I have never been much of an artist. I would call myself a creative person, but when it comes to visuals, I have a hard time expressing myself. However, I wanted to challenge myself to wrap up my first year of high school in a new way. Something I am not used to doing. That is why I decided to create this digital collage. 

 

For this piece, I decided to explore photoshop. I wanted to reflect on my biggest struggles during this school year. I chose to create this piece in all black and white, to play on emotions and make the piece more uniform. On the top, there are storm clouds. These are representative of my biggest struggle: feeling unheard and unimportant. The words written underneath represent that feeling, hanging over. Over the course of this year, I have struggled the most with feeling heard, and like self- advocacy makes a difference. This year, I was in Spanish 2, and Advanced algebra. I planned to be in Calculus and Spanish 3 next year, but they were held during the same period. I tried to advocate to work my way into spanish 4, but was completely shut down, until I offered to take an expensive spanish 3 class over the summer. This was especially frustrating as it was Animas’ choice to allow me into an advanced Spanish track, then make that track not accessible in my second year. Additionally, it was Animas that changed the advanced math track, taking away Pre-Calculus as an elective. I feel like the school created this problem for me, but offered no solutions. This made me feel like my plans and goals did not matter, and neither did the fact that I tried to make it work. I was told I wouldn’t succeed in spanish 4, and that I shouldn’t take calculus, instead repeating the math that I did this year. I didn’t feel heard, I felt shut down. I also had an incident in the Animas Student Council. Come the carryover member election, I tied with another member in the freshman group. They had a run-off between us. However, in the Junior group, they made the decision to keep all members on, despite one of them losing the vote. I asked if I could also stay, and not have a run-off, but they immediately told me that it wasn’t an option. After that happened, I felt defeated. Like the members of the council didn’t care about me being there, and didn’t want me. I will not be on the council next year after losing the run-off, and it felt like even though I advocated, it didn’t change the outcome. 

The woman on the bottom represents what I am most proud of, which is my mask essay. This essay was a huge accomplishment to me, but, like the hands around her throat in the image, I was dragged down. The words surrounding her are different words that I was told about my essay. I feel that I wrote something raw and real, and during the exhibition, I had many supportive members of the community read it. Many of them told me that I was a good writer, and that I have a future in writing, which felt incredible to hear. This made me feel like I had a voice and a future in something I am passionate about. I felt like I had impacted the adults who read it and as a freshman, that was extremely empowering. 

I had to learn to balance my friends and academics, which when out of proportions, created chaos in my world, like the hand. The man tightroping is that balance. The most important change that I have made is learning to balance social needs with academic work. At the beginning of the year, it was the first time that I had a group of friends that I was eager to talk to during class. I went from being extremely academically focused and shut in during class to not paying attention and talking with my friends. I had to learn how to balance out both things for the first time. This is a very important skill that I really needed and will continue to need in the future, and working through it was the biggest challenge and most worthwhile change that I made this year. The hand looming over is the most important change I have made this year.