Personal statement take 1?

Please describe the factors and challenges that have most shaped your personal life and aspirations. How have these factors caused you to grow?

I am a unique individual. There is no one on this planet exactly like me nor will there ever be. Since my freshman days in high school I have grown into an intelligent, well-rounded, and reliable person, however the credit for this growth goes not simply go to me. In my journey to become a good person I have had big influential factors on both sides of the positive and negative fence. On the negative side there is the negative influence of my absent father, and my own personal sense of rejection. Whereas on the positive side I have my amazingly supportive mom, and the sense of community and acceptance I have felt by being in Pinole Valley High School (PVHS) marching band.

My Father has always been a part of my life, but more so in spirit than actual reality. Since my childhood I remember always looking up to and viewing him as a hero, only later on in my years did I come to see that my visions my slightly distorted. To put it simply my father is not the most reliable person and is only present when it is convenient for him. When I started to realize this I could not help but wonder if somehow his absence was related to me being a bad son. While one might see this as a sob story in the making, I learned to develop a new mentality based off of my father’s personality, a mindset where I told myself that I would never be my father. I vowed to become educated and reliable, someone respectable and amazing. This is a goal that I think of everyday and inspires me to strive in everything I do and become the best person I can possibly be.

On the reverse side of my father is my mother, who gives me strength every time I look at her. From her I have learned the value of genuine support and surrounding yourself with positive people. She always told me “do not worry about our financial situation, that’s my job. Just worry about school and becoming a good man”. These words resonated within me and allowed me to point my attention toward my academics and extra-curricular activities, without having the constant mental remainder of my financial situation looming over my head. There was even a time where my mother and I were forced to leave our home of 6 years due to sudden foreclosure, and as traumatic as this was to me at first, through me moms optimism and undying faith that we would find a new home I was able to remain calm. Through her love and positive aura I have grown into someone who wants to emit the same positive energy as she, and will not stop until I am able to be reliable as she.

Like a lot of other teens in my generation I have dealt with the problems of low self-image and a sense of unimportance among my peers. From the moment I stepped foot onto the grounds of high school I feel inadequate and awkward. I was not one of the perfect students who were taking all advanced classes in their freshman year or had taken them over the summer. I felt alone, a lot of my middle school friends were either gone to different schools or took a darker path than I. My fear overcame me and instead of learning to be myself I tried to adapt to what would make me the most “popular” and well liked. As a result I became a nuisance and sank even further into my own self-pity. It was only at this low point that I was able to find my saving grace: marching band.

At my school the marching band is about being part of a family, and it is this family that accepted me for the person I was and not the person I was trying to be. As far as I am concerned the marching band was the start of my high school life. It sparked my ideals of giving as much back to the community as possible and being positive role model for future generations. As I progressed through all four years of high school, the marching band has been one of my main support systems, with its combination of having the friends I love in it and teaching me to be a more outgoing person. Without band I know that my high school experience would have led me down a road that I was not meant to go. It has shaped me into an upbeat person with the goal to energize and inspire others.

These factors make up the person I am today, I regret nothing and feel as though I can only go up from here.

what do you think?

  

The Venting Senior

I hate venting. I hate the very idea of bearing my thoughts or feelings to anyone because I feel that they will never truly comprehend me, which is a valid point considering when I vent I ramble on in an insane fashion until the anger subsides. I will make an exception this year because I am just tired of this creeping feeling that feels way too much like stress: something I don’t do. Here we go; these are the reasons for my discontent.

HEARTBREAK:

          Might as well get this one out of the way first since its messing with me emotionally. I refuse to go into detail of this situation but let us just say that a long standing “something special” recently fell over. I am not an idiot and I saw it coming from a mile away, but I always thought I could stop it. In the end that was about as helpful as standing in the path of a speeding train and trying to slow it down using only your mind. My whole high school world has been shaken up by this because the person involved has been very close to me since my sophomore year, and now she is gone. I know that I should be happy she has moved on and found someone that makes her happy but that does not make up for the hole I feel in my soul. People are not replaceable, and do not let anyone ever tell you otherwise, people are 100% unique and it is not possible to simply replace one with another. This hole compiled with the other things has got me caught in a bad place.

