This is my Writing 39A portfolio! I am excited to share my thoughts, and I hope you like what you read.

Cover Letter

Grant Lawler

Professor Chang

Writing 39A

9 March 2022

Cover Letter

        In order to answer the class’s question of “how do we translate emotions into writing, we must start with what we have learned from the class that prepared us for this question. What have we learned? What can we take away? After we reflect, we will be able to answer the ultimate question of the class. 

        "I can now say that I have finally digested the meaning of this recurring, and seemingly random memory. It was not about the pancakes, or the sandcrabs, it was about playing the waiting game. One day the fish will bite, and it may not be today, or tomorrow, or even next week, but the fish will bite eventually, and you will be rewarded for your patience."

        This final sentence of Draft 1 of the Taste Memories Essay was the best feeling that I have ever had in my writing. At this point I made the decision to completely stray from the pre-draft, and all of the ideas that I had with those writings because I wanted to have a more exciting piece of writing. I wanted to have a greater connection with the story I was sharing. I was not entirely sure why, but this was a recurring memory that I would have of my grandfather night after night. When writing this I was in a very stressful period of my life, and yet I kept having this memory of him. I started by just recalling the full memory in the first place, and just seeing where this would take me, as I had little to no reason to write about this. This was a fishing story in which we didn't even catch any fish. However, this was the moment of an epiphany where I legitimately got goosebumps. This was the reason for the recurring memory! There was something to take out of it after all, and this point actually gave me peace because it related to my current situation, and I truly believe that this was a message from him telling me not to worry and to just play the waiting game because the fish will eventually bite.

        Firstly, what I learned from this experience is that the author must tie in all of their evidence. It doesn't make any sense when there are multiple "side rants" that don't contribute to the main idea/argument. This is something that I have always struggled with and I can say that I have finally fixed the problem. My most recent "Draft 3", I needed to simplify my writing because there were points that were not relevant as of yet, and some of them I deleted, however the good ones, I used my second method, and that second method is that a writer needs to be driven by something about their story. There must be a personal connection behind the words they weave. This was the true testament to why we should be passionate about our writing. We have to follow our gut, and choose what we feel called to write about no matter if we are able to see a light at the end of the tunnel, a lesson or a clear point. There must be passion in one’s own work, and that passion will be rewarded with a fantastic piece of writing.

        If we can say that being passionate about one’s writing will result in a fantastic piece of writing, and we can also say that a good essay also needs to have an emotional connection regardless of the writing genre, we can combine these ideas into one. One needs to be able to have a passion for one’s topic in order to translate emotions into writing. In order to translate emotions into words, one needs to feel emotions oneself.

Draft Three of Essay One

Grant Lawler

Professor Chang

Writing 39A

4 February 2022

Patience and Pancakes

        My most memorable meal I’ve had goes back to the fifth grade. I had finished my work the day before in preparation for what my brother and I called our “Nana Thursday”, where my grandmother would make a half an hour journey to see her precious grandchildren every week. Little did I know, my grandfather had the day off. My grandfather was a very hardworking man that I rarely got to spend time with. What little time I did spend with him, that I can remember, was sitting on the couch right next to his chair: quietly, complacently, sipping his English Black Tea with milk on a tiny, round, white dessert plate filled with Lorna Doone cookies, while wearing a once cream colored cardigan that his mother made for his father before they both passed away. All of my memories of him were passive ones. This wasn't just because he worked long, hard hours and needed to wake up early. This was his way: calm, gentle, docile. So when he showed up at the door with my grandmother that Thursday morning, I was quite surprised.

        After my grandparents picked me up for the fun day ahead of us, we headed north to La Conchita, a sub-city holding around 340 people, for an errand that my grandmother needed to run. This would be one of the only times to this day that I would spend time with just my grandfather. It would be a while until we needed to pick up my grandmother, so my grandfather said in the most tranquil baritone voice, “Well, It looks like we’ve got some time on our hands.” To which I did not reply. I am ashamed to admit that I was intimidated by him. I didn’t want to be, but I felt like I didn’t know him. Sure, I knew him, but what little time I had spent with him, he would rarely speak.

