Welts by Emily Popp, is a piece of writing that describes hazing, a form of initiating people into a group. In this case, the main character and the other sixth graders are being “initiated” into the baseball team. A group of eighth graders shoot the back of the sixth grader’s necks with a rubber band. Even if the sixth graders tell the coach, the coach dismisses it. However, two girls called Lily and Jamie never touch a rubber band and the main protagonist aspires to be them. When the main protagonist is in eighth grade herself, she doesn’t make fun of the sixth graders but instead offers them words of encouragement. This piece of writing is excellent because it tells people not to be a bully. Hazing is a way of bullying and Emily Popp describes it as so.

I think that this piece of writing is an encouraging piece of work that tells people that they don’t have to be a bully even though other people are. The main protagonist doesn’t become a bully like the other eighth graders. She becomes a person who is nice to sixth graders and becomes a person like Jamie and Lily, who don’t take part in hazing. “I know, in that moment, I have become what I aspired ti be: like Lily and Jamie. The main character has become an anti- bully, a person she can be proud of.