BLog 12 stroy of a picture

I love pictures, I love taking pictures, and I love looking at pictures and reminiscing about the time and place and story the picture is telling. I choose to write about a very simple picture. The picture is of me as a baby (maybe eight months) on my mothers lap with my two sisters who were about 10 and 12 at the time standing beside my mother. We were in my grandfather’s house, in their terrace. It was night time so you cant really see the background but my grandmother has a whole bunch of different weird plants decorated all around the terrace so you can a couple of those in the back; you can also see the bars of the terrace. The picture was shot in the Dominican Republic where there is a lot of poverty and a lot of thieves so the back of the house had, and is, surrounded with bars so that thieves don’t come into rob the house. Anyways, my sister Laura is on the left (she’s the ten year old) wearing a blue dress whose color is washed out (80’s style). My sister Michelle is wearing a pink sweater with a purple skirt with the sleeves on her sweater rolled up again 80’s style. My mother is wearing like a white shirt with light pink pants and I’m wearing socks with a blue and white baby outfit (you know the ones that look like a one piece bathing suite made out of cotton). I don’t know who took the picture but I can almost guarantee it was my grandfather, like me he’s sentimental with memorandums. The interesting thing about this picture and the reason I decided to write about it is because of my mother “smile” in the picture. And the look in her eyes, she looks sooo tired and anguished as if the entire world was on her shoulders. Her eyes are open but you can see that she’s forcing herself to keep them open. Who knows when was the last time she had a goodnight sleep. At the time she was working, and taking care of three kids one of who was new born by herself without any help from anybody. Even thought she has make on you can still see the brown bags under her eyes. And her smile, it’s almost as if she is forcing it like if she is saying in her “Omg just take the picture already”. You know I could never imagine what a woman has to go through when she has a child out of wed-lock, but I can sure tell the pain in my mother’s eye from this picture. The pain, the pain, but out her pain and sacrifice and commitment to raise me up right she struggled but made me a man. I love her so much. Thank you mommy.
Ps. Dr. Chandler, I spoke with my mother about the picture I described in class and I found out what was going on that day and who took the picture. The picture was actually taken by my aunt’s ex husband, husband at the time, and he took it because that day I had received the police shirt from one of the members of church who was an officer. I had been asking for that shirt for a long time and when I got it I felt so proud and I didn’t want to take it off for days. Its funny, I actually wanted to wear that shirt to school, never did thank god, but I though if I wore to school all of the kids would have been all over me asking how I got it, so on. After that I dot two more of those shirts and I think I still have them till this day, its amazing the happiness those shirts brought me, things that simple would never bring that kind of happiness these days, anyways just wanted to tell you that.

Blog # 11 Story of an object

The process of looking for only one or two objects that I have a special connection to is very difficult because there are many objects that I could tell many stories about. For now I am going to pick my baseball glove which I have had since I was eleven years old and I still use to this day.
MY glove and I go a long way back it has brought me many enjoyable moments. One in particular which comes to my mind is a story that is troubling but funny at the same time. Before I start it I just wanted to say that nobody got hurt during this incidence. It was another summer day in a hot New York summer. My best friend Samuel and I went to play catch like we did seemingly every other day that summer of 1999. The Yankees were on a tremendous winning streak, I remember that quite vividly because I wanted o go play catch that particular day because of it. It was a rather gloomy but humid day. Samuel and I went o the usual park but since it had been raining earlier in the day we decided to play on the side walk rather then in muddy field. The park was very solitary since it was right next to a highway behind a hospital and the only ones that played there were Samuel and I. we had two usual neighbors however, a crazy homeless man who sat on the hill behind the trees and sang songs while he was listening to his radio. I must admit the first couple of times we went to the park and he was there Samuel and I were a bit terrified, nevertheless he was harmless. Our other neighbor was this senile old man who never bothered us either. He would usually just sit down on the benches next to the park. Like I said that day the field was muddy so Samuel and I were playing on the sidewalk and the old man was sitting there as well. So Samuel threw me the ball and I threw it back and he threw me the ball and I threw it back this went on for a while. And then all of a sudden it happened. As I was going through the motions I accidentally hit the old man in the face with a hard baseball while he was innocently reading his newspaper. I felt so bad but I followed my instincts and I stared running. The worst part about the whole thing is that my best friend just stood their motion less and the old man started screaming at him, by that time I was already down the block. He later told me he stayed there because he wanted to get his ball back. So as I ran I was yelling at him and waiving “go go go run go home” but he didn’t. Anyways like I said the old man was fine. Later on about two months later my friend and I were playing catch once again and the old man came by us and we had a long talk about that day and about life. It turned out the old man wasn’t as senile as I thought. He was actually pretty nice and philosophical. Ill never forget the last thing he told me “never run away from your obstacles stay there and take it like a man”. LOL

