On a summer day being in Los Angeles it was probably 97 degrees hot. I was so excited because it was going to be my first time going to the pool and i was only 4 or 5 years old, not only because it was my first time going to a pool but because i was going to learn how to swim, i was nervous, the same feeling you get when you are learning to drive a car, you don't want to put yourself in danger and crash the car. Well its similar to swimming because you are learning how to swim and you don't want to drown yourself.

      As the day started, me and my family were getting prepared to get our swim suits ready and bring some food in case we get hungry after our swim. As we got to the pool we laid out our towels and changed into our swim suits. As i took a step outside and saw the pool, my heart pumped so fast that i was so scared that the fact i would drown and never let go of the fear. I saw my dad coming outside bringing food to our family and right after he dud that me and my father got into pool, i was only on the stair case level because i wasn't that tall for a 5 year old. So my dad carried me to the 3 ft and started showing me how to do the basic steps such as how to float, how to paddle your feet, and how to move your arms. Once he saw me making progress or thought that i was doing a great job he decided for me to swim to him, he was at least 300 to 400 ft away from me, he wanted me to swim to him, as soon as i started paddling my feet and moving arms and making my way towards him and till when i finally reached him i was so relieved that i made it full way without hesitation and without stopping.

    From that very moment on i had confidence in myself that i knew how to swim without anybody's help. I was just so excited that i kept on begging my dad for us to go to the pool and just swim all day. I was too focused on swimming that the was only thing for me to do and the only thing i wanted to do so my mom put me in a summer program in New York called the YMCA. The YMCA program had taught me a lot of things such as diving and to float better and other techniques.Over the days we had progressed on swimming they decided on the last day at the YMCA program for us to dive in level of 12ft. That is pretty deep and i was only 6 years old. for me to hear this i was kind of scared because i didn't want to be laughed at by other kids to think that i cant swim or i am not a good swimmer. Sooner than later i had to get it over with, so i made my way and i just dived into the pool , once i had jumped in  and swam up i felt so happy that i didn't fail.

     Ever since i accomplished on what i did my fear was gone and i enjoy swimming every time i go to the pool or to the beach.

Framed found poem: Night

It all started on the train

As we were leaving the town, eyes filled with rain

Solider took our possessions 

And left us with lessons 

Dead silence is among us...Fire!

Someone yells... I see fire!

Soft cries are let out

Oblivion is among us now.

Villans forever remembered 

Victims are Grieved but then forgotten

As the fire devours our body

It could never touch our soul.

Life giving

The Nature of Earth 

Live on the same land

Therefore we need to be green

And take care of Mother Nature

Earth is where it needs trees

Where it needs mud

Each stick and stone

And a bit of grass

Everything grows naturally

Every day is Earth day

Our home is Earth

And every day we need to take care of our home

A thunder storm, a snowy day, or a sunny day

This is our mother nature

Who gives us life?

This is nature of earth

Virtual Selves

Kathleen Sanchez

January 22, 2015

P.5

Students tend to be online more often and some grow up being online. In this quote "we seldom pause to consider how this virtual society might be different from more traditional forms of community life". In this quote seldom means not often or rarely tend to think to ourselves how this society with kids that tend to be online often can affect them with any type of relationships. I agree that kids or students being online or growing up online can affect their relationships, even the creation of one's identity and the nature of community. 

As students tend to use Inter-media pages or social media pages such as Instagram. Which is where students can upload pictures and insert a caption to their photo and also talking to others can affect them by many ways. Not only for Instagram but also Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, KIK, and Snapchat can effect students and even harm students. The reason why i think it can effect students is for an example a high school student can post a picture of himself and his friends drinking alcohol and tend to find it cool, but a few days later he gets into trouble with his parents or teachers or even a relationship with their mate because they can get the information from a family member or friend informing the parents of what the guy or it can be a random student from his school that saw a picture and showed it to the teacher or parent. Pictures are not the only things that affect you but words can also affect you and others, like they say action speak louder than words, but words can hurt them too verbally because you don’t know deep down what they went through.

