My Feelings About This Project

            A couple weeks ago, when we are assigned to write like 3 paragraphs a day about whatever you want, for two weeks, I guess you could say I wasn’t happy. It’s not that I don’t like writing, I just felt like I didn’t have the energy to write a blog post every single day. It’s not even the idea of physically writing something, for me I most struggle with coming up with what to write about. I honestly never thought I would be able to write about something new everyday. Now that it’s over, I think I learned so much about writing and myself.

            In the end, I actually turned out to kind of like this project. I think this is because instead of writing about boring learning-related things like most of the pieces I write for school, this past week I was able to write about things that are important to me. This made writing the posts a lot more fun and they were actually much easier to write. I liked how I was able to express myself, and I think I learned some things about who I am, too. I also think that having to write something everyday for about two weeks greatly improved my writing skills.

            There were a few things I struggled with in doing this project. One was trying to come up with an idea every single day. I don’t know why this was so hard for me, but I guess it’s because I’m not a very creative person. I also have many dreams, but I always tried to pick one that I would be able to write a lot about and other people would be able to relate to. I think I also had a hard time because I’m the kind of person tends to rely on their friends for opinions and ideas. So, everyday I had to go out my comfort zone and trust that my idea was okay. This project definitely made me more independent, and even a little more creative. Doing these blogs everyday also wasn’t the best because I had to write something almost every single day. This made it hard because I had to do this project on top of the other homework I had that day. In general, when I write things, it just takes me a pretty long time. So, every night I had to basically reserve a time for writing my blog entries. I think this project was pretty fun and helpful to my writing and creativity. But, I’m kind of glad it’s over so I don’t have to stress over it anymore.  

Overcome My Fears

            As a normal human, I have many fears on a day-to-day basis. These fears vary from really small things, to pretty big things. Even the smallest fears are important to me; they affect how I act or feel. Sometimes, my fear of something can be so strong, but I never try to overcome it. One day, I want to be able to face my fears comfortably and get over them.

            Some of my fears can even control how I live my life. For example, if I come home alone, I have to turn on every single light in my house. This is because I have a huge fear of the dark. I’ve had this fear ever since I was little, and it really hasn’t changed much. When I was a kid, I was terrified of someone coming into my house and taking me, or things like that. I guess I watched too much TV or something… Anyways, in all those movies or shows I watched, the worst things happened in the dark. There was always something or someone waiting, ready to hurt you in some way. So, I would always look into the dark and see shadows of things or imagine that there was something there. I think this fear has gotten a little better over the years. Like now, I sometimes go into a room to get something for like 10 seconds… but then I turn the lights back on. I guess I could hope that I could gradually improve, but I think that some fears may never go away.

            Unlike my fear of the dark, which just kind of grew from my imagination, some fears can come from past experiences. For me, this past experience was when I got into a car crash with my babysitter, about 4 or 5 years ago. It was just a normal summer day, and I was coming home from her house. When suddenly, some idiot ran the red light and crashed right into the driver’s side of our car. I won’t go into much detail, but I was thankfully un-harmed except for a couple of bruises from the seat belt (thank God for those…). Unfortunately, my babysitter was not so lucky and got a cut and some pretty bad internal damage to her forehead. When it happened, I was just in so much shock and I couldn’t really believe that it was reality. Before I knew it, I was in an ambulance (my first time in one, how exciting) with just my babysitter and her boyfriend. At that moment, I felt so alone and scared without my parents or even anyone I knew able to help me. It took my babysitter at least a month to heal, and even though my bruises faded, I think I’m scarred forever by that experience. When I’m in the car now, I am so scared of something happening to us. I think I watch the road more than the driver does, and I freak out when we even come close to getting in a crash. I think this fear has caused the most damage, because now I’m even afraid to learn how to drive. For most teenagers, driving is something they look forward to more than anything. For me, it’s just another thing to be scared of, because of something that happened years ago. I hope maybe one day I can get over this fear, but I have a feeling it will stick with me for a while.

Picture from Google Images  

Highschool...

            Over the past few months, there’s been a big decision on my mind. This issue is something that will basically determine my future (no pressure…), so it’s been pretty stressful to think about. I’ve been trying to decide where to go to high school. I obviously have my options of where I want to go, and submitted my applications, but pretty soon I will have to make the final decision. For some people in my class, it’s easy for them; they have their “dream school” to go to if they’re accepted. And even if they can’t go to that place, there is a back-up plan that they are still kind of happy about.  But for me, the decision is more complicated.

