Transom Shows: My Struggle With Obesity

Radio Rookies:
My Struggle With Obesity
Produced by Samr "Rocky" Tayeh w/ Czerina Patel
Edited by Karen Michel

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Rocky
Rocky

About the Story

Fifteen-year old Rocky, a Palestinian American, lives with his parents and siblings in Brooklyn. Rocky's story is about his emotional struggle with obesity. Three times the size of his twin sister, Rocky is the target of many of his siblings' jokes and insults. When they're not ridiculing him, his family tries to entice him to lose weight by offering him incentives like a laptop computer or $1,000 if he loses 30 pounds. Rocky earnestly wants to slim down but doesn't know how to control his eating. Rocky adores his family and would love the $1,000, but he thinks his siblings have no idea how much their jokes hurt him and how they're actually causing him to eat more, not less.

Notes from Rocky

This story is about my struggle with obesity. Both myself and my family seem to be struggling with it. My story [what now is a public issue], I kept secret from everyone who knew me. It wasn't a comfortable issue to talk about at all.

Using and recording with a microphone helped me express {to everyone} my struggle with trying to lose weight.

"When I heard the completed version of my story in front of an audience , my head was down and I emerged myself in embarrassment. Suddenly, a spark hit me and I rose my head in pride saying in my mind, it's me - like it or not!"

Rocky
Czerina & Rocky (center) w/ The Kitchen Sisters, Davia Nelson (L) & Nikki Silva (R)

About Radio Rookies

Radio Rookies is a WNYC program that trains young people to use words and sounds to tell true stories about themselves, their community and the world. Through a series of workshops, each held in a new neighborhood, Radio Rookies gives teenagers the tools to become radio journalists.

Check out Transom's previous feature on the Radio Rookies project.

More information about Radio Rookies can be found at their Website and discussion boards.

Tech Info

As a part of the Radio Rookies workshop the Rookies learn how to use recording equipment, and how to edit sound using Pro Tools. Rocky used a Sony Mini Disc Walkman MZ-R700, a Shock Mounted Dynamic Omnidirectional RE50B Microphone and Sony headphones. He had his own kit throughout the workshop, and recorded consistently and continuously. He recorded on nearly 20 minidisks (not all full).

We brought two Apple Imac computers (using OS 9) to the workshop, and Rocky loaded in most of his audio there, using Protools LE 5.2.1 and an Mbox. Rocky inputted and cut down much of his tape in Pro Tools, but final mixing was done by the Radio Rookies producer, with assistance from WNYC engineers, using both Pro Tools LE 5.2.1 and Pro Tools 5.1.1.

Rocky was extremely active throughout the mixing and production of his piece, even staying late at the station the night before his story first aired on WNYC, and going over final mix tweaks that were still being made. He has a strong sense of sound, and tremendous producer instincts.

About The Contributors

Czerina
Czerina Patel

PRODUCER
Czerina Patel is the producer of WNYC's award-winning Radio Rookies, considered a model for youth media initiatives nationwide. She has been involved with the program since its inception and through Radio Rookies, has mentored and nurtured dozens of teens from all over New York City. Besides radio and youth, Czerina —a native South African— loves travel and photography. In addition to running Radio Rookies, teaching the workshops, and producing the stories, she is available to the students at all times.

Rocky
Samr "Rocky" Tayeh

REPORTER
Samr "Rocky" Tayeh is a fifteen year old Palestinian American who lives in Park Slope, Brooklyn. Rocky is in the tenth grade and involved in many school activities, but the one he likes the most is peer mediation where he has the chance to solve problems for other people. Rocky wants to be a multi-billionaire when he grows up, and also wants to be an entertainer or lawyer, with radio as a side job. Earlier this year, Rocky also completed a commentary about life in America as a Muslim teen. "There are no better storytellers than teenage storytellers" Rocky says.

EDITOR
Karen Michel is an upstate New York- based independent radio producer who got her start in media as a guest on Art Linkletter's "Kids Say the Darndest Things." She's lived and worked in Alaska, Mexico, Japan, Greenland, India, Canada, Kenya, Nepal, Madagascar and other geographies real and imagined. Her academic training is in visual arts and cross-cultural education; she's been an exhibiting artist (jewelry, photography, drawing, and holography), and a teacher. Since falling into a job in public radio, in Fairbanks, Alaska long ago, she's been committed to sound, as an audio artist and as a journalist. There've been many awards and fellowships : Peabody, Robert Wood Johnson, NEA, CPB, NFCB, the Japan Foundation and the Fulbright/Indo-U.S. Subcommission among them. Perhaps radio is a calling, maybe it's craziness or compulsion; maybe there's no difference.