blog 6

As I stood up on the podium of the SUNY New Paltz gymnasium after being recognized for being good at math or something, at my eighth grade graduation, I think I began to realize how important my role in the family was. I began to think of my future and right there and then I transformed from a child to an adult.

I like to think of myself as pretty smart, and I hope that isn't just an over inflated view of myself. I never cared about how important it was that I was smart or what it meant to be smart,but after standing on that podium and being recognized for a scholastic achievement I began to think about how lucky I was to be considered “smart”. I am lucky because no one in my family has ever attended college. In Mexico, where my parents grew up, college is just a dream, only reached by the few privileged people. Since the United States is the land of opportunity, my parents gave me an opportunity that they never had and none of my relatives in Mexico will ever have.

My English teacher once made me read this awful memoir called Catfish and Mandala, and it had many things that I could relate to because the author was in a similar situation as me. One of the things that stood out in my mind was that his parents sacrificed a lot in order to give him and his siblings a better future. This is how I think of my parents. They left behind their life and their families, to go to a brand new place, where they did not speak the language just to give me and my siblings a better future.

Unfortunately, taking advantage of this opportunity requires a lot of hard work, and better yet I face all the challenges alone due to the fact that I am the first out of three children. I get to be the first person ever in my family to face the daunting challenge of applying to colleges. My siblings have the advantage that I can give them advice or help them with their school stuff and this is part of what I realized as I grew up. My job in the family is to go through these challenged in order to be able to help my siblings get through these challenges also. I have to get through school and get into college and get a job without messing up so my siblings can follow in my steps. When I realized this I think it gave me a sense of responsibility that I did not have before because if I do not do things right, my siblings might mess up too.

I have tried my best throughout my high school career to be the best role model I could possibly be for my siblings. I think in eighth grade when I was recognized for being good at math, it marked the beginning of adulthood because the award made me think of a future. I was no longer a care free child who thought that his youth would last forever, I became an adult that had a responsibility to be a good role model and worry about how my actions would affect my future.

Blog 5

 When people look at me they don't think “Oh look at that guy, I bet he is a really good dancer” because I'm not. I'm actually pretty bad in my opinion. But I did learn how to dance a couple months ago for my cousin's quinceañera (a sweet fifteen in English). And so began my story of how I learned to dance.

A quinceañera is a big party for a fifteen year old girl where she makes the transition from a girl to a woman. It is the biggest dream, besides their wedding, of a Hispanic girl to have a gigantic and amazing party. The tradition is that the girl and the her chambelanes perform multiple dances. That is where I come in. I was chosen by my cousin to one of her chambelanes, I knew what that entailed and I wanted to decline really badly, but it is frowned upon to decline such a request. Therefore I became a chambelan, but unfortunately for my cousin I am literally her only male relative that is young/ old enough to be eligible for this position. The typical quinceañera has like six to eight chambelanes, we had to ask multiple family friends because the next male in my family turns out to be my brother who was ten years old at the time (which is too young), and adults are not eligible to be chambelanes. Eventually we found four people willing to do it. We started taking dance lessons in September and had two months to learn six dances, not too hard right?

Well it turned out that all of us were pretty quick learners. We learned the dances in time and we weren't half bad. But along the way we learned to laugh at ourselves and to not be so self conscience. Most of the time I would be laughing at one of the other chambelanes until I realized that I looked just as ridiculous. If the creators of the dances had seen us they would have probably cried, and it didn't help that our parents would take pictures and videos of us and then show us later just to get a good laugh. I didn't really like dancing and I still don't but I did learn how to dance bachata, merengue and some traditional Mexican dances.