Blog #10 deciding on an essay

I’m very confused and undecided about which ones of my essays I will review. I wanted to rewrite or revise my first draft because it was really about my personal growth and I also liked the way I developed the essay. I also liked the way I talked about my relationship with my grandfather and most importantly the relationship with myself. On the second essay I love the story line and the way I segmented the essay. I also liked the fact that spoke about and reflected two completely different periods in my life that really made me who I am today. As far as the words and overall flow of the essays the first draft in the one I’m mostly leaning towards. I think mostly because I get real personal and express feelings which I have never discussed or though before in my life. I also think the first draft was more enjoyable to write, when I was writing I felt as if the words flowed out of my brain and into the computer. With the second draft I already had an outline and an idea of what I wanted to say so the process was more like writing a paper than writing a personal story. The first draft I felt as if I was writing my journal and I was simply realizing emotions and sentiments. Nevertheless I don’t know makes for a better story. As far as audience I feel that both of my stories are relatable to not only people my age but of any age. The first draft is about my inner battle of perfection and self doubt which I think many people can relate to and the second draft is about a time in my life where my entire outlook and life made a 360 turn, and it is centered around a move from one house and environment to another which I believe many people can relate to also. Talking to one of my classmates I figured out that in my second draft I could also elaborate a bit more about my relationship with my mother and also the sacrifices which my mother has been willing and able to do for my sake. I thought about that and I think that if I do talk about that in my essay Ill sort of be getting off the subject. I could write an entire essay on that alone and I really do not want to include it in the “moving” essay, although I do mention her in the essay. I am definitely perplexed however I will probably just pick one of the randomly and hope that which ever one I pick will give me the best results.

