Student’s Writings

You Fail by Jason Barnett

FAILURE-SUCCESS…The students were challenged to consider the interaction of these two fundamental realities of life.

JASON…makes the case for resilience and determination, with a bit of help from hip-hop’s Kendrick Lamar and history’s Kunta Kinte.

You Fail

What is success without failure? It’s like saying you can’t feel pleasure without pain. Most of your improvement is done through failure. When you fail, you might think you’ll never succeed. But If you give up then, you won’t ever succeed… not because you’re not trying but because you gave up. The worst thing you can do is give up. 

How does success feel? How much failure have you endured to come to success? Hold on to those feelings next time you feel like giving up and use your resources to help you. It doesn’t have to be a person but you should have someone to confide in. Don’t blame your failures on others or put your procrastination on something else. 

Six hundred thousand people commit suicide every year, that is what giving up is. In some ways, committing suicide might seem better than doing nothing and having no purpose in life. That’s not a life at all. That is not a life worth living. There are probably billions of failure * success stories out there, get inspired and try to do something with your life. Turn your meaninglessness to meaningfulness. You might not know what to do and you don’t have to, just do something, move forward, never give up. Do something until you find your meaning.

Find some time, find some time to do something. Shoot for the stars because, even if you don’t succeed, you reach higher. What matters is that you tried, you didn’t give up and you succeeded in doing something.

Whether you want to be an NBA star, a famous musician, or a well known scientist, nothing is out of reach… for what is the meaning of it if you don’t go for it? Standards are so low nowadays, it used to be that your family supported you and thought you would be someone great no matter what you did. Now it’s just pale. Your family doesn’t support you, you don’t support yourself, and you just live a slow bleak life because you don’t think you’ll reach anything you shoot for, but that’s because you gave up. I’ve heard so many stories about people going to the edge, not giving up, and becoming something great. For every one of those stories, there are at least a dozen stories where they do give up and that is so sad.

There is so much ugly in the world. Even so, tell me how many times you’ve seen an artist turn something ugly into something beautiful. You should do the same. Imagine you’re on a straight narrow road, the wind is at an all time high, cars are blowing past you, and you can smell the carbon emission everywhere. You have no choice but to move forward until you can’t. You’ve reached a mountain so high, you can’t even see the top. If you turn around and give up the feeling of reaching the top, give up the feeling of success and happiness, you fall into a stage of only moving backwards. No mountain is too high for you to climb. Just try. You don’t know what you will find.

“Mornin’ mornin’ mornin, I feel the evils of Luci is all around me, so I went running for answers. Take it in the perspective of Kunta Kinte, everyone wanna cut the legs off em, now he’s got the whole world talking. Kunta, a black man taking no losses.” This is one of my favorite stories of perseverance. Now confide in yourself, persevere, don’t give up, think of what you can do.

SHOUT OUT TPAB

Jason Barnett

October 3, 2025

Failure by Karla Rivas

FAILURE-SUCCESS…The students were challenged to consider the interaction of these two fundamental realities of life.

KARLA…grabs our attention with her opening line, before acknowledging mistakes she regrets but refuses to be taken down by.

Failure 

I’m one failure away from ruining my life. I mean, I’m about to start doing crack and live on the lonely, dirty streets of Baltimore. I’ll be honest, I don’t know where to start. I thought about it yesterday for a very, very long time and I still don’t really know how to articulate how I feel. I feel like I’m being held hostage by this invisible force that has deprived me from oxygen and is causing me to roll around as if I’m a roach on its back trying to get back on its feet. 

I’m kind of still trying to figure out how to say something, without saying anything at all. It’s actually the most difficult thing to do. I’ve been trying to not make my past mistakes happen again. I’m trying really hard to be able to live with them, but there is nothing more difficult than forgiving yourself for past mistakes. It’s even harder to do that if you didn’t hurt just one person, but many. 

Now I feel like I’m actively hurting the people around me. It’s a crazy, almost unreal experience to be scared of yourself and your actions. I’m trying really hard to be careful with my words telling you this. I don’t want people to read or hear this story and have pity, I just want people to understand what I’m trying to say. 

I’m trying really hard to not deprive my feelings from the daylight, but everytime I bring them up it feels like someone gets hurt by what I feel. Then it brings me to question myself and whether it’s right for me to feel something. There’s times I ask the question out loud and people give me a mixed response, telling me that I “should” feel that; others tell me it’s unjustified how I feel. But I always feel that what I’m feeling is never right and I should just not feel so much. So what should I do if I feel too much but I don’t want to feel as much? Should I just stop feeling? Do I continue to feel and hurt people? Or should I just kill myself? (Guys, it’s a joke. I’m not going to harm myself.) 

It’s hard being a failure and then trying to live with that, while also trying to succeed in the field you failed in. I’ve become one of those failures that don’t want to continue to try because they have nothing else. 

On a lighter note, I talked about it last night to someone really important to me. I feel so much better after talking to them. I don’t feel like an upside down roach anymore, just a roach on its feet. This person has made me feel not so much as a failure, telling me it’s okay for me to feel everything and anything. 

