Allah Raja

1. What do you feel like you learned this unit that you didn’t know before? 

1. I do not mean to be ignorant, but I had AP Lang AP Research in high school so whatever we learned so far in this unit I already had a rather good grasp of it like the different rhetorical devices which we looked at like name calling, antithesis, litotes etc. But I definitely hope to learn more things in the upcoming weeks. 

2. What did you already know, but now understand better or learned more about? 

1. Going back to question one, in AP Lang in high school, I learned a lot about the different rhetorical devices. I already had a pretty good grasp of them in my head, but it has been like 2 and a half years since I took that class in high school, so this unit was like a good refresher course for me. 

3. What (if anything) do you feel like I wanted you to learn, but you still aren’t sure about? What are your lingering questions? 

1. There was this one article we read about propaganda; I forgot the name of it, but I remember that I was extremely confused whilst reading that article. The whole concept of propaganda is a bit iffy in my head. Like I know what propaganda is, but that article was weird and difficult to comprehend. 

4. What are the strengths of the writing you did for this unit? What are you most proud of? 

1. The main writing piece we worked on was the this I no longer believe paper. I really loved my paper. I put in a lot of effort into it and I think I did extremely well. I think my narrative skills and creative writing skills are very strong. I am also very good at creating very detailed pieces while utilizing different rhetorical elements and figurative language. 

5. If you were to revise the writing you did for this unit, what would you want to do differently? 

1. I would add a little more to my writing piece because it was kind of short. It was 3 pages which isn’t too bad but still. I could’ve added another section talking more about how cooking is a part of me now (u read my paper so u know what I mean 🙂 

6. How would you describe or rate your participation/engagement in this unit? 

1. My participation is immaculate, I think I participate the most in the class, and that’s just me being real. I love to participate and when it gets quiet in class, I make it my responsibility to bring something up to talk about.  

7. What did you do this unit that helped make you successful? 

1. I kept on pace with the course calendar and kept on pace with all my assignments. I tried to complete all the assignments on time so that I don’t have anything to worry about. Especially the rhetorical devices assignments, even though they are type annoying, I still tried to do them as fast as possible. 

8. What (if anything) do you want to do differently in the next unit?  

1. No, I think you are doing great in the way you are running the course. It’s a mix of you teaching and explaining, discussions, and us just doing some activities and work. I like that mixture. I like what you are doing and I think this way of running the class is making it very easy for the students to keep up with the class and be successful in this course. 

9. What additional things (resources, support, information, etc.) do you wish you had had for this unit? 

1. I wish we learned more about narrative writing before writing our this I no longer believe essay because I feel like we didn’t really go over it. That would’ve just given a bit more edge to us in writing the narrative. 

10. Is there anything you would like me to change (in the structure of our course, in how I’m presenting information, etc.) going forward? What were your favorite readings/activities, and which readings/activities didn’t feel effective for you?  

1. My favorite reading was the article where the guy is arguing with another article about how language should be taught in school. The amazing thing about the paper was that the person who wrote the article used extremely informal language but ironically it was an extremely formal paper. It was very nice and it showed how language is subjective to the individual and to different areas. 

11. What (if anything) from this unit would you like to discuss/think about/explore further? (either this semester or just in your life) 

1. Actually I’m kind of doing this in class right now and we are talking about the Columbia protests that the Columbia students held. It seems remarkably interesting and weird that the deans were held hostage and the building was blockaded but it sounds very interesting and unreal. But considering that Columbia is in NY its believable. But this sounds cool, I want to look into it more. 

A Five-Star Meal

In the seventeen years of my supposedly masculine life, I never wanted anything to do with the kitchen. I had never wanted to cook a meal for myself. I never wanted to handle a knife, I never wanted the scorching heat of the stove to burn my face, but boy was I starving.

After a tiresome yet fun session of basketball at the YMCA, hunger took over me as it would an empty-handed hunter. I felt the nutrients excreting from my body through my sweat, if that’s how science works, and I desperately needed to get those nutrients back in my body. On the train ride back home from the YMCA, my mind began filtering through the different dishes I wanted to eat. I could not choose a dish I wanted, from the modest number of dishes which were circulating through my brain—it was either rotini pasta or chicken legs with rice or garlic naan with kabob or lamb stew with naan or cheese bread or biryani or chicken sliders or cheese sticks or Turkish bread or chicken tenders. I really had a limited choice. The decision was tough, but I had quite some time to think about it, after all, it was going to take me 1 hour to get home on the train. Stop by stop, I filtered through the dishes in my brain, and I finally settled on the prize winner– lamb stew with naan. Though the walk home from the train station was like a path through hell, I had finally made it home.

