Hey You Get Off My Cloud, You Don't Know Me and You Don't Know My Style

 

Carlos Hernandez

English 104a

Final Essay

Susana Huerta

12/09/2009

 

 

Hey You Get Off My Cloud, You Don't Know Me and You Don't Know My Style

 

My identity is like a puzzle, every experience I've lived, every person who has influenced me, every place I've visited, they are all pieces that fit perfectly to create who I am today as a person, as a student. The experiences I've been through have brought me here, to college, to pursue an education. "If you can find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn't lead anywhere." Frank A Clark

St. Anger around My Neck

"He was crazy, insane, hating the Mexican flesh he had on his bones" Villaseñor. Just like Juan Salvador felt hatred towards his own people, I too have had the same feeling of hating my own people, but instead of hating the whole Mexican race my hate was focused on men.
At the age of three my heart was full of hatred. Being raised by a victim of domestic violence and being surrounded by strong yet vulnerable women I was confused. I remember not having a strong father figure until I was seven. Before that all I've seen around me were women being mistreated by their abusive husbands or single mothers struggling to feed their bastards. Some of them had become single by misfortune, their husbands had either being killed or died in an accident, and others had been abandoned by them. I wish that would had happened to us, but my mother wasn't as "lucky" as the other women, my "father" always came back home drunk, drugged and for some reason mad at my mother for wanting to give her kids a better future, for going out job hunting or doing someone else's laundry in order to pay the rent. He would beat her up until she lay on the dirt almost unconscious. I hated him for touching my mother but I also hated the men who lived around us, the neighbors, my uncle and my grandfather because they never did anything to stop him. Like Sanders wrote on his essay "The Men We Carry in Our Minds" that the first men he saw when he was a kid determined his destiny to be one of them, I too came to think the same, but after an event different paths opened for us, different opportunities, different destinies. After being exposed to the violence twice or three times a week I began hating myself, I hated being a man. I though that one day it was going to be me beating up my wife, wasting money at the cantinas. Thoughts of suicide came to my head, even though I was pretty young I was well aware of different methods to commit suicide which were taught by TV. I did not want to grow up into a monster. The only man I recall who respected women was my uncle "memo", he was my "father's" youngest brother. He was a soldier so we rarely saw him. He came home one day and saw my mom all beaten up and told her to runaway and so my mother called her mother and a couple of hours later we left never to come back, I was five years old. When I turned seven I met the man I now call DAD, unconsciously he taught me that not all men are turned to monsters as they grew old, he has so much respect for women, thanks to him all my hatred came to an end, we shared the same background, an alcoholic father and a strong woman as his mother who struggled all her life to give her kids a better future. Now that I'm older I've come up with a theory of why the man who impregnated my mother with my brothers and me had so little respect for women. His mother died when he was twelve years old and his dad abused him physically so he filled himself with hatred, accumulated throughout his childhood and took it out in someone "weaker" than him. All of this reminds me of how much respect Lupe and Salvador had for their mothers, the heads of their families.

Sexo, pudor y no lagrimas

"Tony ven vamos a jugar", she said as I walked out of my room, "our mothers have gone to the market and they left me in charge of you" she was no older than thirteen at the time. I followed her to my grandfather's house which was empty for he had gone to work that morning. "Take off your shirt and pants" she said "why? What are we going to do?" I asked, "We are going to play a game" she replied. At the age of four learning a new game seemed exciting, so I did as told and she took me to my grandfather's bed. And there I was, laying on the bed almost entirely naked, she started undressing, she took off the skirt she was wearing and then her shirt, I had never seen her, my cousin, like this. "This game is quite simple actually, all you have to do is imitate me and I'll do the rest" she said, "Ok, but what are playing?" I asked, "Al Papa y a la Mama" she answered. She sat on me and I remember her face was filled with joy and mischief, her face got close to mine, I felt her warm lips touch mine and she kissed me like the couples on movies do. She took off my underwear and…. I can't really remember what happened after that, what I do remember is me playing in my grandfather's living room and finding the Yellow Submarine Album by The Beatles and then my mother and my aunt walked in and I went rushing towards my mom, I was going to tell her about this new weird game my cousin had taught me but my cousin pulled me before I could even say a word and whispered to my ear "Do not tell anybody, this is just between you and me" and again I did as told. I don't remember playing that game with my cousin anymore after that day, after I moved to another town and started kindergarten I learned that that game was actually called sex, so I asked my mother what sex was and she explained me what it was. "Lupe really wondered about this world of sex."-Villaseñor.
I wanted to know what the point of the game was so when I finally learned to read every time I had the chance I would go to the library and read books about sex and biology, but at that age I couldn't understand most of what I was reading. Later in life I learned that people misjudge others by knowing too much or too little about a subject. In my experience, I was called a pervert for knowing a little bit more about sex than the rest of my friends both male and female.

