Informal Narrative: Race

     As a caucasian male, I have a certain privelege over some of the minority races in the United States.  For example, I never had to ride the city bus to get where I needed to go.  I never had problems with getting my hair cut.  I've never experienced discrimination or prejudice because of my race firsthand.  To tell you the truth, white people have it pretty good compared to some of the minorities.

Informal Narrative: Social Class

     My social class is pretty average, I suppose.  We don't have a ton of extra money to throw around, but we've got enough to hold us for a while.  Although it's outside our Christmas budget to get a fancy new gaming system, we have a fair amount to spend for the holiday.  We have plenty of money for new clothes and shoes once we outgrow the old ones, so that's shows that we aren't too low in our social class.        

Informal Narrative: Gender

     Being an aspiring artist, I don't find it necessary to be as active or fit.  I usually spend more time inside reading or drawing, so I was never as fit as the other guys in my class, and was therefore not as active in gym class.  I couldn't lift as much, wasn't as coordinated, didn't have as much stamina, etc.  But that's okay; the majority of my gender can be fit if they want, I am an artist and I like it that way.

Informal Narrative: Religion

     I'm not ashamed to admit that I'm an atheist.  I don't believe in any sort of deity, and I don't think that I ever will; not in the forseeable future, anyway.  I've been openly atheist for nearly three years, but, looking back, I think I have been one all along. 
    I remember when my parents finally realized.  It was Easter in the year 2010, and my parents gave me the liberty of choosing for myself when I go to church since my Confirmation.  I told them that I wasn't going to go to church with them, even though both my sisters were going (and at the time, my older sister didn't go to church very often).  When my parents asked me why I didn't want to go, I simply stated that I don't believe in God.  They seemed sort of mad, and my mom even said, "Why should I bother buying you Christmas presents this year?"  And then my family left, and I was in the house all alone.  I felt a little betrayed, because my parents said at my Confirmation that they would support me no matter what I believed, and here they were mad at me because I stopped practicing religion altogether. 
     Now, they offer to bring me to church every once in a while, but I still decline respectfully and they don't seem to have so much of a problem with it.  Most of my friends know and have no problem with it, but no one in my family other than those in my house know.  I drop very subtle hints sometimes, but some of my extended family is pretty religious, so I'm going to hold off on flat out telling them for now. 

Predictably Irrational

    The chapter that I read was called "the Fallacy of Supply and Demand".  It started by telling the story of someone that made a ton of money from selling Japanese pearls and then trying to sell black pearls.  He set an extremely high price on them and, since people didn't normally buy black pearls, went for it.  It then goes into detail about "anchoring", which is described as basing what you're willing to pay for a given item based on the price of when you bought it the first time.  For example, when you buy your first house, you may tend to base your future house purchases based on that first house.
     I suppose anchoring applies to me in a few ways.  For example, I tend to base my video game pricing based on the price of my first gaming system.  If it is more, it seems expensive to me.  If it is less, then it seems cheap to me.

Blink

      I read Chapter Six: Seven Seconds in the Bronx: the Delicate Art of Mind Reading.  This chapter is all about how we can "read someone's mind" by closely reading their facial expressions.  It goes into the research of two scientists, Silvan Tomkins and Paul Ekman, and how they discovered that there are over ten thousand different facial configurations.  The two of them also researched people from all over the world and discovered that facial expressions remain the same in different cultures; so the faces, like the "choking signal", are basically a universal sign of whichever emotion that particular face would normally represent.  It also talks about a man that the police shot down because he "looked suspicious."  If they had read his face, the police would have realized he was afraid and not hostile.  This connects to the first chapter because it shows how the people looking at the tape of the married couple could tell exactly how they were feeling at a given point in time.
     My family and I frequently babysit a four year old girl by the name of Mya.  She's a really an interesting individual who at times says very weird and funny things.  There was a time a few months ago where she would, completely randomly, ask someone from my family: "You mad?"  We were almost never mad at the time she asked us, so it was really strange.  Perhaps a misreading of our facial expressions?  Perhaps a joke of some sort?  Or just plain randomness?  If this indeed was a misreading of facial expressions, what could she have seen in our faces to think that we were angry?  These are questions that connect to Blink and also need to be answered because it sort of confuses me what she could have been thinking. 
    
     

    
       
 
     

The Memorial Project

The Memorial Project

 

                I can be pretty boring and quiet.  When I’m in class, you can barely get a word out of me.  Now, when I’m with my friends…that’s a whole different story.  I talk and joke almost constantly, and the huge difference might seem strange if you don’t know me well.  My friends are pretty much what give me purpose.  Without them, I see myself as a hermit that sits in his house all day and never speaks out loud.

                I really like to paint and draw.  Most of what I do involves creating cartoon characters.  Sometimes I make a small backstory for these characters or sometimes I just doodle them all over my homework.  I have some sketchbooks at home and I only just got into painting last year.  I’ve been working on a painting for most of the summer and still haven’t finished it.  I have taken Drawing 1 with Ruder and 2 with Ingersoll, Painting 1 with Ruder and I’m taking 2 this year, and Commercial Arts 1 with Ingersoll.    

