Hello everyone!

 

Welcome to my portfolio. My name is Mishal (pronounced Meh-Shell) and I am currently a sophomore studying Sport Management with minors in Writing and Social Media Design and Analysis. This semester I have had the pleasure of being in Shelley Manis’ class with 9 other wonderful writers. I have learned so much from everyone and am extremely excited to continue my journey in the minor. 

 

I have always been a reader, and I continue to regularly enjoy great writing in the form of novels. Some of my recent favorites include Where The Children Take Us by Zain E. Asher, All My Rage by Sabaa Tahir, and Uphill by Jemele Hill. Reading great books has always inspired me to work on myself for the better, and think of ways that I can contribute to the betterment of the world. It also just allows me to dive into a world that is different from my own. Of course, there is other types of writing that I read (whether I enjoy it or not is truly up to interpretation) which includes research and other forms of academic writing. Most of my current classes, assign some form of this type of writing to supplement the class curriculum. 

 

The first time I saw my written work printed in a publication was during my first year of highschool. From then on, I knew that writing was a passion I needed to continue. My background in writing is primarily from academic and journalistic standpoints. I worked on my high school’s newspaper and yearbook for multiple years. I continue to write for The Michiganensian Yearbook, and am also a freelance writer for Ann Arbor Family Magazine and Current Magazine. These opportunities have given me the great pleasure of interacting people I otherwise would have never met, and learning about topics that have changed who I am outside of journalism. 

 

For this semester, I took to changing a journalistic article I wrote in my junior year of high school on academic dishonesty in the setting of an Advanced Placement course (read the origin piece here). This was one of my favorite articles to write in high school as the situation was super interesting to me and affected the students drastically, arguably more than it probably should have. I turned this into a tv show script and a blackout poem, eventually resulting in a finished first act of a tv show pilot. Read these drafts here.

 

My fully realized project took major inspiration from the television shows Abbott Elementary and The Office, in regards to the idea of a mocumentary with talking heads. I loved being able to show character’s inner thoughts through dialogue with the camera and with other characters. The plot is about students who are committing or experiencing the repercussions of cheating in their high school’s Advanced Placement Chemistry class, a notoriously difficult class for many. The origin piece focuses on a perspective on cheating from teachers, but I took extreme creative liberties in showing different perspectives from students. If I were to write a complete series, I would want to include more teacher perspectives, as I believe that both are important. Students are just fun to write as I personally put pieces of myself and people I know in these characters. 

 

The audience is extremely general, likely most interesting to students and teachers due to the setting. I believe that shows like Abbott Elementary and The Office are extremely interesting is because of the compelling jokes/storylines AND a setting that people are familiar with. They can see themselves in the characters. 

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I hope you enjoy my fully realized project, my other work, and this portfolio! If you have any questions, comments, concerns, or confessions, feel free to reach out to me!