El Extranjero

"Doña Manza and her family decided to to go out, too, but a few days earlier so they wouldn't be a big group and could get out of the mountains without being noticed"- Villaseñor. "Carlos wake up, its time" my mother told me as she got up and got ready to leave, "hide this money in your shoes" she said, I took the money and slipped it between insole of my shoe and my sock. It was still dark outside and I could smell the tension in the air. "He wants us to pay him now" said one the coyotes that was going to smuggle my mother, my brothers, a man and me across the border to the United States. "Te damos una television ahorita y alrato vienes por el dinero" said the owner of the house we were staying at, "esta bien alrato vuelvo" said the taxi driver. The coyotes gave each one of us two gallons of water "para el camino", we got on the taxi and he took us outside of town where all you could see was the desert, mountains and more desert. We had been walking for less than five minutes when out of nowhere three armed men robbed us. "Donde esta el dinero?" the most nervous one of them asked, "We don't have any" my mom answered without hesitation, "Vamos a darle en su madre a quien tenga el dinero", after hearing this I was scared. "Everyone, take off your shoes" another man said, and he inspected each one of them, I was second to last on the line and I guess he thought he wasn't going to find anything because he didn't even took half the time inspecting mine that he had taken with the others. Since they couldn't find anything they eventually let us go, and so our journey began. We walked and ran for seven hours straight, taking five to ten minute breaks every 40 minutes. We were all tired, especially my mom and her legs started to get numb, she just couldn't go on any further, her body was failing her. My oldest brother put her arm around his shoulder and I took her other one, at this point the smugglers decided that we needed to rest so we sat down under a tree and rested our bodies for thirty minutes, we walked for another 20 minutes and waited a little bit longer until the cars arrived for us, "cuando se metan a la ven(van) todos se van a acostar en el piso y no vayan a alsarse, ahi viene, vamonos corranle". Lupe and Salvador both experienced having to move out of the place they knew as home and move to another place way different from the one they had been raised, different people, different language and different cultures, laws and values. We had to take this journey to an unknown land in order to have a better education, a better future.

Y ahora estoy aqui…..

"Si usted supiera lo que es estar dividia no saber cual es su tierra…caminante por eso no tengo bandera representante, da lo mismo mi nombre lo importante es lo que hago, valorar al hombre por la calidad de su trabajo…los paises donde he vivido han unido sus matizes para que me caracterizen"-Makiza
All those events, people and places have made me who I am,
I am an immigrant who hated his gender, believes in feminism and who was exposed to sexuality at a very young age. All these pieces together make my identity and have made a huge impact in my life that I want to know more about them, I can't wait until I take an anthropology class and learn about the social beliefs of human kind, or take a psychology of human sexuality class and learn more, not just about sex but what's behind it.