I also want to clarify that I refuse to be taken down by mistakes I make. My purpose is bigger than me and I am not losing the plot. I want my parents, mentors, and teachers to be proud of everything I do. Unfortunately, in order to be the best me, I have to make mistakes and sometimes they are big. I am not giving up or giving in to the failures, I refuse to. 

I will succeed, not just for me, but for everyone that has been and will be with me on this beautiful journey of failures and success. All in all, I regret all my mistakes and failures, but I will not let them take me down to a deep hole that kills me. I will succeed and do whatever it takes to succeed. 

 Karla Rivas

October 3, 2025

Failure*Success by Khori Mitchell

FAILURE-SUCCESS…The students were challenged to consider the interaction of these two fundamental realities of life.

KHORI…uses her very mixed feelings over the loss of a special family member to remind us all that in order to help others you must first be able to help yourself.

Failure*Success 

The definition of failure is the lack of success. Throughout my life I’ve experienced many different forms of failure. I’ve always been the type of person who believed that everyone can change, even when they fail. I thought I was a prime example. If I can fail and keep trying, then surely everyone can, right? 

No, I was wrong.  Last year I was a freshman, and I’m sure everyone knows that, when you’re a freshman, you have to show an enormous amount of perseverance.  I expected everyone around me to show the same amount of perseverance ,and this unfortunately led to my demise. 

I had a family member that passed away from drug use last year,and I felt the failure she inflicted on herself ,and the rest of the family.  As a kid, I would often see her in a lot of pain. Pain from losing her closest family members from old age ,and  pain from her own failure to stop using drugs. I remember always being in her room, and asking her questions of what she used to be like, how she used to act, and all of her regrets. It’s still hard for me to acknowledge the fact that she’s actually gone.

  During her funeral, I was so angry that she failed. How could she? How could she choose a substance over her own family? Were we not important to her? If only we could’ve helped.. If only we didn’t fail to get her the help she truly needed. She would still be here today.  I was so angry at the fact that she failed. It made me forget her success… The person she was before she started to use drugs.

Looking back I think she always got less than what she deserved ,and this led to her drug use even more. She was the type of person to give more than what she had. She often gave so much that she never had anything left for herself. 

This truly scares me because I believe that I share the same traits as she did. I think I often show too much empathy to the point where I would choose someone else’s happiness over my very own. This is a trait that I’m currently working on ,because I know from experience that this trait often leads to failure. I also know that in order to help other people, you have to be able to help yourself. “You can’t pour into anything or anybody from an empty cup”.  I think about this a lot. Will this trait truly lead to my failure or my success? Will I be able to show empathy ,and show that I care for others ,while also caring for myself? Or will I let everyone else’s needs contribute to my failure and end up just like her. 

                                                                                          Khori Mitchell 

                                                                                          10/3/25

Blindspot by Judah Patterson

BLINDSPOT…The students were tasked to imagine themselves sitting on a park bench, waiting for a friend, when a blind person suddenly appears and asks the student, “What do you see?”

JUDAH…deploys “a Karen” to remind us just how blind humanity can be.

Blindspot

One summer day this lady, (will call her Karen to paint a picture in your head). Anyway, Karen went out to go meet one of her friends at a park. When she got there, her friend was a bit late. They were supposed to meet at 2:30 but her friend wasn’t there and it was 0.5 seconds after 2:30. As Karen’s name suggests, this behavior was unacceptable, so she went to sit on a bench and she sent her friend a long email complaining about how late they were. 

I can’t read the email out loud just because it has extremely colorful language not suitable for a school setting. Anyway, 0.02 milliseconds after this long email she was still sitting on a bench when she noticed this blind black dude who looked to be in his late 20s who had dark black sunglasses. The man was holding an ice cream and walking in her direction and she felt unsafe. Karen felt so scared that she gripped her purse so hard that her fake tan lotion started to melt under her sweaty hand. All of a sudden she noticed that one of the white couples in the park got into a fight and the husband started to get physical. Karen thought this was hilarious. What could the woman have done to make her husband so upset? She should have just kept quiet about all of her feelings and emotions like a good tradwife, Karen thought to herself. She was so focused on the couple that she didn’t notice the blind person was sitting next to her. 

In her personal space! Five feet away from her!!!! She tried to hold all of her Karen instincts inside so she wouldn’t yell. She knew she was in a hostile situation. I have to be careful, she thought to herself. These kinds of people are so unpredictably dangerous, like how is he holding that ice cream if he’s blind!! A couple of seconds went by of Karen sitting next to the blind person when he asked her. “What do you see?” Karen was in shock. She didn’t think these kinds of people could talk so well. “Well?” The blind person asked her. She didn’t answer, she was frozen in fear. 