        A little farther up the pacific coast highway, he pulls off to the side of the road in his old Hyundai Accent, and after three minutes of dead silence, he avers, “this is one of my favorite places.” At this point, I had already become acutely aware that the unspoken reason why we were there was to fish. He was born in a small fishing town in England, and even though he only lived there for the first five years of his life, he still took to his town’s custom by becoming an avid fisherman. He was even known to wait out the traffic by taking an early exit and fish for hours until the traffic would clear. Knowing this, there was no doubt in mind about what he meant by “this is my favorite place.” Wandering through the small neighborhood, we find a bridge. He attempts to lead us over the bridge to a man made island about a half of a mile outward. When we arrive at the bridge, we discover that the gate to the bridge is closed. We improvise. After searching for a different spot close to the bridge, he determines that we will be better off shore-fishing. He then teaches me how to tie a basic knot from the main line to the sinker and from the sinker to the hook. By this point in my life, I realize a basic understanding of what we need to catch a fish, and I did not see any bait. I timidly ask where the bait is, to which he replies, “we find our own bait.” Confusedly, I take another step toward his direction. I open my mouth, but no words form out of a fear that I still do not fully know the origin. I open my mouth a second time, but he bends down at the crack of two semicircular waves and pulls out a sand crab the size of a large grape. My mouth opens a third time, this time in shock. He places it over the hook and hands me the rod. He asks me if I remember how to cast, to which I nod my head. He then replies, “Well… let’er fly.” To which I cast and wait for something to bite.

        My impatience is, seemingly, killing me. Being a fifth grader, I had little to no patience. When I finally feel a tug on the line! My excitement, bubbling up inside me faster than the spread of the ocean’s collapsed waves: reeling as fast as I can, only to find a tangled mess of seaweed on the other side of the line. I cast again, and search for bait. He complacently watches the line while I search for crabs like I had seen him do. After about twenty solid minutes of trying to scrounge up a sand crab. I rewound to some thirty minutes ago, and I then remember his method of waiting for the conjoining of the semicircular, foamy ends of the water. I wait patiently for the water to wash up, and I dive my hand deep into the sand to pull out, not one, not two, not three, but four more grape sized sand crabs from the sand. I excitedly take the crabs to my grandfather, and to this day I still remember his genuine, yet barely noticeable, expression of pride and surprise. To say this was A-typical of him would be an understatement. Seeing the pride in my grandfather’s eyes, I anxiously seek to please him more. I placed the first four crabs in the bait-tub that was attached to his belt, and set off in search of more sandcrabs. This continues for the next hour and a half, and any normal human being would have lost their mind with the amount of times I would have to show them, not only each batch of crabs I would find, but each individual crab from each batch, but he just went along with it. This is a testament to who my grandfather is, and I can see that now. He was slow to impatience. Perhaps that’s why he enjoyed fishing so much. Approximately a half an hour in my quest to find as many sand crabs as possible, I find myself bent over, head down, facing the shore. The next moment, I lie prostrate in the water. I am completely disoriented. I have no clue where the surface is. To my puny 5 foot tall, 90 pound self, it seemed as if I was drowning. In reality, I had only been under water for about 5 seconds maximum, but nonetheless a large hand grabs the back of my shirt, and pulls me up with his calaced, hairy hand, and in a foggy, deep, assured voice I hear “and that is why you never turn your back to the sea.” After another  hour and a half of bait retrieval, I realize that we have not caught any fish. He affirmidly reports, “all we’re getting is seaweed”, and shortly after, he receives a call from my grandmother saying she is ready. He tells me to dump out all of the sand crabs that I had caught, to which I rebut, “but we haven’t caught anything yet!” He quickly, yet softly counters my rebuttal with, “well- if fishing was about catching, it would be called catching.”

        Silenced by my stupidity, I think about his remark. Before I know it, we are already back in La Conchita, picking up my grandmother. She offers to take me to any restaurant I would want, to which I immediately reply, “IHOP!”, of which there was not one for another 10 miles. After the even longer journey to find an IHOP so as to not break the cardinal rule of saying “no” to your grandchild, we sit down and each enjoy a hot, buttery, syrupy stack of pancakes, which immediately after I got my grubby mitts on were caked in sand falling from my hair, shirt, and still sandcaked fingers. I still remember that meal. My fingers dryer than the dying flowers decorating outside of the restaurant. My fingernails, still stuffed with the sandy residue of the once sandcrab-dwellings. And the smell of the Ocean, still on my shirt and jeans that I would only save for special occasions because they were too uncomfortable to wear, soaked because of the lesson I had learned about never turning my back to the Ocean.

        It would take me another eight years to swallow  the real lesson that my grandfather had said about fishing. I can now say that I have finally digested the meaning of this recurring, and seemingly random memory (pun intended). It was not about the sand caked, yet still delicious pancakes, or the sandcrabs, or even “never [turning] your back to the Ocean”, it was about playing the waiting game. One day the fish will bite, and it may not be today, or tomorrow, or even the next year or two, but the fish will bite eventually. As long as you stay alert, you will be rewarded for your patience.