Final Circle Blog

A Time of Miracle
This section starts off with one of the paymasters not wanting to pay Lupe and the rest of the women what they deserved for working in the fields, he used the excuse that it would be an insult for men. Tired of being treated like this Sophia called for a meeting between the workers, he told them than since they were going to live in the United States and going back to Mexico was just a dream they had to make their bosses treat them with respect, the men in the meeting disagreed with Sophia saying that they were going back to Mexico, but other women in the crowd backed up Sophia and so the men had to listen. After a week of seeing their workers not doing any work and not being able to find any other people to replace them, the bosses gave in and agreed to pay both men and women equally. After a some time, Maria’s first husband, Esabel, came back to her, she took him back but kept his other husband, Andres, many people including her family thought of her decision to be wrong. Lupe, Carlota and Victoriano decided that their parents should not be allowed to work anymore because they were old. Victoriano learned to drive and bought their first truck because after the strike, the labor contractors in town didn’t want much to do with Sophia and her family. Mark offered Lupe a job helping his uncle with his bookkeeping. After coming back from the library Lupe noticed that there was not one in at her house and remembering how her brother always told her that women were not supposed to drive she decided to go against what he had told her and teach herself to drive, while Salvador saw her doing this, he realized that his “angel” had some evil in her and this made him love her more. After the mess she made Lupe and Salvador talked and both shared their dreams and their life experience, Lupe was stunned and excited for no one had ever asked her about her dreams. Since Victoriano and his father didn’t a job for sometime, they worked with Salvador moving manure until he (Salvador) told them that he had other business he had to take care of and so they work alone. After working five days with Epitacio, making the liquor, they had to hide it but on their way there they got “robbed” by Ten Mexican cowboys and Archie. Doña Margarita had the idea of going to Chicago to find her lost son, a day before she was supposed to leave, her son Domingo showed up with a woman named Nelly. During this time Lupe became very ill and was unable to go to work for a couple of days. Once Lupe was healthy again Salvador showed up to where she was working and gave her the keys to his car so she could practice her driving skills. That same night Lupe and Salvador kissed for the first time. Harry took Salvador to a store which was owned by his brother to buy a wedding ring for Lupe. Lupe decided to tell Mark that she was in love with another man and he promised her that he was going to fight for her. Domingo brought Salvador many problems because he was stubborn, he didn’t not listed to him after he had told him not no make a big fuzz while they were in the distillery so the neighbors wouldn’t call the cops. Salvador and Domingo were beaten up by the feds and sent to jail, Salvador lost all of his money and saw that none of his so called friends let him borrow money and the last people he would have thought were going to help him out did. Salvador was able to get back on his feet and proposed to Lupe with the help of Father Ryan. Lupe and her family accepted Salvador’s proposal, she told him that he wanted the first years of their marriage to live alone just the two of them. Lupe met Salvador’s mother, Doña Margarita for the first time. A couple of days before the wedding Febronio and two of his son came to Salvador’s house to congratulate him and they brought him a goat, he killed the goat and told them go away. Doña Margarita who saw the whole thing through a window talked to Salvador and told him that he needed to let go of all the hate he had inside of him because it would give him problems throughout his marriage. Salvador apologized to Febronio. On their way to the wedding, Salvador got pulled over by a couple of Indians, they told him that he was under arrest all because he didn’t invite Archie at the wedding. Since he didn’t have another option he told Archie that he was welcome to join them to the celebration. Lupe and Salvador got married, they had the reception at Lupe’s Parents home and everyone was enjoyed themselves.

The Men We Carry in Our Mind "Thinking about the text"

1.Sanders acknowledges that the bodies of the men he knew were worn out, they were twisted and maimed by the hard labor they went thru everyday. “The nails of their hands were black and split, the hands tattooed with scars. Some had lost fingers” “Their ankles and knees ached from years of standing on concrete” p. 56

2.For Sanders, the soldiers were the ones who did not sweat and whose chief fact of life was boredom, the ones who didn’t have a say when or how a battle would be waged, but when the hour killing arrived, they would kill.

3.After living among poor men, who were bound to work as their fathers had worked, killing themselves or preparing to kill others, he couldn’t image growing up to be one of the other type of men, those who were bosses, the savvy lawyers or the generals because that was his boyhood vision of men destinies.

4.Sander’s father’s fate seemed a partial escape from the fate of most men he knew because even though his father went from working on a red dirt farm to a tire company, and from the assembly line to the front office this didn’t mean that everyone would have the same opportunities as his father did and so they were bound to follow the path their fathers had lay for them.

5.According to Sanders, women had “the better life” because they didn’t have to break their backs or had to go to war like the men he knew from his childhood.
6.Since both lower class men and women share the fact of being poor, both of them struggle, men have to break their backs just to get some money while women have to break their heads rationing the money.

7.Sanders wanted to share the power and glory of the fathers of the college educated women just as much as they did, they both wanted jobs worthy of their abilities, for the right to live at peace, unmolested.

