What They Missed

Author's Note: In this writing piece, you will find out about what the founding fathers missed in the constitution that created major problems over the next 200 years. One thing that I worked on in this essay was understanding each of the different topics.


Thinking about our country and how it started is honestly boring to me. Our teacher asked us, if you could go back in time and talk to America's founding fathers, what would you say? Trying to answer this question boggled my mind a little bit because to start, I didn't even know who the founding fathers were. I also barely knew what the constitution was. Nobody ever bothered to teach us about the true meaning behind any of those things. After I looked into some information on the topic myself, I started thinking about things that they never actually added in the constitution that over the years, that created major problems in our country that would have made our country a better place if they were illegal in the first place. In the constitution, they missed talking about women's rights, slavery, and the environment and that created strong effects.

One of the biggest things that was never mentioned in the constitution was Women's Rights. Everyone now knows that women have the exact same rights as men. However, that isn't how it used to be. Women were not given the right to vote up until 1920 due to the power of the 19th amendment. Another thing is that women didn't receive equal pay compared to men. Usually women were used for other things other than actually making a living like they do nowadays. Lastly of the many other things that created problems for women, was marriage by force. They didn't get to choose who they married; it was usually their parents who chose or the person who wanted to marry them. Even though women's rights were a large problem in our nation's early years, slavery was an even greater aspect of trouble in our country.

Slavery should have been abolished way before it was even started. Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States, was the only president to think about abolishing slavery; he was actually successful. It is not right to judge someone by their skin color; they didn't choose what they look like. Just because someone was black, doesn't mean that they deserved to be sold to anyone to work in a field all day. It should not have ever crossed anybody's mind to have slaves. We are all the same people, we just have different, unique characteristics that make each one of us who we are. Really, slavery should not have ever made and impact on our nation or anyone's nation at all.

A problem in any country, especially the U.S.A., is that there is pollution everywhere. You may not even notice it, but it is in the air that you breathe. Pollution is anything from exhaust being let out of a car, to plastic bags being thrown in a landfill. Occasionally as you are driving on the road, you may look out your window and just see garbage scattered along the side of the road. The cause of that is because people don't want to keep gross trash in their cars, so they dispose of it out the window. In the constitution, they never had any laws about the environment. The earth is not a dumpster; people do sadly treat it like one. 

Slavery, women's rights, and the environment are three huge components they missed in the creation of the constitution that not being there, impacted our nation in many ways. There being many problems our country faced through the years, these were some of the ones I found that created the most predominant effects. Throughout the years as we became a stronger, more bonded country, we worked together to solve those problems. Now, we all work to keep it that way. 

Fruit Fluff

Author's Note: This piece is about my fun time on New Year's Eve two years ago. You will figure out what I did that I should not have done in the way that I did.

Have you ever thought about doing something, second guessing it, and then doing it anyway? Well that is basically my idea of decision making in this story. I probably shouldn't have done what I needed to do in the way that I did. As we approached my friends' house on New Year's Eve, all I had been thinking about was the fruit fluff that was in my hands. How excited I was the previous day when my mom had been making it. How it would taste squished up against my taste buds. How the first bite would make me react. Once my friend opened the door, the first thing she laid eyes on was the bowl in my hands. I brought it in the house and set it on the counter. As the night progressed, we had lots of interesting stories to share and things to do. When we gathered our plates with tasty food, we skipped loading up on fruit fluff because we consider that 'dessert' so we ate it last. Morgan and I made our way down to the family room and turned on the T.V. for a while. Once our plates were gone, we headed back upstairs for the mouthwatering fluff. As expected, there was a line to get more food. We waited anxiously in line with the fruit fluff taunting us as it sat there looking delicious. Once we got there, we slapped it on the plate. With eagerness, we headed back downstairs.

