Difficulty Paper #2

“The Scarlet Letter”
Allison Finley
English 1B
May 4, 2011


Page 1
I believe that the central theme of an intense and powerful religious environment is the key to understanding the cultural norms of the Puritan society. The fact that the culture within The Scarlet Letter revolves so strictly around religion and the ties that their society has to the bible and their religious beliefs sets president over every aspect of their life. The Puritan way of life found within The Scarlet Letter is so different from our modern day society that I find the Puritan cultural norms not only interesting and intriguing but frustrating and obnoxious as well. Today, we have freedom of religion. Not only is that freedom of religious choice written into the United States Constitution but it is also one of our cultural norms. While the people of the Puritan society use their religion as judge, jury, and executioner. I am happy to live in a society that embraces religious differences amongst one another.
Compared with the culture that I am accustomed too, the Puritan society was overly harsh and unforgiving. Because of these differences between the Puritan culture and my culture I find it difficult to fully comprehend their norms; it’s as if I can only understand their society so much, but I’m left with many questions unanswered. I can’t help but compare and contrast these differences between their culture with my own. I also think that the author of the novel, Nathanial Hawthorne, presents sub themes throughout the entirety of the novel and I find it interesting that Hawthorne revolves these sub themes around their religion. For example, their decision making, ability of moral acceptance, and rebellion are all influenced heavily by their strict religious beliefs.
I think that the Puritans’ decision making process was heavily influenced by their religion in that their decisions were very public. They had to deal with what is right and what is wrong on not only a private level, but also on a much larger scale; they had to consider their decisions as viewed in the eyes of society as well. To an extent, unlike today, the Puritan people had such a heavy burden to carry while making any decisions; they always had to take into consideration their society and strict religious rules. Today’s culture, on the other hand, is much less strict and judging. The culture I am accustom to is less harsh I am happy to live in a society which is more accepting of differences found among different people, and in a time where those differences are accepted.

Annotated Bibliography

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. "The Scarlet Letter and Other Writings". Norton Critical Edition. New York, London: W.W. Norton; Company, 2005. Print.

1. Some themes found within this popular novel deal with what is right and wrong in the eyes of society, what is morally acceptable within a religious civilization, and pushing the boundaries within a strict culture.

" 'I have greatly wronged thee,' murmered Hester.'We have greatly wronged each other,' answered he" (Hawthorne, p 53).

" 'Thou art not my child! Thou art no Pearl of mine!' said the mother... 'Tell me, then, what thou art, and who sent thee hither?' said the child... 'Thy Heavenly Father sent thee!' answered Hester Prynne... 'He did not send me!' cried she, positively. 'I have no Heavenly Father!' " (Hawhorne, p 67). 

Crowd Reaction - Conclusion

After the crowd had time to proccess what exactly had happened that day and reevaluate their initial reactions of shock and confusion, some members of the crowd were unable to come to mental realization of what they had saw. "...spectators of the whole scene, and professed never once to have removed their eyes from the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale, denied that there was any mark whatever on his breast..." (Hawthorne page 163). Another important explanation some members of the crowd believed was that "some affirmed that the Reverend Mr. Dimmsdale, on the very day when Hester Prynne first wore her ignominious badge, had begun a course of penance, which he afterwards, in so many futile methods, fallowed out, by inflicting a hideous torture on himself" (Hawthorne page 162).

Research Essay Process Suggestions -

I decided to copy and past this to my posts so that I can have this readily available during my writing process.



