When Mr. McDonell first emailed me to “come to his office” , obviously I was very nervous, as anyone would be. But then he told me I wasn’t in trouble so the fear was relieved, and I just became curious. He began to talk about this role play that he wanted our class to take part in. By this, I became excited because I LOVED the Athens-Melos role play we had done a few months before. He then asked me how good my acting skills were. I was very confused. After telling me, he wanted me to play a special role in the role play, I got excited.

After being told about Robespierre, and the part he played in the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror, the first thing I thought of was Mr. Peabody and Sherman. In one of the beginning scenes of the movie, they time travel to the French Revolution, where Mr. Peabody miraculously saves himself from being be-headed. That is definitely one of my favorite movies so it obviously came to mind.

When we first started to write our “introductions” for the trial, I got to my research. I wrote about how he was a lawyer just like his father, and spent most of his life in France, which I figured would make my argument more compelling. In the beginning of the trial, when we read our introductions, I tried to make myself sound more distinguished and proper, so people would think what I had to say was important.

During the trial, I did little speaking, except for when I was giving my testimony. I sat quietly in the back and took notes. I took a lot on notes. The biggest thing for me was taking direct quotes. If someone said something that maybe they wanted to take back later, they couldn’t because it had already been recorded. I like to think that for the majority of the trial I was in stealth mode. Except when I got up to give my testimony. I wanted to make sure I was really expressing my thoughts not only through what I was saying, but how I was saying it. I made sure to be firm in my expression. It was almost a preview of what was going to happen.

When the trial concluded, and the King was found guilty and sentenced to death, I knew it was my time to sneak in, and show everyone what I had been concocting behind the scenes. I almost was going for “scary” in a way. I wanted people to almost fear me because of the power I had. The element of surprise definitely assisted me in that way, because nobody knew that I had the power I did. No one was expecting it either. I made sure to show no hesitation or remorse!

Although this was just a school assignment, I did take it very seriously. I wanted to transform myself into this character, and make it look good. I enjoyed taking part in this, and I hope there will be more opportunities like this one in my future classes.