Exploration Two from Omar

Hello Class, I am Omar Shehadeh. I am a Palestinian-American who is my first generation born in America. I am a political science major with a focus on Pre-med. I have a pit-bull named Astro who I would give anything for. This is my second year at OSUM and I continue to enjoy the environment the teachers create and the one on one help they can provide. I worked at Nordstrom for a year, but with my recent appendicitis I had to take a leave of absence while I recover and focus on my school work.

"The life of Fredrick Douglass" stood out to me the most. The fact that an entire race of people was being condemned to live an un-educated life and to stay impoverished and enslaved made me very angry. Mr. Aulds hatred for black people and his view of it being "unlawful" and "unsafe" to teach slaves to read and write shows the true ignorance a entire society can develop. For an entire society to accept another part of their society as lesser creatures really had a big affect on me. Through the reading I learned that literacy events are times in our lives in which we use linguistics to interact with one another. This can be either orally or written in text. The reading was a direct narrative of the life of Fredrick Douglass. A former slave who reached his freedom after many years of hardship, the story clearly depicted a literacy event.