Summary Self-Evaluation Blog

The most challenging parts of writing this summary were finding the main ideas in the essay, writing the thesis statement and writing the actual summary. I found these areas to be hard for me because even though I’m a good reader and I can understand for the most part the ideas, in other readings, the author is trying to give us, I had quite some trouble understanding the ideas Tan was trying to her readers. I believe this was because I had never broken down an essay into sections and had to find the main idea in each section. Writing the thesis and the summary itself were also complicated because of my “broken and/or limited English”. I couldn’t find the words to express what I had in mind so I used “simple” words and terms to overcome these challenges to be able to write the summary. Having to follow a certain set of rules made this summary difficult for me so I’m going to have to say that aside from reading the essay everything else was in some ways hard. Honestly, I don’t understand how I got and A- on it, I was actually hoping for a C or a D. For the next summary I’m going to take more time analyzing the reading and thinking about the ideas given by the author and seek help when and/or if I find myself puzzled with the material.

Memorization

The most important memorization technique I learned from chapter 8 would have to be connect because if I can relate to something I already know it’s easier to memorize the new subject or idea that I’m being taught. I also found mark it down and act to be very useful because as kinesthetic learner its easier for me to learn the new subject by writing it down rather than coming up with acronyms which will confuse me later when trying to remember. I think that it depends on the person and/or situation on which technique is more efficient to use. For example, if I want to remember a number or email and I don’t have a pen, paper or something to write the information in I cant act the number, for this scenario I think it would be easier to just try to break the number/email into sections which will make it easier to remember until I can write it down. Each one of us memorizes things differently, so all I can say is to practice on the memorization technique that best suits you.

Libby Blog Response

1.Do the author’s survey results indicate that feminism is, by and large, a dirty word for her fellow students? What in the essay makes you agree or disagree?

By the author’s results I believe that feminism is not a “dirty” word among her fellow students, you can see this in paragraph two where she says “in-fact only one person said that feminism was a bunch of radical women who hate everything about men and blame them for everything bad in the world.” She also stated that most of the people said that feminism was a good thing.

2.What reasons does Libby offer why there are not more self identified feminists?

Many males she talked to said that they couldn’t be feminist because they were male and feminism was only for women, some said that even though they agreed with the ideas of feminism they couldn’t call themselves feminists because they weren’t actively doing anything about it. Also some people said that sexism, sex exploitation and oppression don’t exist in our society anymore. Another reason is the negative connotation attached to the word. Others said that they didn’t care about the issue and one person responded that “titles freak her/him out”.


3.Why does she think more people should identify themselves as feminist?

She thinks that more people should identify themselves as feminist because both men and women are victims of sexism and sex exploitation.

Transfer Motivational Conference

I enjoyed everything about the conference except the workshop. The bus, it was mad funny when Jorge started giving out sandwiches “Tuna or Ham?” I think that the first couple of speakers were alright but then they kept talking and talking and honestly I lost interest in what they were saying. Roll Call, that was the point where I snapped out of my daydreams and got my mind back into the conference. I was really excited to go to the workshop, mine was at the library and I fell in love with it, 5 stories high damn. The workshop speaker was one of the downers from the conference, first of we couldn’t relate to her since she wasn’t an AB540 student, even though she had some points she really didn’t tell us anything new, I was hoping to get some more information about AB540 but nope nothing new. She kept talking about how she thought she wasn’t going to get into Berkeley and how her teacher pushed to her to apply to Harvard and how she did get in, I think that was the highlight of her presentation, having someone push you when you think you can’t and achieving things you would never have thought of. The campus tour was alright, it had been a long day and we were all tired so we all wanted to get it over with. Overall it was a cool experience, seeing new faces, getting closer to the ones you already know. Another downer about the conference was that we couldn’t perform at “Explosion” and we couldn’t even stay to see the other performers.