Process suggestions:
1. Review your lectures notes and information posted on Instructor Knapp’s blog. In particular, review the Key Terms post, Critical Theories Overview, Combining Sentences, Constructing an Argument, Popular Student Errors, Using Quotations, and The Scarlet Letter.
2. Look back at your own blog posts to get ideas about a possible theme to explore or an approach to this essay. You should also read some of your peers blogs to expand your ideas on the text.
3. Brainstorm ideas for research and writing by doing a cluster, list, or freewrite.
4. Begin your research process by formulating questions about your chosen text. Your research may be more fertile if you direct the search somewhat. Locate Critical Essays in our Norton Critical Edition that connect to your questions.
5. Skim several of the essays included in our anthology, additional writings by the author, or biographical information to help you develop your interpretation.
6. Discuss your questions, ideas, and responses with a classmate, instructor or another person.
7. In your first draft, draw plenty of examples from the text. Include references to your research. Don’t be afraid to argue with the literary critics you’ve read. Let this draft be your chance to enter the literary conversation and don’t “censor” your ideas—it’s better to overwrite on your draft to allow for insights that you gain during the process of writing to emerge. Later you can edit, select, or throw out what doesn’t fit.
8. When revising, return to your introduction to ensure that you have a clear, strong (narrow) thesis. Remember to name the author and text in your introduction. The title of your essay should reflect the theme of the essay (do not use the title of the book as the title of your essay). The body of your essay should include plenty of support for your ideas, including examples and quotes from the book. Use specific references to your research to enhance your interpretation of the text. Generally, the most effective way to use quotes is to use them to support a point you’re making; then follow up the quote with interpretation (Remember the TEA paragraph and the Quote Sandwich). Review MLA format for citations if you need to.
9. Share your rough draft with your peer response group. Ask for specific feedback on the parts of the essay you’re unsure about. You may also contact me for help or submit your rough drafts to the campus Writing Center for help.

Difficulty Paper #1

For my very first difficulty paper, I'd like to speak about the first thing that I am having difficulty with between both our novel, The Scarlet Letter, and with our most recent short story, Young Goodman Brown. With both pieces of literature, I am finding it increasingly difficult to read the style of English they both use. That style of language, which to me is almost like old English, that to me resembles both the bible and works by Shakespeare, is very hard for me to understand. Because we don't speak in the same way that these works of literature were written in, it's not like our common language we use to communicate therefor it's not easy to know right off the bat what some words and phrases mean. So instead of just zooming right through the book and comprehending it the first time I read it, I have to reread sometimes even multiple times before I use contextual clues to fully understand what it is that the author is trying to say. I also have a dictionary right by my side to help me better understand some words that I've honestly never heard before. So between rereading passages, using clues in the text, and having a dictionary by my side, I have began to adopt ways of overcoming not understanding the language of the text.

Typical American Teen - Final Draft

Allison Finley March 26, 2011
English 1B
Professor Knapp

Finley 1

Typical American Teen

Within the novel The Flowers, by Dagoberto Gilb, we find a rather typical American teenager named Sonny Bravo. This typical American teenager is our narrator, and the main character of the story. Throughout The Flowers, the way in which Sonny tells us his story makes him extremely relatable to the audience. Gilb shares Sonny’s story with us on a day-to-day basis by including what he is currently going through at that moment in the novel, while comparing that with memories that he’d made in the past. Which, I believe that style of writing that the author uses of present situations combined with past stories keeps him on a more relatable level because we go through life not only living in the present but thinking of our past as well. This type of first person point of view story telling allows us to fallow Sonny’s every move, and really divulge into his character; in which through his stories and encounters we are able to learn so much about him. Throughout this novel I have learned so much about Sonny Bravo including his risky behavior, his local hangout spot, and his adult influences; now using reader response threory, I will discuss key elements that prove Sonny to be a typical American teenager. However, my personal memory of being an American teenager varies quite drastically from Sonny’s habits and experiences. While Sonny would partake in some risky and strange behavior of watching

Finley 2
people through their windows and venturing into their homes in order to avoid reality and learn more about the family who lived there; I never broke and entered or watched people from afar. I actually had to interact with people in order to learn more about them and in order to get to know them, I actually had to make he effort. Which has never been something I’ve found difficult to do, even in my teenage years during both junior high and high school. Also, I can’t necessarily say that throughout my teenage years, I had a some strange quirk or specific habit that would allow me that pleasure of being able to escape reality as often as he does in the novel. Sonny had the convenience of watching in order to learn and I had to interact and converse with people in order to do so. I feel as if, even though that was strange behavior, he had it easy to learn about people. However, since I’ve always been a social person who can talk to just about any one and by doing so, I feel as if that is the best way to know people.
Sonny’s voyeurism tendencies acted as an escape from his home life by being another place he can go, mentally as well as physically, to escape whatever it was he had to deal with at home. Which I completely understand the concept of wanting to escape, however in contrast with how he would escape, whenever my home life was too much to handle, I would simply go over to a friend’s house and hang out there for a couple hours, or even a couple days. Both Sonny and I would get away from our homes to avoid our parental figures. But while Sonny would basically break and enter to force his way into a home, I was invited and welcomed into a friend’s home. While Sonny didn’t like having to deal with his step-father, I wanted to get away from having to deal with my step-

