Olivia Mason

Course: College Success for Honors, HONOR-101
Professor: Dr. Jody Nusholtz
Assignment Title: The Protagonist: A Carroll County Social Commentary

Assignment Details

In this project, I wanted to make commentary on what I feel is the most important issue in our community right now. Students who were previously bullied, ignored, and otherwise marginalized suddenly had the spotlight, and due to the Board’s lack on insight on what truly goes on in Carroll County Public Schools, this problem was exacerbated by their new policies.

I also wanted to explore my own personality, after all none of us are without fault, and how I see myself represented in the sins of our leaders. I think that growth does not come without acknowledging bias and weakness, and that is something our Board should take note of.

Application

The topic of my assignment relates to my life because it is a dissection of my personality in regard to the social events happening in my community with the banning of the pride flag in public schools and anti-self-expression sentiment of our current Board of Education.

The members of the Board in my story are members of the Seven Deadly Sins, with their colors aligning with the traditional colors of the sins. Greed is the most important here, represented by the character Yellow.

The people who make public comments represent different aspects of my MBTI personality type, ENFJ, but the twist is that there are only three people who make public comment. The last representation of my personality type is in Yellow, himself, because I see the Judging part of my personality as the part that tends to hold me back most often.

I chose Greed as the representation of my “J” because I notice that, if I am not in control of a situation and my expectations don’t line up with reality, that is often when my anxiety takes over and I find it difficult to actively participate in whatever is happening. I also feel that many of the Board members’ lack of empathy for student voices and feelings is due to their own greed (and often pride) for their position.

Results/Conclusions

I realized that the problems I outlined in this project are a lot more clear-cut than I originally realized. This issue has nothing to do with politics, as members of the LGBTQ community belong to both political parties. It is a self-expression issue that I believe not enough people in this county are aware about.

I want to use this opportunity to call attention to the anger and frustration that students, arguably the biggest stakeholder in education, have felt over this policy.

Challenges and Successes

The most challenging part of this project was figuring out the setting.

I knew that once I had the setting, I had the story, but I didn’t know how obvious I wanted to go with my commentary. 

I figured that I didn’t want readers to have to read too far in between the lines for the social commentary, but for my own personality analysis they may have to dig a bit further.