Anzandula Blog Response #2

Anzandula writes her essay in a non-academic format. The technique she uses is different from an academic essay. She starts it with a metaphor instead of giving the reader a sense of the “larger debate” and the thesis. Throughout the body she lists the many languages she speaks and gives some history behind them, and she quotes Spanish sayings and poems. She divides the body in different section each talking about a specific topic such as music, food, Chicano Spanish, Linguistic terrorism, etc, etc. I think she writes her essay this way in order to show that she feels comfortable using the languages she knows to get the attention of the reader instead, and honestly I think she did a great job because once I started reading it I was hooked. This makes it an anti-academic essay because it doesn’t follow the “rules” for a traditional academic essay. “Identity is the essential core of who we are as individuals, the conscious experience of self inside.” –Kaufman, this quote tells me that she writes her essay this way to prove that she knows who she is and that she doesn’t need to follow a certain technique to reach her readers.

Amy Tan's "Mother Tongue" Summary

In the article “Mother Tongue”, Amy tan emphasizes the idea that we all speak different languages unconsciously and that we are categorized by the way we speak. The author is a fictional writer who is “fascinated by language in daily life” and uses language as a daily part of her work as a writer. In paragraphs 2 and 3 she observes experiences that made her realized the different types of "Englishes" she uses. The first time she became aware of this was when giving a talk about her book, The Joy Club, she saw her mother in the audience and she realized that she had been using academic language learned from books, a language she had never used with her mother. The second time she noticed one of her “Englishes” was when walking with her mother and husband, she said “not waste money that way” which for her is an intimate language used only by her family. Her mother’s “broken” English contradicts how much she actually understands, this reminds us that even though her mother’s English seem “broken” it does not reflect her intelligence. Even though her mother was categorized with limited ideas by the people she would to because of the way she spoke tan rejects the idea that her mother English is “limited” or “broken”. She emphasizes the fact that even her mother recognizes that her opportunities and interactions in life are limited by her English. When the author was young she used to have to call people on the phone and act as if she was her mother in order to get people to pay attention to her like when she had to yell at her mother’s stockbroker for not sending a check. In a different occasion when her mother went to the doctor to get the results of a CAT scan, the doctors ignored her when she complained about them losing her results. It wasn’t until Tan talked to the doctor that they apologized and cared to solve the problem. She insists that people not taking a person seriously because of their language can have dangerous consequences. Tan comes to the idea that the language spoken in the family, specially in immigrant families, plays a large role in shaping the language of a child this made her acknowledge that perhaps her family’s language had an effect on her own opportunities in life. For instance in her experience, she notices that Asian students actually do better in math tests than in language tests, and she questions whether or not other Asian students are discouraged from writing or directed in the direction of math and science. Tan changed her major from pre-med to English and she decided to become a freelance writer even though her boss told her she couldn’t write. She eventually went on to write fiction, she celebrates the fact that she did not follow the expectations that people had of her because of her struggle with writing and language. With her mother as an influence Tan decided to write her stories for people like her, people with “broken” or “limited” English.


Like the author I also grew up in an immigrant family who’s English might seem “limited” to others. I sometimes too have to be the spokesperson for my mother and other family members. The idea of people categorizing other people by the way they speak I believe it’s wrong. Unconsciously I have categorize people by the way they speak, both English and Spanish, whenever I hear my mother attempt to speak English I feel as if she is not smart, but then when I’m watching random history or science channels and she tells me her point of view on the whatever I’m watching I realize that she’s actually pretty smart, just like Tan mother’s English seems “broken”, it does not reflect her intelligence. After reading “Mother Tongue” my belief of judging someone by the way they speak has made me stop and think before I put someone down and it has also reminded me of all those times when some of my friends would say something bad about a person because they couldn’t express their ideas or feelings because their language skills were limited.

Anzaldua Blog Response

A couple of friends and I were in a store checking out some stuff and talking. An old lady walked into the store and she stopped and looked at us, we didn’t pay any attention to her, and kept on with our conversation, a couple of minutes later the store manager walked up to us and told us to watch our language because some costumers had complained. We told the manager that we weren’t saying anything bad, then the lady walked into the conversation and said “Yo los escuche usar palabras obsenas”, we asked her to tell us the words and she said that I used the word “wey” a lot and that my friends said others words which honestly I cant remember. I got frustrated trying to explain her that where we came from those words were normal and we use them on a daily basis. She got pissed off out of nowhere because the manager was from a town near ours and knew the words we were using which were not bad at all. She started saying things like “como pueden llamarse asi entre ustedes, esa es una falta de respeto para nosotros los mayores”. I told her “señora porfavor no sea ignorante, ya no estamos en los tiempos de antaño en los cuales todo el mundo hablaba de una forma, cada quien tiene su forma de hablar”. She told the manager that if he didn’t kick us out she was going to call the cops because she felt that we were being disrespectful to her and to other costumers. The manager spoke to us in English and told us that even though he knew that the lady was wrong he didn’t want the cops to get involved in some stupid argument so he asked us to leave. Before we left we told him that it was unfair that we were being kicked out for the way we talked, he apologize and we left.

