was released. Love was my first single that went platinum. I never knew this song would blow up like this, nor did I expect it to in the first place. The song is about keeping a stable relationship while being a full-time musician. Being a musician comes with touring, women, and non-stop recording. You can easily dig yourself into a deep hole. Teenage love is complicated. A snippet of the chorus of the song is below:

"She say she love me when I'm on the road
All these beau-ti-ful girls want me to fold
I need someone to keep me warm when it gets cold
But love it will save us until we grow old"

I wrote this story because when the music got serious, I felt myself growing distant from my significant other at the time. I really wanted to be with her so I began writing about how I felt. "All these beau-ti-ful girls want me to fold." I'm basically saying that there are so many women on tour that will try to destroy our relationship, but I won't let it happen. I use music to express myself. It's my language. I wrote "Ma Knows" a year later which was written for my mom. Music is literally another language. You understand some of it, but you can't understand all of it.

After my late teens, things just started going uphill, well, for the most part. The name of the artist collective I was in is called "Exit The Premises" (ETP). These were some of the best years of my life. This group was all of my best friends. All we did, was help each other unlock our potential as artists. We all had independent careers, but we were part of something bigger. Exit The Premises was a statement. Being in ETP was a statement, and we kept it strictly family which was convenient because our family was so talented. Our logo was an alien. This alien represented all of those people who don't exactly "fit in." It was strictly for the creative and experimental. One of our mottos was to just try new things and stop being so hard on ourselves. It was important to realize that music doesn't just have one sound.

My mother is one of the dearest people to me. She taught me to be resilient and to challenge the status quo. She has proven to be the reason for all of my accomplishments. My mother went through a lot. She had me at 16 years old. It was hard, to say the least. I couldn't imagine having a child at that age. The responsibilities and the burden on my social life would be tremendous. My mother quickly became an adult. I almost ruined her teenage years. She loved me, though, and she kept moving forward. My mother's resilience is crazy. She is the reason that I try to be the strongest person I can be. The hardest thing my mom went through was post high school decisions. My mother wanted to go to college for hair. Her mother told her that it is was unrealistic. My mother ended up going to college for what her mother wanted and not for what she wanted. I didn't want to make the same mistake. I ended up going to Morehouse for business, just to understand the business aspect of music, and to be in Atlanta.

My life has been unreal. I starting touring at age 19. I eventually did drop out of Morehouse my sophomore year, but it was a hard decision to make and I had to make it. After obtaining 8 grammies over 10 years, at the age of 29, I started taking online classes at Texas University. I ended up getting my Bachelors Degree. It was for me, as a milestone, and for my family as well. I am now, at the age of 68, a co-founder of Exit The Premises (ETP) and CEO of $$ Records, Where Artists Are Free.

Fable For Young People

For the third and last action project of my STEAM class, Systems & Models, we were asked to analyze a particular part of our school while having full creative control. The particular parts of the school have to relatively specific. I chose interpersonal relationships. This entails the relationships between students of different ages and cohorts within the school. I also had to interview 4 people from within the school to get a better perspective than just my own. We were asked to connect our findings to the SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) chart. We were also asked to relate our findings to Maslow's Hierarchy and our research on I-O psychology. I had difficulties following the rubric while completing the project, but this project allowed me to write, which is one of my favorite things to do. I wrote a fable type of story for you all. It is about a teenage boy and his little sister. Enjoy!

"Bro & Sis" Web. 26 Feb, 2017.

This is my fable, “The Divide.” The story is represented in the quoted bold text and annotated in the regular text. I hope you enjoy reading it!

“There’s this beautiful thing called ‘divide.’ This is the same divide you have with your younger siblings. How beautiful is ‘divide?’ Or does divide have this negative connotation that everyone generally gives it? If you ask me, divide is a way to separate yourself, and sometimes you have to. The real question is, when does divide become a liability? This story about Jonathan and his sister Joanne will entail the story of ‘The Divide.’”

I chose to write a fable type of story as a creative way of depicting the social divide in my school’s cohorts. The underclassmen and upperclassmen don’t have much of an understanding. It seems as if the underclassmen want to have more fun, and the upperclassmen are used to the freedom that the underclassmen seem to be new to. I will be trying to depict this by the big brother Jonathan, being the upperclassman, and the little sister Joanne, being the underclassman.

“Jonathan was having a rough day. Honestly, it was just a regular day in the Harden household. Joanne is in her room, on the phone screaming irregularly. It would be ideal to check on someone screaming like that, but it was normal in the Harden household. Jonathan, at 17 years old wasn’t having it! He stormed into Joanne’s room with fire in his eyes! Before anything came out of his mouth, a pillow was thrown at his face as his 15 year old sister yelled, ‘get out!’ Jonathan responded, ‘I’ll get out if you please shut-up.’ Joanne teased, ‘I’m telling mom you told me to shut-up!’ ‘Whatever, just be quiet!’ Jonathan said while leaving Joanne’s room.

