Waleed Qureshi – Hall 1121 Spring 2019

Me As A Writer – Waleed Qureshi

Waleed Qureshi

ENG 1121

Dr. Carrie Hall

5/21/2019

Me As A Writer

What is a writer? Sometimes I ask myself this question when I’m making up stories in my mind. I have had this thinking ever since I was little that every time I was extremely free, I thought up stories, putting myself in some heroic situations because even though I have no qualities as a hero or anyone responsible, I just like the thrill of a climax or unexpected turnaround. Even though I can think of fictions, this does not prove that I am a writer.

When I started this semester, I didn’t care much about writing. To say the truth, I still don’t but one thing has changed. I think just me getting encouraged was enough for me to enjoy what I write. One thing I learned in the beginning of the semester was that I really need to check my vocabulary. Before this I always thought that I know a lot of things and if I need, I will just end up getting some idea of what words I had to use and end up using them and they will be correct. The obvious problem was, I was wrong. To some extent I believe that my vocabulary was missing because I lived my life in Pakistan and I didn’t know what some words meant if I had to convert them and make people understand what I did or what I went through.

In my first essay the students had to share one part of our life where we could say that we learned something. As I said before, I lived my life in Pakistan and we had a different high school system there. In my essay I told a story when I failed my exams. Normally, they would be considered my high school years, but I didn’t know that. I thought that what I did gave me GED because at the end of the year when we finished our two years we got something called a General Certificate of Education or GCE, and I confused that. When professor read my story, she was totally confused because it made no sense that I did high school and got a GED? Professor Hall told me to come to her office. There the professor told me how much of confusing essay I had written. Luckily Professor Hall gave me a second chance, told me my mistakes. As it turns out, this feedback was just the thing I needed because I added everything that was missing to the essay.

I always thought that my less knowledge of the United States limited my capabilities because I had no memories of things other students thought as daily routines because I have not been here for as long as they have. I was reminded of this fact in the second essay when we had to choose a pop-culture artifact and write an essay on it or make something artistic with it. Since the artifact also needed to be something that had a message related to community. Everyone had something in their minds starting from songs of Rihanna to x-men movies. A friend of mine also chose a book on Malala Yousafzai who is from Pakistan and she wrote a book on her journey of how she fought her way for her studies. When my friend told me that she had picked that book as her artifact, I thought to myself, why didn’t I think of that but then I realized, even if I did I couldn’t have written anything on that because I hardly ever read any book. The professor gave us two days to think about what we wanted to write. After those two days, the only thing I managed to come up with was a Pakistani song that spoke about the problems the public cause for themselves. I wasn’t sure of this and was very confused until the professor told me that se would love to see that because that was something totally new. I listened to the professor because at first this motivated me, and another thing was I knew everything about this so making something with this was not impossible. I am somewhat good with art, so I decided that I am going to make a comic page showing the message that the song highlighted. When I first wrote and drew the piece, the professor told me that I had taken the instructions for the unit the wrong way because we had to write our opinion on the piece and I had written what the song told. The professor again gave me another chance and I wrote what I felt about that piece. Until a few days ago, I had forgotten about what I wrote until I saw the professor’s comment about how much she liked the piece because it highlighted what I truly felt about the song. I think I am getting overconfident while I write this but at this point I think it is okay.

So, what did I get out of this? How did I grow? I think, a way I grew in was that I learned seeing my mistakes and correcting them as we read about in an essay too that when a writer is writing a story, he must revise his work tirelessly and be open to his own mistakes. Accept them and find a solution to that. Professor Hall provided me with that chance to correct myself again and again and I am very thankful for that.

Waleed Qureshi – Project 4(Revision 3)

Waleed Qureshi

ENG 1121

Prof. Carrie Hall

05/16/2019

Homelessness

Homelessness is a problem everyone is aware of. We have seen it in train stations, trains, outside of subways, sidewalks, etc. Nowadays we see homelessness so much that it has become regular to us. So much regular that when we see a homeless person we think nothing and just walk away, ignoring them.

Homelessness is like a negative that comes with a positive. For example some addictive drugs like cigarettes are actually used for treatment but if drugs like these are used regularly, you get addicted to them. This is similar to homelessness as when cities get developed, more people move in to the city. The technology is improved and people end up getting more resources but, the more resources a city or state gets, the taxes has to be increased and that is what happens. Along with the taxes the rent for housing also increases and we all know how expensive it is to get a house in New York.

