...Freshman year at Trimble Tech High School was nothing short of a liminal year. High school basically swallowed me whole as a freshman, and spit me out as an unrecognizable senior. In this sense, I’ve become a completely different person. In my four years at Trimble Tech, I had a metamorphosis with my outlook on life and mentality. As a sophomore, my AP World History class enlightened me to the vast number of religions in the world. Prior to this, I was religiously ignorant because the concept of religion could not be discussed in public school. By the end of sophomore year, my brain was occupied with the various teachings of the diverse religions of the world. As a result, I’ve learned to look at things from a number of varying perspectives...
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...The event that marked my transition from childhood to adulthood within my family was not easy nor tranquil, yet a long journey that was extremely challenging. During the time span from 2012-2013 I was submerged in the experience of my sophomore year of high school. Looking back on my sophomore year, I remember being carefree, still just a kid. Likewise, the only worries I had to fret over was finding my place in the large social scene of my high school and what time softball practice was. However, all that began to change a few weeks into the New Year of 2013, where my life was turned upside down. In January, my father underwent a L4-L5 spinal fusion. He was a paramedic. My father has such a beautiful and inspiring passion for helping others and our community. Unfortunately, his passion was put to a halt due to his tragic injury. In addition, post-operation left my dad in a state of complete dependency because he was left unable to walk for a large portion of the recovery process, as well as the indescribable pain he had to endure every single day. Without any source of immediate income, with my father unable to work, my family soon ourselves in financial catastrophe. Soon after, my mother served my father divorce papers and quickly moved out; leaving my dad, my younger sister, and I to in simplest form, fend for ourselves. Consequently, the absence of my mother, shook the roles of the family, and left a scar on all of our hearts. The result of her decision, was equivalent...
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...King Dork, written by Frank Portman, indulges young adult readers into the fictional teenage world of Tom Henderson, aka Chi-Mo. This coming of age story reflects his journey from confusion about his father’s death, societal issues, the purpose of life, and mysterious annotations on his father’s old books to even more confused about all of these. This hilarious yet meaningful novel is filled with relatable high school experiences and archetypes, Catcher in the Rye references, mystery, geometry, interesting family dynamics, that awkward best friend, girls, and more girls. King Dork documents the thoughts and experiences of Tom, from August to December in his sophomore year of high school, with Portman writing as Tom in stream of consciousness....
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...Sophomore year was my favorite year of high school. It started out slow but ended with a rush. It seem like it flew past me. I would redo sophomore year all over again just for the fun of it. Being a 10th grader is often looked at as the beginning of our teenage independence. It’s not like that for everyone. At the time I was going through some family issues that held me back from experiencing my own independence. I had just started living with my aunt, my dad’s sister, at the end of 9th grade year. I started 10th grade at John Adams High School. Even though I ended 9th grade year there, I told myself that I wasn’t going to try to make any friends there at the time because I’d probably be at another school next year, but I wasn’t. Going there was a bit awkward; I had told some students that I wouldn’t be attending the school 10th grade year but there I was....
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...Around my sophomore year of high school, I began joining a numerous amount of clubs thinking it would benefit me when I would have to apply to college. However, as many would expect, I stopped attending the meetings of all but about three clubs. One club that favored over all others is High-Q. This club involved competing against other high schools in a quiz bowl style format similar to the Jeopardy. The most memorable moment occurred senior year as four other members, two advisors, and myself traveled to Washington D.C. to compete for the National Academic Championship. The journey to D.C. began after a school day as we all crowded in a small minivan for the seven-hour ride ahead of us. Most of the time in the car was spent sleeping;...
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...I remember being 12 years old, stepping on to the lacrosse field for the first, my white Nike cleats strung tight, and my light blue stick gripped firmly in my hands. I had little knowledge of how the game worked except I felt like I belonged on the large field of dried grass. I belonged in between the two orange poles of the goalie net. I had such a homey feeling since I am kinesthetic learner. I learn best when I am moving my body. Therefore, the drills would come naturally to me just by trying them out. For the first few years I played lacrosse I considered it to be only an after school activity at which I accelerated. It was not until my sophomore year in high school, when I began to struggle in math that I realized lacrosse means so much to me....