Grant Lawler

Writing 39A

Professor Chang

16 February 2022

What Really Gets Under My Skin

        No matter what anyone says, yes, racism still exists, and their vessels, tiny little remarks, carried out by ignorant people. My favorite example, “Mexico [sends] their worst.” This stereotype is carried out by ignorant people who believe this lie that the very people that cohabit your Earth, the people that you live nextdoor to, the people that scrub your toilets, work in fields, cut your grass and trim your flowers when almost nobody else is willing to put in that amount of work, are the same people that are not good for this country. “They” alone are the reason for murders in your counties just north of the border. They, alone, are the reason for robberies in liquor stores. They alone are the reason why our country has “no jobs for good people” or no spots for the white people in college.

        I came to my good friend Anthony Gonzalez, who is a fellow Mexican American to ask him his thoughts on the statement. He first explained to me that there was some truth to this statement, and that he knows people personally who came across the border to “take advantage of the government.” He further defines these people as individuals that came for food stamps, and other government aid, and don’t end up paying their taxes. He follows this by stating that these examples are somewhat scarce however when compared to the genuinely good people that come to the United states seeking refuge, and/or better opportunities. “These people”, he remarks, “are here for a better life just the same as the moochers, however, these people understand that you must be able to give back in return.” He concludes his point with, “so it is entirely unfair to label all people out of Mexico and into the states as Mexico’s worst.”

        Again asking the opinion of another friend, Rudolf Aguilar, he takes a very similar approach to answering the question. He states that there are valid reasons to think this way as there is a drug epidemic that is more prevalent in certain parts of the United States than others. However, he also avers that this is not at all the case for the majority of people. He states, “The fact is that the majority of people that come here, are good people who come here for good reasons.” He continues with “The majority of us come here, not to be drug mules or dealers, the VAST majority of us come here for a better life for us, and our families.” He goes on to list the following reasons that people of Mexico see as good reason to venture across the border, which may even bear fatal risks in a large number of cases. “There’s government programs like Welfare and Medicaid, there is the fact that the dollar is worth almost twenty times that of the Mexican Peso, and the fact that we have more jobs available to make that dollar amount of a factor of twenty even more effective.” He rounds off his argument by sharing a piece of personal history, he continues with “there are not always selfish reasons for people coming into the United States. Some people like my mother, sought to have a better life for her family, which in this case was me. My mother was pregnant with me when she came across the border, and she had no desire to come before she was pregnant with me. She, just like every good mother, wanted to give me the best life that I could have. So she decided to take the risk, and take our family to the United States despite the risk it presented, because she knew that I would be in a better place.” And look where he is now! He is attending a top University, getting good grades, and is on his journey to contributing his part to the country we call home.

        Even though Mr. Gonzalez and Mr. Aguilar deal with these stereotypes fairly well, I have not yet made my piece with this assumption that “Mexico [sends] their worst”, or racist remarks in general. There are few in total from where I am, thank God, have increased astronomically since the arrival of a certain political figure that shall not be named. So much so that I had not even heard one of these remarks before their arrival to office. My first encounter was the summer of 2019, and there was an older “gentleman” from Connecticut that was a grandfather of one of (who I consider to be) my older brother’s clubmates. While my mother was in need of professing her pride to her godson as he was about to graduate with a bachelor’s in political science with the title of Magna Cum Laude from Yale University, the older man suggests how easy it would be for his grandson to do something like that if he happened to be the same skin tone as my brother. To which my mother retaliated sharply with “I didn’t know that you could get better grades if your skin was different”. To which he didn’t reply with much. She continued to shut him down by making sure that he was aware that my godbrother was a part of the Civil Air Patrol, took part in a Devil Pups Military training program, had a 4.7 GPA in high school, took part in a rowing team, and graduated as Salutatorian only because the Valedictorian his graduating year was known to cheat. The older man did not rebut once more.