NCF Second Essay

The City
“In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life. It goes on” (Robert Frost). Isn’t it amazing how crucial and important everyday feels when your in high school, life seems so short and you feel as if you have to do it all before “it” goes away. It’s ironic that we have no foresight as teenagers, yet we have our entire lives ahead of us. I wish I could’ve seen the future when I was teenager, I would’ve saved my self from a bunch of inconvenient situations which should’ve never happened at all.
December fourth 2001 I remember it as a cold snowy chilly night. The ground was wet, fog clogged the road ahead. The weather was so bad that morning that Jose the man who was helping us move, could barely make out what was thirty yards ahead of us on the hazy RT. 46. We were on our second trip from 162 ST. Fort Washington New York NY 10032 to 17 Hobart Place Clifton NJ 07011. Boy was I tired, that day I had carried so much stuff that my hands were all scratched up my back was in tremendous pain, my clothes were filthy covered in dust and who knows what else from that nasty New York apartment; but it was all worth it. I felt proud that day, I almost felt like a man. I was only fourteen at the time but my skinny little frame with the help of another scrawny fellow, Jose, were able to move all of that crap down the five flights of stairs into the small van and accommodate it as well as we could in the empty house.
That night my sister with her baby daughter my mother and my self slept together in the frigidly cold basement all coddled up, I imagined the first night the settlers arrived in North America perhaps having very few blankets making a small fire and each family went to sleep holding each other to retain the heat; and their new unknown future full expectations and hope for a better life would begin the next day. That’s how we felt, well at least my self, my new life was going to begin the next day, and as opposed to the prospects which I had in the city my future here was promising and my outlook was optimistic with this new beginning.
In the city I was going absolutely nowhere. My life before the move was in complete shambles. In September of hat same year I was a freshman in high school, besides all of the problems a regular freshman has in high school such as peer pressure being insecure, bashful, foolish, and uncontrollable, I also had to face drugs, excessive violence, unruly gangs and not to mention one of the worst schools in the city. I was attending George Washington High School in upper Manhattan also known as G’dubs. In New York city as opposed to New Jersey you do not go to the high school in your vicinity rather students take a standardized test and according to the scores of that test and your junior high school grades you have high schools look at your records and decide whether they want you or not, sort of like applying to a university. Most of those schools are charter schools which have very high academic standards therefore if you’re an intelligent student but had the unfortunate circumstance of attending a low, very poor academic junior high school your chances to succeed and attend a better high school are limited. So there I was in an awful school whose teachers treated you more like an inmate rather than a student. For instance my first week there I was suspended for three days because I had a two buttons missing in my school mandated white button up shirt and therefore I couldn’t button it all the way up, ridiculous. It was almost as if they wanted you out of the school more than they wanted you in the school. I also had a math teacher who could barely speak English so the couple of times I went to that class I was mostly clowning around in the back with the other knuckleheads. My science teacher for the short time I was there was a substitute teacher who made us do worksheets the entire time we were in class. The only good teacher I had was my English teacher but she was too busy working with the other forty students in the class. Feeling discouraged with school and most importantly with life I started hanging out with the wrong crowd.
Being a young man with no father figure can be hard on anybody. As for my self I searched for that father figure in my older friends. When I began going to G’Dubs and realized that I wasn’t going to do anything there but “waste my time” I began to cut school. I would wake up in the morning put on my regular clothes instead of the required khaki and white button up shirt mandated by G’Dub; and I would meet up with my “boys” who were part time students’ part time drug dealers and users, and we would usually chill in one of our apartments. This happened almost everyday. We weren’t concerned with school or our parents and unfortunately what we neglected the most was our futures. But we couldn’t see that far ahead all we knew was that “today” had to be one of the greatest days in our lives. Whenever we dished school and went to one of our friend’s apartments we made sure we had the essentials marijuana, liquor, and girls. We thought we were the greatest, I was the youngest of the group and I looked up to those around me as if they were my family more importantly my role models, boy was I wrong. I didn’t care however because I though I was just like them, at the time I was just concerned with making them happy, making sure I was cool enough to hang around them, not knowing that in reality those guys didn’t care about me but used me as their puppet to entertain their immature brains.
I didn’t have any foresight at fourteen; I was too caught up in everyday life not concerned about the future. Partly because of the school situation I was in and partly my inability to stand back and realize that if I didn’t make it better nobody else would’ve, had placed me between a rock and hard place, I was going nowhere fast as they say. If my mother hadn’t intervened and made all of the strenuous efforts to move me out of that situation into a more suitable one for my future I’m pretty sure I would’ve ended up exactly like those guys I was hanging out with; using drugs to an extreme where it would’ve consumed my entire life, committing petty crimes, having unprotected sex with the wrong girls and living life day to day with no hope for a future. I thank God everyday that although I didn’t have foresight, my mother did. I feel sorry for those who do not have parents to guide them through adolescence. After several months of not acting like myself my mother realized that I hadn’t changed but that the people around me had changed me and the influence they had on me was enormous. So she decided that a change of scenery was what I needed. And she was right.
At the time, surprisingly enough, I was happy I was moving to New Jersey. I knew that there I could start all over. I realized that I wasn’t a bad kid, and personally I didn’t like the life I was living in Washington Heights, but felt I somehow had to live that type of life just to survive. When you live in that type of environment and you don’t have a strong support system you’re bound to fall in with the crowd because essentially you have no other choice, you’re either in or you’re shut out. There is no in between in that environment you can’t be a good student and be accepted by your peers at the same time.
When I woke up the next day in that chilly basement, I realized that my new life had begun. There was a mess in the house and my mother my sister and I tried doing everything we could to make it a more comfortable living environment for all of us but we still had a long way to go. Most of the furniture we had in the apartment was thrown out because it was old and worn out, so our house looked empty for a long time but our house was full of love, and that was all we needed.
When I enrolled in Clifton High School the following week I was amazed to see how everybody was so welcoming and pleasant towards me. The teachers and even the students treated me as if I was a long time friend even though they had just recently met me. It was a short time after 9/11 so that may have had something to do with everybody being so nice, but it didn’t matter if that was the reason I still embraced it. Clifton high School is a very multicultural school, I was used to being around nothing but Dominicans in my previous school, but this was a change I needed. I discovered how to be around and respect other cultures something which I would’ve never had the capacity to learn in Washington Heights. And the education in Clifton was superlative as opposed to that which I was receiving G’Dubs. In Clifton I realized that my math skills were mediocre at best and I realized that I needed much help with it which I received from a teacher I would never forget, Mrs. Rooney. Mrs. Rooney was an awesome algebra teacher, everyday she would stay with me in after school remedial and we would go over everything I didn’t understand, but she was much more than a good teacher she was a humanitarian. One day after remedial, it was pouring January rain and I would usually walk to my house which was around fifteen city blocks away from the high school, Mrs. Rooney offered to give me a ride home which I gladly accepted. Maybe this isn’t an act that deserves tremendous merit, but I personally feel it should, this seemingly innocuous act changed my entire outlook about teachers and it made me realized that maybe they aren’t the root of all evil, but rather they’re there to help you and make you a better person.
After the move I continued to get good grades, a couple years later I would start working, and later after that I would enroll in Kean University, now I’m about nine months away from graduating with a bachelor’s degree in English education and teacher of students with disabilities. It is almost certain if my mother didn’t have the foresight which I lacked my life now would be a complete disaster.

