Writing Samples

Here are writing samples from three different social studies courses: Economics, AP Psychology, and 8th grade civics. But I’ll start out with the zombies. I wrote this public video for ASU Prep to explain the guided discovery method. I write short, interesting videos that are a direct path to understanding. Also lots of easter eggs 😉

Guided Discovery Prevents Zombies:

Econo-Man!

I started penciling comics for curriculum development and I absolutely love it. I write regular lessons and digital interactives, too, but this is better. I even have had the chance to do narrative development for history simulations, but those are proprietary–I can brag about them at my job interview if you want me too, though! My favorite work has been level design for a dystopian world I created for an 8th-grade civics course. You can see the video script for the intro to that game after the AP Psych sample.

Interested in designing a civics video game with me? Want to bankroll some Radical History comix? Email me!

Here is Economan! I penciled him for an employer and have been given permission to display the completed version here. BUT you may not under any circumstances re-print or publish this.

And now for the completed project (thanks to some amazing graphic designers) Sorry if it is a little blurry, I only have jpgs for my own use.

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AP PSYCHOLOGY WRITING SAMPLE

Here is some copy I wrote for an AP Psychology Course. My students might remember me drawing these guys on the board (they looked A LOT like Econo-Man) back in the day.

Freud in the City: The Structure of Personality

We don’t know about you, but [Redacted] personality is made up mostly of awesome and hungry with a dash of sarcasm and lolcats.  All humans, in truth, are not just one trait or characteristic.  You’ll remember from the introduction that your personality is the unique combination of behavior and thought characteristics that are consistent across various scenarios over time.  So we are all different and special like snowflakes, but our snowflake doesn’t change that much in different situations.

According to Freud, our personalities are made up of three main components which interact with each other (and conflict with each other).  Sounds like characters in a TV show, doesn’t it? We do, so we are going to explain these three characters: the Id, the Ego, and the Superego, as kids just out of college trying to make it in the big city. Let’s set our Freudian sitcom in a city apartment building. 

Id’s Smelly Basement:

Our show opens in the basement apartment.  It is dark, except for a neon beer sign glowing on the wall and a sliver of sunlight coming through the filthy half window. There is a haze of questionable smoke in the air, and Id is playing a video game.  He is wearing boxers and a Dr. Who Tardis bathrobe.  Surrounding him are many boxes of delivery Chinese food, several objects to smoke weed with, and the biggest super-dooper-big-gulper man-sized sippy cup ever.  It is a very good thing they haven’t invented smell-o-vision because Id’s hovel smells like a port-a-potty fell on a pile of dirty clothes after someone pelted it with a bunch of tacos.  

Id represents the primitive, instinctive component of personality.  It operates according to the pleasure principle.  Id wants, all the time, to satisfy biological urges.

The only reason Id gets out of bed is to eat and poop. The rest of the time, he just sleeps and has sex.  He participates only in primary process thinking: primitive, illogical, irrational, and fantasy oriented, like a three-year-old. He’s basically a big man-baby.  

You may be thinking of a few people you know who fit Id’s description, but you haven’t met a real Id.  If Id existed in real life, he’d be dead in 5 minutes from eating all the donuts and doing all the drugs.  In our TV version, Id’s parents pay for everything.  He never leaves the apartment (more on that later.)

Ego, The Landlord 

Knock knock!  Ego enters.  He’s wearing a suit, but it’s vintage and cool, with a bowtie, and designer glasses which he pushes up nervously as the laugh-track dies down.  His whole life, he’s had to keep Id in line.  Let’s say he’s the younger brother, who makes all the decisions for his big brother.  If Id ever left the apartment, Ego would be the one bailing him out of jail.

Ego’s apartment is on the ground floor, because he’s the manager.  His place is nice and clean.  It looks like it came out of an Ikea catalog:  European lines, chrome and light wood.  The appropriate, if occasional, splash of color really ties each room together.  Ego is exactly what society ordered.  If his brother, Id, represents the reasons to get in and out of bed, Ego represents the reasons to make the bed and purchase coordinating throw pillows and a duvet cover.  Ego is a kiss-up.  He does whatever society asks until he has all the gold stars.

The Ego is the decision-making component of personality that operates according to the reality principle.  The reality principle seeks to delay gratification of the id’s urges until it is appropriate.   It conducts secondary process thinking, which is rational, realistic, and oriented toward problem-solving. 

Ego has long-term goals and tries to stay out of trouble.  With his big brother urging him to do inappropriate things all the time, this isn’t easy.  He stands between the Id and the social world (with all its expectations and norms), and it’s a darn good thing he does.