This problem began by the time of 1980’s. Before that the people in New York were able to get housing easily and never had to worry about rent. Whenever someone came into crisis, they just moved to a housing that was more cheaper or something that suited them more, something that they were comfortable with but after 1980, housing started getting more expensive at a fast pace forcing people to go homeless. Since the housing never stopped getting more expensive and hence the amount of people going homeless has also increased.

Some causes of this problems are low wage and unemployment. Today about 8 million of extremely low waged households pay half of their monthly income towards their housing. This means that the person probably has anything to spare for their saving due to other expenses for example groceries and other bills that one has to pay to survive the conditions of this world of technology that we live in. If not for that, if something bad happens for example an accident or something, you need to use your savings to handle that crisis but what if you don’t have any money to take care of that crisis, that is where a person goes homeless.

The other problem is the unemployment. This relates almost completely to the low waged problem. When people are not able to pay for their expenses or rent with low wage, how are they going to survive if they are not even able get money to feed themselves because they don’t even have a job. They don’t have a source of income. If people have some savings, they will survive but what if they run out of it eventually causing them to go homeless.

Now as students we all have something supporting us, but someday we have to be independent so we will might face similar problems to these and we will have to get through them but for now think about how you would feel if you were in their shoes so all I ask of all my fellow students is to help them in any way you can.

Video:

Santi, Feighbie, Tisha, Brandon, Waleed – Message To The Future

Project 1 Revision – Waleed Qureshi

Waleed Qureshi

ENG 1121

Prof. Carrie Hall

04/30/2019

Project 1 Revised

August 13, 2015, that was the day I was lost. Lost as I was so deep into the sea of disappointment that I just did not know what to do. Something I was confident at a time that would be so easy to achieve but the results just left me utterly confused.

September 2014, I started my first year as a Cambridge O-Level (both years equal high school) student in Pakistan. I was always very bad at studies scoring a C or D, at max I got a B in my English or Urdu. I first I thought of this just as a normal year, but then as I started progressing through the semester, I started getting focused on what I had to accomplish. This meant that I had to get good grades in my Urdu, Islamiat and Pakistan Studies since my parents had to pay an expensive fee which was separate from the school fees itself. This basically meant that we had to pay double the amount of an expensive fee already. This was my motivation for the semester.

Our first term ended by the end of December so that meant that this was the time to study for the CIEs (Cambridge International Examination). My friend at that time talked me into attending a professor’s academy who taught us Pakistan Studies and Islamiat. He was a great teacher and always cleared our confusions when we had any. Another thing that he did while teaching was that when he told us to copy the notes, used to tell us life lessons that he had learned in his life and the things that we may encounter at some point in our life. I don’t remember most of them but there was one that I haven’t forgotten and probably won’t forget. He told us that if we say something, stick by it. Overall, I had fun studying with him and I believed that I was ready to get an A or at least B in my finals CIEs.

We had our exams in May to June at exams halls that were usually very far from all our houses so me and two other friends that we would go to the exam halls together with the friend who had a driver to drop him off and, so we did. I wasn’t worried about Islamiat and Pakistan studies, but I was worried about Urdu because during the whole year, I didn’t take any extra classes or academies for Urdu.

Our results for these exams came to us in August since they were checked at Cambridge University. Then came the fateful day on which we got our exams back, August 13th. I woke up at ten. Got to school at 11. The school was 5 minutes’ walk from my house, so I went there after I got easy. There was a complete rush of students trying to get their results. Of course, my classmates and friends were there as well. Now most of my class was really happy because they had gotten their results and they had very good grades. This made me confident that I might have passed easily. I went to the room everyone was getting their results at. My turn came, I received a copy of my exam and an original sent from the Cambridge University.

I opened the envelope in which the result was contained. My result had one fail (‘u’ grade which is called ungraded in Pakistan), one D and one B. I was totally devastated. Totally confused. Was this what I deserved? Did I not work hard enough? These were just some of the questions that came into my mind. Everyone kept asking me my grade, but I had lost the guts to say anything but obviously I did answer them and told them my grades. After a few minutes, I found my old friend and we told each other our grades and while he had all As, I hardly passed in mine. We later decided to go out to eat something while I gathered the guts to explain my grades to my parents because they had very high hopes from me.

