During our last project we learned about authoritarian rulers, now were taking a deep dive into dystopia. These projects build off each other very well with similar concepts and will allow us to build on what we have already learned but in new ways and from different perspectives.

We launched this project by watching a movie called V for Vendetta. In this movie, London is a police state that is occupied by a fascist government. A vigilante known as “V” fights the oppressors using terrorists tactics. Many of the themes including unity, government control and manipulation that we saw in the last project are present in this movie and are relevant in our upcoming project. These themes are present in many dystopian movies like Hunger Games, the Maze Runner and Divergent.

This project has two main benchmarks. For the first benchmark we will be reading a dystopian novel. As a class we had many choices of novels but I ultimately chose Never Let Me Go by Kazou Ishiguro. For the second major benchmark we will be writing a dystopian story. We haven’t had many opportunities to do creative writing throughout my time in high school so I hope to use this opportunity to stretch my skills in this discipline.

My mission for the school year was “Approach every learning opportunity presented to me with persistence and confidence so I can grow both academically and personally. I will remain resilient and not give up when challenges arise, building the knowledge and grit I need to become the person I want to be in the future.” The challenge of creative writing is outside of my comfort zone so I will stretch my persistence and resilience. I expect to struggle but I’m determined to improve my writing skills through both feedback and revisions.

Over the course of the previous project I learned how to layer original thoughts and ideas into topics that we learned about in class. To build on these skills in the next project I want to apply the techniques that I learn from the dystopian books we read and apply that to my dystopian story. I am also going to continue building my original ideas and thoughts about the information we learn about dystopian societies in class and apply this to my story.

For this project my goal is to work on my creativity. We will have many opportunities to creatively write so this goal is acheivable. I want to come up with a unique concept for my story while also achieving high quality work. Creativity is important to me because it allows me to express myself. Unlike analytical work, being creative is boundless and it takes a special set of skills to demostrate understanding. For this project I will also need to work on my agency and time management. We need to finish reading our books and writing our stories in one month so staying on track is key for successful completion of the project. I’m excited to start this project and I know I will stretch my skills and learn new things.