Brief Summary

My three works contain my perspectives on different issue.

My first work was an article to enter the INYT Writing Competition in 2016 about education. It expresses my opinion on education on contemporary situation we are dealing with.

My second work is my English Essay on transgender in Turkey.
Transgender suffer a lot of discrimination and prejudice and there are no laws to protect them. One of them died after went missing and my diary is my way trying to give voice to the transgender and the depression and anxiety they have to go through.

My third work is a fairy tale land I created after Trump was elected as President in the US.

It is used to enter a competition but it conveys my true feelings and thinking about a Trump presidency – chaos and problematic.

Welcome to Wonderland | Young Writers

Competition in http://www.youngwriters.co.uk

Dao Thuc Doan

 

Sorrow – A “Fairy” Tale

I’m living in hell. Or it feels like it.

You would think that I’m kidding but I’m not. Everything that I loved and believed shattered in one night. Chaos, riots, rebels are everywhere. I wish there was a potion for me to drink, a spinning wheel for me to touch, an apple for me to bite.

Walking down the street witnessing sadness and sorrow on people’s faces breaks my heart. So this is what Trumpland feels like – heavy and bitter.

Hey, the sun still rises, the birds still sing, and maybe it’s ONLY four years, I convince myself that.

 

 

Struggles of transgender in Turkey.

Source of article: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-37143879

A diary through a transgender mind.

 

Inside the mind.

 

• Dear diary,

 

Insecurities.

I feel so trapped and powerless inside this body. I’m lost within my own body and every time I look into the mirror it’s like looking at someone else. I hate myself but there’s nothing I can do about it.

I imagine myself to be a woman every day, how it feels to walk down the street wearing high heels, with a pink dress and be happy with it. But I’m not.

I envy those who are happy with their assigned body, gender because they get to be who they are while I can’t even come out to my parents.

It was hard growing up desperately wanting to be a girl. It was wrong but it felt so right. Society told me that it’s just my puberty thinking, and hearing my friends telling me that I need help with my mental state. I thought I was going mad because of those words kept reminding me that I was wrong.

 

• Dear diary,

 

I had a dream. And it was so beautiful.

I was a woman. A gorgeous one and I’m happy with my body like I’ve never felt before. I got to wear my mom’s make-up and she would look me in the eyes saying “You’re so beautiful, darling”. Then I went shopping for some dresses, shoes and people would give me compliments saying how pretty I am. I never had the confident to walk down the street and just be happy without any struggles within me, but then I did.

And for that brief moment, I no longer hated how I look.

Oh the joy.

I miss that dream, as I woke up and cried to myself, asking why can’t I be happy.

 

• Dear Diary,

 

I came out to my parents. I don’t know what I’m feeling right now. Fear? Shame? Relief?

They hated me for being transsexual, they told me I’m ‘disgusting’ and they asked whether I wanted therapy for my ‘condition’ because that’s wrong for me to ‘be transsexual’. Should I go?

 

• Dear Diary,

 

It’s been a year since I last talked to you. Miss me? Because I do, so much to talk about.

I went to therapy for 4 months and he convinced me that it was only a state of misleading thoughts in my life like how people want to   commit suicide, he said that I WANTED to be transsexual. Funny.

He also gave me some hormone replacement medicine. I felt sick, horrified, disgusted and exhausted. And I thought maybe it could make me feel better about my sexuality, desperately.

I didn’t. Never have.

On another note, I moved out. It bounds to happen, I could never live under a roof that hormone replacement treatment is the ‘right’ thing. I miss my parents so much but I know I could never be accepted as who I am.

Would you have done the same?

It’s so sad how I tried so hard finding a job and every time I identify myself as female they would not even consider me. The injustice.

The only way for me is to be a sex worker. To find a new house, to continue my life, to be a woman.

 

• Dear Diary,

 

It’s Pride Day today. There was a parade, a huge one.

I could not possibly describe to you how happy I am. For the first time, I’m not wrong anymore, I’m right. For being who I am. There are still a lot of conflicts against the LGBTQI community but everyone just ignored it because they don’t have to live in shame anymore. It feels like for that 24 hours, you can be whoever you are and you can be proud of it.

It’s hard not ‘being’ straight in Turkey.

I got to meet loads of people with my same struggles, my same feeling, and it was wonderful. Not that the issues are wonderful but I finally know how share my problems, with no fear and only acceptance.

 

• Dear Diary,

 

I was abused. For the first time.

 

• Dear Diary,

 

I was abused. Again.

 

• Dear Diary,

 

I was abused. For how long now… I lost count.

It was my choice to be a sex worker, and it was me that wanted to move out but I feel so low. It’s like I was forced by myself to sell my dignity, my body – so I call it abuse. Caused by me. Mentally.