That day, either I was extremely sad or the food at that restaurant we went to tasted bad. I couldn’t tell. After sulking for half an hour, I dropped my friend at his house and then went back to my own. I told my mother about the result. My mother showed her usual face and basically made me feel guilty with her somewhat usual insults which never mattered to me, but today was different. Today, I felt like she was saying the truth. She was always saying the truth before too in her insults, but I knew that they were right and just told my mother that why should I change myself because I liked being what I was and at that time, I felt like I was perfect. Until then of course.

My father and brother lived in New York, so they still didn’t know. My father lived there for almost 20 years at that time because of work. He only called us there for the summer but otherwise we stayed in Pakistan. The reason being, he thought that us knowing our own culture is very important. When I was young, I never understood his decision. I even like 4 or 5 times when I was young because I wanted to live in New York but now I understand what he meant and I respect his decision. Now I am at the point at which my main reason to work hard is so someday I can return with peace.

My brother on the other hand lived in Pakistan his whole life, just like me and left Pakistan after his O-levels and A-levels to continue his study. Just like I am here right now. I always looked up to my brother because to me, he lived his life to the fullest. He got good grades in school, played sports tournaments and even went out of city sometimes just to chill with his friends.

Of course, I didn’t tell them the results myself because I was scared. My mother told them the results while I stayed behind the webcam hearing everything. Both were very angry. Now obviously I had to give those exams again. I again paid the school 15000 Rupees and this time the fee was lower because I only had to repeat the failed subject.

The next exams were in October to November. This meant that I had at least 2 months to prepare but this time however things were different. It’s not that I studied harder than the last time. No. How could I? Because after one week my self-esteem had faded away and I wasn’t fazed by anything. My friend that went to the restaurant with me even started to beg me to study. He even invited me to his house to attempt a past paper, but I just quit after 5 minutes.

Now came the days of them exams. I had to give 2 papers for one subject. This basically meant that exam was divided into 2 parts. My father and brother were also in Pakistan. This made the situation even more intense. I faced constant talks about my grades and how I might fail again but I survived and usually spent my time in my room. I did stop going out to chill though. So, for my first paper, I managed to study one week. Every one of my family members knew this and that was why they were worried. I gave the paper. I had almost twenty days to prepare I believe. And, I did nothing in those twenty days. Instead I just reviewed my old notes one day before the exam. I don’t know why but at the time, the only thing I worried about was that I was not worried at all. After that I just gave the last exam and waited for results to come in and I was going to receive them on January 15th, I think.

The day finally came, even though I didn’t hope for it to come but it did. I just went to my school for regular classes, I had even forgotten about the results but then literally the whole class came to me and congratulated me. That was the point I realized that I talk a lot in class. Then my most of my friends came running towards me and congratulated me as well. I had realized by then that everyone was congratulating me for my result, but I still did not know what grade I had. All I knew was that I passed. Upon asking my friends, I was told that I got a C and even though this might not be something one person would be happy about, but this was greater than an A for me because at this point anything would be good if I passed.

This was in a way the funniest thing that ever happened to me. I couldn’t even pass a subject after studying for 3 months and now after doing almost nothing related to studies, I passed. I even ended passing the next exams without being failed.

I don’t know how I managed to pull of the things I did but I managed to take away from it was that sometimes even failing is very important because it teaches you to deal with much bigger failures that you might face later on in life. All you need to be is thankful for what you already have and take everything just as a bad experience.

Research Memo – Waleed Qureshi

Waleed Qureshi

Prof Carrie Hall

ENG 1121

Research Memo: Causes of Homelessness

In my research I have gained more insight on the causes of homelessness and the overall process of becoming homeless. Every city in the United States has some sort of homelessness involved in it no matter how much developed it may be, but that is the problem. The more a city is developed, the more chances it has for homelessness to increase.

This is because when a city or state becomes more developed, obviously its taxes also increase and as you follow through, the rents of houses or apartments also increases and unfortunately some people are not able to put up with the increasing rates of the city. This includes housing. According to a source, in 1970s, the community had plenty affordable housing. This meant that even when an individual or a family faced a crisis, the family or the individual just moved to another location with similar price range but then by the middle of 1980s, the count of affordable houses started to decrease significantly and has not increased ever since. Instead it continued to rise and the population of the city which did not receive enough income began to come on the streets.