It is important to note that these two brothers completely lack morality.  Everything they do is for very selfish reasons.  Ego follows rules because it benefits him personally (gold stars) and Id doesn’t care about rules because all he does is want.  You can see how these two brothers would fight with each other.  The Id tries to get the Ego to do all sorts of inappropriate things and the Ego tries to get the Id to wear pants, bathe, and stop hitting on cousin Jane.  But the real conflict comes from little sister: Super Ego.

Super Ego: Home from the Peace Corps

You all know her, the kid who got straight A’s and started a non-profit to aid hungry orphans while developing a cure for eczema.  Super Ego is technically homeless, but the super-cool version of homeless since she’s a couch-surfing world traveler with a schmancy backpack filled with all the super tiny things at REI you always wanted a reason to buy.  She would totally renounce all possessions, though; she’s zen like that.  

Super Ego is always trying to convince her brothers to be less materialistic, to help others, to go vegan, or recycle, or adopt a highway.  She’s a gluten-free, non-GMO, card-carrying member of the ACLU.  When she enters a scene in our little show, half the audience groans in a unified eye-roll at what is basically a walking, talking, buzz-kill.  To make things worse, she wears a cape and a big grin.  Whenever she shows up, she pauses, puts her hands on her hips, adopts the super-hero stance, and says, “Hi boys, it’s me!”

Super Ego is the moral component of personality.  It incorporates social standards about right and wrong.  Freud believes that this part is internalized throughout childhood and emerges during the anal stage, when a child is three to five years old.

She may be a drag, but she’s kind of important.  Without our caped crusader, her brothers would run a brothel out of the apartment building or start working with the Mafia.  The brothers Id and Ego don’t care about right and wrong, they only care about what benefits them (even if their ideas of what that is differ).  Let’s look at this classic episode of Freud in the City:

Id lusts after the woman who delivers his laundry.  Ego tells him to knock it off, since she’s married to a very powerful man in the neighborhood.  Id says he doesn’t care, because he’s Id, he just wants what he wants.  They decide that they need to kill the husband so Id can get what he wants.  Ego is fine with that since it circumvents the married rule, and as long as no one gets caught, it benefits both Id and Ego if the husband is murdered.  Ego won’t have to feel less powerful anymore.  So they hatch a plan to murder the husband. 

Makes for decent TV, doesn’t it?  But would you actually want to be friends with someone who thought it was totally okay to kill a guy just because he had power and a hot wife?  Let’s hope not. So here comes Super Ego to say, “Hey guys, I see you really want to murder someone because he has something you want.  However, you shouldn’t because it is wrong to kill people.  I’m going to have to stop you from doing this terrible thing.”  

Id says “But I want the woman!” at the same time as Ego says “But we won’t get caught!” The dramatic background music swells as the cameras zoom in on young Super Egos face.  Have no fear, Super Ego is impervious to her whiney brothers and uses her super-power–guilt–to stop them from committing a heinous crime.  See why she wears a cape?  

Pretty much every episode of this TV show goes like that.  If it isn’t sex, it is aggression.  Id and Ego fight about something.  If Id convinces Ego, then Super Ego has to step in and stop them from doing something awful.  Sometimes Id wants something that is totally okay with society and morality and there is no conflict.  But usually, someone has a problem with what the Id wants, and the whole show is basically keeping Id in the basement and keeping Ego from doing the terrible things he and Id cook up.  

Where they live:

Id can’t actually do any of the terrible things he thinks up, because he never leaves the basement.  This is where we take TV show metaphor and talk about levels of consciousness.  The basement of our show is the unconscious.  In Freud’s view of consciousness, “what happens in the unconscious, stays in the unconscious.”  We are rarely aware of it.  Usually, when we think of the word conscious, we think of “awake.”  If we are conscious, we are awake, if we are unconscious, we are asleep.  For Freud, conscious means “aware” instead of awake.  You are aware of your conscious thoughts and feelings, you are not aware of your unconscious thoughts and feelings.  You don’t know what Id is feeling or thinking.  He’s there and he’s doing it, but the first whisper you get is through his brother, Ego.  Ego and Super Ego both exist at the unconscious level (they know exactly what Id is thinking) as well as the preconscious level and the conscious level.

So if the conscious is everything we are aware of at a point in time, and the unconscious is everything we aren’t aware of, what is the preconscious?  The preconscious is all the thoughts and feelings we were previously aware of, that we are no longer actively thinking about, but could recall if we wanted to: like what we had for breakfast, or what we watched on TV last night.  

According to Freud, we get a peek into unconscious thoughts and feelings by observing slips of the tongue (also called Freudian slips) where you mean to say one thing, but your unconscious desires make you say something else.  Like accidentally saying “see ya!” instead of “hello” when you see someone you unconsciously dislike.  Another way Freud believes we can observe unconscious desires is by interpreting dreams.  You can go ahead and google your way down that rabbit hole on your own.  Spoiler alert:  according to Freud, it is all about sex and aggression.

