Week 8: Beginning of the End!

Hi everyone :D!

(This update is a little shorter because on Friday I spent almost six hours making a lemon meringue pie + salmon and cabbage wraps with a friend. I highly recommend trying fried cabbage btw; It’s feels like one is consuming a colossal brussell sprout.) 

Officially 75% of the way through, wooo!!! So far, everything has gone relatively according to plan. Their were a couple of hiccoughs here and there (like figuring out how difficult publishing fact heavy news satire is) but I’m proud of what I’ve accomplished.

This Week I…

Spent most of my time researching. Think back to week one, when I came into school, sat in an almost empty entrance hall for three hours, and thoroughly exercised my two scrolling fingers. I’ve never felt closer to JSTOR or my Paracetamol before (thanks to gorging myself on blue light). Jokes aside, I actually had a really fun time. It was nice to put dedicated time aside to reading and learning :).

The texts/articles that I consulted the most this week were: 

– Dangerous Alliances: Populists and the Military

– Laos Struggles with UXO

– Corruption and the Curse: The Dictator’s Choice

I wanted my final piece to be as broad as possible- while still fulfilling the short story brief. So, I felt the best way to do that was through a list like format. Thus I looked through research journals describing the various impacts that dictatorship has on the public. This includes economic, societal, religious, and environmental lenses. For example, I learned that countries with high percentages of military officials in government positions tend to be more autocratic as well as impose themselves on civilians civil liberties. Although, in Latin America, the military is viewed as this apolitical, moral stronghold, which has let presidents like Bolsonaro appoint more military officials to govt. positions without public dissent. [Dangerous Alliances: Populists and the Military]

I have a decent outline knocked up covering this. At the moment I’m leaning towards a narrator from Hell’s wellbeing department hoping to make his future long term residents a little more optimistic about Earth and fearful of the Underworld. But more on that next week heheh…

Next Week I…

plan to finish the Hell Wellbeing work! This will most likely be the last thing I write the year, so it’s a tad bittersweet. At the moment, I’m planning to make my final Presentation some sort of satirical news anchor show (*cough* The Day Today), and I want to focus my attention on that- instead of just more pieces.

Alongside writing, I’m going to run with Mr Brady’s (my internal advisor) advice on Facebook advertising. It’s difficult to quantify the impact of my writing if I only 30 people have read each work- although that is not the only measure of this project’s success. So, I will make a new email and start learning about how to set up a business manager account, how to target specific audiences for engagement, and creating the actual ads!

Note: This website has been an invaluable source

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Enjoy this lovely cartoon, and have a great day everyone!

Christopher Weyant- Boston Globe