            For one thing, I have three options. This may seem like actually a small amount of options, but the decision kind of more than that. What I mean by this is that the high school I go to depends a lot on many other things. My options are: George School, Council Rock North, and Pennsbury High School. I guess you might think I would obviously want to go to George School, since I go to a private school now. Honestly, I do want to go there, but not really that much. I think going to a Quaker school my whole life has kind of turned me off from going to a high school like that. It’s not that I don’t like it, I just feel like I’m in a bubble half the time. Even when I was younger, I remember thinking about how strict the teachers were at recess time and things like that. I remember always getting “yelled at” for not including someone to play with me or my friends or going on the grass… I feel like I didn’t really have the chance to be a free and really happy kid. And, now (in eighth grade), I still feel a lot of those limitations. The teachers are now especially hard on us since we’re supposed to be the “role models” for the school, so I’m excited for next year where there will be less pressure since I’ll be the “new kid.” Another problem I have with going to a private school is the size. I know not all Quaker schools are so small, but Newtown Friends and George School are not big at all. I guess it would help because it’s less people to worry about and you could learn more. But, for me, I just can’t wait to get out because I’ve known and been in classes with the same people for like 9 years now. So, when I go to high school, I would kind of rather there be a lot more people, so I can learn to branch out and make new friends.

            There are a couple issues with going to public school though. First off, there’s the fact that there would be at least 10x more people in my grade than in eighth grade right now. I definitely think the first few weeks would be hard, adjusting to the way the school works, trying to make new friends, and there will probably be a big workload. And then, at the moment, I’m faced with the decision of “picking” whether I want to go to Council Rock or Pennsbury. I know I can’t really pick because it’s decided based on where I live, but when I pick where I want to go, I could move. Moving, of course, is not an easy thing to do. If I stayed where I live now, I would go to Pennsbury. For some reason, I don’t really want to go there. I guess it’s because there are like 1,000 people in the grade, which is just crazy to me. Also, I know a lot of the people that go there, and they aren’t the most “classy” people, and I’m not sure if I would fit in. I know I would make friends and get used to it after a while, but I would rather go to Council Rock. It’s a little bit smaller than Pennsbury, and I know more people there that I could be friends with and I would maybe fit in better there. Also, my good friends from school here, Ben and Emma, will be going to there. So at least I could be friends with a couple people. I guess I would like to go to George School or North, but we’ll see what happens. My dream is that next year when I go to high school, I’ll be happy with my choice and have a good four years full of memories there.

Pictures from Google Images 

No More Racism

Throughout history, racism has been a huge problem. Even after slavery and World War II, racism seems to hang over our heads, never leaving. Even though our nation has gotten a lot better about it over time, there is so much room for improvement. One day, I hope that we can overlook the differences between each other (entirely) and live together in peace.

            Not only is this issue big in our whole nation, but it’s also kind of personal to me. As probably most of you know, my grandma was born in the Nicaragua (if you don’t know where that is…Google it), and moved to the US when she was around 30. She didn’t know much English, and didn’t even know how to drive. So, fitting in around here was pretty tough for her. If not knowing English wasn’t enough, she was also obviously from somewhere else by the color of her skin. I don’t know if it was any worse when she was younger, but now, she tells me all these things about how people are racist towards her. She’s a sensitive person so I don’t if people are actually being prejudice, but she tells me things about how the cashier at Macy’s gave her a hard time or somebody looked at her weirdly for no reason. My grandma likes to make scenes, so these things could be just part of her imagination, but I think that these things kind of show that racism is definitely around today.

            I honestly do not face that many problems with racism myself. The only thing that makes me look “different” from some people is that my skin is a little bit darker than normal. Most people just comment on it saying, “You’re so tan!” and things like that. A couple people do occasionally ask where I’m from or something, but I don’t seem to ever be judged by my answer. I don’t really know why things are so different for me than for my grandma, but I guess it’s that maybe our society is getting a little better about being racist…A little bit? But, I know that things are harder for people who are more obviously of a different race, so I hope one day we don’t have to face these problems in life. 

Picture from Google Images

STOP THE SOPA ACT

            The Internet is basically my life. There’s websites to help me understand things like Google or Wikipedia, and I honestly couldn’t do my homework without them… and then there’s websites for social networking, that I end up spending way too much time on everyday (Tumblr and Facebook…). And, there’s always YouTube, where I spend hours watching music videos and stupid animal videos for entertainment. Sadly, if I didn’t spend my time going to these websites, I would have nothing to do. So, if those websites or things like that were shut down, I don’t know what I would do with my life. This is why I strongly protest the SOPA act.