Finley 3
mother. Even though Sonny and my ways of escaping reality were quite different in how we would get away, the reasons why are so similar in that we both were faced with situations and parental figures we didn’t want to deal with at that time.
Also, at the beginning of the novel, Sonny would not only watch from the outside, but break and enter into different houses just to get a feel for what it would be like to live in other types of home atmospheres. On the first two pages alone, the first thing I learned about Sonny is that he would go inside strangers’ homes. “… I would go to a house… I’d crawl through an open window… I sprawled out on their couches or lay down on their beds. Go, How would it be if I lived here?” (pg. 1-2) While Sonny does this forcefully through breaking and entering, I would spend time at friend’s houses that have different family morals. Some would be of different religions; some would be a single parent home, while others would have both sets of parents with many siblings and I’d stay with them for a few days at a time and try my best to imagine what it would be like to live there. But the fact of the matter is, no matter how we would do it; we both liked to get away from our situations and try to imagine ourselves in different ones.
Another avenue of escape for Sonny is the bowling alley; it is another place where he can go to lose himself and forget about what is happening at his apartment, it is away for him to stop thinking about his mom and Cloyd, and it’s a local hang out spot where he can spend his time away from his home life. Just like many other typical teenagers everywhere, myself included, there is always a local hangout spot, where teens go to hang

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out with one another. I too had a place where my friends and I would go to spend hours just hanging out together. A local hang out spot for teens is less of an escape from reality in that specific moment, but is more like something to get excited over and think about and look forward to. I’d look forward to Fridays to hang out with my friends and loved knowing that every one was going to be there. Every Friday evening we’d all head down to the Tennant Station here in Morgan Hill.
It all started when I was in 7^th grade, I would bum a ride off someone old enough to drive us there, we’d all meet up there and hang out together for hours on end; or at least until our moms would come to pick us up. The funny part about it is that we would rarely ever do what we had come there to do. Within that Tennant Station is a movie theater, bowling alley, bocce ball court, and a Safeway. But being in junior high limited us with how much disposable income we had, we hardly ever saw a movie at that movie theater, we never step foot inside that bowling alley and we literally never bowled, with the bocce ball court you had to be 21 even in order to enter and we were only half that age, that left the spot where we spent most of our time, the Safeway. No one really knows why Safeway became our popular hang out destination for Friday nights, maybe it was because there was a Starbucks, a deli, and anything you could ever want to munch on; whatever the reason, that Safeway was our hang out spot where we would meet up and spend hours at every weekend. So throughout my younger teen years, maybe age 12-16, I would love hanging out with everyone at Safeway, but like anything it eventually got old and we started going into San Jose to hang out at the mall.

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Every person, at one time or another in their lifetime will have the opportunity to look up to someone for some sort of guidance. Whether it be educational guidance or religious guidance, parental guidance or advice, and I am no exclusion. I have been faced with admiring someone for advice and support, the role that adults assume into a teenager’s life will help to shape who they will be one day. Sonny and I are no exclusion to this. Sonny has been faced with many different men from who his mother brings home to meet him. While Sonny is often smart enough to know whether or not the relationships between his mother and the men will last or not, when Cloyd becomes a more permanent figure in his life, Sonny will certainly be influenced by him. Cloyd is certainly a father figure to Sonny whether he is aware of it or not. Growing up, I didn’t have many male or father figure influences in my life because I was raised by single mother while sporadically visiting my own father. So when my mother was busy working, which she often was, I would actually look to friend’s mothers to for guidance. One mother in particular was always so accepting and so kind to me, she would offer me her best advice, she would help me with my homework and often feed me dinner. I would actually consider myself lucky to have had this lady in my life throughout some very impressionable years in my life in order to guide me in making the right decisions and having helped me in so many ways to become the woman that I am today.
Your typical American teenager is an easily influenced young adult faced with many difficult situations in which they need to figure out what is right and what is wrong. A typical teen has a local hangout spot and their own way of escaping reality from time to

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time. I certainly consider despite our subtle differences both Sonny and I to have been typical American teenagers.

