As I read the quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson that says:”We acquire the strength we have overcome” it makes me think. What does this mean? The more I think about it the more clear it becomes to me. As we go through challenges in our life and overcome them we find a new greater strength among ourselves. Though times may be difficult they are well worth the reward.

In the comic book Persepolis we read about this girl that is growing up during a war. A war between her government, the people and another government. Though I don’t know from personal experience what it is like to live during a war that effects your everyday life I have found that through this womans words that I would definitely not like to have to go through those kind of difficulties. Though I would not want to live in such harsh situations they can prove to be good in a weird sense. When people face difficult moments in their life something inside them changes. People will go from average everyday people to heroes. So many people in this world that you would have never thought would do anything great have risen up to become great heroes. In the book 1984 an average unimportant citizen does great things. The main character Winston does the same thing everyday and doesn’t act against his communist government that he hates. Then a girl comes along and changes everything for him. She gives him the nudge he needed to start rebelling against the utopian government he lives under. After many struggles he helps start the beginning of a revolution.

We watched a movie that was previously unknown to me in English called Hotel Rowonda. The main character Paul was a manager at a very nice hotel. Had a family and an average life. Then war broke out and he being a father and husband did what any human being would do, he protected his family as well as he could. He was doing what he could to make sure his family was safe but was put as the leader of the hotel and felt a strong urge to protect not only his family but to keep safe and sheltered the war refugees. In the midst of blood and hatred this normal person rose up to think of some cleaver ways to trick the enemy and get the people at his hotel to safety. He protected over a thousand people in the end including his family. This proves that normal people can do anything if they just have the urge to. If the can dig deep and find the power to do amazing things it is completely possible.

When I think of Emerson’s quote I think of everyday people doing great things in their time of need. People can overcome any adversity and any challenge.

Alex

To be, or not to be? The question that goes through my head as often as the sun rises. Since I was a little kid, I was always trying to find out what I want to do with my life. I know it seems a little bizarre for a kid to be thinking about those kinds of things, especially as much as I did but I think it had a lot to do with the fact that my family all grew up to be pathetic wash ups. There are only a few people in my family that actually did something worth while in their life. Ever since I was a child, I promised myself that I would be one of the people to make something out of myself. When I grow up, I will do something amazing with my life.

At such a young age, it’s hard to know what you want to do with your life and so I eventually just put it out of mind and tried to just live life and have fun. I made some really stupid decisions and made parts of my life harder than needed to be but I do not regret it. I have learned so much from my mistakes and am so thankful for the lessons that I have learned because of my dumb decisions. Now if I could’ve learned those lessons without having to make those decisions, I would definitely do that but since that’s not what happened than why stress over it. Throughout my whole life just like everyone else in this world, I have had to make tough decisions a ton. I have had to choose between what I know is right and what is fun. To be a grown up with responsibility or not to be. Well at the time I chose not to be and had a lot of fun but then I learned that you don’t just have to be a mature responsible person especially when you’re a teenager. You can have fun and at the same time do what you know is right and be responsible. I found that when I am doing what’s right and keeping my responsibilities all at once I am much happier. I don’t have to worry about being in trouble and can just relax and have fun. I think I am finally learning how to go about this whole grown up thing.

Now I have been confronted by one of the toughest decisions of my life. What to do with my life, how to pay for college. I have been thinking about and stressing a little over these decisions and have come up with a conclusion. Ever since I was a kid I thought that the military was one of the coolest things ever. I have always thought that the marines are the best. Now I have made my final decision. I know this guy who is in the army and can hook me up with good advice and more money than usual, so I have decided to go into basic training for the army this summer. I’ve made the phone call and now all I have to do is prepare mentally and physically for basic training. My whole summer will be the army which kind of sucks because it’s my last summer before my senior year so I wanted to go crazy and have as much fun as possible before I graduate but I think it is much more important that I be preparing for my future. I will leave this summer and then I will come back for my senior year. I’ll finish up my high school career and then go into the National Guard for at least two years. This was a really hard decision because this is my life for the next two and a half years but I think it’s really good and won’t be as bad as I thought because I will be going to college, possibly working, and be in the national guard all at the same time after I graduate. I think my future is actually looking really bright.

How do people grow up? How do people mature? Through my life even though it has only been a rather short one I have found that people grow and mature from their adversities and challenges. As we go through hard times, we figure out things that are essential for life. It’s weird to think that by going to hell you can come out a better person than before. This week as we were at clear creek I told Doug that if I could’ve picked anyone to be my father I would’ve picked him. With the help of Jennie I realized that because of the fact that my dad was never around and I can only remember about three times that I actually saw him. It has helped me greatly in life.