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...did not start alone like most people’s, but with my twin sister Ale. We have been together like peanut butter to Strawberry Jam, never leaving each other until that moment which will challenged us for the rest of our lives. It was the end of the third grade and I was sent to summer school for low test scores for standard test but with good grades. I went to summer school for about two and half months and my sister went to summer camps creating new memories making new friends. People will think that having a twin is awesome because we’re the same, but it really isn’t: being a twin, one twin will have better qualities than the other twin. It has been like that for me my whole life during school. That makes me think of this moment from my sophomore year. One of my teachers compared my GPA to my sister’s in front of a bunch of people. Feeling discouraged me from actually doing something that has importance. Which made me think very long when I’m able to catch up with her;she ends up to double of what I did which I have been living in the world of catch up with my sister. By these moments I have to remember what really makes me by trying to live in this world of catch up....
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...Omar Gonzalez AP Language Mrs. Edwards “Connect the dots” Essay 15, December 2011 Today, I am an artist sponsored by Roseta Santiago, who is also an artist.It has been quite a journey full of surprises, mistakes, success, and disappointments. I never expected to make it this far, I could only dream of this to happen to me. Now that my dream is a reality, I am just going to live it and hopefully one day, I’ll make it to the top! As a kid in elementary school, I always loved to doodle on my notes and I would enjoy going to art class and making little clay pots and whatnot. I was just always drawing at home, school, and wherever I was. Even though I would draw a lot, I never thought or believed that it would get me somewhere in life, because you would never think of asking a kid what he or she want to be in life and getting the response: “I want to be an artist”. Once I got into middle school, I had this sudden interest in art because I was alright at it and I really didn’t like anything else. Although I liked it so much, I would still never think of telling people my interest in it. I always thought for the longest time that art was just a hobby, that it wouldn’t get me anywhere. As I went through seventh and eighth grade, my passion and interest in art grew even more. Still, I didn’t like art enough to think of it as an occupation because everyone else would always think to be a doctor or lawyer, I was still “exploring” my options. I got the opportunity to take art...
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...of the main reasons I chose Mark Zuckerberg is because he took an existing idea and decided to make it a global enterprise. Some answers I will be looking for while researching for my course project include what type of mainframe Facebook utilizes, the system security Facebook implements, and how they plan for future growth within their network. Additionally, I’ve compiled a list of questions more in line with Mark Zuckerbergs journey to where he is now. 1. What kind of life did Mark Zuckerberg have? 2. What made him so confident in his journey to becoming the owner of Facebook? 3. How did he do it? 4. Where did he start? 5. How did he succeed? 6. What were his biggest fears? 7. Did he ever feel overwhelmed or like he wasn’t going to succeed? A quick summary of what I have found is that Mark got started into computer programming at the early of twelve. He had networked all of his home computers so that a family member could log into a computer remotely and leave a message for another family member. While a sophomore at Harvard University, he created a program called Facemash that would compare to different pictures and people could decide who was more attractive. Throughout the rest of this course, I plan to work with my group to complete the assignment in these steps; complete the research, write out a detailed summary of what we have learned,...
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...The Nursing School Struggle The journey to where I am today, in nursing school at South University, has not been an easy one. It started at The University of South Carolina-Columbia campus. They have an upper division, where clinicals take place, and lower division that every admit starts in their freshman year. In lower division you have to take certain general education courses and introductory nursing classes before applying for upper division the fall of your sophomore year. The only criterion for the upper division is your GPA and only the 200 students with the highest make it in. Unfortunately, when it came time for me to apply to upper division my GPA was not in the top 200, with the cut-off at 3.7. Since I did not make it in, I had three options: wait another year and reapply, change my major, or transfer somewhere else. After speaking with my advisor we decided it was best for me to transfer, and the world wind journey began....
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...multitude of challenges that I went through. I went to high school and I had the choice to choose between going to junior year or sophomore year. Since the first day I moved to America, I have dreamt to be a student at UCR. It is a great school, and I knew it would be very hard to achieve in two years because I needed to cover more credits and finish specific classes in a specific amount of time. Therefore, I started my high school challenge journey as a sophomore and there I met my first challenge: I started as an ELD (English language development) student and I exited the program after one semester. Afterwards, I passed the CAHSEE exam and I became a regular English student. " I passed the first challenge" . While this challenge was being accomplished, another big challenge had been waiting for me: learning how to deal and communicate with people from many different cultures and making friends. The church became my social attet. There. I met new people who served the community working many hours, and participating in many fundraisers. From those experiences, I became more social and formed a core group of friends. Trying to find my niche in school. I became a member of the FNHS (French national honor society) club that opened for me the door to make new friends, not just the club members who helped me with my studies. I could finish my sophomore year with a 4.0 GPA. Thus, " I passed my second challenge " that made my parents so proud of me and I felt glad and confident...
