Class Interview

About two weeks ago during our English class we got the chance to interview one of our classmates. As soon as Mrs. Crooker announced that we were going to be interviewing someone, I immediately looked at my co-worker Rosanaid and thought to myself “well this should be a piece of cake, since I already know a lot about her”. Suddenly Mrs. Crooker stated that she had picked our partners. I was devastated and nervous at the same time just of the thought of speaking to someone else about my life. She gave all of us a number and told us to meet up with someone else that had the same number. I looked around class and listened carefully to see if anyone called out my number. Shortly I was sitting at the same table as my partner. She was a very small intelligent looking girl. Her sweet look helped me with my fear of talking a stranger about my life. We began by introducing ourselves she told me her name was Veronica Aguilar, and that she was only 18 years old. She then began to tell me about her background. She started off by telling me that as a child she lived in a trailer park here in Oxnard. Her trailer park reminded her so much of Mexico and that was one of the things she loved the most about her neighborhood. Also, she loved that everyone in her neighborhood knew each other and the fact that everyone was so friendly was a plus. When Veronica was in the tenth grade her family and she moved to some apartments. She was so sad to leave her friends and nobody was friendly in her new neighborhood.

Years later she graduated from High School and began to work at a factory. Her position at the factory involved a lot of hard labor. She was working for a floral design company and she was forced to make around 100 floral designs in an eight hour shift. She then realized that she didn’t want to be stuck in that factory for the rest of her life and making eight dollars an hour was not cutting it. She then quit her job and with the support of her family began attending Oxnard College full time.

Today she is taking three courses at Oxnard College and is currently unemployed. She attends college one Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday nights. She enjoys having the mornings off to catch up on homework. She has an older cousin that she admires, “She’s my role model,” she said. “She was the first one in the family to attend college. Today she is a teacher and has her own classroom. I want to be a teacher and one day have my own classroom as well.” She also stated to me that she’s a role model to her younger sister. “When I do homework, she does homework” she stated. Her goals are to get a higher education than her parents. She’s proud of being one of the first people in her family to go to college, since not many people from her culture that continue their education. What she likes about college the most is that it’s not as hard as some people make it seem.

FAMILY

As a child, my parents always taught me that family comes first. I always agreed with them because my family was always there for me so I promised to always be there for them.  I grew up in a family of six, which included my mother, my father, and my three sisters. We were always so happy and loving towards each other. We were a family that everyone admired for our honesty, respect, and love towards each other. I can still remember my sisters and me playing outdoors with my mother while my father was at work. We were always so happy and loyal towards each other, but that didn’t last long. On the winter of 2001 my mother’s youngest brother was involved in a car accident and died instantly on the scene. My mother was devastated. She cried herself to sleep for an entire month. Without realizing my mother soon fell into depression. She wouldn’t eat, laugh, or even bond with us anymore. I was so young at the time that I couldn’t understand why our family was slowly drifting apart. Her depression followed with anger. She was no longer that nice mother I once knew. She had slowly become a monster. My father turned to drinking to cope with the stress of knowing that our beautiful family was slowly drifting apart.

Even though many years have passed, my family is still not as close as it used to be. My two younger sisters are not loving, caring, or respectful towards my parents. Today I’m 22 years old and I finally decided to move out of my parent’s house, because all the drama and stress they were getting me involved in was not easy for me to handle. Whenever I go over to my parent’s house all I can hear is loud yelling and people arguing back and forth over nonsense. To this point I still don’t understand how such a happy family can slowly drift apart because of a traumatic situation that happens within the family. I don’t know, or seem to understand why after many years my family has not gone back to being happy and loving. Even though my family and I have gone through a lot, I still love them and I’m always there for them because that’s how my parents once brought me up. That’s how they raised me, so no matter how rude or disrespectful they might be towards me I will always love them.

My first time in the ER!

