Throughout the course of this module, while reading the graphic novel, “They Called Us the Enemy.” what came into my mind as I was reading is a few things, those being that this module was more “chill,” than other modules not only from this class but other classes, and I’ve had a more relaxed feeling, such as the cat you see above this paragraph. I didn’t feel as if I was in a life or death situation to understand what is going on, that being for the reason that this Module emphasized the importance of play and rather than reading a book, we read a graphic novel.

As this module went on, I was incredibly relaxed throughout the module. I wasn’t as stressed as I was during modules prior to this, and I think the reason as to why is because we were reading a graphic novel, not a novel. And the only requirements while reading the graphic novel was seeing how, for the graphic novel, how it CARED and how I READ the room. It didn’t ask me to analyze the plot or find symbolism or writing techniques, just how I noticed the story was formatted. And it was easy, it was relaxing and my brain chemistry wasn’t broken. Although the actual main assignment of the module was relaxing, the part that I found most relaxing of this module was the importance of play. Throughout that section of the module, we got to make clay figurines of random monsters after watching a video about how this woman didn’t stop doing what she considered, “play.” That began to spark in my head. Why is it that we stop playing as we get older? From the TEDtalk we watched in class that explained the importance of play, I realize that there is a lack of balance. Don’t get me wrong, school and afterschool activity and following rules are incredibly important, but when one thing is seen as more important than the other, we lose balance, like the speaker in the TEDtalk said, we have the same amount of stress as a 1950’s psych ward patient. He went on to explain how in his day, when he was in school, he hardly had homework and kids and teens hung out with friends after 8 hours of school, and had no homework, so why is it that kids now have to not only go through 8 hours of school per day, but also do hours of homework and hours of studying for some test and almost never have time to see their friends? 

To add on to my first observation, I also found a heavier motivation throughout this module to draw and write more. I’m not exactly sure what it was, but a guess I would make as to why I had a stronger sense to write and draw more is because of the art style of this graphic novel and how it was told. When going through page after page, my attention was stuck to the graphic novel, so much was told yet the graphic novel didn’t need so much on the page to happen. Not only were the pages easy for me to understand, but the formatting was also another thing that helped me understand what was going on. Especially on the speech bubbles, I was able to understand the order. For past graphic novels such as, “Nimona,” or, “Squad,” I have had tons of trouble on some pages understanding the order of text bubbles. To add on the artistic aspects of the story, I also found it interesting how it was told. As I read this, the mood, to me as the reader, that I was being told old stories from someone who has been through this, yet this person was a young child, so not only do I get the story told to me through an older person telling me about their past, but also through the eyes of a child. You get this story about a dehumanizing event in history through the perspective of a child who doesn’t fully understand what is happening, yet this is also told through a man who knows what this was all about, and it goes back and forth between the two.

To come back from where we started, I thought that this module was more relaxing than others, that was just my big observation. The reason for the module to be more relaxing, to me at least, is because there was an emphasis on play and rather than reading another book with words that don’t stick to my brain, I read a story through wonderful visuals that were neither over or under stimulating. The main lesson was able to be installed in my head of what I needed to understand.