I didn’t even care to take a shower or change my clothes once I got home. It was like every time I got hungry and wanted to eat, my muscle memory simply led me straight to my sisters. Being the only and youngest brother of seven sisters, it was taboo for me to step foot into the kitchen. I was always the one being served. I went to one of my sisters and asked her to make me food, though I really wanted to TELL her. She said no, explaining how she got a lot of homework from her German chemistry professor. She was continuously yapping about that same chemistry professor for about 5 minutes straight, which I really didn’t care about because I wasn’t in college at the time. But now that I am in college and have an old Iranian chemistry professor with a heavy unfathomable accent, I can’t totally sympathize with her. However, at that moment I didn’t really give a shit. I just wanted to eat. After her I went to my other sister, and she apparently was working on a project for an art competition she was participating in. She also didn’t have any time to make her little baby brother any food. I thought to myself, why do they think that what they have to do is more important than my growling stomach.

At this point I wouldn’t be wrong to say that I was starving. By the time I made it to my last sister, I looked like a beggar, going down a street from person to person asking for some change. However, instead of asking for some change, I was kind of asking for a 5-star buffet meal. After getting that final refusal I just lost it. Not even one of my sisters could find time in their schedules to cook for me. Their refusal filled me with anger. I thought to myself, how could my sisters be so busy in their own lives, neglecting their supposed responsibility of cooking for me? I always had this belief that my sisters were mandated by some divine revelation to cook for me. I always believed that cooking was a woman’s job and that a man should keep away from the kitchen. However, I soon came to realize that I didn’t willingly adopt this belief. The belief that my sisters were obligated to make food for me and take care of me was unwillingly instilled into my brain, and at the time, I didn’t realize that I was feeding into cultural misogynistic stereotypes

I was at odds with myself and my beliefs. My brain was clouded with so many thoughts which were chaining me, not allowing me to step forth into the kitchen. I didn’t believe that it was my job, a man’s job to go into the kitchen and make food. I remember my father always saying to me, “Raja, don’t you shame me by taking on a woman’s responsibility. You are here to be the man of the house, provide and protect the family, not to meddle with the kitchen.” I acted upon these beliefs like a puppet, with the strings being controlled by my father. However, something didn’t feel right. I began to wonder if these beliefs were my very own or if I was just an embodiment of my father’s beliefs. In that little fleeting moment, my true conscience showed itself, and I desperately clung to it.

I decided for the first time to experience life the way I wanted to, through my very own eyes. I finally manned up, picked up my sister’s crusty old cookbook which had the secret formulas for all of my favorite recipes and decided to make the food myself. I came face to face with many challenges throughout this expedition of mine. I had trouble with the simplest of things, like even finding the different ingredients necessary to make my lamb stew and naan. There were so many different cabinets and drawers in the kitchen, and I had no clue where my sisters kept each of the ingredients. I almost felt like a tourist in a foreign land. After finding all the ingredients, I finally began mixing and pouring and measuring and whisking. I followed the recipe step by step and soon enough, I had the stew cooking on the stove, and I had the dough for the naan ready. I must point out that the heat from the stew on the stove was difficult to bare. It felt like my skin was peeling off, however, I sort of liked that feeling. I felt like I was on the way to accomplishing something great and therefore, I didn’t let any pain stop me. After about 3 hours, I had finally finished cooking my food. Surprisingly, I didn’t really feel hungry anymore. My hunger was quenched by my new experience of cooking, though I definitely needed to drink a cup of water. I won’t go into much detail about how the food tasted because it would be embarrassing, but I will say that it wasn’t as bad as tuna fish.

Now that I reminisce on my early cooking days, I was a really bad cook. After all, everyone knows how the lamb stew turned out. It was a similar situation with my second, third, fourth and up till like the tenth dish (maybe more). I realized that if Gordan Ramsey were to witness taste my dishes, my ears would be the subject to some beautiful English words. Though, every time I made a new dish, I was yearning to learn more about cooking and how to become a better cook. Cooking almost became my favorite hobby, rivaling basketball. Looking at my current cooking level, I would say that I’m a 3-star chef. Some dishes turn out amazing while other dishes make people puke. But, as I said before, I am continuing to learn more about cooking, and I have made it a goal of mine to become a better chef.

Thinking back, I had no unique beliefs representing my individual experiences or perspectives. The bitter truth is that I was a vessel for my familial, societal, and cultural beliefs- and so was my father and his father and his father before him. So, I do not blame my father for screwing me over, in fact, he was screwed over himself. Living by stereotypes and limiting people’s experiences solely because of gender was the lifestyle passed on to him by the generations before him. Fortunately, I was courageous enough to shape my own destiny. I was able to break free from these cages for myself and my future generations so we can all fly high without boundaries. It’s crazy how one can feel this boundless just by now being able to cook, but for me, the simple task of cooking a meal was a life changer.

In the seventeen years of my supposedly masculine life, I never wanted anything to do with the kitchen. I had never wanted to cook a meal for myself. I never wanted to handle a knife, I never wanted the scorching heat of the stove to scorch my face, but boy was I starving. 