My First Trip to the Emergency Room

It was a typical sunny afternoon. I was only eight years old at the time. I was on the bus heading home from a long day of school. Next to me was Jose, a boy my mother used to care of, and sitting across from us was my older sister Alexes. Finally, after an entire hour ride on the bus we arrive at our destination. Since I wanted to be the first one off the bus, I slightly pushed Jose out of my way.

 Even though Jose was our neighbor’s son, he was always like a brother to me. Jose was seven years old, but as far as I could remember my mother would take care of him since he was a baby. Although Jose was not my parent’s son, my parents loved him as if he was part of the family. I was always jealous of Jose since I wanted to be my parent’s center of attention. Every day after school my mother always had our dinner ready. I can still remember walking inside my mother’s house and the smell of homemade chicken stew came rushing to my nose, for dessert my mother had a small Zip-lock bag full of grapes for each one of us.

 I can still remember my sister not wanting her grapes so I ate her portion plus mine, on the other hand Jose was very happy to eat his grapes. He sat down on the couch and began to eat his grapes, he only had three grapes and shortly after he fell asleep. Without thinking twice, I ran to the couch and ate his portion of grapes.

As soon as I woke up the following morning, I had a tremendous stomach ache. It was so painful I could hardly even walk. I remember my parents did not believe me and they send me off to school. That evening when I got home from school I did not eat anything. My stomach pain had just become much worse and walking had become much more difficult for me. In order for me to be able to walk I had to hold on very tightly to my stomach and I walked with a hunch. Luckily for me it was Friday and I knew I did not have to attend school the following day. The next morning I was not able to walk at all, not even a few steps. I remember climbing off my bed crying and crawling to my parent’s room for help. I had never felt something so painful and horrible in my entire life. My parents finally realized that I was lying. My father picked me up off the floor and carried me out to the truck. He had a serious look on his face and I knew he was extremely worried for me. My mother got pink rose cheeks, the ones she usually gets when she’s afraid, she immediately ran to the truck holding on to my sister’s hand and they rushed me out to the emergency room.

My ride to the Hospital was the longest one ever. I was crying and my pain would just worsen by the minute. Not only was I afraid I knew that we were all afraid of what was going on. My heartbeat was so fast that I felt as if I had just run a couple miles. I can hear my parent’s ague back and forth about what was going on with me, and my sister was hugging me very tightly in the backseat.

 Finally we arrive at the Emergency room we waiting about thirty minutes until they finally called us in. As soon as they took me inside a room I felt a little safer knowing that there were many Doctors there to help. Even though we had not seen a doctor yet, I knew my parents felt relief of being at the hospital as well. It was my first time being at a hospital, I can still remember the smell of medicine and the noises in the background of loud machines. Since the hospital was so cold inside, I had chills all over my body. After a couple minutes of waiting a man in a white coat comes in and introduces himself as Dr. Lanter. My mother didn’t even let him speak when she started telling him in Spanish what was going on with me. He then examined me and then left the room. He had left all of us in suspense we didn’t know why he left the room. He came back in a couple minutes with a nurse named Amanda she then translated for Dr. Lanter and my parent’s. She told us that Dr. Lantern had diagnosed me with an appendix rupture and I had to go into emergency surgery.

Once they were preparing everything for surgery I was very afraid. I had no clue what an appendix was or why it had ruptured. I knew my parents were worried just by the look on their face.

Amanda came back about an hour later telling us that my room was ready for surgery. I then told her if she could help into the restroom since I could not walk. She assisted me into the restroom and I sat there patiently with an even worse horrible stomach ache. My stomach then started to growl very loudly and it followed with explosive diarrhea. I thought that it was normal since I was nervous about undergoing emergency surgery. The nurse got very worried and rushed to call Dr. Lanter into the room. Dr. Lanter examined me after going to the rest room. I then noticed that my pain was slowly going away and I felt much better. After he examined my stool he realized that my appendix had not ruptured, in reality it was just grape skin that had caused a blockage in my stomach from consuming too many grapes. Shortly after my surgery got called off and I was able to go home.