When the day of the party arrived our dance teacher we got to wear tuxedos with pink bow ties all day taking pictures and riding a limo, blasting music around the lovely streets of Poughkeepsie. I think that was my favorite part or maybe it was the food, anyways on that day our dance teacher was freaking out but she was trying to hide it by telling us that we were going to do great. She would not stop fidgeting and she was exuding anxiety, so we tried avoiding her. When the big moment arrived we did fine (that is what we were told), I messed up a few times but they were not conspicuous errors, and we survived. After our final dance I realized that moving around like a fool in front of people was not that bad and I think I stopped caring about whether I was good or not st dancing as long as I was having fun.

band room / Mr.Seymour

The band room in the middle school was a hidden treasure. The laid back atmosphere, free of teenage angst and the soothing personality sitting in a swivel chair made it perfect for a kid like me. The man sitting in that chair looked like he was hiding beach ball under his shirt and when he stood up he made me feel small, but whenever he talked to me his words were full of wisdom. The first time I walked into the band room was in sixth grade, but it wasn’t eventful enough for me to remember it. I just have dozens of memories of things that happened in it, scattered through the three years of middle school career. Many of these memories include Eric picking his nails and Nate and me having no idea how to play the music. But some of them include Mr. Seymour and how much he taught me even though he was just a band teacher.

In sixth grade I took an immediate liking to him and he liked me and my fellow trombone section because he used to play trombone. At first he was just another teacher that was nice, but over the years he became my friend and every time we talked we learned something new about each other, whether it was sexual innuendo that went right over my head or talking about notes on page or me giving him a Spanish lesson. The one conversation that stays with me occurred on a late spring day of my eighth grade year. By then Mr. Seymour and I had known each other for three years and had several conversations. I used to go up to the band room every morning to say “good morning” to him and hang out in a little office me and my friends had made in the back of the room. I remember walking through the heavy, wooden doors and walking up to him and greeting him. But this morning was different. It was the morning after the senator from Arizona had been shot and then saved by Daniel Hernandez Jr. I had not really paid any attention to it (I was an eighth grader who had “bigger” problems) but he began to talk to me about it. He told me that this event had proven that anyone can be a hero. The Woman’s savior had been a young Hispanic and Mr. Seymour went on to say that it did not matter what skin color you are or what you are, everyone matters and can make a difference. I took this conversation to heart and it is the mantra I live by: anyone can make a difference because your skin color does not affect who you are. I think this conversation had a great impact on me because in middle school I had trouble identifying what I was due to my skin color. Maybe he had picked up on this over the years and that is why he told me this, or it was just a coincidence that that conversation occurred. I think this conversation changed my outlook on life because I learned to accept that I cannot change the color of my skin but I can change the way I act to make a difference. The difference I want to make is to prove that all the stereotypes of Mexicans (or Hispanics in general) are not true.

 

 

 

Read it or be Square

As I sat in the Lenape art room listening to constant chatter and a teacher trying to teach us how to be artists I stared out the gigantic window, which happened to be the only source of light, because I was bored out of my mind. Sadly, I have never understood art, the only things a really remember about art from those days were mixing the pretty colors of the rainbow into a disgusting gray-brown conglomeration of stuff, and my friend Lorenzo somehow going from brown hair to pink hair in a matter of seconds. I also remember we had a project where we had to pick a certain style of painting and then try to recreate that style on a blank canvas. My group chose cubism because we assumed it was going to be easy, “all we have to do is paint squares right?” In order to imitate these painting styles we had to look at examples of those types of paintings. We mainly focused on Pablo Picasso because he was famous for cubism. While it seemed like we looked at thousands of examples, the one I remember the most is his painting called the “Three Musicians.” I remember it only because I didn’t get it, “Those aren’t people,” I said, “They look like something I could make in five seconds.” My naïve mind thought that art was supposed to be a realistic representation of the world, not a conglomeration of random shapes that seemed almost as random as the colored paints I mixed together to make ugly colors. How was my young mind supposed to comprehend that art can be anything and that “good” was just an opinion? The words that I had heard so often, “good,” “great,” “amazing”, and others used to compliment me and my school work could possibly not mean anything at all, maybe they were just someone’s opinion. I think this painting was when I started to realize that abstract thoughts were annoying, why did Picasso have to paint with a weird combination of shapes to depict three musicians? Why not just draw them how they actually looked like? Even today I remain confused how people can understand abstract paintings and stuff and while I can handle trying to understand them, I prefer my world of math and science

 

 

 

I never fail...