        My second experience with this starts with me becoming a busser for a nice restaurant in my hometown of Ventura California. As I bring back a large stack of glasses and plates from the outdoor patio, I hear a woman explaining how her son’s prom went. My interest now having been piqued, I listen a little closer. She professes how “crazy” it was that they did not ask for personal identification, to which another woman at the table replies, “like School ID?” to which the concerned woman replies, “no-no-no, like, documentation… you know there’s Mexicans there right?” Of course implying that all of us Mexicans should not be allowed to attend our prom because there is simply not allowed to be any Mexicans that could ruin the special occasion, and quite possibly cause harm to the good white folks. Another related experience that I take little to no offense to, but relates to this story goes like this: I spent the night at a friend’s house a couple years ago, with my two friends Chili and Texas, I know, bizarre names. Ms. Tanner, who I barely had met before, needed to drive me home as my parents were unavailable. On our drive back, about half a minute into our drive, she asks me what part of Mexico I am from. I, of course, being a third generation Mexican American, told her, more or less, exactly that. I told her “Oh… well, I was born in the United States, and so were my parents, and so were their parents. There are people, like Ms. Tanner, that aren’t necessarily aware that just because you are of Mexican descent, doesn’t mean that you had to be born there. I think this is where the problem starts with our stereotype that “Mexico [sends] their worst.” When analyzing this, we find that there are certain people that don’t know what it means to be an American. There should be no confusion on who is an American and who is not because weather I myself crossed the border, my parents, or my grandparents, or Ms. Tanner’s nine-times-great-grandparents crossed the border to get here, we should all be able to call ourselves American. The line is heavily blurred between that of being an American and a Mexican. Entertaining the opposing conjecture, these individuals would say that they would be true Americans because they can trace their heritage centuries back to the mayflower. To that I say that Mexicans outrank these mayflower people in terms of seniority, as Mexicans are all related to their indigenous ancestors since before the Spaniards arrived. I, including almost every other Mexican on this planet, have roots millennia farther than the European “settlers.” Just because they successfully took it over, doesn’t mean that land is not just as much mine as it is theirs. If anything, this land never belonged to what a lot of people consider the “Americans.” A little over 400 years ago, those first “settlers” came to what is now called Provincetown Massachusetts. That land, ALL of it, sea to shining sea, belonged not to these Europeans, but to the Native Americans. I put settlers in quotes because that's what the vast majority of people today call them, but they did anything but settle. Over the next couple hundred years, the “settlers” would almost become completely successful in committing a full blown genocide of all of the Native People, or “savages” as some called them. These so-called settlers pursued everything that the Natives had to offer, their resources, their land, and for their own perverted pleasure (in a lot of cases) the Natives unconsenting women. . The way the “settlers” acquired their precious United States, was through a much more malicious method than “settling”. Genocide is more like it. Just because your family arrived on the mayflower, does not mean you are any more American than I am, for where would we draw the line if it was not sat at current residency. The fact is that we are, sadly, now a country with no true natives.

        But why is it that these people are so ignorant, or just flat out racist in the first place? Is there an evolutionary advantage of some kind for keeping discrimination? Why is it that being more accepting is becoming “more evolved?” My theory is that this may be the way that all of our fellow animals behave. We seek to only breed with members of our own likeness so as to not decrease the biodiversity that gives life as a whole an advantage to survive. We set social pressures with others and against ourselves to outcast any differences as to make sure that you or someone of your same likeness doesn’t fall victim to assimilating your “species” with another. This ensures that species separate and therefore, will increase the number of species there are in a given ecosystem, or in other terms, “increasing biodiversity”. You would probably be surprised to know that there are some examples of speciesism, yet you would be even more surprised to be reminded of the relationship that dogs and cats have with each other. There are many examples of this that I am sure you have personally experienced. Aside from animals, we should reflect back to the ancient days when some of us in Egypt enslaved people to build giant pyramids, or even about 2000 years after, in ancient Rome, where we used to watch people fight to death in a gargantuan coliseum, or even about 400 years when people automatically claimed a half of a continent was theirs because nothing but "a bunch of savages'' lived there.

        We can all agree that we are miles ahead of the people that used to roam the planet thousands of years ago. So when someone presents the same attitude and behavior that is being demonstrated by animals and the same people that decided to dehumanize a half a continent's worth of human beings, we should have a reaction to it. Therefore, when someone looks down on someone because they say they are from Mexico, and follows a certain president when he calls the Mexican American people "bad hombres", should we follow in the ways of our predecessors and continue to adopt this as the "norm"? NO FOR THE LOVE OF CHRIST, we should avoid all of this and not tolerate the thinking of Mexican Americans as a worse people! In fact, nobody should be treated like this, no matter what the color of your skin is, or what color your eyes aren't. "If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?" (Shakespeare).

        The last part of that quote is what allows this insanity to ensue. This quotation from The Merchant of Venice shows us the humanity in prejudice. It could have only taken one insensitive act on someone's place of origin to ignite this, because in demonstrating humanity, we find something that is natural to us, retaliation. Of course we can persist with retaliation and start a few race wars, but we could also take down this whole idea of retaliated superiority by breaking the cycle and not responding to "you're a bad hombre" with something like "you're a crazy cracker", or even "you're an asshole" it persists. Which is why I take back what I said earlier in the essay, if you had said something racially motivated and took offense to me calling you an asshole, I apologize because this needs to stop, and the only way that will happen is if we all decide to put down our verbal, and emotional pitchforks, and act like humans from this century. We need to become the people we want to be, and this will only see the light of day if we learn to forgive and treat each other as fellow travelers to greener pastures rather than hindrances to our own stagnant worlds. My conclusion stands that there is no need to inhibit the progress of humanity by shaming others because of a reason so menial as to where they come from. This behavior should not be met with retaliation, but instead with patience and possibly even forgiveness as opposed to verbal or physical violence. We all breathe the same air, eat the same and shit the same. We are all a part of a more complex species, a higher organism, a grander race: the human race.