Blog 8 Second essay preview

For my second personal essay I wanted to write about my experience moving from the slums of New York City to the suburbs of New Jersey. It was a life changing experience for me, one of those times in your life where you road shifted a completely different way. In New York more specifically Washington Heights I had just begun ninth grade in one of the worst schools in the city, I was hanging out with the wrong crowd of people doing inappropriate things for my young age and I was headed in the wrong direction academically. When I moved to Clifton my life made a 360 turn around and it was kind of a new beginning for me where I could reinvent my self and start fresh. Now I had the advantage of wonderful teachers who cared about my future and my education. I also started to hang with a different crowd of people who didn’t influence me to ruin my life but who motivated me to be a better person.

I do have an idea of what I want to write about my only problem is that it takes over a long period of time and I don’t know to how to segmented, I guess ill have to play around with it.

Blog # 7 reflection on first essay

For me what went well in my first essay was the story itself. I do have to admit however that as I wrote I kept coming up with new important facts that I needed to add on that I hadn’t thought of before I started writing. Nevertheless I do feel that I got the point across that I wanted. When I read it again a couple of days later I was really satisfied with the story itself but there are a lot of things in the essay itself that I can improve on. For instance the structure of it, maybe I need to move some of the paragraphs around or I could also emphasize or explain some of the topics which I brought up in the story. I also need to fix the grammar. Even though it was the first draft I felt the wording was a bit sloppy, and I could organize my thoughts a bit more. I tried to use segments in my essay and although I personally thought it was successful, looking back at other CNF essays and some of my classmates’ essays I realize that I still need to improve on the way I format the paper and when and how I introduce new information. I think I should be more concise but clearer in some aspects of my essay. If I get the opportunity to rewrite one or two more times I do think it is going to be a success, because the story itself, like I said, is a good one, at least to me.
For my next essay I think I will try to use more dialog, I didn’t use any dialog in my first essay. I am not quite sure which personal story I will write about for my next essay, but I will also try to incorporate feelings, or what I thought were the feelings, of other people involved in the story. Even though it was a story about what I went through, in my first essay I didn’t suggest or include the way people who were around me reacted to what was going on in the story. Some of the topics I am thinking of writing about are my transition from Washington Heights New York to Clifton New Jersey, Going to my first concert, or meeting my father for the first time. I still haven’t decided which one I am going to use yet. The one about moving is a good one to write about because there is a lot of information which I can focus on and it is also relatively new so I remember a lot about that point in my life. The one about my father is very very emotional, I don’t if I want to revisit that subject again idk maybe I will. Out of the possible choices those are the ones which I am leaning towards, I still have to do more thinking on how I would incorporate the aspects which I didn’t include in the first essay into my second essay.