As you can see, there's room for improvement. Let's analyze the SWOT of this brother and sister's relationship. A strength that I see here is that they obviously have some type of connection or understanding which can be related to the relationship between the cohorts in my school. This is a nice transition to the weaknesses that we witnessed in their relationship. Like the cohorts in my school, these two seem to have different interests and wants/needs. I asked a senior at my school, VG, how he thought the general relationship between the upper and underclassmen was, he responded: "the larger the grade gap, the less friendliness displayed." I asked the same question to a freshman at my school, ZG, and he responded that the relationship between them was, "decent, but it could be better." He claimed "the freshmen are misguided and the seniors can help in certain ways." Although ZG is a freshman, he seems to not be a negative factor in the problem between the cohorts.

"Jonathan knew that Joanne was relatively tolerable some times. Maybe she wasn't too bad. It would be kind of boring without her around the house. He whispered playfully under his breath, 'I'll get her back. She wants to be annoying, I'll show her annoying!' Jonathan planned on playing his music louder than hers. He wanted to play his music so loud that Joanne couldn't even hear herself speaking on the phone."

There's obviously opportunity for their relationship strengthen. I asked a teacher, how she felt the upper and underclassmen's relationship was and she said she thought that "everyone gets along well." She said she thought that, "the freshmen as a group get scapegoated for a lot of stuff, but individually, I think everyone treats each other fairly for the most part." She has a point. The freshmen specifically are blamed for their energy which is commonly looked down upon because the seniors don't share the same energy. As the cohorts in my school do, Jonathan and Joanne need to find somethings mutual. How can they find a way to compromise; to look past age? It's all about systems thinking, and making all pieces of the puzzle come together. I asked the counselor in my school if she believed that there was a "divide" in the school she responded: "I don't know if I would call it a divide, maybe a bit of a misunderstanding between the age groups." This misunderstanding represents the gap in maturity and motive.

"What Jonathan didn't anticipate was, him playing one of Joanne's favorite songs. Jonathan had a maniacal look in his face. He was going to get his sister back! Twenty seconds had passed and Joanne bust through the door singing! 'DON'T YOU OPEN UP THAT WINDOW, DON'T YOU LET OUT THAT ANTIDOTE! Jon this is like my favorite song!' Jonathan's plans were soiled. He tried to find it in himself to be angry, but he realized that Joanne wasn't so bad. The hard part is finding something mutual between the two. Music is just one of the things that they have in common. Jon jokingly responded, 'Haha, I forgot. You know, sometimes you're not too terrible.' After briefly laughing, Joanne replied, 'Yea, you're not that horrible of a brother. I just hope we can keep the house to ourselves. It would be a catastrophe if I had to share my room if mom and dad had another child.' Jon's face showed some uncertainty. He responded, 'I'm leaving next year, so if that was to happen, you could just take my room.' Joanne smiled."

The threat in this case is a newborn child. Relating back to my school, the threat of this situation would be new students. Once the upper and underclassmen come to an understanding, these new students or newborn child will alter the relationship that was once formed. There doesn't have to be this idea of Six Sigma. There doesn't have to be a perfect relationship, but there does have to be a mutual relationship. They have to relate to each other. Within I-O Psychology, there's this idea that innovation drives our economy. I believe this to be true because innovation means interaction and collaboration. Interaction prospers through social skills. Social skills are needed in order for there to be order.

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs is important to understand in this situation. Esteem on the hierarchy is very important to both the seniors and underclassmen. They want to graduate, and the underclassmen want to be "cool." Seniors really only need water and food, but underclassmen need satisfaction of classmates. There's this sense of self-actualization, and how you want to be viewed. Maturity goes hand-in-hand with self-achievement. This is an interesting way to put it into perspective for you.

THE END

References:
ZG. Student, Interview.
VG. Student, Interview.
Sharon. Teacher, Interview.
Jessica. Teacher, Interview.

"SIOP" SIOP.org. Web. 26 Feb. 2017.

The First Woman Is Drafted To The NBA!

For the second and last action project of my Equality class, we were asked to think 100 years into the future and try to tackle one of the social issues we've been covering throughout the second unit. These social issues include gender and race inequality, and also social class. We were supposed to create an article or newspaper to represent how things have changed over 100 years. I chose the first woman to be drafted to the NBA. The NBA is a man's league. The WNBA was issued in 1996 to separate men and women who wanted to play ball. We were then asked to write a short letter to the editor of this created article/newspaper with a reaction. This project was pretty difficult and it really forced you to use your creative bones, and that's why I loved this project so much! I hope you enjoy my project!

What Did the Emancipation Proclamation Solve Exactly?

The first action project for my Humanities course, Equality, consisted of creating a textbook. We were asked to choose a relatively broad topic. Our projects were essentially supposed to look something like a textbook; three educational devices, text, etc. Textbooks have to be accurate, though. We made sure that we had more than five sources for our information so that everything checks out well. This project was long and hard, but very important to me. This project, not only told me about myself but about what my people go through on a daily basis. I interviewed one of my younger peers and his answers really spoke to me. The project was especially difficult but necessary. I learned eventually that so many people are oblivious to the horrible systematic racism still present around the world. This project is my attempt of informing people that the oppression of black people will never be justified. Although the difficulty was very high, the project was enlightening.