Also even though my mom hurt and crushed me constantly, that also was a great blessing in my life. When I was little, my dad never cared enough about me or my mom to stick around. He is always in jail and so is my mom. He tried a couple of times to see me but my grandma wouldn’t let him because she knew how dangerous he is. My dad is a very abusive and mean person. If he wouldn’t have been in jail while my mom was pregnant with me, I would either be dead or retarded. When I was a little kid and my grandma told me how my father is, I hated him even more. I promised myself that I would never ever hit a girl because that is one of the lowest most pathetic things you can do. When you grow up without a father it hurts. It hurts to know that your dad is a pathetic wash up and doesn’t give a crap about you. That he would rather be off doing whatever it is he does rather than being with his own son. Rather than being with his own blood. Its not just him though it’s my mom too. It think that hurt the most because she would come around from time to time and seeing her brought so much joy and hope, then she would leave and I would be crushed. My mother would rather be doing drugs and having sex than watch me grow up. It sucks so bad not having parents around especially when they have the choice to be or not. I remember lying in bed crying myself to sleep praying to God that my family would come together and wishing that my mom and dad would just be there to love me. I wish I would’ve been more important than drugs.

Going through these hard times ever since I can remember has made me who I am today. I’m not saying I’m anything special because I’m not. I’m no better than the next person but I have learned so much. I have learned that you always need to have your guard up and you need to really learn how to read people. I’ve learned to love as much as you possibly can because you never know when it’ll be gone. I’ve learned how to overcome adversity and challenges and I’ve learned that you can’t just leave it up to other people to figure it out on their own because everyone needs help and love. Through my struggles I’ve made two major promises in my life. To never hurt a girl and the most important in my life: to always be there for my family. No matter what is going on in my life, no matter what struggles I’m going through I will always be there to love and take care of my family. My friends and my family are the most important things in my life and I will never let another human being down. I will not walk down the same road my parents did and I will always try to make other people feel how loved and special they really are. I never want anyone to feel the pain that I have felt. I never want to be the cause for someone to cry themselves asleep, especially if it’s something so easily preventable. I will try my hardest to help someone else to the top.

Alex

Power




If I could have any power I wanted I really don’t think I would have a super power. What I would ask for is great wisdom. I think that with wisdom you can achieve your goals and do anything you want. What I really want to do out of this life is not to be some high and mighty person that has a lot of power. What I want is to help people. To try and better as many people lives as I possibly can. There are so many people in this world that have it hard and go through continuously hard times. What I really want is not to take them and just make there lives perfect but to teach them. To teach them how to achieve great things in this world and to get what you want out of this life, to get out of the muck and grime of their everyday lives. If there was one thing in this world I could do it would be to make sure there are no starving babies, no single mothers fighting to feed and cloth their children. If I could do one thing in this world it would be to help mankind as we know it, to give everyone the power to have a good life. For me one of the hardest things is seeing all the people that have dreams and don’t know how to achieve those dreams. If I had great wisdom I would have the answer to everyone’s problems. I would be able to help out this world and that is the goal of my life, to help others, to help as many people as I can in this world. If I could have the words to inspire anyone and everyone than nothing else would matter to me. I would be so completely happy that I wouldn’t have a care in the world. My goal in life is to come closer to this goal everyday. To eventually be able to help anyone that comes across my path.

alex

Narrative: Conclusion

Now as I get ready to leave Summit and everyone here, I feel so many different feelings. It’s going to be hard to be away from the people who I have become so close to and even though we will still try and hangout it just won’t end up the same. Whenever I move or change schools, my best of friends I end up eventually hardly talking too. Maybe this will be a test. A test to see if I can keep in touch with a few of the people I love. Part of me doesn’t want to leave, but I just crave the old life I used to have. The good parts anyways. I just love the crowd and all of the people that I just love talking to. I just really hope I don’t leave and forget about the people who have made such a difference in my life because I have done that so many times that it kills me to think about it. I guess it’s just another life lesson that I have to learn. If I want something, I actually have to give it my all to achieve it. I will achieve my goals because I am the master of my fate and I am the captain of my soul.