Imitation

make sure it's in nuetral; turn the key to on; this is how you turn the gas on; turn the choke to half; kick it over; feather the throttle to give it some gas to keep it idling; turn the choke off; keep the gas on; pull in the clutch; kick it down into first gear; let the clutch out slow and give it gas; this is how you ride your dirtbike;

turn the ignition on; make sure its in nuetral; let the e-brake out; push in the clutch; put it into first gear; let out the clutch slow; give it gas; go; shift; this is how you drive your manual car;

this is how you tie a hook onto your line; attach your wieght; this is how you put your worm onto your hook; this is how to cast; this is how you plug for bass;

crack the eggs; put them into a bowl; this is how you mix them to make sure the yolks break; butter the pan; poor in the eggs; let them cook almost thoroughly; this is how you smoothly mix them around in the pan; keep them whole for as long as you can; this is how you scramble my eggs;

girl - by jamaica kincaid

Out of all of our short stories to choose from for this weeks assignment; I must say I like Girl the most. It was different and unique, strange and intense, intriguing and interesting. I've actually never read a short story in this fashion. Only separated by semi colons, no periods. It was a long story in the terms of it being a short story. The fact that it read like one long sentence also made it an easy read. One where I didn't want to stop reading at the pause of a semi colon, but instead I continued on reading looking for almost the point of the story. And it was intriguing when the point of the story came at the very end by way of question. At times in the reading I would find my mind multitasking by asking questions about where the story is taking me. Questions to try and find out information of where is our narrator? Where does she live? What's her culture? Religion? Race/Ethnicity? Is this information coming from mom, dad, an elder? Who is this telling her these life lessons and did they come out to her over a long expanded period of time? Or was it over a course of couple days, or hours even? This short story intrigued me with its difference that set it aside from other short stories I've read in the past.

Revised Thesis Statement - The Flowers

Here is my current thesis statement:
In this novel, we learn that Sonny partakes in some risky business, has a local hang out spot, and has a few very diverse adult influences; which in my oppinion are all typical teenage behaviors.

Revised thesis statement:
Throughout this novel I have learned so much about Sonny Bravo including his risky behavior, his local hangout spot, and his adult influences; now using reader response threory, I will discuss key elements that prove Sonny to be a typical American teenager.

For anyone reading this, feel free to help me by critique and of course constructive criticism! Thanks!

Transitions

Addition:
again, also, and, and then, beside, equally important to, finally, first, last, in addition, furthermore, second, still, too, next, moreover


Comparison:
also, in the same way, likewise, similarily


Concession:
granted, naturally, of course


Contrast:
although, and yet, at the same time, despite that, even so, even though, for all that, however, in contrast, in spite of, nevertheless, on the other hand, on the contrary, still, though, yet, otherwise, regardless


Emphasis:
of course, in fact, indeed, certainly


Example:
for example, after all, in other words, of course, thus, that is, truly, to illistrate


Summary:
all in all, together, finally, in brief, in conclusion, in short, in summary, in simple terms, to summarize, that is, in particular

Time Sequence:
and then, also, meanwhile, in long, next, now, moreover, thereafter, too, since, so on, simulataniously, far, soon, still, then, thereafter, too, in the first place, in part, before, at last, in the first place, when, then

The Flowers - Rough Draft

            Within the novel The Flowers, by Dagoberto Gilb, we find a rather typical American teenager named Sonny. Sonny is our narrator, and the main character of the story. Throughout The Flowers, Sonny tells us his life story on a day-to-day basis by including what he is currently going through at that moment, while sharing memories that he’d made in the past. This balance of present versus past that Sonny conveys his story to us by, keeps him on a more relatable level because we go through life not only living in the present but thinking of our past as well. This type of first person point of view story telling allows us to fallow Sonny’s every move, and really divulge into his character; in which through his stories and encounters we are able to learn so much about him. In this novel, we learn that Sonny partakes in some risky business, has a local hang out spot, and has a few very diverse adult influences; which in my opinion are all typical teenage behaviors.  However, my personal memory of being an American teenager varies quite drastically from Sonny’s habits and experiences.