                I play a lot of video games, too.  My favorite games are probably Kingdom Hearts, God of War, and Halo.  I sort of use video games as a distraction because I don’t exactly think the world is working the way it should be right now. 

I like to watch TV, too.  Mostly comedies such as South Park, Family Guy, Tosh.0, the Big Bang Theory, Two and a Half Men, How I Met Your Mother, and the King of Queens.  I love to laugh and make jokes so these shows are just right for me.  A lot of my friends also watch most of these shows so it creates some common interests between us. 

How much I like school sort of is like a roller coaster.  There are lots of classes I hate and some that I really enjoy.  The class that I hate the most is probably math.  Most, if not, all of what they’ve been teaching us for math in high school is pointless and will never be used in real life; unless you were planning to be a math teacher, which just creates a cycle of pointless knowledge.  My favorite class is painting because I love to paint and want to have an artistic career at some point.  I haven’t painted much more than common objects or landscapes, but the painting I’ve been working on during the summer has people in it and flames in parts of the background, adding some challenge and new experience.  I also sort of like English because I really like to read and sort of like to write a little bit.  The only thing I don’t like about English is when the teacher provides us with a book that’s really boring and makes us read it.  At the moment my favorite class is anthropology because I think it’s very fascinating to learn about who we are and how we came to be the way we are.               

 

                 

Hedonism

I wish I could:
play video games all day
sleep in every day
watch TV all night every night instead of homework
buy all the seasons of South Park and Code Geass on DVD and watch them at school
skip school
cause a sudden black out in the school just for fun
ditch homeroom and fire drills
buy every book I've ever wanted to read.  Ever.
spend all day reading said books (instead of reading what the teacher assigns)
have summer vacation all year

Past Negative

I remember in sixth grade P.E., I had Mr. Nicolet.  At that time, I wasn't very good at swimming, so when the swimming unit came along, it wasn't fun for me.  I think I may have been a little hydrophobic, too, because I refused to go underwater.  I also didn't want to go to the deep end of the pool because I couldn't tread water.  I remember being nervous and shaking before class every day because I was so bad with this unit.  The whole experience was just not a fun one for me, and it resulted in my gym grade dropping down from an A to a D.  Needless to say, I was very happy once the unit was finished.

Past Positive

Most of my memories involve something happening at school. The positive things that definitely stick out the most are:
Putting corn on my pizza.
Running laps around the field at Flynn during recess.
Laughing so hard at lunch that chocolate milk comes out my nose.
Playing tag and Star Wars on the playground during recess.
The library lock-ins at South, which meant hanging out with my friends and reading all night.
Playing in the snow at recess in the winter and sliding down the icy hill on my belly.
All those funny but strange conversations during lunch with my friends.
And, of course, meeting all my awesome friends.

Senior English Brag Sheet

I. How would you characterize your academic performance? Have you found an area of academic focus (arts, technology education, business education, mathematics, etc.? Have you participated in any academic opportunities such as dual-credit courses? BYA? How have you grown as a student? 

                 My academic performance has been good because I've gotten almost all A's or B's with a few C's.  I've mostly focused on art classes, however I have found some interest in social studies classes such as Anthropology and Philosophy.  I would say that I've grown as a student because I used to always focus on art but now I've gotten better with English, Spanish, and social studies courses.

II. Describe your extra-curricular involvement, including any leadership positions you may hold or may have held.

                     

III. Describe your work experience. Where? How long? Responsibilities? Promotions? What experience have you gained from your work?

               As of now, my work experience includes babysitting, shoveling snow, and mowing the lawn.  These jobs have taught me the work and responsibility that goes into caring for small children, and mowing the lawn and shoveling have taught me more about keeping things consistent. 

IV. List and describe any volunteer experiences you have had.

           A group of churchgoers and I once completely cleaned the kitchen at the church that I formerly attended. 

V. Describe your interests.

               Most of my interests involve art such as drawing and painting, but there is a writing component to my interests as well.  I also enjoy reading and spending time with my dad by watching sports or comedies. 

VI. What are you really good at? Or how is one of your skills/talents evident in something else you do? Use a specific example of something you have done where this skill/talent is evident.

        The things that I am really good at are painting and drawing, which require a lot of patience and discipline.  Those skills are useful when we need to make a poster as a project for school.  For example, in English 10 the students had to create a character with a background to it.  I created a funny-looking hobo character that lived in the forest on the outskirts of a town.  Classmates commented on how "it could be a Simpson's character" and I got an A on it. 

What four (4) words would you choose to DESCRIBE yourself (and your personality; explain WHY):

          Artistic because I have and still do devote a lot of time and effort into getting to a higher level of artistry.  Creative because I tend to come up with rather odd cartoon characters and interesting concepts that are translated into written word.  Determined because when I get started on a piece of work that I am interested in, I don't want to stop until I've finished.  And finally, entertaining because I can usually get a laugh out of just about anyone that I meet.

If I or anyone else were to write a RECOMMENDATION for you, what would you definitely want said about you?
          If someone wrote a letter of recommendation for me, I would definitely want that person to explain my hard work ethic and how I get things done on time. 

Is there anything unusual about your life experiences that you would want included in a recommendation?