Obviously I am not perfect and I fail… a lot… like a lot. But I fail so often that it is hard to think of a failure that has been significant in my life. Luckily I was able to think of one. I constantly fail to meet my father’s expectations.

First there was baseball. Then there was karate. Then there was soccer. And lately it has been my grades.  I will admit that I sucked at baseball, but that wasn’t the part that annoyed me, at least I was having fun. What annoyed me was that my dad, who is a great baseball player, expected me to be amazing when he took me to play with other adults and I was the only kid. When I couldn’t get on base or make a play he didn’t have to say anything, he just exuded disappointment. Karate, it was fun for a year or two but after a while it just got boring but I stayed for five years to please my dad. After I got my junior black belt I stayed for another year and then decided that I was done. When I told my dad that I no longer wanted to participate in karate, he was fine with it but even to this day he continues to ask me when I’m going to join again.

Soccer… I won’t talk about that. We still have fights because I did not become this amazing soccer player that he dreamed of.

And then he started caring about my grades. I am not sure why, he had never cared before, he barely knew what classes I was taking. I have always gotten good grades but the past year and a half my grades have not been high enough, even though they have pretty much stayed the same. He also started caring about my work ethic at home, even though he had never cared about my unorthodox way of achieving good grades. I am constantly under pressure of getting my privileges taken away because my grades aren’t high enough. The funny thing is I’m ranked 11^th in my class, but yet my grades aren’t good enough to get into a college according to him.

As he started putting more and more pressure on me to meet these expectations I realized that it does not really matter if I meet his expectation or not. I can set my own goals, I don’t need my dad setting them for me. If he doesn’t think that my grades are good enough too bad for him, I’m happy with my grades and extremely confident that I will get into a good college. If he doesn’t like how I do my school work, it doesn’t matter because I still get it done.

While I have become more independent due to this realization I cannot help wonder that maybe he is only setting his expectations high in order to push me to my full potential.

 

Believe it or not I actually enjoy reading. For some reason people get surprised when they hear that someone likes to read and I don't understand why,but to be honest I don't know why I enjoy reading. Maybe because in a book everything makes sense eventually and I like when things make sense. I like to read mysteries, because of the suspense they can build, and while at first things might be confusing in the end the mystery is solved and everything makes sense. In my life and everyone's life most of the stuff that happens doesn't make sense. A couple examples are  AP Lit essays, the district giving us random snow days and why people care about grades so much. Maybe books give me a break from things that don't make sense, maybe that's why I like them.

When I was younger I learned a lot from just listening. I would hear one of the people at my daycare read me a story and then go ask my mom to tell it to me again. Unfortunately my mom did not speak English too well. so i had to figure something out. I would memorize the stories in English and Spanish and eventually I could translate it and then it lead to me learning how to read.Once I learned how to read everything made sense. I could read to myself, and i think it helped me master both languages faster.  I remember a book that was about a cow that went "oink". This poor cow didn't have any friends because all the other cows went "moo". eventually in this book the cow finds a pig that says "moo". They both immediately become friends and try to teach each other how to say the noises they are supposed to make. In the end  they can both say "oink" and "moo" and they can finally communicate with their fellow animals. As i was writing this i finally realized why I liked the book, it finally makes sense. I liked the book because it was about me, I can speak both English and Spanish and I can communicate with  two different culture and types of people. If i had not met people who had been nice enough to teach me the languages when I was younger I would have been an outsider just like the cow. Nothing would have made sense if i couldn't understand what people were saying, I would not have been able to learn as much as i have learned (yes i also like learning). Without knowledge nothing can make sense and me being the person I am, that would suck. Maybe one of the reasons I enjoy reading is because when I was younger I subconsciously realized that reading would help me later in life.