post # 6 draft of first essay

Sorrow of Youth Decisions, or Evils of Ignorance

It was a gorgeous day in the Dominican Republic. The sun was out, and the balmy humid temperature wrapped your body up like a warm blanket on an October day. I was four years old but this day would be fixed in my memory for eternity. Oh boy was I happy to be there I always saw all of my cousins and my older friends be so content with themselves when they came back from the baseball fields after their practices. For baseball is my country’s national pastime but really it is more than that; for Dominicans baseball is a religion which we follow study and live rigorously with now days off. Everyday in the Dominican Republic is a good day to play Baseball the baseball field is our sanctuary; and for many youths the key to survival. I was ready prepared for execution on the baseball field that day. For breakfast, my mother served me plantains with eggs and salami, the regular Dominican breakfast. I had my hat cleats and uniform on, oh yes I was ready.
My cousins my friends and I used to talk about that day the first day of baseball practice. My older cousins were all good athletes, they received many awards and prices for beings such good competitors. Therefore I had a lot to live up to, although I was very skinny it seemed as though I was the sportiest and energetic out of my cousins so the pressure to succeed was tremendous. My grandfather had spoken to me many times before the first day of practice about how he used to be a superlative baseball player in his day and that if he had the chance “today” with all of the technologies available back in 1992 and opportunities that were available to young kids who wanted to play baseball he would have probably made it to the pro’s. He said to me “If I didn’t have to work on the farms with my family to make ends meat since the age of ten who knows what would have become of me, maybe I could’ve been a fabulous baseball player or maybe a politician” then he said “never waste any great opportunities to advance in life, even though you have more then I ever had when I was young, you will only get a handful of real opportunities and you have to make sure you take full advantage of them because the one thing you can’t get back in this life is time”.
As my mother and I stepped into the field I smelled the freshly cut grass and the wind caressing my face. The older kids were already there throwing the ball around doing drills everybody with a smile on their faces and I sensed they all knew what they were doing, except for me. My mother had to go singed me in and she also had to talk to the couch about what team I was going to play in and what position I was going to play and how they were going to start teaching the me the game, so she left me by the gate in the front of the park, and that’s when it happened. I felt the feeling that I have felt ever since then whenever I was faced with an obstacle. The feeling was an anxious sick to my stomach feeling of doubt and insecurity. Damn I hate that feeling.
I often try to figure out why does this happen to me, why I feel weak whenever I’m going to do something that I might fail in. Why do I feel like giving up even before I step on the field or stand in front of a class to do a speech, before I ever got in back of a wheel of car, before I was supposed to danced with my Godmothers daughter for her sweet sixteen? Is thee something wrong with me mentally is it normal those this happen to everybody else this drastically? The only thing I do know is that it happens to me all of the time; Anxiety. I spoke to my doctor once about this problem and he said all I had to do was close my eyes take deep breaths and say to myself that everything was going to be ok. He said that this problem was not so severe that I would need to medicine for it or anything like that and since that day I can honestly say I have tried his solution and it hasn’t worked. I still feel it, I get scared every time the possible outcome can be one of failure.
So as I waited for my mother by the gate it happened. This was the first time and I will always remember it. as I stood there waiting for my mother to come back and tell me what team I was going to play on I started looking at the older kids who were maybe eight years old to the oldest being fifteen and I started asking myself hey am I as good as those kids definitely not. I was not fast I had never thrown baseball before then I though wow am I going to get dirty and filthy with the mud, im going get hurt these bigger stronger kids are going to hurt and then they’re going to make fun of me for being so weak and soft and a cry baby oh my God if I cry I could never show my face hear again. Wow there’s a lot of mosquitoes here they keep biting me and bothering me. And there it was the reason I could tell my mother to never bring me back there again. I screamed I hollered and ranted and belted my self claiming that these dangerous ants had crawled all over my body and I couldn’t take it anymore. Small tiny harmless ants those ants were my excuse for playing baseball that summer. Ants, creatures who can carry ten to twenty times their body weight these half an inch who have so much might and sense of unity were able to defeat me.
