My Sophomore Year (Final Exam)

I don’t want to be the person who hardly finishes high school not knowing how they made it through. I also don’t want to be the person who graduates high school academically smart, but has no clue how to deal with the adversity of life. I’ve made the decision not to be that person. High school is about more than having a good GPA and lettering in extracurricular activities. What can we really learn? Not just from the teachers, but from mistakes, achievements, and let downs? Teachers are not the only means of learning.

I spent the beginning of my sophomore year devoting all of my passion and energy to cheer, tennis, and ROTC. I kept my grades up at first but midyear they began to fall. My grades weren’t slipping because I just didn’t care or because I was too involved. My grades suffered because I gave up. I didn’t understand math, chemistry was a little challenging, and I had absolutely no interest in world history. The work was hard, long, and boring. It took extra effort on my part for me to focus and I felt I was wasting my time. I didn’t want to care. When I started pretending I didn’t care, my teachers quit asking questions. It made it that much easier to get away without doing work. I thought it was too late to try. It was pointless. I did away with my math tutoring at lunch and never bothered to look at my homework. I didn’t learn how to balance equations or find the surface area of a cone. I didn’t learn how to effectively use a Persian chart to understand historical events. So what did I learn? It took me long enough, but when I opened my eyes I saw that giving up didn’t make anything easier. I felt “stupid” and disappointed in myself. Giving up was hurting me academically and socially. My social life revolved around sports and if I don’t have a decent GPA I cannot compete or even participate. I learned that it’s never too late to try. Every day is another chance to correct our previous mistakes.

Upon discovering that I had to try if I wanted to go somewhere in life, I became more aggressive in sports and activities. I worked a little more at my grades so that I could pass, but all the anger I felt and had nothing to do with; I turned it in to passion. My passion for cheer and ROTC became stronger. I commanded first year cadets into an overall 5th place in a varsity state drill meet, and I got to know and understand my cadets better. I acquired my standing and running backhand spring and performed it in front of a large crowd of people at cheer state competition. What’s the big deal, right? This taught me courage to move forward and try again. I wasn’t scared to get back up no matter how many times I fell physically or mentally. I gained discipline and I learned how to respect the differences I shared with others. It wasn’t easy. I had my disputes with other cadets and I literally fell on my face multiple times learning how to tumble. Still, I got up and shot for the moon. I may have landed on a star but the moon is that much closer now.

I aimed at the moon, knowing it was higher than I could reach. I was disheartened at the thought of never being able to stretch far enough to reach it. I hadn’t tried to take things step by step. I could leap thirty feet up but the moon was a hundred. I thought I was letting myself down. I thought I was letting my friends, family, and coaches down…I wasn’t. Gunny told our platoons, “Shoot for the moon. If you miss you’ll land in the stars, but you’ll have one hand on the moon pulling you back up.” He was right. I learned ambition only dies if you let it die. Nothing is ever too far of a stretch. I learned that I can use those stars as steps and climb my way up to the moon. That’s exactly what I’ll do.

My sophomore year was full of lessons. I learned a lot. Maybe not academically, but you need more than academics to persevere. These lessons that bear themselves before me now will always be a part of me. They are not things I will soon forget. It’s not ok to let your academics sufferer just because you are learning life lessons. Next year I’m going to be a better student, but I’m also going to continue to seek the lessons that can’t be taught in text books and class activities. I’m creating a better me because I learned how to do this my sophomore year.

My Anything Blog - Storm Inside Us

The rain falls. It started gently but now it’s crashing on our roof top like ten thousands rocks dropping from the sky. The wind is blowing, wrapping me in its bitter embrace as I sit on the roof of this two story building. My tears mix with the rain. I close my eyes and let the next tear roll. I can hear the thunder boom relentlessly in my ear. I open my eyes to the luminous lightning streaking the sky, watching patiently as the dark clouds devour the moon. The frigid air tranquilizes me and I surrender to my own thoughts connecting this climate to our own feelings. This is the connection:

Like a small child scared of the weathers tirade, we run to our safe place. Mama can’t kiss away the fear this time. Pain rages inside us like thunder. Tears streak our face like lightning across the midnight sky. Similar to the wind, we wrap ourselves in the bitter embrace of life, just pondering what’s next. Someone offers a helping hand but we ignore it. In the same manner in which the dark clouds devoured the moon, we shield our emotions from them. The world goes still. We are tranquilized by the atmosphere around us. The questioning…so many questions. The why ‘s and the how’s, you know, the questions that can never really be answered. Everything we feel has built up under the surface. Still, we reach a point where we cannot contain this anymore. It swirls akin to a tornado, destroying us from the inside out. It obliterates us because we let it. We can find shelter from our own storms, but we chose not to. Counselors, friends, family….these are our trees. They shade us when the sun is too hot for us to bear. Still we run away. We run into the storm, fearless, headstrong, and uncaring of what will happen. Why? Why do we make this choice when it tears us down? We hope it will restore us. We trust that it will construct a stronger, better us. But…What if it doesn’t? What if it’s too late? What if all our trees have somehow strayed? We don’t know how long this storm will last. We don’t know how long our trees of support will stand. Yet we linger inside of our storms for the longest time, anticipating the grand finale. Are there going to be fireworks at the end of our endeavor? Probably not. We know there are other storms rolling in. What we don’t know is the extent of brutality the next storm will bring. However, we know whatever it is there is no avoiding it. Maybe that’s why we dive head first into all that we must endure. But every storm must come to a standstill sooner or later right? And every person has a similar storm they have or will abide. So why do we do it alone? We don’t have to. We shouldn’t. As for myself, I’m not going to any longer. I’ve found my rock, my shelter, my tree of support. I have a firm grasp on it too. She’s not strayed nor has she tried, and I know together we can withstand any storm.