You can’t expect people to be nice to your body, they treat you like a one night stand, no more no less.

Life is not a movie. You can’t have a musical to forget your doubts, you work your way through poverty. At least, I can afford not to live outside the street and I’m aiming that these money will help me with my operation.

I hope…

 

• Dear Diary,

 

I’m half way to my goals.

I’m half way to be who I am.

Am I?

Then why do I still feel so empty…

 

• Dear Diary,

 

I was fined.

While I was trying to earn a living, the police detained me and took me to the police station. They gave me fines. I couldn’t pay them of course. I didn’t pay them. On the one hand, the government tells me to stay off the streets, to not be a prostitute; on the other hand, they keep on giving me these fines. In order to be able to pay the fines, I need to do even more prostitution work. I have so much debt, not even health services or insurance…

The struggles…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

INYT Article.

EDUCATION IS SH!T

 

 

Education is useless!
Students have lost the ability to do anything practical. The only thing we’ve mastered is consumption. Record numbers of students have entered higher education in the past 10 years, but despite being the most educated generation in history, it seems that we’ve grown increasingly ignorant when it comes to basic life skills. Testing tells us absolutely nothing about students’ ability or achievement in real world’s skills. That data is useless when it comes to assessing the essential skills of identifying resources, evaluating resources, and developing new ideas. Creativity and collaboration are not testable ideas. That’s exactly what the education is doing today. Why?

 

Society considers Global Education is something huge and important; it takes up billions and billions of dollars and it’s a completely waste of money. We go to school everyday, thinking what’s there to learn when we’re not even interested in the subjects. Interestingly enough, education in the 1800s was for the serve of the industrial evolution – where maths, economics, etc. come first and the arts are the last – and now we’re using that system as an answer to everything, just like a one-size-fit-all t-shirt. Technology, science, and even the people have changed, why hasn’t our education changed?

 

Millions of students were failing then, as they are now — and it’s because we’re clinging to a business model that clearly doesn’t work. Education is a system of imposed ignorance with a limited spectrum of acceptable ideas; it allows lively debate within that spectrum to allude to an illusion of knowledge. Either you repeat the same thing over and over again, or else you say something true, and it will sound like it’s from Neptune.

 

The whole purpose of education is to learn . Frankly, in school all we do is cramming every facts you got in books into your head to deal with the teachers and to do some standardize tests; over a period of time, you’ll forget everything about it. Why? Because they’re completely useless and boring. Most teachers think homework and quizes are precious, they help student to review the old knowledge. Here’s a thing: most students are stressed out because of the constant amount of homework and quizes after a whole day at school, not to mention mid-term and finals. Going to school is basically working without money.

 

As kids, we dreamed big, saying things we thought that was right; we didn’t care about being wrong, we had ideas that only make sense to us, that’s called creativity. As we grow up and go to school, we fear of creativity, we fear of being wrong; we follow instructions like robot and not even wonder is it right or wrong. People learn through failures, mistakes but schools don’t allow that – if you’re wrong, you’re an idiot. Schools judge students based on our scores, they don’t care about our creativity. Arts, Music, Drama, … are always subject that are least concerned, they always go with a distinctively long history and theories that take away all the creative in those subjects. Each individual thinks in a different way, there cannot be a score boundary for that but somehow in The Arts, you don’t think like the examiners, you’re wrong.

 

The internet, social media, mobile phone, etc. – they were all ideas, that’s how powerful human can be. They brought the ideas into real life, to connect people around the world, I can bet you school don’t teach you about ideas, they teach you about “mitosis”, “gravity”,… that are completely useless when we go into the real world. We’re not taught how to pay our taxes, how to pay a mortgage, what it’s like in the real world. No! We have no experience of how to have an independent life, how to get a job, we were taught what they think was necessary. We were taught to listen to others, but who listens to us?

 

Schools shape our thinking. As kids, we were curious about everything and we would not rest until we could find an answer. Now, in school, all we do is finding answers in books and we’re not even excited about it. We have so many talents that are yet discovered, as school shapes our thinking, we buried those talents by fearing we have no talents and focusing on being “right”.

 

The true nature of an intellectual is to question ideas and authority, not to be obedient to a weeding process so that you may better survive or be better ‘educated’. The educational system promotes lazy thinking habits for the purpose of root learning information that will lose hold in your mind a week after examination. True knowledge comes from an impassioned self-discovery of ideas and that shouldn’t be conflated with what you gain from educational institutions. It isn’t a virtue to be employable for it requires the passive submission of free thought so that you may better serve the powers that be.

 

I’m speaking up, are you?