The seniors carried heavy school supplies and emotional burdens. Park carried extra schoolwork weighing 4 kilograms due to his parents' high expectations. David daydreamed about a girl named Leah to escape his responsibilities. When Park fainted after mock exams, David realized he needed to focus on his studies instead of Leah. He deleted their messages and committed to being a model student until graduation.

1. The Things They Carried
The things they carried were largely determined by their schoolwork. Among the
necessities were pencils, pens of various different colors, textbooks, notebooks,
wristwatches, Student ID cards, laptops and water bottles. Together they weighed 10 to
15 kilograms. David, who was the executive student council member, carried with him
student body’s expectation. Before he fainted, Park who was often referred to by his
peers as a “nerd” carried extra pencils, pens, erasers, and an extra bottle just for energy
drinks. By necessity, and because it was unavoidable, they carried with them the never
ending stress, and the feeling of exhaustion where your eyes seem to flutter and your
body feel unusually heavy. They were called the seniors.
David carried his phone and the thousand of text messages from a girl named
Leah, a sophomore at a high school downtown. They were not love messages, but David
liked to think other wise. During especially boring classes, David would often take out
his phone, hold it under the desk, and spend the rest of the class reading and hoping.
Sometime David could even see her mouth smiling and speaking out to him. But it was
never romantic, just casual complaining about school or her friends. However, David
clung to those moments. He was in technicality present in classes, and listening to
lectures, but he wasn’t really there. He was with Leah in downtown coffee shop chatting
away, listening to her problems. As the class bell rang, slowly, not really paying
attention, he would get up and move among his friends, never fully returning to reality.

2. Until he fainted, Park carried extra workbooks from his academies weighing
about 4 kilograms, which for him was a necessity. He carried with him the fragility of his
body, which meant that he had to carry with him inhalers, and Tylenol pills for his
headaches. However, for Park, above all the things he had to carry the heaviest, the most
unbearable burden was his parent’s expectation of him to be perfect. Every passing day,
Park felt like the burden was getting more unmanageable to carry. Every question that he
did not know how to solve, every mark taken away from any of his seemingly infinitely
many tests and assignments, and every comment about the importance of grades from his
parent over a dinner table was another encumbrance and obligations he had to bear.
In a sense they carried each other. They carried what the other could no longer
bear. They were in this together and yet in a sense they were each in their own different
realm. To escape their realms they found jokes to tell. They used hard vocabulary and
profanity to help satisfy the need to feel in control. They would curse their classes, their
assignments and tests. It wasn’t brutality, just stage presence. They were actors. Before
he fainted, Park played a role of a perfectionist or as other people called him, “a nerd”.
To others, he would pretend he loved what he was doing. He would pretend how doing
homework and school assignment was what he really enjoyed doing. David, whose
parents worked two jobs to pay for his tuition, pretended he was a diligent student. Every
time someone asked what his grades were he would tell them his desired score. As they
acted in front of each other they would actually feel some of the load vanish.
Nevertheless, when they lied down on their beds to sleep and reflect on their day. They
would feel their burdens crushing down upon them doubling in weight. But for that
briefest moment of relief, they kept acting.

3. What they carried varied by schoolwork. In the first week of February, before
Park fainted, it was time for senior’s mock exams. They carried all they could, their
notes, extra textbooks, extra pens, pencils, erasers and extra batteries for their calculators,
partly for being prepared, partly for the illusion of being prepared. In some way, it was
worse not taking the test. When they were taking the test they knew what was required of
them and what they had to do. When they were waiting they did not know what to do.
Some would listen to music in silent, some would chat and some would feel sympathy for
those taking the test. David, who was waiting for Park, was studying for his next test. But
without willing it he was thinking of Leah. How he wished he could be somewhere,
anywhere else with her. He just wanted to be with her.
Few daydreams later, Park and the rest of the math higher-level students walked
out of the gym. David went to greet his friends and ask about their test, but his heart
wasn’t in it. He should have noticed how unusually pale Park’s face looked, and how
there were dark bags under his eyes. But he didn’t. At that moment when David was
asking, “How was it?” was when Park fainted and fell forwards on to the ground with a
thud. “Oh shit” someone said. “Is he fucking dead?” Someone else asked. “No I think he
just fainted.” Others answered.
The night after Park fainted, David lay on his bed. His phone was powered on,
and was on the usual chat page. But he wasn’t reading the messages as usual. He was just
looking, staring, than he started erasing all the messages from Leah. He was determined
now. He was a student after all, a senior at that. He did not have time to hope and follow
after a girl. He would get his shit together. No more reading messages in class, no more
day dreaming and most of all no more acting. He would be what he is supposed to be, a

4. model student. A student and a person who his parents and his friend needed him to be,
that is what he will become. From now on he won’t be just passing by, he will march
forward with purpose and dignity until the end, until graduation.

5. Rationale
For this written task, I have chosen to explore Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They
Carried”. Following the same structure of O’Brien’s story, I am attempting to write a
story about school the same way he writes about war. I attempt to show my target
audience, any adults of age, what its like to be a senior in high school studying IB. The
purpose of this written task is to emulate Tim O’Brien’s style of story telling and apply it
to my story about being a senior in high school studying IB. This story will show these
adults the physical and emotion burdens the seniors have to carry. This is achieved by
imitating the confusing, but somewhat direct and grandiose writing style used in “The
Things They Carried”. I will achieve this by using the similar pattern of listing various
things the senior’s had to “carry”, the awkward phrasing of sentences, and some profanity
to narrate my story much like “The Things They Carried”. Adopting the writing style in
“The Things They Carried” into my written task demonstrates my knowledge and
understanding of how Tim O’Brien uses his writing style to convey various themes. My
written task intends to explore the course by showing, through the use of Tim O’Brien’s
writing style, I am able to effectively communicate my theme of the physical and
emotional burden seniors have to carry and the inability to communicate to your
classmates.
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