Wisdom Quote and Essay Assignment

“To confine your emotions is asking for explosion. To cover your emotions is asking for confusion. To feel your emotions is to have enough wisdom to acknowledge that you can only defer the feeling and make it worse or deal with it in an appropriate manner. You cannot change it.”

It is hard to let yourself feel the emotions you are actually experiencing. Many times we pretend like the emotion is not there. We make ourselves numb. Other times we lie to ourselves about what we feel. For example, we get angry at the world so others won’t see the fear that lies inside. Neither of these are healthy for you or the people around you.

Countless times I have hid my emotions in hopes that no one would know what I was truly feeling. Countless times I have seen loved ones hide their feelings in hopes no one would know what they were truly feeling. It doesn’t work. After a while, you begin to feel emotionless like a robot. As time progress you start to feel again but this time you’ve added to the emotions. For me it was anger. Anger for lying to myself knowing sooner or later it would no longer work. Still, sometimes people make themselves feel a different emotion in place of what they are really feeling.

Lying to yourself about your emotions doesn’t help either. It actually makes you a meaner person. You start to get angry. You get angry that no one understands or cares, but you’ve hid the emotions so that there is nothing for them to understand. You get angry at yourself and at the world. When you get really angry you start to take it out on other people. You get rude for no reason or shut them out and ignore them. This is not healthy for you or the person who is being shut out.

This is where wisdom comes into play. We must learn when and how to show our feelings. If it is not the appropriate time to express our emotions then we must know how to feel what were feeling without showing it and/or letting it affect the given situation. This is not an easy skill to acquire nor is it one many obtain. Nevertheless, it is important to have wisdom when it comes to our own emotions. You don’t want to become numb or constantly trick yourself into feeling something totally different from what you really feel. This can make you confused and closed. You also don’t want to display the wrong emotions at the wrong times. This is why it is critical to obtain wisdom on your emotions. In order to do so we must first get to know ourselves. We have to know how we show and react to certain emotions. If you do not know how you currently deal with the adversity and inconvenience of some emotions then you cannot change the way you deal with them for the future.

Quote on Life

“Enough is never enough. To think that enough is enough is to give up. To give up is to throw away a potential chapter of your life’s book. If you throw away a chapter the book is never complete. Giving up means living your life in several short stories instead of living it in one novel.”  - Angelica Martinez

Person For a day Assignment - I Wish to be...

Sometimes we reach that point in our lives where we wish we could be another person. Many people wish to be that famous pop star the paparazzi love, the actress others of the opposite sex are always talking about, or the Olympian who takes the gold at every meet. I wish to be something different ….someone different. I wish to temporarily be the homeless man on the corner. Yes, the one you mock and put down. I wish to be him.

I wish to be that “hobo” that teaches us how to love. The man who has been hurt so many times yet still has the strength to smile at those who pass by, even those who do not stop to offer money, food, or a helping hand. I want to learn how to love unconditionally the way he has learned to do. I want to learn how to love those who pay no attention to the desperate cries and outreaches around us. To love not only those who love you, but also the ones who despise you is a beautiful and amazing gift that is hard to acquire. No one knows how to love the people who throw their mistakes in their face and mock their debilities. It is obtained through life lessons.

I wish to be the man who lost everything he once lived for and still finds reason to live. The man who shows that being strong is about much more than our own decisions and self control. He is the person who will show me how to find to the hope that I thought was lost. He is the person who will teach me to find courage in that dark alley to sleep there, and the audacity to hold that sign and collect the money from the giving souls. This “hobo” is the man who will train me on how to forfeit my own pride and greed to feed the mouths of the children, mothers, and fathers that are no longer capable of doing so themselves.

I wish to be a homeless man because the homeless man is the preacher. He is the spiritually tough man who finds God in the dark alleys where he made his bed from a box. He is the one on the street holding that piece of cardboard asking God to bless you. It asks God to bless you who returned his weary smile. It asks God to bless you who handed him the spare change in your vehicle. Furthermore, it asks God to bless you who pretended not to see him as you sat next him at the red light anticipating the moment when the green light freed you.

I don’t want to be a pop star. I don’t want to be an actress or an Olympian. I don’t even want to be homeless. What I do want is to trade places with the homeless man. I want to experience his struggles and hardships. I want to endure what he suffered in order to acquire the unconditional love, the strength and courage, and the spirituality I saw in his eyes when he asked God to bless us. A night of hunger and sleeping under a bridge…I would tolerate this if it would teach me the lessons and give me the strength many fail to acknowledge.