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...Throughout my high school journey. I have had the opportunity to be a part of amazing organizations and classes such as Cosmetology, Student Council, and National Honor Society. Each one has benefited me as a student and also has helped me overcome obstacles. At the end of my sophomore year, I chose to enroll in dual credit cosmetology. I made this decision because I enjoy working with hair and makeup. These classes would also improve my hairdressing skill. From the first day of my program until the present, I have yet to encounter any problems on trying to balance my high school and college work. Being involved in the dual credit program given me the opportunity to be well organized with my academic schedule and an idea of what instructors will expect in college. I will also soon earn my cosmetology degree in May. Being in this program has made me realize that I am capable to cope with real-life responsibilities....
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...Finding Truths In my life, I have taken many journeys without which I would not have experienced important truths. My father started us off early, taking us on many journeys to help us understand that true knowledge comes only from experience. We took trips every winter break to Madrid, Mexico, Costa Rica, and to Jamaica and Trinidad, my parents’ homeland for Christmas. Silly things I remember from those trips include the mango chili sauce on the pork in Maui, the names of the women who gave out the towels by the pools in Selva Verde, Costa Rica, eating dinner at 10 p.m. in Spain. These were all tourist experiences that I, at first, found spellbinding. My truths were the truths of the tourist brochures: beautiful hotels, beaches, and cities. I did not see the blindfolds. I did not appreciate how being held hostage by the beauty of the surface—the beaches and cities—blinded me to the absence of Puerto Rican natives on the streets of San Juan; I did not understand how the prevalence and familiarity of English conspired to veil the beauty of the Spanish language beneath volumes of English translations. I learned more about these truths in my sophomore year of high school, when I was among a group of students selected to visit Cuba. My grandmother was born in Cuba, yet I had never thought to research my own heritage. I have remained the naïve American who saw Castro as some distant enemy of my country, accepting this as fact because this seemed to be the accepted wisdom. I soon...
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...seven siblings drove a one week trip from Ohio to Anchorage, Alaska. They drove to Alaska midway through winter, and was required to remain there until summer. Once summer came around, Vicki and her family drove to a remote native Alaskan village called Nenana. Her family were unable to drive the last 400 miles of their voyage, so they abandoned their car and started walking to a ferry that could take her family to Nenana. They then crossed an enormous river to finish off their long expedition. Vicki and her family took the ferry across the river for many numerous until they reached Nenana. Once Vicki got to Nenana her family moved to a compact cabin within the village. My grandma states, “It was an extremely exhausting and long-lasting journey to arrive in Nenana, and once we finally did my first impression was that it was so unusual.” My grandma lived in a remote native Alaskan village, which means life in the village was immensely unalike the ordinary life of a 1950’s child. In the remote village Vicki lived in, her and her family had to hunt, fish, and harvest nearly all of their food. Vicki proclaims, “Throughout most of my childhood I was assisting my mom and dad by hunting for animals, fishing, and picking berries.” Inside the village where my grandma lived, there was only one miniature store where food was provided, and all they had was powdered milk, bread, and other canned foods. Although Nenana obtained some food, none of it was fresh because it was all shipped and...
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...In my life, I have taken many journeys without which I would not have experienced important truths. My father started us off early, taking us on many journeys to help us understand that true knowledge comes only from experience. We took trips every winter break to Madrid, Mexico, Costa Rica, and to Jamaica and Trinidad, my parents’ homeland for Christmas. Silly things I remember from those trips include the mango chili sauce on the pork in Maui, the names of the women who gave out the towels by the pools in Selva Verde, Costa Rica, eating dinner at 10 p.m. in Spain. These were all tourist experiences that I, at first, found spellbinding. My truths were the truths of the tourist brochures: beautiful hotels, beaches, and cities. I did not see the blindfolds. I did not appreciate how being held hostage by the beauty of the surface—the beaches and cities—blinded me to the absence of Puerto Rican natives on the streets of San Juan; I did not understand how the prevalence and familiarity of English conspired to veil the beauty of the Spanish language beneath volumes of English translations. I learned more about these truths in my sophomore year of high school, when I was among a group of students selected to visit Cuba. My grandmother was born in Cuba, yet I had never thought to research my own heritage. I have remained the naïve American who saw Castro as some distant enemy of my country, accepting this as fact because this seemed to be the accepted wisdom. I soon became intrigued...
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