Such as twitter, Myspace, and Facebook, it can affect you because you can get into some kind of trouble with a teacher, police, even with your parents and the things by saying something about your teacher or your parents even that has to do something with gang-violence or drugs... You never want to put something up because you are putting yourself into danger and others which can also affect them.

Their isn’t only students that can affect them or others but other people on social media pages can harm us. Such as “Catfish”, Catfish is a person who pretends to be someone they’re not, using Facebook or other social media to create false identities, particularly to pursue deceptive online romances. There are so many ways they can be a catfish not only in a romance way but it can also be a threatening way or an enemy that you seek to have revenge on. Social media can do so many things to a person that you can reveal a secret about them that they have done in the past. I don’t think in it’s the right thing that people are a catfish or an enemy or even a random person can say so much and leak out so many things that it can cause students to commit suicide and it wouldn’t be an exotic thing either.

Why do you think people pretend to be somebody they aren’t? Do you think it affects themselves or the person they are talking to? In my opinion it affects both of these people and there are so many reasons why it affects them and why people pretend to be somebody they are not. My reasoning is why I think men and women pretend to be somebody they are not is because they probably don’t have the confidence to feel secure about themselves, these people need to embrace their flaws and accept the way they look, and in this world nobody isn’t perfect. The reason why I say this is because the person that is pretending to be somebody can lead a person’s feelings and the person that has feelings finds out that it isn’t the person they really were.

In the passage ‘What You Say Online Could Haunt You: Schools, Employers, Scrutinize Social Websites Such as Myspace and Facebook” students don’t find it fair that teachers or schools should use the internet against their students, such as a student posting something saying “I want to rob this bank” but when they’re not breaking laws or hurting themselves or someone else. I do agree that the fact if you are a student and you are attending to UCLA or Berkley or NYU and you posted something that’s threatening; I think the school has every right not only because you are making the school look bad, but it makes your reputation look bad even when you think it’s a joke.

What you can do to make yourself a better person or to do the right thing is to think about something as this student named Guinn said “In the beginning, I kind of posted whatever without really thinking about it” he also said “I could have saved myself a lot of misery, had I just sat down and used my common sense” this shows you a life lesson not to do anything that affects you or harm you and think before you do anything.

In addition to this social media can affect you in good ways or bad ways. The good ways are you can use social media pages to get people’s attention such as making a page for people that are going through a depression or people that want to commit suicide can make a page to help teens and adults. The bad ways that social media can affect you is by leaking private things about others. Before you post something up in a social media page you should think what to say and think before you do something.

There are two different types of people in this world which are people that live their life in technology and people that hardly on technology are communicative and anti-social with others. I think people that live on technology should learn how to be more anti-social and communicate with others because in the future they will need to communicate in jobs and standing up for themselves. It’s a big life lesson to know what you choose or what you decide in life.

EPT Essay on Mead

     The quality we celebrate  or admire in people of is the people with the highest grades, most attractive, or most likely to succeed. We never tend to admire others for the things they do such as having talent with singing, dancing, drawing, or the person that works hard the most. Margaret Mead said “we tend to regard the success of people close at hand, within our own small group, as a threat”. This statement means that people who have talent in our own groups (classmates for example) we feel threatened or jealous of their talent.

   My question is what do you think about this argument? Do you think we tend to admire people that are celebrities or sport stars or singers as long as they are famous, or not in our group? I think it is true that we do admire people that are celebrities or sports stars, now why do we do this? Why do we admire them but not in our group? Perhaps because we think they have more talent compared to our own group, and most likely we admire them more because we think they have more talent compared to our own group and most likely we admire them more because they are famous! If somebody in our school was a pro at basketball and had a basketball game, people would love to come see the guy the play, but if it was Angelina Julie people would rather see her than the professional basketball player at our school. This happens because she’s famous, she’s attractive, and maybe because they she has a good heart, on the other hand they don’t know that the basketball player has a good heart, and maybe the basketball player isn't attractive. We can make a change to how we should admire people that are not famous.

