Report Cards

Many of us at this school live our lives around grades. We make sure our grades our always up doing no matter what it takes, while also rating anything and everything. Melinda comments mentally on her progress, or at most points is a decrease in her level. As she grows in a few areas of school, she seems to not take interest in others.

Of Melinda's personal report card her grades do not improve in all of her classes but one. As time goes on she finds it harder to communicate. She sees everyones' identity change during this time period and finds it even more difficuilt. Her mother tries to put on the identity of perfect, American mom cooking Thanksgiving dinner, Heather puts a greater effort at becoming an official Martha, and David Petrakis is still himself but as being a foil for Melinda, him speaking out for himself is significant because that is the stage that Melinda needs to be getting at. She works on her Burrow so she can have a place to escape to and she works on her art. Through her art, she starts to show her past and begins to talk about it all.

A drawing of lightning striking a tree and a Barbie in a turkey carcass aren't typical works of art from Freshmen in High School, but Melinda creates her art in a way not fully knowing that she feels like the subjects of her artwork. Because she iis unknowlingly allowing her soul to come through and speak up her grade isn't falling in art because she is coming forth. In her other classes she doesn't get that opportunity like in art, and in topics Melinda grades herself in that aren't school subjects, she has a bad reputation and low selfesteem so she doens't even give herself a good grade. She feels the need to be honest with herself even though she doesn't want to face her own identity. She hides the mirrors so she can't be reminded of what people see her as and what she sees herself as.

(I am sorry but I can't get there to be a paragraph break in between, ...about it all. and A drawing of lightning....)