Since the beginning of my life I have been studying. In the early years of my childhood I didn’t quite understand what my role was all about. I always wondered why is it that I have to go to school everyday even on Saturday because my mom said that it is good to be around smart people. When I was growing up I found the answer by myself. I started to understand when I was eight years old. I began to see school as the place to get knowledge this that my parents cant teach me at home.
I also saw (and actually see) School as a place to play, have positive thoughts and enjoy life without forget about class and what society is expecting from us, and to socialize to have good friends, friends that care and have the same interest in success as I do. Now being 18 years old I know a lot more of myself. I can make and I have made decisions that really have a direct effect on me. Three years ago I decided do my best at school to have a good high school education and make myself better every day. Since I am in love with my school I have accomplish many thing like doing extracurricular activities.
On March 1998 I joined United Talents a group of student that help the Parents Association to organize activities. We use to dance our Dominican Republic folk music for our parents and make each presentation more enjoyable for them each time. Actually I am participating in a lot of activities, which are the chess club, yearbook as staff and photographer, swimming pool taking a course to be a lifeguard and helping in the computer lab. In the chess club as I heard I will be elected as a vice-president of the club do to the fact that I have accomplish fine in the city tournaments (every last Sunday of each month).
The yearbook is very interesting for me because I like taking pictures and Mrs. Serrano gave me a workshop working as a photographer which I enjoy a lot. Those pictures I take go to the yearbook staff and they decide what to add to the school year book. In the computer lab, I use to help because I have some experience using computers. Some people don’t know how to use the computer at all. In the computer lab, I am there to help them find what they want and show them how to do it.
All these activities that I just mentioned and detail have a great influence helping me even more to have a college education to be more useful in society. I like Electrical Engineering because I use as a kid I use to tear apart radios and electrical things just to see the inside (the circuits). I also decide to become and Electrical Engineer because I like to create things, to help in this modern society and to improve even more solar energy use. Photography is one of my ambitions because I like to make my own massage in the pictures I take. I have been working in photography since I came to this country in 1995.
First I just was learning how to enlarge photos to become and lab technician in the darkrooms but then I started to take pictures and know I have (I would say) a basic knowledge about photography and all the process. In many projects that I have participated in school and out of school “History Is Our Story” was the most interested one (for me). That project was about writing essays from a point of view of a person that lived a historical event such as a war or a holocaust. In that project we have to share with students from others high school our experience being that certain person and get into phychology to explain the person’s feeling.
We also make a collage, which I name Past, Present, Future and Us. This collage later would be exhibit in Brooklyn museum. I have always say that all I have I always carry it with me. That include my mother’s love because hold onto each other. We are very confident. She decided to come to USA . The problem we faced was that by coming here everything would change for us. I was afraid of that. I didn’t speak English but she it was okay, that we should come to seek a better future and make best of our self working and thinking positive always. That feeds my heart every day.