    People who have talent in our own groups such as classmates or athletes feel threatened/jealous of their own classmate or the other athletes. We question ourselves why do you feel like this, why are we jealous of others. I wouldn't say I feel threatened by them unless they are trying to compete then yes I would feel threatened by them because you can work so hard in basketball and all that hard work that you did is thrown away because there is another player that is better than you and he doesn't work hard enough he still gets recognized and the other person doesn't, but I do agree that we get jealous of other peoples talent because you tend to work so hard and you feel like you have low standard because you put all your thinking into it, but the people who have talent they just do it, and us students feel jealous because of that.

   

     In addition to this we shouldn't feel jealous or threatened by other groups that have talent, we should believe in ourselves and know that we might not have the talent they have but we always have a way of finding our own.

what is an american?

An American is a person that is a united citizen to America, But that’s what every person thinks just because we were born in the US doesn’t make us Americans and just because our parents were born in America doesn’t make us white American people. I believe there is a difference between being in America and being an American. There is more to just being an American, there are all kind of history.

Being in America is one thing, to be in America you have to respect the laws, but you get freedom. The reason why we have laws is because some people in America take advantage of it and tend to do dense things. For example selling drugs, shootings, rape, kidnapping, etc… I feel that these people don’t deserve to be in America, there are people out there that have suffered with slavery, or immigrants that cropped our farms and don’t get the freedom. I say this because they sacrifice their selves for us, and we don’t thank them or appreciate them, even the African Americans that suffered through slavery.

Being an American is someone who demands what they want. Sometimes I think the four fathers were the people who beat fair people; America was built on blood, slavery and lies. The blood was built on a land where it was originally Native American. This was the blood that was part of Americas upcoming. 

Also the slavery was when the African Americans were taken away from Africa to “free them” to work for them and become slaves and get an amount of money a day, or most of the wages that was nowhere after taking a family. This situation is compared to the immigrants that came to the United States to be freed and make money by farming but to those immigrants it felt like slavery they were only getting paid a certain amount of money.
 

Everyone has suffered throughout life but there are certain people that have been through hell. My point is that I find it unfair that they treat African Americans, immigrants or Hispanics, and Muslim people, they always have to be so stereotypical with a certain race, and they have to pay the most consequences. We all are Americans! And we should all be treated equally the same, even if you are a Jew, Russian, Italian, Korean, etc… You are American.

Autobiography
We wonder how people’s life is like as their childhood to their teenage years went by. My friends and family say I have an interesting life because I went through so much when I was young and even now. I was born in California but raised in Kingston, New York, I lived with my mom, grandma, and my uncle’s girlfriend that is Puerto Rican. I have two brothers one is thirteen years and the other one is turning 19, I am the only girl. At times it sucks being the only girl because I am the one being depended on mostly. But I knew it was only for the best of me. When I was nine years old my mom had passed away on October 6, 2006, she was murdered by her ex-boyfriend  it was the worst thing that had ever happened to me in life, I felt like It wouldn’t be the same without her, I had to leave to California to live with my dad. In my head I knew it would be different because I am being raised by a single father, but that’s not the only thing that had changed, I had to take therapy classes because they didn’t want us to be depressed through our whole life and they wanted to check up on how we feel since my mom passed away, but I felt that it didn’t make me feel better. As the years passed by through middle school to high school I knew I had to focus on graduating high school and go to college and get a major in Psychology, psychology is one of the subjects that interest’s me and motivate me to get a career and a bright future ahead of me. Psychology may be one of the things that I like but I have a passion for volleyball, even though I just started last year, playing volleyball is a hobby for me I got other hobbies like running, shopping, and I guess you can consider reading as a hobby. The type of books I like reading are drama type, crime scenes, or basically a book that leads you to read more and a book that isn’t boring. My favorite subjects are math and English and my worst subjects are science and history. My dream college is Pepperdine University or New York University, I always wanted to go to one of these schools and hopefully I do. As I get older I have to go to Sacramento and talk to these specific people about my mom’s murder and when I get there I want to know the real story of mom’s murder case, my family don’t want to tell me the full story because they think I am too young to know or I wouldn’t understand. My goals are to graduate high school, graduate college and get a major in Psychology and take care of my family and show them that I am a strong young lady that fights for what she wants.