            While Sonny partakes in some risky, and downright strange habits of watching people through their windows and seeing into their homes, both in order to learn so much information about the families who lived there, just by that simple act of watching them. I can’t necessarily say that throughout my teenage years, I had a specific habit that would allow me that pleasure of gaining knowledge about other people without actually interacting with them. On the other hand, I’ve actually always been a social person who can talk to just about any one and by doing so, I feel as if that is the way that I would get to know people. Sonny’s voyeurism tendencies acted as an escape from his home life by being another place he can go, mentally as well as physically, to escape whatever it was he had to deal with at home. In contrast, whenever my home life was too much to handle, I would go over to a friend’s house and hang out there for a couple hours, or even a couple days. Sonny and my escapes from reality are quite different in how we get away, yet the reasons why were so similar in that we both were faced with situations we didn’t want to deal with at the time. Also, at the beginning of the novel, Sonny would not only watch from the outside, but break and enter into different houses just to get a feel for what it would be like to live in other types of home atmospheres. On the first two pages alone, the first things we learn about Sonny is that he would go inside strangers’ homes. “… I would go to a house… I’d crawl through an open window… I sprawled out on their couches or lay down on their beds. Go, How would it be if I lived here?” (pg. 1-2) While Sonny does this forcefully, I would spend time at friend’s houses that have different family morals. Some would be of different religions; some would be a single parent home, while others would have both sets of parents with many siblings and I’d stay with them for a few days at a time and try my best to imagine what it would be like to live there. But the fact of the matter is, no matter how we would do it; we both liked to get away from our situations and try to imagine ourselves in different ones.

            Another avenue of escape for Sonny is the bowling alley; it is another place where he can go to lose himself and forget about what is happening at his apartment, it is away for him to stop thinking about his mom and Cloyd, and it’s a local hang out spot where he can spend his time away from his home life. I too had a place where my friends and I would go to spend hours just hanging out together. Every Friday evening we’d all head down to the Tennant Station here in Morgan Hill. It all started when I was in 7^th grade, I would bum a ride off someone old enough to drive us there, we’d all meet up there and hang out together for hours on end; or at least until our moms would come to pick us up. The funny part about it is that we would rarely ever do what we had come there to do. Within that Tennant Station is a movie theater, bowling alley, bocce ball court, and a Safeway. But being in junior high limited us with how much disposable income we had, we hardly ever saw a movie at that movie theater, we never step foot inside that bowling alley and we literally never bowled, with the bocce ball court you had to be 21 even in order to enter and we were only half that age, that left the spot where we spent most of our time, the Safeway. No one really knows why Safeway became our popular hang out destination for Friday nights, maybe it was because there was a Starbucks, a deli, and anything you could ever want to munch on; whatever the reason, that Safeway was our hang out spot where we would meet up and spend hours at every weekend.

            Every person, at one time or another in their lifetime will have the opportunity to look up to someone for guidance. They will be faced with admiring someone for advice or support, also the role that adults automatically assume into a teenager’s life will help to shape who they will be one day, and Sonny is no exclusion to this. Sonny has been faced with many different men from who his mother brings home to meet him. While Sonny is often smart enough to know whether or not the relationships between his mother and the men will last or not, when Cloyd becomes a more permanent figure in his life, Sonny will certainly be influenced by him. Cloyd is certainly a father figure to Sonny whether he is aware of it or not.  At all moments of time, we all have influences in our lives, however sometimes when we’re younger we are more susceptible to adult influences compared to when we grow up a little and become more self assured of who we are. Growing up, I didn’t have many male or father figure influences in my life because I was raised by single mother while sporadically visiting my own father. So when my mother was busy working, which she often was, I would actually look to friend’s mothers to for guidance. One mother in particular was always so accepting and so kind to me, she would offer me her best advice, she would help me with my homework and often feed me dinner. I would actually consider myself lucky to have had this lady in my life throughout some very impressionable years in my life in order to guide me in making the right decisions and having helped me in so many ways to become the woman that I am today. 

               

               

"idea paper"

As of right this moment, I believe I am going to adopt the feminist critical theory to write my essay on Sylvia from The Flowers!! But who knows if upon the completion of the novel whether or not I will change my mind and choose something different to write about and maybe even a different critical theory, we'll see!