VARK Activity

After reading this chapter i realized that I am more of a Kinesthetic learner which means that I learn by doing things. I've always thought of myself as a visual learner because it easier for me when I see an example of what I'm supposed to do, I think I the way i learn is based on the mood i am that day for example there are days when I'm too tired and hearing someone talk doesn't work for me, but if you illustrate what the person is talking about i will understand it or when I have a lot of energy being in a chair for 2 hours is the last thing in my mind and i need to move around or work with someone in order to understand the subject. I also learned that there are many different ways for me to approach a subject because not everyone learns the same way.

Blog Response #3

After being sent to jail, Juan Salvador saw how desperate his mother and sisters were because there was no money coming into the family, so he agreed to the rich Mexican proposition in order to help out his family. The proposition consisted of Juan Salvador confessing to the crime of the man’s son, which was the murder of a Texas’ ranger, this meant that Juan would have to give up his six year sentence to be in for life or even be executed, in return the man would give Doña Margarita five hundred dollars in gold. (Pg.215) Another example from the book which is not in the chapters we had to read is when Juan had to sacrifice his burro so his family and the starving people around them could eat. I believe that people are more willing to sacrifice in times of hardship, my example proves that even though at first Juan thought of spitting to the man’s face after hearing what he had proposed he realized that his family was in need so he sacrificed his freedom in order for his family to be “ok”. Thanks to the current economic problems many of us have had to sacrifice many things we used to do on a regular basis. A couple of my friends stopped going out to clubs, restaurants and to the movies so they could save money, they are sacrificing their social lives. Material objects, life, freedom, fun are a couple of things that people would be willing to sacrifice in times of hardship.

To my "Familia": sorry you guys my internet was down since yesterday.

Powerpoint Presentation

LEAVE YOUR CELLPHONE AT THE CLASSROOM DOOR

LEAVE YOUR CELLPHONE AT THE CLASSROOM DOOR

 What causes the digital divide (those who have technology and those who do not)?

The digital divide is caused by many different factors, the only two i can come up with right now the availability of technology and age.  Not everyone has the money to buy a computer or pay for internet access, that creates a huge gap between those who are lucky enough to have these services available to them.  Also age is an important factor because the older you the more complicated in going to be able to understand how something works, for example, a couple of months ago i had to explain an 80 year old what the difference between an ipod and a iphone was, for most people my age that would be a dumb question to ask, lets just keep in mind that 70,60 or even ten years ago an mp3 was unknown to the majority of the world.

Literature Circle Blog 1

As a sign of appreciation to god, Doña Margarita decided to feed as many people as possible with their old burro. She believed that it was because of him that the name of his son Jose had caused General Felipe Kelly to show them mercy and respect. This might not be important to many of us but it shows that she had faith and that god was with them even though they had suffered a lot. Even though Juan didn’t like the idea of killing and eating his friend he realized that it had to be done, so he somewhat started to grow into a man.
Pgs.112-115

After having a dream in which Juan and Domingo were back home racing through the canyon with their bull, Juan was woken up by the ants that had crawled on to his face and the sunlight that came down through the cracks of the fence. He told Emilia his dream and started arguing with her about how they needed to know what they had become. He felt repulsed by his sister and his niece because they had given up and felt somewhat less repulsed by his mother. He told Emilia that he wasn’t going to stay there while his mother was begging in order to feed them, he felt the urge to help his family so he decided to go find more wood to sell. Emilia cried and begged him not to go but he had already made up his mind and no one was going to stop him. I believe this scene is important because it shows Juan becoming a “man” and how all of his life was set on course. He wasn’t scared or had any more questions.
Pgs.147-149

What are some of the consequences of assimilating and not assimilating into the American culture?