The blind person then asked her if everything was alright and she didn’t answer. Eventually Karen’s friend came and saw what the situation was. We’ll call him Hankkk, spelled with three K’s at the end. “And who might you be!!” Hankkk violently yelled. The blind person responded with, “my name is Daquarius Freeman. How are you doing and what do you see?” Mr Freeman calmly said. Mr Hankkk yelled at Karen to get up. violently grabbed her and  they both ran off into the sunset happily ever after. The end.

Judah Patterson
9/26/2025

Blindspot by Jordan Smith

The students were tasked to imagine themselves sitting on a park bench, waiting for a friend, when a blind person suddenly appears and asks the student, “What do you see?”

JORDAN…starts to answer the question with her eyes, but soon finds herself tapping into the deeper well of her mind and heart.

Blindspot

Today I decided to go to a park with a friend. It doesn’t matter what park I go to, nor which friend I go with. I just feel like using the swingset the whole time instead of letting a little kid get on. They can cry to their parents all they want, I refuse to move. Anyway, I sat on a random bench in the park closest to my house. I kicked several rocks that were in front of me while I waited for my friend.

Suddenly, I hear movement beside me. Turns out somebody sat down on the other side of the bench. I felt a little upset that somebody sat on my bench, until I looked up. The person sitting next to me was blind. They had a white cane with a red stripe, and dark glasses. It was quiet between the two of us for a moment. Then, they asked me a question out of nowhere. “What do you see?”

I was confused as to why they asked me that question. I didn’t have anything else to do, so I answered. I told them about the trees swaying in the wind, the chirping of birds, and the countless kids running around. I thought I answered the question, but I was wrong. This person wasn’t looking for a basic answer, instead one that was meaningful. Meaningful? I don’t know anything about meaningful, heartfelt sayings that would inspire thousands of people.

I didn’t realize the answer was in front of me the whole time. The answer was my personal view on the world, mine.. When their question clicked in my head, I told them everything I felt in the moment. “I see people that disregard others because of a label they were given. I see how cruel humanity can treat one another. I see how kindness can be found in a pool of selfishness and anger. I see the world for what it is, not what I want it to be. 

I see the efforts to rebuild what is broken. I see the limitations, pain, and resentment of colonized countries. I see uncovered secrets in the faces of those who don’t know where they came from. I see the corruption of governments around the world.”

 Everything I’ve ever thought spewed from my mouth until there was nothing left. The person next to me said nothing, but I didn’t need words to know they understood everything. We sat together in silence, basking in this moment with only our surroundings speaking for us.

Jordan Smith
9/26/25

Man on the Ledge by Mohamed Cisse

The students were presented with the challenge of coming upon a person perched on the ledge of a tall building in beautiful Los Angeles.

MOHAMED…learns to appreciate a home filled with arguments and stress as opposed to one filled with silence.

Man on the Ledge

On the roof of the building I saw how endless Los Angeles looked. The city was full of light and noise, but on the roof it was quiet. I wanted some fresh air away from the weight of everything, from the arguments I had with my mom that kept getting me irritated and stressed. That’s when I saw him.

A man sat on the edge of the building, his feet hanging over like he might slip. At first I thought he was just up there to think, but the way he stared out into nothing told me something was wrong.

I hesitated before speaking, then asked, “Hey… are you okay?” He turned slowly, and I could see the sadness and exhaustion in his face, like he hadn’t slept in days.

“ My family is gone” he said, with his voice low but steady. “ ICE came while I was at work. Took my parents and my sisters. Left me with nothing but a note on the table. They’re being sent back, but I was born here. I’m the only one who gets to stay.”

The words hit me harder than I expected. I didn’t know, but in the moment it felt like the whole weight of his life was pushing on my chest. I stepped closer, careful not to startle him. “That’s… that’s brutal. But taking your life won’t bring them back. You’ve still got a chance to fight for them. To tell their story.”

He shook his head. “Fight? With who? Against who? I’ve spent my whole life following the rules, paying taxes, working double shifts. None of that mattered. To them, I’m just another name in the system. And now I’m supposed to keep going like I’m not split in two?”

I didn’t know what to say, but silence felt wrong. “You’re not split in two,” I said finally. “You’re still whole. And maybe… maybe you’re the only one who can bring them back. If you leave now, their story ends here too.”

He let out a resentful laugh, but I noticed his hands loosen slightly on the ledge. For a long moment, we both stared out at the city, like it might give us an answer.

As I stood there beside him, I couldn’t stop my own thoughts from flowing. I thought about the things that weighed me down with the pressure at home, the stress of school, the way it always felt like I was running to catch up with everyone else. I used to think my problems were too heavy to carry.

But looking at him, hearing what he’d lost, it hit me different. His family was gone, torn away while he was at work. He didn’t get to go home to noise or arguments or even stress. He went home to silence. That kind of silence had to feel worse than any noise I’d ever complained about.

This didn’t erase what I carried, but it made me see it clearer. My weight was real, but his was a different kind of heavy. One that could break a person if nobody reached out. For the first time that night, I realized something: sometimes the only thing keeping someone from falling is knowing they’re not alone.

Mohamed Cisse

9/20/25