You may think that it isn't possible to devour luscious looking food while playing Zumba; you are only half correct. When the game first started, it was pretty easy to manage eating and dancing at the same time. I mean, you are only jumping around. Bringing the fruit fluff downstairs during our game probably wasn't a great idea in the first place. Once we got into harder levels, I had positioned the fluff's plate on the couch to make sure it wouldn't fall over. Sometimes having a fun time dancing and eating aren't exactly the greatest combination. I had gotten a little too excited and suddenly I found myself falling onto the couch. Of all the possible spots to land on the couch, I just had to land right into the fluff. I hadn't really noticed what I had sat in; I jumped back up and started bouncing around again. Morgan had seen the pink blob of fruit fluff on my pants and she told me and then it hit me. I sat in my favorite food. Fortunately, I was sleeping over at her house that night so I just went upstairs to her room to grab my pants. Since nobody else was in the family room with us, I just decided I was going to change down there. Let me tell you in advance; horrible choice on my part. 

Hobbling back downstairs, fruit fluff still covering my pants, I told Morgan what my plan was to just change down there. She said alright, and went into her brother's room which is also down in the family room. I was precisely half-way through changing and wouldn't you know her brother had to come get something from his room at the exact same moment? Frozen, I stood in the middle of the family room stunned with embarrassment. Without thinking, he ran back upstairs as fast as his legs would carry him. I precipitously slid my legs into the pant holes and told Morgan what had happened. She doubled over laughing. I couldn't believe what had just happened. Bradley, about five minutes later had come back downstairs and pointed at me and said, "We never speak of this." Of course I would never tell anyone after all that humiliation. As the night passed on, we never conversed or made eye contact. This was awkward at the time, but in reality, it wasn't after I thought about it; Bradley is basically like a brother to me, only because I have known him for so long. As the night wound down, everything turned out to be just fine between us.

Thirteen Reasons Why

Author's Note: In these paragraphs, you will find out about the cause and effect of one of the events in the book Thirteen reasons why and also about if the event were to change, which path would the story take.

In the book Thirteen Reasons Why, by Jay Asher, the event that occurs is that one of the most well known people in the city commits suicide. She leaves 13 tapes, double-sided, and each side has a person that it is about and it is blaming that person for some reason why she killed herself. The cause was that she ended her life because she wasn't happy anymore. People treated her very terribly. Once the first person is done with the tapes, they set it on the doorstep of the next person listed in the tapes. 

The climax is right in the beginning; Hannah Baker killed herself. Because climaxes are the turning point, peak, or change in a story, that is the climax. When she made the decision to end her life, she made many people have mixed emotions. She ended her life for a reason that could have been fixed. The effect on this is that all the people have to live with the guilt for the rest of their lives, being a small portion of why the girl killed herself. 

If this event were to change, the story would not be a story unless this was the smallest problem. Also, the author would've had a different plot in mind obviously, because this is the basis of the story. The author would definitely have some problems in life if they could come up with something worse than suicide by a  teenage girl. 

Conflict/Resolution for The Last Song

Author's Note: In these paragraphs, you will find out about the main problem and the author's way of it being resolved.

In The Last Song, the main conflict I would say, is the cancer Ronnie's father was diagnosed with and having Ronnie and her brother find out their dad isn't going to live much longer. When they arrive at their dad's house in Georgia, they didn't know that any of this was going on. I think that they really should have been told by someone so that they would spend quality time with their dad because once he's gone, there is no way to get any of the lost time back.

This conflict is extremely unpleasant to resolve for Ronnie and Jonah, her brother, because the only way possible for it to end in this story is death. The doctors had told their dad to prepare for his passing, and that is why Ronnie and Jonah came to live with him in Georgia for the summer; they hadn't really spent time with their dad in the past. When Ronnie finished the song her dad was composing, it gave her less sadness in her life because she felt she gave herself another was to relieve herself from her father's death. As we all know, death is a horrible way for anything from a book, to real life to end. 

Ronnie and Jonah resolve their sadness through being with their dad when he was dying. Also for Ronnie, finishing the song he was writing before he died. For Jonah, it was just spending the summer with his dad that meant so much; looking back on all the memories of things they did that summer. They both needed to forgive their dad for leaving their mom and leaving them.