            In a way, I understand where they are coming from with trying to pass this act. Everyday, thousands of media files are downloaded or created illegally. And, sometimes people “steal” copyrighted material even if they don’t know it. I really don’t see what the big problem is, though. Maybe because I don’t really have anything out there that’s copyrighted or has a possibility of being stolen. But I think that if someone cared so strongly about their music or video, maybe the rights should change for just that one person’s material, not necessarily everyone else.

            But then, there’s the side I’m on, the people against the act. I’m not only against it because of the possibility of them shutting down my favorite websites. I think it is against our rights as citizens of the US. As citizens, we get the right to many things like freedom, and that’s what’s supposed to make our country better than some other countries. With this new act, though, they are going against our freedom of speech. If they do end up going through with the bill, they would shut down any website or blog that has the possibility of copyright. I feel like the government would find reasons to shut down many innocent blogs and websites, only because they took a quote or picture from somewhere and didn’t cite it. Actually, they would be going against this bill even if their sources were cited. This just seems unfair, and almost makes no one able to post anything… at all. Also, the whole point of a lot of sites like social networking websites is to share things.  If they are trying to shut down the Internet forever, I guess it’s working. Because, honestly, I don’t think there would be any reason to use the Internet when I can’t even go onto the websites I use.  

Meet Taylor Swift

            Music is a huge part of my life. I literally listen to it everyday and I don’t know what I would do without it. I also don’t know what I would do if the people who write/sing those songs were not around. Most of the singers out there write their own music. So, you know that when they sing their own songs, they have much more meaning to them and are sung with passion. I have a whole bunch of favorite artists, but for some reason I love Taylor Swift a lot. Another one of my dreams is to see her live, and maybe even meet her.

            I admit that her music isn’t the best, but she’s such an inspirational person, at least to me. For one thing, she’s not afraid to write about what she wants to. If some guy goes and breaks her heart, the next day she’ll probably already have a song written about it. To some people that may seem kind of annoying, but I think it shows how powerful she is as a person. Since she writes her songs about personal experiences, I also love how I can relate to almost everything she sings about. If I had a bad day, her music is always something that can make me feel better.

           

            With Taylor being a celebrity, there’s also so much pressure on her to be perfect. Of course, no one is, so she’s had to go through a lot. These things have only made her stronger and a better person. I love how she’s not the typical celebrity. She actually started out in Pennsylvania, and then moved to another small town in Nashville. And, she looks just like a normal person; she has crazy curly, frizzy hair like me, and is often called “the girl next door,” for her down-to-earth personality. She’s also not afraid to show people her imperfections. She inspires me to love my life for what it is and dream big. 

Picture from Google Images

My Life in 15 Years

            Even though I definitely haven’t planned my life yet (I don’t even know where I’m going to high school…), sometimes I like to imagine what it would be like. I guess I’m picturing what my life would be in about 15 years, when I’m 29 years old.  I would hope to have gone to college, or if I dropped out to become a singer or something, that’s cool too.

            I would like to live in a small town - probably not Pennsylvania – but nowhere too small, and definitely not with a lot of people. I don’t really know why, but I love the simplicity and security of living in a little town, and living in a big city like New York would probably not be for me. One of my pet peeves… or fears… or something is being around a lot of people at once. There’s something about it that makes me nervous and anxious and it’s bad. Anyways, I think small towns are a lot cuter and better to raise a family in. Oh yeah, one of my dreams by the time I’m 30 is to be married and have children. I really do not want to have to be living alone (without a husband) my whole life… I mean I would have my cats, but that obviously would not be enough. I guess I’m sort of that stereotypical girl, dreaming for a fairytale relationship and wedding and a perfect life. Of course no one’s life can be perfect, but I can make it seem perfect by doing things that make me happy.

            A lot of things in my life would rely on what my career and job will be. Honestly, I have no idea what I really want to be. When I was younger, I was that little girl that loved animals and wanted to be a vet or a zookeeper or something like that. I think those days are behind me, and I definitely want to do more than that. I also do not want to be one of those people who hate going to work; one of my dreams is to love my job and the people I work with. If I had any idea what this job would be, it would definitely be something that involves working with people or other living creatures. Even though I spend too much time on the computer now, I don’t think I could live with myself if my job was a secretary or anything like that. I would want to be able to come home to my kids and husband and tell them exciting stories about my day at work. 

Picture from Google Images