Hatred can make you feel

In a short essay called Notes of a Native Son by James Baldwin, he writes about his bitter father and the segregated society he grew up in. The author’s situations seem to come together in the essay. Some of the topics he talks about are hatred he has toward his father and also society as well.
While growing up he was never happy to see him or close to him. But later I the book he talks about how society, white and blacks relationship, was bitter and his father was also. He represents the relationship between these two by equally representing how Baldwin sees them, society and his father’s bitterness. For example Baldwin hates his father for judging everyone before he knows them. For instance, when Baldwin went to the theater with his white teacher, even though he went his father still didn’t agree with him going with her, because he said “you can’t trust white people.”Then societies show this same judgment toward Baldwin, when he goes to the diner and the waitress replies, “we don’t serve blacks.”These two examples come together because they show judgment of people by their skin and how they are both making Baldwin grow bitter as well.
Overall, this short essay seemed to relate his father and the relationship that blacks and whites had together by representing how they made him grow bitter and angry. But Baldwin tells us how they both criticize each other. But Baldwin tells us the he is holding the bitterness he got from his father and society, which is making his heart heavy, and wishes he, could change his father and the relationship between society, as well to keep the bitterness away.

Taking Criticism

A short essay called Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris, tells us about a forty-one year old man who moves to Paris with hopes of learning French. Even though he has a very anal teacher who is always attacking the student for his French, at the end of the essay he finally understands the language. On many occasions, I have seen that many professors seem to be harsh, in order for the students to learn, which is reflected in the short story.
I can relate to David’s situation because I too have had a teacher who criticized my opinion. An example would be my senior year in high school, Mrs.Ellingsen, my AVID teacher and mentor, had always pushed me in my academics. She would check my schedule and make sure my courses were rigorous and would look good on my high school transcript. If she didn’t think the course was challenging enough, she would tell me to change the class. One day, I decided to drop my AP English course and take regular English. According to Mrs.Ellingsen, that was the biggest mistake I could have made. Mrs.Ellingsen told me the harshest things. Things such as, "if you can’t even do AP English then how are you going to make it through college?" She also told me that she would not support me in my decision. When she told me this it made me feel like a failure, she even made me cry that day. After feeling depressed I decided to adhere to my decision to drop AP English and take an English Course. Just as David learned to speak French in spite of being criticized every day, I learned to do what benefits me, even though other don’t agree.
Even though the message of this book was hard to get at the first reading, overall the essay in my opinion was about taking criticism and learning to grow from it. People aren’t just harsh to you for the fun of it but to make you better. When you have a harsh professor just remember that they are harsh to improve your skills, as was David’s French professor did. But count yourself fortunate to have someone who cares about you.

Change

What does change mean? The word change to me means having things be different. What I mean by different is not wanting the world to stay the same. Sometimes change can be seen as a good thing, but also a negative depending on the subject. A change that I went through was just last night, watching the presidential election. I saw change in who became president of the United States, the first African American president, Barack Obama. Watching this and living it was a good change in our history. The reason why I believe the election is a good change is because it’s slowly showing more people willing to see through someone’s skin color. What I mean by seeing through someone’s skin color is we are not judging people by their skin color anymore, but by who they really are. This change has become one less wall put up in our society, even though through history, the presidents have been white, many people of all cultures believed it is was time to make the transition. Seeing that we all united together and voted will slowly help bring about bigger changes in our society. We have all been through many changes that have impacted us in different ways, and this election is one that will remain in history as a tremendous change.