"Gracefully Grayson" is a book that I just started reading. I fund this book from a YouTuber that I watch. I actually noticed a lot of YouTubers read this book , so I decided to check it out. I've only read the first chapter but I am intrigued to keep reading.
          So far this book is introducing the main character Grayson who "he" is girl trapped in the wrong genders body, this book is basically about this teenage boy who has this secret that is afraid to be who he really is. The first scene is set in a class room,, where Grayson is doodling on the margins of his paper, he starts to explain how when you are drawing stick figures that when you draw a triangle as the body, people automatically think that it is a girl. And this is what he was drawing on his papers. Actually it was a princess, but he drew it abstract enough with his, silver, and gold sparkly pens that you couldn't tell what he was drawing. Yes, he is using sparkly gel pens, Grayson says he has other color pens, like pink and purple, but he keeps them in his top drawer of his desk.
           When he is in class his teacher asks him a question "Why do you think people should keep a secret from other people" and Grayson's answer was " I think people should keep a secret because you don't have to risk being vulnerable, and people finding out the truth." which I felt so sad for him because he is afraid of people finding out about the real person he is.  

 

I am super excited to keep reading this book, the writing style of Amy Polonsky is very easy going and easy to understand because it is such an easy read. But the book its self is what I'm excited about. But back to the writing style of the book, I don't really have much to say about since I've just began reading. I really cant wait to see what happens with Grayson and if he gains the courage to be the person he is meant to be! 

          The proposal that I have for my Multi-genre Research Project is, that my topic relates mostly to a cultural interest. My topic is self confidence,  I will mostly be relating to teenagers when doing this research topic, probably from the ages fifteen to eighteen. It says that I will have to interview people, and I think instead of doing just two people, I will do four; a girl and boy freshmen or sophomore, and the a girl and boy junior or senior. But, I don't know who those people will be yet, and I would rather they be people I'm not very close to, or know very well. I will probably end up doing people I know but I want to try my hardest not to, but it might be easier to do that. I think that I will be able to get the interviews sometime next week, because that gives me time this week to think and find people to interview. I don't know a whole bunch on my topic, other than that all types of people are effected by it, whether it's in a positive, or negative way. The way I plan on gathering my information is by watching documentaries, and reading a lot of peoples articles, or maybe even blogs that people with confidence issues have posted before, and if there are any statistics on something like this it might be interesting to add. The reason why I find this topics personally meaningful is because after reading one of the example papers that we looked at, it just got me thinking a lot about other people. And the way that they might feel about themselves, also I find it really intriguing on how the way other people view themselves, than by other people viewing them. It also made me start realizing how I view myself, and how I will be hard or easy on myself on the way I look or act.   

Multigenre Idea/Response

I really like the idea of the Multigenre Research Projects, it gives you a more creative aspect, because there are many different ways you can go about presenting or the way you write the paper. I like that it’s something we get to choose to research, and that it can relate to a topic we experience, or just enjoy a lot.

Whenever I went to the link that was provided, I went to a research paper titled “Living Thin: One Girl’s Fight for a FULL Life” which was basically a paper about a girl who had anorexia, but it was more that just a research paper with a bunch of facts, and stating arguments. This paper had her own story tied into the research aspect, and she put in her own experiences into the writing which I found cool. I enjoyed the topic of the eating disorder a lot, just because disorders interest me strangely. Her paper made me think a lot about myself, not that I having an eating disorder, because I love food. But, she mentioned something about how seeing herself in a mirror made her feel bad about herself, and I think that is just terrible. She states that Anorexia is just a much mental as it physical, maybe even more, but to think that you look bad and self ridiculing yourself is something that I could never do. Yes, I look in the mirror and wish I was smaller but I am content with myself, and it makes me want to do my multigenre research paper on self confidence, because its something all of us have. Maybe a little too much of, or not enough.    

I don’t have a lot of ideas of what I want to do my project on, because I don’t have a lot things I’m really interested in. Unless it’s something like, band, or soccer which aren’t all that interesting. So I’m interested to see if I will end up doing something simple, or more complex like relating something to my life, or my future.    

United Nations Millennium- Goal 4

      The millennium goal that I chose, and think strongly about is the “Reduce Child Mortality”, the reason I think strongly about this is because I really care about children, and they interest me the most out of all of the topics.  When you open the “Goal 4: 2013 Facts Sheet” it opens with some facts about the topic and one of the topics that interested me the most was, while around 17,000 fewer children are dying each day, 6.6 million children under five died in 2012—mostly from preventable diseases. And that interested me the most because they were preventable, but they don’t have as many resources as we do to save those lives.

     What goal four is, is that is states “Reduce by two-thirds, between 1990 and 2015, the mortality rate of children under five” and to summarize what the goal is wanting, is basically making it possible for in the future increase child survival. It also talks about how the death of these children come from some of the poorest and most marginalized societies, and some of the diseases mostly come from: pneumonia, preterm birth complications, diarrhea, intrapartum-related complications and malaria. It is known that the first month, and particularly the first 24 hours, are the most dangerous in a child’s life. But, it is said that when you breast feed your newborn, they’re more likely to survive that non-breast fed children.

        The way I think this connects to our neighborhood, and our society is that maybe not to the extent of so many children dying from the disease listed above, but from not enough nutrition. I say that because, there are plenty of children who are starving, or have health issues and can’t afford the medication that they need. The outcome so far of goal four is that in Bangladesh they are breaking health care barriers by having UNICEF supported efforts, by training community health care workers. But overall it seems that the UNICEF has tried to make great efforts to reach the goal in many communities.