Even today, 8 million extremely low-income households pay at least half of their income towards housing therefore putting them at the risk of homelessness if any unfortunate events were supposed to take place. This problem has continued to grow and even in New York city which is supposed to be the state with the highest population has not been able to avoid the problem of homelessness and about 75000 of its population is moving towards homelessness at an increasing pace just like other cities with high population due to high rent in the city.

Another reason for poverty is the lack of employment in a household. The equation is simple, and everyone knows it. The equation is that if you can’t bring money home, you got no money for rent and nobody is going to go easy on you and they will kick you out. As harsh as it may sound, unfortunately it is the truth. Even for myself I have heard this truth from my father. As I just explained, unemployment needs to decrease for homelessness to decrease.

Another reason for homelessness that is like unemployment is low-wage. As explained earlier, extremely low waged households lose half of their income goes into paying the rent. This leaves half the income for food, bills, repairs and other purchases a man must make to keep his household together.

In a recent report by Early Intervention to Prevent Persistent Homelessness presented us with two of many reasons of homelessness which were low-wage workers and the ones who lose their jobs, and the youth who get into public assistance. Now according to the researchers, while majority of these groups are able to break free of the problem of homelessness quickly, but still 8 percent of these groups tend to stay homeless.

According to another survey. A random group sleeping on the street was selected and from them who were aged from twenty to fifty-six, five of them are unemployed, one is homeless, some of them were out of work for months and some just wanted to get into a new career.

Wake Up!! – Waleed Qureshi

Waleed Qureshi

ENG 1121

Dr. Carrie Hall

3/26/2019

Laga Reh (Keep It Up) is a song by Shehzad Roy, a Pakistani singer. Everyone knows that no country is perfect and Pakistan is of them. It is filled with corrupt politicians and protesting people. Which is not very uncommon in any country. In this song the singer is telling people that everyone in this country, after every little period of time, the country is in a delicate situation and it never changes. He is telling the people that they are just too greedy when it comes to themselves. Everyone is just not satisfied with what they get. They always want more. In this, to some extent they themselves don’t understand that when they are trying to do something for themselves, they end up making it worse for the other person who is not in the same position as they are and they never stop. In the song, when the singer explains this to the public, a man just says, “so what should I do, lose hope”, at this time the singer just tells the man to never mind and keep doing what he’s doing. According to the song, even elders of the country have lost all hope and they are just praying that God will handle everything by himself so just leave everything to Him. The singer even explains that just by saying this, people are still not doing anything better and leaving everything in the hands of God. Then the singer talks about the good people in the world. He says that if anyone had a chance to, their greed would not let them stay good and they will instantly turn into the people that they are trying to stop. He tells in the song that even right now anyone who has stayed good was ditched at some point when they almost turned bad. I don’t completely agree to this that not all people are like the people he displayed in the song but I don’t completely disagree with him either because even I don’t know what I might do if I had everything in the world I wanted because probably by then I would so self absorbed, I might not realize what I might be doing wrong. In the end he gets to the straight to the point and explains that everyone is just sleeping and they need to wake up and look around and realize what is happen next to them or to them but if they don’t do it right now, it will probably be too late but right now nobody understands him.

LINK TO SONG:

TRANSLATION:

Shehzad Roy: When I was ten years old, I heard on the 9 o’clock news that Pakistani history is at a critical crossroads/crisis.

Kid: Daddyy!!

Then I turned twenty, and heard on the news once again…that Pakistani history is at a critical crossroads.

Having tied your impossible dreams to yourself, you’re standing, holding your ground.
You’re an ordinary person, dude, enough, can’t do it anymore.

Political activist: So what should I do? Lose hope?
Roy: No. Just keep at it.

Chorus:
Keep at it, keep at it, you keep going.
Keep waiting, keep waiting, you remain stubborn.
Laying still, laying still, you stay still.

Respected elders–they asked me, how will the nation run?
Respected elders–I told them, keep at it, keep at it.
Respected elders–they asked me, how will the nation run?
Respected elders–I told them

I’m not concerned about whether the nation will run. I’m concerned that it might go on running like this.

Keep at it, keep at it, you keep going.
Keep waiting, keep waiting, you are waiting.
Laying still, laying still, you stay still.

Dude, there’s a lot of tension in the nation.
It’s nothing, it’s nothing, leave everything to Allah.