While assimilating into the American culture might give you better opportunities I also affects you and the next generations in your family by losing your roots, for example if the first generation gives in to the culture the generations after that will know less about their main culture until it’s forgotten. Also by assimilating into the culture it’s not going to chance your appearance, this might not apply to everyone but it does to members of minorities and or kids of interracial relationships, not just because you learn the language, change the way you dress or change the way your name is pronounced or spelled is going to make you look less like the rest of your ethnic group. By not assimilating into the culture your opportunities might be less than those who did. It also might isolate you from those who did. For example, when I first attended school in the United States I would only talk to the students in the Puente program, who were learning English, I was told not to talk to the pochos, whites, blacks and chinos, because they would discriminate me for not speaking the language. This kept me from being part of many activies because they were just for the English speakers. The same thing happened when I moved to another middle school in East Palo Alto, but this time it was the pochos who told me not to talk to the rest of the ethnic groups. In my opinion assimilating and not assimilating into the American culture has good and bad consequences; I prefer to stay in the middle of them. I will learn the language and try my best to “fit in” in order to have a better future, but will never leave my culture behind because it defines who I am.

Puente: Bridge to English Program, a program for newcomers to our country. After these students gain English language skills they have the opportunity to apply to attend the MIT program.
http://www.rcsd.k12.ca.us/mit

*pochos- term used by native-born Mexicans to describe Chicanos who are perceived to have forgotten or rejected their Mexican heritage to some degree.
*chinos- Spanish word translating as Chinese, in this case all it was used to refer to all who are asian or pacific islanders.

Note: I apologize because this is not what you were looking for in this assignment, but I had trouble figuring out what to write so I combined two of the questions and gave my opinion on the subject.

My Digital Life

Everyday right after I get up but before I’m completely awake I have to check my email, it’s the easiest way to keep in touch with my family and friends. I want to say I’m right in the middle of loving and hating technology, I love it because it makes things easier, why would I want to go my friend’s house and knock on his door to ask him about what’s up, when I can send him a text, email, IM or just give him a call. Why would I want to go rent a movie when I can just order it on the spot without having to get up from the couch? Why would I want to buy a CD with 20 songs if I only like two of them, I can just go online and buy them? Even though technology has made our life easier, it has also made us lazier, now we think that going to the library and research about a subject is a waste of time, we can easily just Google, copy and paste, which is also known as plagiarism. Also it has made some people shyer, take me as an example, I can talk for hours on IM but when it comes to interacting with someone face to face um yeah let’s just say I’m not the life of the party. Now that I think of it, I realized that since the first time my hands touched a keyboard, I’ve been wanting to be part of computer technology, but it wasn’t until I programmed my first game that I actually thought about it. I can’t really picture life without technology, or at least not without computers, I don’t usually listen to the radio or watch TV, I pretty much do all of that online. My life revolves around technology without it I wouldn’t be able to keep in touch with my friends or be able to listen the newest beats, or where's the dopest crew in the world.

My Motivation to Attend College

When I read the assignment the first thing that came to mind was that it was going to be easy and I was going to finish it in no time. It's 2a.m. and I don't know how to start. Right after I graduated from high school i was offered a job as a carpenter, which I took. I worked there for almost two years and even though i loved it, I realized that working my ass off there wasnt going to take me anywhere in life. I worked with a lot of different people and I would hear them talk about how they hated their routines, waking up, going to work, go home and go to sleep, they couldn't even enjoy their weekends 'cuz they were still to tired or had to work. They would ask me how old I was, back then I was 18, and they would ask me what was I doing there working and not in school, I always answered that I wanted to have money in my pocket and that school could wait. They would tell me "times flies" and that I should go back to school while I was still young, I didn't pay any attention to them. Sometimes they would come up to me and ask me about a subject in school and if I knew the answer I would explain it to them, they told me I was lucky for having an education and they would tell me how when their kids had questions they couldn't help them 'cuz they didn't understand what they were talking about. Now, three years after I graduated high school I decided to go back to school because I don't want to hate the place I work, I want to work everyday with a big smile and i want to be able to help my kids when they have questions, so that's pretty much my motivation to attend college.