After a tiresome yet fun session of basketball at the YMCA, hunger took over me as it would an empty-handed hunter. I felt the nutrients excreting from my body through my sweat, if that’s how science works, and I desperately needed to get those nutrients back in my body. On the train ride back home from the YMCA, my mind began filtering through the different dishes I wanted to eat. I could not choose a dish a wanted, from the modest number of dishes which were circulating through my brain—it was either rotini pasta or chicken legs with rice or garlic naan with kabob or lamb stew with naan or cheese bread or biryani or chicken sliders or cheese sticks or Turkish bread or chicken tenders. I really had a limited choice. The decision was tough, but I had quite some time to think about it, after all, it was going to take me 1 hour to get home on the train. Stop by stop, I filtered through the dishes in my brain, and I finally settled on the prize winner– lamb stew with naan. Though the walk home from the train station was like a path through hell, I had finally made it home. I didn’t even care to take a shower or change my clothes once I got home. It was like every time I got hungry and wanted to eat, my muscle memory simply led me straight to my sisters. Being the only and youngest brother of seven sisters, it was taboo for me to step foot into the kitchen. I was always the one being served. I went to of my sisters and asked her to make me food, though I really wanted to TELL her. She said no, explaining how she got a lot of homework from her German chemistry professor. She was continuously yapping about that same chemistry professor for about 5 minutes straight, which I really didn’t care about because I wasn’t in college at the time. But now that I am in college, and have an old Iranian chemistry professor with a heavy  

un-understandable accent, I cant totally sympathize with her. However, in that moment I didn’t really give a shit. I just wanted to eat. After her I went to my other sister, and she apparently was working on an art project for an art competition she was participating in. She also didn’t have any time to make her little baby brother any food. I thought to myself, why do they think that what they have to do is more important than my growling stomach. At this point I wouldn’t be wrong to say that I was starving. By the time I made it to my last sister, I looked like a beggar, going down a street from person to person asking for some change. However, instead of asking for some change, I was kind of asking for a 5-star buffet meal. After getting that final refusal I just lost it. Not even one of my sisters could find time in their schedules to cook for me. Their refusal filled me with anger. I thought to myself, how could my sisters be so busy in their own lives, neglecting their supposed responsibility of cooking for me? I always had this belief that my sisters were mandated by some divine revelation to cook for me. I always believed that cooking was a woman’s job and that a man should keep away from the kitchen. However, I soon came to realize that I didn’t willingly adopt this belief. The belief that my sisters were obligated to make food for me and take care of me was unwillingly instilled into my brain, and at the time, I didn’t realize that I was feeding into cultural misogynistic stereotypes 

I was at odds with myself and my beliefs. My brain was clouded with so many thoughts which were chaining me, not allowing me to step forth into the kitchen. I didn’t believe that it was my job, a man’s job to go into the kitchen and make food. I remember my father always saying to me, “Raja, don’t you shame me by taking on a woman’s responsibility. You are here to be the man of the house, provide and protect the family, not to meddle with the kitchen.” I acted upon these beliefs like a puppet, with the strings being controlled by my father. However, something didn’t feel right. I began to wonder if these beliefs were my very own or if I was just an embodiment of my father’s beliefs. In that little fleeting moment, my true conscience showed itself, and I desperately clung to it. 

I decided for the first time to experience life the way I wanted to, through my very own eyes. I finally manned up, picked up my sister’s crusty old cookbook which had the secret formulas for all of my favorite recipes and decided to make the food myself. I came face to face with many challenges throughout this expedition of mine. I had trouble with the simplest of things, like even finding the different ingredients necessary to make my lamb stew and naan. There were so many different cabinets and drawers in the kitchen, and I had no clue where my sisters kept each of the ingredients. I almost felt like a tourist in a foreign land. After finally finding all the ingredients, I finally began mixing and pouring and measuring and whisking. I followed the recipe step by step and soon enough, I had the stew cooking on the stove and I had the dough for the naan ready. I must point out that the heat from the stew on the stove was difficult to bare. It felt like my skin was peeling off, however, I sort of liked that feeling. I felt like I was on the way to accomplish something great and therefore, I didn’t let any pain stop me. After about 3 hours, I had finally finished cooking my food. Surprisingly, I didn’t really feel hungry anymore. My hunger was quenched by my new experience of cooking, though I definitely needed to drink a cup of water. I won’t go into much detail about how the food tasted because it would be embarrassing, but I will say that it wasn’t as bad as tuna fish.  

Now that I look back, I had no unique beliefs representing my individual experiences or perspectives. The bitter truth is that I was a vessel for my familial, societal, and cultural beliefs- and so was my father and his father and his father before him. So, I do not blame my father for screwing me over, in fact, he was screwed over himself. Living by stereotypes and limiting people’s experiences solely because of gender was the lifestyle passed on to him by the generations before him. Fortunately, I was courageous enough to shape my own destiny. I was able to break free from these cages for myself and my future generations so we can all fly high without boundaries. Its crazy how one can feel this boundless just by now being able to cook, but for me, the simple task of cooking a meal was a life changer.