Don’t do a thing.
You don’t do a thing.
Everything you leave to Allah.
Allah is your protector, period.

Oi, brother, you too are facing a crossroads (can also mean “have become a cause of catastrophe“),
holding your ground.
You’re an ordinary man–hey, stop! …Now it’s painful, dude.

Lawyer: No way. There’re still a few noble people remaining…on the planet.

Respected elder–he asked me, who is noble, tell me.
Respected elder–I told him

A noble person is he who hasn’t had the chance yet to prove himself otherwise

Keep at it, keep at it, you keep going.
Keep waiting, keep waiting, you are waiting.
Laying still, laying still, you stay still.
Keep at it, keep at it, you keep going.
Keep waiting, keep waiting, you are waiting.
Laying still, laying still, you stay still.

Reporter: The entire country’s law and safety has been restored to order.

And then one day the ground will disappear beneath your feet (pun, can also mean “you will face the biggest catastrophe” and “your land will be snatched away“)
And then to you, they will say..
They will say, “you’re soaring in the clouds.”
You’re soaring in the clouds.
(pun, can also mean “you are finally free“)

Poor man: So…will we really, truly be soaring in the clouds? Eh?
Roy: If you won’t understand, fool, then…!

Poor man: That boy’s face resembled Shehzad Roy’s so much…

Politician 1: Sir, it might be time to wake up the nation.
Politician 2: Don’t wake them up! They’re sleeping because of some very important work.

This image requires alt text, but the alt text is currently blank. Either add alt text or mark the image as decorative.

Keep It Up!! – Waleed Qureshi

Waleed Qureshi

ENG 1121

Dr. Carrie Hall

14/3/2019

Keep it up (Laga Reh) is a song by Shahzad Roy which conveys to the people that all most people do is complain about what is going wrong and all they do is just talk. They talk about the ways people should improve the society but do nothing and even when the singer is trying to motivate the people by also telling them about the problems, the people just come up with one question, “so what should we do”. I am planning to make a comic page which shows the main idea of my pop culture artifact depicting how people are similar to sleeping when they are asked to work for themselves. I did almost end up giving up this idea because I thought that there is no way I can explain the song to the audience because of its difference in language. I did start off with the Idea that I should make a sketch but then I realized that the sketch would not be much help because there is not much that I can fit into the sketch. Since I am somewhat good with art, drawing was the only thing I could think of when thinking about this piece. Later I realized that I can also create a comic page when I was going through my old drawings and I found the comic page that I once made for my very own story but ended up abandoning later. Though it did disappoint me that I forgot about the piece, but I ended up realizing that a comic page was what I needed.

Professor I plan to make a comic page showing the purpose of the song…

This image requires alt text, but the alt text is currently blank. Either add alt text or mark the image as decorative. — Professor I plan to make a comic page showing the purpose of the song…

Rhetorical Questions – Waleed Qureshi

Waleed Qureshi

END 1121

Dr. Carrie Hall

03/07/2019

Q1. Who is the speaker? What do we know about this person? How do we know it?

The speaker is Shehzad Roy. He is a motivator who is trying to tell people to work for themselves by taunting them in a way.

Q2. What is the occasion? When or where did it occur?

It occurs in a random street of Pakistan where Shehzad Roy is speaking of the problem of the public.

Q3. Who is the audience. What group of people is he speaking to? How do you know?

His audience is the people sitting at home complaining about the problems Pakistan usually goes through but doing nothing about it. We know this because he actually narrates the situations at every point where people ask him, “so what should we do” and he answers, “nothing, just keep it up(sarcastically)”.

Q4. What is the purpose if the piece? What is the writer trying to accomplish?

He is trying to motivate people work for themselves or for the betterment of their country.

Q5. What is the tone of this? How can you tell the writer’s feelings by the words or phrases (for other clues)?

Throughout the song, the tone is sarcastic but in the end the tone changes to angry because people are still not understanding anything about what he is saying.

Q6. Other thoughts of this piece? And by the way, what’s your name?

I liked this song because it relates to one of almost every family member who just sits there in front of the television talking about that the country isn’t doing well and people need to do this and that but when it comes to themselves, they do the same things or some people only think of the things that support their ideas and ignore the rest. My name is Waleed Mustafa Qureshi.

Link to the song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXesOFA8e0E

translation for song: