Art is fascinating because it comes in a variety of shapes, sizes, and mediums. My favorite piece of art is "Yellow-Red-Blue" by Wassily Kandinsky. I love both music and paintings, and this piece of art beautifully ties these two elements together. Wassily Kandinsky painted the abstract oil painting "Yellow-Red-Blue" in 1925. Kandinsky believed that the arrangement of colors and lines in paintings could represent feelings. In fact, he associated musical tones with colors. This relationship was so strong to him that every note was associated with an exact hue. To Kandinsky, the painting "Yellow-Red-Blue" is more than just colors painted on a canvas. It turns out to be an entire piece of instrumental work. This is one of the reasons I appreciate his abstract art so much. It is interesting to be able to interpret the piece as Kandinsky’s symphony as well as the one my own imagination creates. In this work, Kandinsky heard high trumpet notes as yellow, and flutes, cello, double bass and a deep organ as various hues of blue. He combined different shades of color that blend well to symbolize harmonies, as well as certain shades that clash to indicate dissonance in sound. Critics believed Kandinsky was outright insane when he first created an abstract painting. However, all he wanted to do was touch people’s souls. His captivating piece "Yellow-Red-Blue" has undoubtably touched people’s souls, including mine.

My goal is to raise my future children in an environment where they can explore their gender identity without being pressured to conform to society's gender norms. One of the most important things I aim to do is provide them with gender neutral toys. The possessions a child has can have the potential to influence their identity. Children learn how to be by following what their primary social contact does. If an individual is given either exclusively "girl toys" (or "boy toys") as a child, they may eventually conform to them due to what has been reinforced, accepted, and praised in their environment. This is not completely how girls and boys fall into sex-role stereotypes, but if this type of treatment continues in their upbringing and extends to other aspects of a child’s life (such as the way they dress, the activities they participate in, etc.), then this can lead a male to developing stereotypical masculine traits and a female developing stereotypical feminine traits. Toys are important for the development of children’s minds. They encourage creativity and imagination. They should not be branded as gender specific, but rather as a medium that allows all children to develop their potential skills and gain a greater understanding of the world without being forced into gender stereotypes. Masculine toys offer a number of positive qualities like spatial skills and science whereas feminine toys teach concepts like nurturance. To promote a combination of these abilities, parents should surround their children with gender neutral toys. For these reasons, an important goal of mine is to raise my future children in this manner so that they can learn and develop without being pushed to follow society's gender stereotypes snd expectations.

"If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie." Chapter 6, pg. 68 This quote is from my favorite novel “The Things They Carried.” It is a heartbreaking, gut-wrenching story collection based on the real experiences of author and war veteran Tim O'Brien. This war novel emphasizes the physical and mental baggage that each soldier carries. The literal and metaphorical weight includes items like weapons, pictures, and food, but also heavy emotions like grief, love, terror, and regret. Storytelling is how the narrator copes with his traumatic war experiences and all of the emotional baggage. It provides comfort to the narrator during times of mourning and allow him to deal with the disturbing past. He believes that the power of memory in storytelling will grant life to both the ones who have died on the front line and the ones who tell their story. This allows the narrator to live with his traumatic past. This work is one of my favorites since it depicts a side of combat that is rarely spoken about. It demonstrates how war can transform people. It is a story of the invisible scars that battle can leave on troops and their families. "The Things They Carried" is an excellent illustration of how literature can help us understand history by painting authentic portraits of those who lived through such traumatic experiences.

I have participated in a wide variety of acts to serve my community and those in need. One of my favorite trips was to Detroit. Each day, my service group was assigned a new neighborhood to help clean and rebuild. When cleaning up one of the neighborhoods, we heard from residents how grateful they were to have our assistance and effort in creating a comeback in their community. I went to Houston, Texas, the summer after the powerful Hurricane Harvey. Although it was long after the hurricane had hit, there was still significant damage to buildings, parks, etc. from the flooding that took place. A dozen individuals from my church were among the 30,000 people who attended the ELCA Youth Gathering that summer, where our main purpose was to make a difference in the area. One day, we had a service project at a Historical African American Cemetery. We spent all day out in the sun cleaning up the neglected site. Afterwards, we had a moment to speak to the owner who was beyond thankful for our help. Hearing his appreciation for our hard work filled me with a strong sense of accomplishment. It made me realize the power community service has to make the world a better place. I have continued to serve however I can during the pandemic. I volunteered with the Macomb Food Program for a month last summer. Boxes of fresh foods, dairy products, frozen meals, and non-perishable goods were loaded into vehicles representing over 70 local pantries and relief organizations in order to keep their shelves stocked and ready to provide for those in need. Serving my community is incredibly important to me. Positive gestures like these have a lasting impact on people and their region.

I have always heard the concept "gender identity," but never truly knew what it exactly meant until it came up in a recent class discussion. It is an individual's personal sense of having a specific gender. Gender identity development can be influenced by a variety of factors like family, school, social media, friends, church, etc. Personally, I believe my family had a significant impact on the formation of my gender identity. My siblings and I grew up in a “pink for girls, blue for boys” environment. We became conscious of the “physical differences” between boys and girls as a result of this. Unfortunately, my siblings and I were not given the opportunity to explore different gender roles as a kid. My sister and I were taught to “sit and act like a lady” and received praise for following orders. My brother was often instructed to “man up” instead of expressing his feelings in a healthy way. I believe that being raised in such a strict household pushed me even further towards being a stereotypical female. I am the way I am almost entirely because of a path my parents led me down, and I never truly questioned it. The simple mention of the term "gender identity" in class made me realize that I’m still figuring out who I am. One thing I am confident of is that I am not the “stereotypical female” that my parents were attempting to raise me to be. I exhibit both masculine and feminine stereotypical qualities. My genuine self was suppressed when I was younger in order to conform to a certain image, but now I feel like I can truly figure out who I was meant to be.