Metacognitive Experience

My Metacognitive experience throughout reading our novel, Flowers, has been one of a struggle. I have found many difficulties in getting to the stage of actively participating in the story line. It is indeed a great story, with interesting characters and it has a great story line. However, for one reason or another, I can't really get into the story. I find my mind wandering and racing when I sit down to read. It feels like every oppertunity I have to relax and get into a reading mentality, every other thing is in order except for my mind. I can't quiet my mind to really dive deep into our reading. It just turns into reading five, ten, maybe twenty-five pages here and there compared to upwards of fifty to one-hundred pages when sit down with our book. But as I mentioned earlier I am still thoroughly enjoying our novel and getting to know Sonny better throughout the plot. I just wish I could get even more into it, where the book becomes a total page turner and I can't put it down. Those are certainly my favorite types of books.

Frusturated...

I'm so confused! I still don't know how to use this blog site other than to post, how do I find out where our homework, what's due and assignments are? I can't find them! Help?

Difficulty

Apparently I am having a huge difficulty with our text in that I find it more often than not hard to understand. For some strange reason, this novel is difficult for me to comprehend. I am beginning to believe that it is because of the slang term "Spanglish" - or the authors use of sprinkling some Spanish within the novel here and there. Being that I am a single language speaker, sometimes while reading our novel and words come up that I don't understand for the simple reason that they are in another language, I stumble in reading and loose that concentration and focus on the story.

Metacognitive Reflection

Thus far in this semester, to be completely honest, I have had a ridiculously tough time with fitting our assigned reading into my schedule. Between work 25+ hours a week and attending school full time, having three other very general education courses besides this english 1b class, I'm very busy and find it hard to do everything. While in past semesters I have had this busy of a schedule, it's just something about this current semester that I have been struggling to keep up with my school work, including assigned readings. Typically speaking in previous semesters I have worked with this busy of a schedule and not even thought twice about it; I actually really like being busy. Maybe I'm falling behind because I'm so close to being done at Gavilan that I feel like it's senior year of high school all over again where you get that overwhelming sense of just wanting to be done with schoool already. Or maybe I'm just ready for big change, like moving to LA or Florida and interning with Disney. Or maybe it's both of those reasons in addition to the fact that my mother and I just found out that the house we just recently moved into to rent is foreclosed. The anger and frustration I'm experiencing right now of having to move again after just 7 months of renting at our current house in San Martin, and having to pack up and move again is just simply overwhelming. So those three big reasons in addition to being crazy busy and never seeing my boyfriend has honestly made school fall by the wayside this semester, which is even more frusturating because I'm typically a very good student who does what is expected of her and I get good grades and I try my best, I study for tests and usually read every assigned reading imagineable. But it's just something about this semester that is just getting to be too much. I hope that as soon as we move to our new house in Gilroy within this coming week and a half that I am able to get right back on track and refocus and become that terrific student that I know deep down I am. Wish me luck.

Free Write - My Father Always...

Has the best advice. Ever. Period. End of story. I can go to him with anything I need some help figuring out, he has the best advice that always has helped me to put my situations into perspective. Every time I have had any type of problem or situation that I just can't handle on my own, he's the first one I call. Instead of confiding my drama in a best friend or with the boyfriend, I turn to my dad. Over the years, my father has helped me through a whole lot; a lot of stress and hardship as well as emotional ups and downs, sadness and tears, and anger and fear. I love him so much, and am so happy that he's always been there for me, no matter what the situation may be.

Reader Response Journal Prompt (02/09/2011)

"It was like when the eyes aren't open but try to see." -Sonny (The Flowers, page 2). I'm not sure why, but when I was reading through those simple first two pages this sentence litterally grabbed my attention. I'm not sure if it is because I can relate to it personally or not. But it was as if I could feel my book reaching out to me and little white flags popped up in my mind, alerting me to pay attention to what was happening to our narrator. I could feel almost a gravitational pull to our character. I don't know why, but I felt a much deeper level of connection to our novel as soon as I read that sentence. I'm not sure if I can relate to that sentence on a subconsious level or if I experience that sometimes without realizing it. But as soon as our narrator, Sonny, spoke that sentence, I became much more interested in our book.