Looking back I am quite sure that the ants were not the cause of my problems. I wasn’t afraid of ants; frankly you couldn’t be afraid of ants, where I come from that is like being afraid of snow living in the North Pole. So if it wasn’t the ants what was it? Was it getting my uniform dirty was that the reason why I didn’t want to play baseball? That could not have been the reason I was only four years old and at the time getting dirty while playing out side was my favorite hobby. Was it the fact that I had very little experience playing baseball? That could not have been it either because I knew I didn’t know how to play but I knew that everything I had previously tried I had succeeded in so I knew that if I simply tried and put effort I was going to learn and eventually get very good at the game of baseball. I also wonder if maybe the fact that my mom was going to leave me by myself to run errands maybe that was the reason I cried out? Maybe I was crying out to my mother to no leave there alone by myself a young four year old. But that could not have been it either, because I knew that it was customary for mothers to leave their youngsters on the field by themselves and the fact of the matter was that I was not going to be by myself, I had my next door neighbor there who was five years older than I was, and my cousin was playing on the field next to the field where I was so he kept an eye on me and there was a couch for every five children so I was secure. I remember looking at the other kids playing baseball and I was terrified because I knew I wasn’t as good as they were, and I remember having a small trepidation to fail because I would look like a fool. But it wasn’t that either, heck at the time I didn’t really care what people though of me I was more concerned about myself than of what other people were doing.
Thinking about it I now realize the reason why I made a scene like if I was afraid of those ants, and screamed and I hollered to get out of the field as a soon as possible. The truth or the real evil which made me act like a brat was of all of the pressure that was put on me by my grandfather my friends and most importantly my self. I have been a person who has always looked at the glass half empty, and the fact of the matter was that on that glorious summer day with my uniform on and me ready to go play baseball I didn’t fear failing or ants, or the other kids, or my mother not being there, what I feared the most was the fact that there was a slight possibility that I was not going to be great. You see I wasn’t thinking like the rest of the kids who simply though about having fun and playing with their friends and making new friends, what I was unconsciously thinking about was that this was one of the few opportunities in life which my grandfather had told me about, and I knew I couldn’t pass it up, so for me it was not about having fun it was about being great at it.
My mother, like a resilient strong Dominican woman, was not going to let me quit that easily. She forced me that day to play. And I was only four so hesitantly I played that day which wasn’t like playing real baseball. On the first day I found out they never play an actual game. We did some drills and started to throw the ball around and we mostly just ran and ran and ran, never actually putting a team together and playing a game. I never got to find out which team I was going to play on I never went back.
Ants never bothered me again after that day. And I sometimes wonder if maybe if I would’ve stuck it out I could have become a great baseball player. Hey, I am not blaming the fact that I am not playing for the Yankees right now on that single event of my life, but you never know. Living with regret is a waste of time, I’ve learned, as I mature, that regret moments in life should not be looked at with sorrow but should be acknowledged as a moment of self growth and one should learn from all of those “regret full moments in life”. However, I still fear the fact that whatever it is that I do I have the possibility of not being great. I want to be great at everything I do and that is the problem I have to accept the fact that I am not perfect that it is ok to fail once in a while and that the whole world is not expecting me to succeed. I still have to deal with my inner conscience everyday; it’s a battle, if not a war that I am going to have to fight with for the rest of my life until I eventually ease up on my self and accept it.
P.S. I need help finishing this story. I don’t know if I should ended by giving examples of times when have had the same anxious scared feeling in the present time; or should I finish it by accepting that I am never going to get over it and have to live with it for the rest of my life, and even somehow appreciate it for what it is and embrace it as part of my human condition.