The point of psychoanalysis is to uncover the unconscious desires that are causing conflict and anxiety in a person and help them to face these desires head-on.  We’ll talk about how this never-ending conflict among the Id, Ego and Super Ego affect us in daily life next lesson.  For now, let’s sum up our characters and levels of consciousness:

• The Id is the wanter.  He lives in your unconscious and wants things; some are good some are bad.  When they are bad, Id conflicts with Ego and Super Ego.  

• The Ego is the rules guy.  He wants to benefit from society’s rules and so he keeps the Id in line for the most part.  He is the aspect of your personality we see the most.  

• The Super Ego is your moral self.  She keeps the other two aspects in line, but if there is too much super ego, you can feel excessive feelings of guilt, which can be just as harmful as the other conflicts that arise among these three components of your personality.  

• Consciousness is the part of your thoughts and emotions that you are aware of and with which you contact the outside world.  Ego and Super Ego are both part of your conscious self.

• Preconscious is the material just beneath the surface of consciousness waiting to be retrieved.  Your accessible memories.  Ego and Super Ego are both part of your preconscious as well.

• Unconscious consists of thoughts, memories, and desires well below the surface of conscious awareness, but these thoughts have a huge influence over your behavior.  You just don’t know about it.  Super Ego and Ego are both part of your unconscious. That is where they fight with the master of the unconscious: the Id.

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And, finally, here is the video script for the Civics game that never happened:

Sim Intro/ Game Preview for “Philadelphia: 2776”

Estimated Time: 2 minutes

Video Style: Animation

AUDIO	VIDEO suggested images all from sim or are sim-related.
Music UP
Philadelphia 2776.	SUPER: Philadelphia 2776
A new revolution is drawing to a close	Scan of empty war-torn streets, crumpled propaganda posters blowing in the wind like tumbleweeds. Graffiti with phrases like “Feed Us” “Philly has Rights!” “We Shall Overcome” are sprayed across President Reign’s Big Brother-esque posters.
It looks like the United Districts of Philadelphia might carve out their city from the vice grip of tyrannical President Reign.	Scan to barricades and tape marked “safe zone” and “Property of the United Districts of Philadelphia.” Maybe a few people picking up the detritus of war.  Fixing something.  The poster/banner of Reign being torn down or a new poster being pasted up over it.
You  have been called to your home district of You Are Here to do your part for the rebellion	Map of Philadelphia, a You Are Here pin marks the Independence Hall, the Constitution Center… the area is circled
not as a soldier but as a scholar.	Image of a collection sequence where the PC’s hand grabs a scroll from the annex and unrolls it on a desk. It is the Declaration of Independence.
Here, in the ruins of a democracy long since disintegrated	Pan and scan the ruin and then inside the hall with dust motes swirling, maybe some flashes of other rooms?
you will work to design the government to lead the United Districts of Philadelphia through the dawn of a new Era.	Insert play from game about this, maybe editing the declaration from the combined sim 2 of 2 in mod 1, maybe flashlight over ghost writing on a wall to give them a taste or some other visually dynamic action indicating what “work to design a government” might be.
Help will come from unexpected corners of this crumbling edifice from a time long ago.	Pan the holograms in a still of Fallah introducing the team. Give the viewer time to read some stats.
A fortress  against President Reign’s spy bots	Show Spy bot with “DROPS” stenciled on the side with Pres Reign’s logo.  It is attached to the corner of a brick building like a monkey with four legs.  It turns its head from where it was looking to the screen, a 180 swivel.
and a repository for relics squirreled away from the clutches of Reign and his predecessors by rebels and thieves alike.	Pan to Jefferson’s copy machine, Ben Franklin’s glasses, a television set mounted in the corner of the kitchen, a doll with a pull cord is pulled by the PC but no sound can be heard.
The AI protects the relics inside. And has evolved along with the artifacts.	A laser comes out of the copy machine to scan the PC, The PC puts on Ben’s glasses and sees a video of the DNC protesters shouting “The whole world is watching!”
The few that get in, can’t leave without appeasing the gatekeeper.	Show the lock from sim 1 with the LED readout above it “Exit is not permitted without security code.”
You will need to return to this place many times while you complete the mission, and each visit will bring a new challenge and a new way out.	PC racing through the halls to the jail sequence. A view from the tower scanning the city, King George laughing, Carl jumping and clapping.  Any sequence of tasks and characters really.
Just remember Young Scholar, for this your first mission:	POV PC is back at the entrance.  All the holograms are up on ice walls in the shape of the semi-circular window light cast on the floor. The artifacts below the balcony are barely visible in the shadow of the balcony.  Fallah is to the right, gesturing as if talking.
MUSIC OUT
Locke is the key.	Just a black screen. Maybe the keyhole from the entrance.

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