"My Mother Never..."

My mother never allowed me to drive with someone who was under the age of 18 while I was a minor. And while I didn't understand it at the time, I believe now that this rule stemmed from her profession. She is a deputy sherif for the city of San Francisco and I know she only had my best interest and safety in mind. But as you could imagine, this still made high school feel extremely difficult for me. I felt left out when it seemed like all of my friends were going out and driving with their parents because they just got their permits; I was just in the passenger seat of our truck being driven by my mom. Or when my friends had their restrictions removed after an entire year of driving and would drive everyone around just because they could; I didn't get to celebrate along side with them. Instead, I was that one kid growing up who always had to get a ride somewhere from her parents, which was embarrassing enough in itself. However, if that isn't convincing enough, my mom has been, and probably will always be, notoriously late. So not only was I that one kid to show up with her mom yelling "bye, sweetie" out of the window, it was always later than everyone else; giving everyone the chance to witness my face blush a deeper than any shade of cherry.

Now if you're still not convinced about the embarrassment I had to endure from this seemingly simple rule she had, on top of all that, I rode the bus to school until my junior year in high school. Because according to another one of my mom's little rules: in order to be able to obtain my own license and drive myself, I had to have grades of B's or better. Well needless to say, I got a few C's throughout my high school career which prevented me from driving until I was 18. Because of these two innocent and simple rules, those four years of my life were always carefully planned and a synchronized schedule of events. With the whose driving where and when, the freedom one experiences from driving, felt more like restriction.

Now this all changed when I met my current boyfriend of three and a half years during my sophomore, his junior year summer, all because he could drive at age sixteen. Before I knew it, I was riding around in his charcoal grey, hand-me-down, '96, lifted, Dodge Ram. Of course with my mom being in law inforcement, it wasn't a secret for too long. She saw right through any tales I would attempt to feed her. Eventually my mom found out, everything: the fact that we were dating and the fact that he would drive me around and that he was a minor. But surprisingly, she didn't mind. To this day, I'm not too sure if she could tell that we were in it for the long run or maybe somehow knew that she wouldn't be able to stop me, or what the reason was, she didn't try to stop me. Although he has long since sold that truck and bought a new one; every once and a while when I see a spitting image of that truck driving down the road with a couple of teenagers in it, I can't help but think about how my mom's rule bent and wonder that if it hadn't, whether or not we'd still be together.

"I Am"

I am...
A chidlrens; ages 19 months through to 10 years of age; gymnastics, dance, and "mommy and me" lead instructor at The Little Gym of Morgan Hill. I've worked there for about a year and a half. I love working with children and can't imagine doing anything else at this time in my life. I work with children because I am one of those people who wants to improve the world and I really feel like the best place to start is with future generations. I want to leave the world a little bit better than I found it, and if I can do so through being that positive influence on children's lives than so be it. While I love what I do, I love teaching and working with my kids, I can't see myself being an instructor for the rest of my life. That's why I am currently here at Gav.

I am planning on completing my general education here at Gavilan Community College, then transfering to CSU Monterey Bay within the next two semesters to major in an art field. I feel that I wound up at Gavilan because I never knew what I wanted to do with my life, and sometimes I feel like I still don't quite know. But one thing I'm sure of, is the fact that I want to fallow my heart, and my heart leads to art. I have dreamt about becoming a Disney Imagineer since I was young; and now things have become surreal because instead of it being just a dream in the far off distance, it is becoming reality in that I am now persuing that dream and hope to make it a reality through my education. I love anything and everything Disney. From Steamboat Willie to Princess Tiana, from Disneyland to Disney World, and the rollercoasters to the atmosphere; since I was young, I have loved what Walt started with just a mouse.

In addition to everything Disney, I like hiking, camping, the beach, fishing, dirtbiking, and scrapbooking. I fish primarily for bass in the many lakes we have surrounding our community: Chesbro, Anderson, Coyote, and Uvas. Besides all of that, I try to spend every oppertunity I have with my boyfriend of 3 1/2 years; typically doing outdoor activities. I love summertime, it is easily my favorite season because it allows me to do all that stuff with awesome weather. The warm nights and twinkling stars, drinking iced tea and listening to country music; summer is my favorite time of the year.