Alex

Narrative: Body Paragraphs

I don’t know what it is about being around a lot of people but I love it. There’s something about knowing everyone and having everyone wanting to talk to me that empowers me. It makes me feel untouchable. At regular a public high school that’s the way things are for me. As soon as I walk in the door, I’m constantly talking to people. I can’t walk more than a couple of feet without being stopped by someone just to talk to them. I love being able to walk around from group of friends to another group of friends. I guess I just get tired of people kind of fast and that’s why I go around from group to group but it’s also kind of nice to have a lot of friends because when there is drama with one group of friends than you can always just go to another group until things cool down. Plus another major thing that I like about my old school is that they sell breakfast in the mornings. I can barely live not having breakfast, and as amazing as Summit is, it still doesn’t have breakfast and I almost go hungry everyday. Finally the last thing I love about mainstream schools are that you can walk around with your iPod and phone and nobody cares. Plus I like not having the same classes everyday.

When I went to Lone Peak High School, I would constantly skip class because even though I would eat lunch every morning I still got really hungry and so did my friends, so we would go to one of there houses or somewhere to get food. Plus another thing that I have always had trouble with is the discipline to get up in the morning, so I would sleep in for a long time. And then when I felt like it I would go to school which was evidently not the best idea. I hated class mostly because I would miss so much that I never knew what was going on so it would be frustrating and embarrassing to go to class and have no idea what was going on. Since I hated paying attention in class because I was so far behind, I would just go back to sleep or I would just go walk around the halls. If I had money, I would go buy myself some food from the vending machines. I loved it because I would just go and screw around, I wouldn’t have to do hardly any work and I would just go hangout with my friends. I would go and talk to everyone in the halls and go with them out to lunch, basically I did whatever I wanted and I loved it.

School was a lot of fun when I wasn’t in class but eventually my dumb mistakes caught up to me. During the last term of my tenth grade year, my counselor brought me into her office and we sat down to talk. She told me that I needed to get my grades up, that I needed to start coming to school everyday and if I didn’t than I would have to find another way to get my credits. I kind of blew it off and didn’t really start doing much better but then she brought me in a couple more times and brought my aunt and uncle in too. She told us that if things didn’t improve than next year I would have to go to either East Shore, do electric high school or there was a third option of going to another school. Now that scared me. That meant I would have to leave all my friends. That was the last thing I wanted to happen so I kicked it into gear but it was to close to the end of the year to get them up. I tried really hard and I talked to my teachers trying to figure out a way to get my grades to at least passing. My grades went up and some of them were pretty decent but they weren’t good enough I still failed a couple of classes. So during the last couple of weeks of school my aunt, uncle and I all sat down with my counselor and talked. I was not going to be able to go to school next year. We had to figure out where I would go and finally my aunt decided that Summit was the place that I should go. She didn’t want to drive me to East Shore everyday and she didn’t want to pay for electronic high school.

I had the option of working with the janitor to get my credit for the classes that I passed but just had no credit for because of my lack of attendance but I only did that once and for some retarded reason decided that I’d rather hangout over the summer instead of taking a couple of hours to get my credit. So I went the whole summer just having a great time and finally the school year crept up on me. I was furious to be going to another school but decided that there was nothing I could do about it because I really needed that credit to graduate. My plan was to not make any friends and to just go to class, get good grades and then leave back to Lone Peak as soon as I could. I found out that the soonest I could go back was the following year, my senior year. That made me so livid that I could barely stand it. I started skipping school again and going to visit my old high school. I was still passing my classes with pretty good grades but things weren’t going to end up good if I continued to skip school so after talking to Doug a bunch I started going to school a lot more. I still miss a day every couple of weeks but I have definitely improved. My progress has been substantial. My grades are really good but for some reason I can’t get any better than a 3.4 gpa. I swear I’ll be planning on having a bunch of A’s and they’ll be A’s till I get my report card and they end up being B’s. It doesn’t make sense to me because I’ll have A’s on the last day of the term but then on my report card it somehow changes. All together I couldn’t stand not making friends and eventually I became very social. Now that I have let Summit change my life I am very grateful for having been sent here. The people and faculty have really made an effect on my life. When I go back to Lone Peak next year I will not go back to my old ways. I will be getting good grades even if it kills me. Life has a strange way of teaching you lessons but I am so glad that I finally got the life lessons that I have from Summit.


-Alex

Narrative Introduction

Have you ever wondered where your life was headed? I always did but never did anything about it. I was blind to the obvious and the consequence I would’ve never expected. I thought I had everything under control. I thought that I was invincible and things would workout somehow without me having to put any effort into it. From where I was standing, I was on top of the world. Life was great, I did whatever I wanted whenever I wanted. Nobody could touch me and I loved life as I knew it. My world would be flipped upside down but I knew I could handle it because I had gone through much worse before. I’m in the middle of a roller coaster. Things are constantly changing and so different than I would’ve ever thought they would have been.

Alex