COLLEGE APPLICATIONS:

          Whoever had the “splendid” idea to make college applications: cost money, take forever to fill out, and just be the biggest thorn in a person’s side EVER should be erased from every sort of existence.  I HATE this overwhelming feeling of father time breathing down my back as I struggle to stay on top of schoolwork and my extra-curricular activities while also putting together a teacher recommendation packet, and stay ahead of all deadlines…if  I hate the applications this much, am I even READY to embark on the college journey? I do not know anymore and my only hope is that the same monster father time who is currently my worst enemy, will become my ally in the near future and let me know that under his influence I am ready.

SCHOOL:

          And of course what is stress without a little school? This been not only the worst start of any school year I have ever had, but it involves me and a few of my friends to split ourselves mentally between what we love to do and what we need to do. I have never been stressed out by things involving school but now it feels as though the entire administration is plotting against us. I know this is not true, but I cannot shake the feeling, like we are being punished for a crime we had no knowledge of. I am not a quitter, and refuse to make any choice that I do not have to. I am not a fall man, nor will I act like one. The result of an action my friends and I had nothing to do with is causing us to be unclear about the fate of our own schedules….UGH. That is how I truly feel and its not getting any brighter. I will continue to keep my head up but unless things change for the better and fast I think I might literally lose my mind.

Quite the Senior year…  

A Short Poem For APlit

A mother catches her breath to stare in awe. Witness to the gift that was 

given to her as the snows of winter thaw. The joy of life, one of many. The first to grace her life forever yet it cost not one penny.

She holds the gift close and feels its heart beating strong. A feeling to amazing to be expressed by any kind of book or song.

Hours pass and she makes the trip home with the precious joy she has vowed to protect. The vow runs blood deep and will remain up kept and pure with no neglect.

The First Born, the legacy, the heir and light of her world. No evil will she let touch the child, no harm will she let come upon it, nor any pain will she let unfurl.

In the child’s eyes she sees the light of life ever so coy, this is her First Born, her pride and joy.  

(this was alot longer on paper T_T)

Senior Year Starts With A Bang -_-

Okay, for the record let me just saw that I am incredibly mad at my schools administration. I usually do not writing about my day without giving it some sort of deep meaning that is meant to help those who read, but this time I will make an exception.

A lot of teens hate school. This is an irrefutable fact that has been true for many decades, but the instances that have happened at my school the last two years have made this all the more true. I am the type of person who loves the social aspect of school, friends, performances, rally’s, etc. but when my personal comfort zone gets messed with, I can hardly find the time to enjoy school. For the past two years my class schedule has been royally messed up, it has been that way for a lot of students, but these last two years hit really hard. Students not only are not getting that classes they want, but they are not getting the classes they NEED and as such the madness begins. Due to a horrid mistake and terrible planning my friends I (who deserve to have their classes fixed more than I do) might have to drop some of the classes we really wanted and or needed.

This situation has yet to sort itself out and if it does not seem as though things will end in my favor. My senior instead of being filled with fun classes and comic relief is instead being dominated by a cluster of confusion and an uncertainty of what is to come next. I am usually not one to complain, I have dealt with and ignored all kind of negative event in in these last 3 years of high school, but I refuse to stand down as the very classes that me and my fellow classmates have EARNED are stripped away from us due to poor planning our administration.

Do not get me wrong, I love my school and I take pride in being a PV Spartan, but something this stressful could not have come at a worse time, it is not a good feeling walking up and not knowing what the rest of your year will be like in terms of classes, the people you are with (in those classes) , etc. I will continue to strive for excellence for that is the only thing that can be done in this situation. We have tried fighting it and complaining, and we cannot afford to throw a full-fledged protest, so all that’s left is to deal with the cards that you are given and hope for the very best. This is not how I wanted my senior year to go, but I guess this is the final test of our high school lives, to see if we can deal with a negative situation while still keeping our awesome mojos, who knows?

I know one thing for sure, I have come too far and worked too hard to let something like this stop me. This storm will pass is what I pray, and until the day it does I will do my work and just keep my fingers crossed x_x