Parasitic

This is the dystopian book that I wrote in class, I highly encourage you take a look. 

During this project we read classic books based on dystopias like 1984, Fahrenheit 451, handmaids tale, etc. I chose to read the handmaid tale with a group of 3 other people. At the end of the time we were giving to finish these books, we had a small group book chat. I admit, I felt like I could’ve connected to other topics and research a bit better, but I still think I did better than I actually did.

We also brainstormed ideas that people were worried about. Things like global warming, viruses, problems within the economy, classism, etc.

I originally landed on gene editing and CRISPR tech, but slowly morphed my story into being centralized around parasites and gene editing together

My story wasn’t very cohesive at the start, it was many ideas all mushed together with no actual idea about where the plot would go. After a long call with my friend and a lot of critique from my writer step dad, I finally landed on a plot and world that made sense in my head. Now the problem was writing it

I like to think that writing is a strong suit of mine, but I’m not the kind of person that likes to read, so I know I’ll be a level below the people that do actually read. Either way, I gave it my best. I asked for a lot of critique and feedback from my stepdad, who happily obliged, along with my friends, who not so happily obliged. Without their help I wouldn’t have ended with a story I could say I’m happy with.

This project definitely challenged my critical thinking skills as it required a basic knowledge of authoritarian societies and dystopias.

Our first project of the year has just ended and it was great! It was a very interesting project on dictatorships and authoritarianism

We started our project by looking at Timothy Snyder interviews and we read his book, “On tyranny”. We held a Socratic discussion on the book and its connections in class which I definitely could have done better on, which is reflected in the grade I received for it. I struggle with large group discussions like that because of how many people want to talk so I’m never sure when to jump in. I also struggle because the topic moves around too fast so it’s hard to properly prepare.

Then we were put into groups to research and present a short presentation about a famous dictator. The group i was put in was given Mussolini to research and explain. I felt like i didnt add enough to the presentation as i only researched his childhood and death so i didnt learn too much about about HOW he rose to power

Afterwards we were added to different groups to participate in a full class documentary on authoritarian control, our class, along with our DRI Silas M, came up with nearly everything about the video like what topics we wanted to cover, how long each groups video should be, etc. after a good class and a half we decided on the topic being

1. Propaganda

2. Institutions

3. How the people fall

4. How to fight back

my group chose to do 3.

Unlike how group videos have been made in the past in this program, we all worked on our own separate parts instead of one person working on one large area like script. We all chose our own areas to talk about. Magnus worked on intro/outro, Sofia talked about books and education, i talked about the psychology, and Ronan did a kind of miscellaneous topic. After editing everything and finding the b-roll, our video ended up being around 7 minutes long. Mixed with the other 3 groups, the final video was around 20 minutes long.

Watch the whole thing here!

we had a showing of the documentary last week, although there was a small turn out, it was still fun to watch the full video

my groups section was closer to the end of the video and seeing all of the amazing editing and b-roll made my section feel like a rushed mess. I think i definetly could’ve spent more time on my editing especially since it’s always been one of my weaknesses.