I then realized that I should not be eating other people’s food without their permission and I also learned to share my food. When I got home that night I immediately called Jose and apologized for eating his grapes.

Texting

Texting has become my number one form of communication. I send roughly around 5,936 text messages per month. I find texting much more convenient than phone calls or other forms of communication. The only problem with text messaging is that some people might misunderstand what you are trying to tell them and might take the message the wrong way. For example, one day I text my boyfriend in Caps and I asked him what he was doing, followed by three exclamation points.  He automatically assumed I was mad, and immediately called me. I had not realized that the way you send a message might affect how the reader responds to it. Now I’m much more careful when sending a text message, or ill usually add and Emoji, which are smiley faces that I can paste with my Iphone so the reader can understand how I’m truly feeling.

 Even though I find text messaging convenient in many ways, it still causes many problems. A major problem that I find is caused by text messaging is that people are forgetting how to spell. They will write things like (U) instead of (YOU) in important school papers, work documents, or even on cover letters for a new possible job. That makes the person look bad, and they most likely will not succeed if they continue with their bad texting habits. Another equally important problem that is caused by text messaging is texting while driving. Texting while driving has caused many accidents throughout the world, and has caused the death of many innocent people that get killed by a person who is texting and driving. I think texting and driving is as dangerous as drunk driving. In my opinion everyone’s phone should go in the glove department when you get in your car to avoid these types of problems.

Reality Television

At this point I currently do not watch any reality shows. I don’t find them appropriate for either teenagers or adults. They show the cast members acting like fools and they expect the world to believe that everyone should act that way. The last reality show that I watched was “Jersey Shore.” Even though I wasn’t hooked on it, I never missed an episode. After a couple seasons of “Jersey Shore” I started to notice that more and more teenagers were getting influenced by the members of the Jersey Shore cast. They began to act, dress, and talk like the members of the show. Another show that I have watched was “Keeping Up with the Kardashians.” Although I do find this show to be very interesting, I know it’s still not appropriate for anyone to watch. After this show began more and more girls got influenced by the Kardashians fashion styles, attitudes, and lifestyles that by the end of the first season there was many girls wanting to look like Kim Kardashian that they bagan dressing, doing their hair, and make up like Kim Kardashian. I believe that reality television has significantly affected our society in many ways. It influences people to do things they normally don’t do. Not only adults get hooked on reality shows, teenagers spend a lot of time watching these types of shows. Most teenagers get influenced by reality shows on MTV such as “Teen Mom”, “16 and Pregnant”, “Rock of Love”, “Sister Wives”, and the most popular “Jersey Shore”. Even though most of these shows seem to be very interesting, they can also have a negative effect some people. These types of reality  shows show the cast members drinking, smoking, and having sexual relationships leading teens to believe that they should also be doing all those types of things in order to be cool. Although I know that most teens will see this behavior and probably won’t get influenced in that behavior, I do believe that these teens see the members and allow them to change the way they see themselves. Leading some teenagers to believe that by acting inappropriately they will be much cooler and gain popularity at their schools. I do find some reality shows to be entertaining but I try very hard to avoid watching reality Television. In my opinion, reality television is influencing people in many ways. It seems that the cast members on all these shows are the role models for the next generation. I believe that if teenage girls see other teens getting money and fame for getting pregnant as a teen, those girls will also be influenced to get pregnant at a young age. All of the networks that show these types of shows on television should be more cautious about what they teach tomorrow’s generation. The networks that show reality shows on television are showing tomorrow’s generation negative values and morals that will eventually lead to greater problems. If you constantly watch these types of reality shows, or allow your kids to watch reality television do not get surprised when your young teenage daughter gets home with a big surprise, or when you find out that your teenage son has been caught smoking or drinking alcohol.