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.