Andrea’s Angel

This is stupid. That cop should never have killed him. That doesn't mean that we have to attack all police officers. One murderous cop doesn't make all of them bad. Why does the protesting have to get so out of control and voilent? Some states had to call in the National Guard! An incident that occurred in another city, another state, should not affect the lives of people who just want to go about their day. Innocent police officers are being attacked, people who have nothing to do with what occurred in  Minneapolis, but are suffering the consequences anyway. Stores are being looted and broken into, streets and highways are being blocked, and a Fed-Ex driver has been attacked. Fights are breaking out, and cities are being placed under curfew. This went from being about a corrupt cop killing a helpless man, to a fight about race. You know what I see? I see people. White, black, brown, we are all the same. People are people. No one race is responsible for what has h...

I love the rain. Little drops of water, falling on my face. Flooding the streets, flooding my shoes. Jumping in puddles, twirling with an umbrella. Dancing with my grandma while singing our favorite Country song. The thunder shaking our house while lightning lights up the sky. I love the rain. Due to the drought, us kids in California hardly ever get rain. If we do, its normally just a sprinkle, a single drop. It started raining yesterday, and it seems like buckets full of water are just pouring over our heads. My favorite part of rainstorms is dancing and singing in it with my grandma. We stand in the pouring rain and just twirl in circles, holding on to each other. I also love watching lightning storms on my front porch. We sip hot chocolate, and count how many seconds it takes the thunder to roar, so we can guess how far away it is. Sometimes we stay up all night. I wish it rained more often.

Last night I went to see an amazing play set on by some amazing actors. Three high schools in our district; Righetti, Pioneer, and Santa Maria, are responsible for putting on this production of West Side Story . The three schools have spent many weeks setting this up, and you can tell. The actors and actresses made me feel like I actually was part of the play. I strongly recommend that you find time to watch it.

Today is your birthday, and you are finally nine years old. You have been waiting for this moment for months, and I wonder: How does it feel? I have spent several years being both your teammate and coach, and I couldn't be more proud of you. This video is for you Sunnie.

You can't. Those two words are the ones I've heard most often in my life. Someone was always telling me I couldn't. And for a while, I let myself believe them.  I used to dream of becoming an astronaut when I got older. Someone told me I couldn't.   I wanted to be the smartest student in my third grade class. Someone told me I couldn't. I wanted to be the best softball player that ever lived. I think you know what they said. Sometimes there were legitimate reasons as to why I couldn't do certain things. My fear of heights made my dreams of becoming an astronaut unachievable. There are always people smarter than me. I had asthma and was always sick growing up. I let myself listen to others and take away the best parts of my life. I listened to what everyone said I couldn't do until I was in fourth grade. I had a wonderful teacher named Mrs. Adams, and she taught me that I could. I told her about my goal in thi...

Over this Thanksgiving break, I went to Las Vegas to play a softball tournament. When I wasn't playing softball or going out with my family, I was reading and doing homework. I started reading the book The Historian , and it caught my attention immediately. I worked on my English portfolio and made some blog posts. I even asked my family members about my big question.

I have been presented with a choice today, and I don't know what to choose. My brother is moving from SM to PV, and I have to decide if I'm going with him. I have as many friends there as I do here, and I live just as close to both schools. I have great classes here, but PV has the same ones. I have my Art Club, but I can start one there. I have four adults I trust more than anything here, but I can email them if I need help. As a junior, I am comfortable here, and I know almost every nook and cranny there is here. I love SM, and I do want to stay here, but my parents really want me to go there. I have no idea what I am going to choose, but I have to choose quickly. If you wish to comment and tell me what you think, please do. Any opinion will help.

On the first day of school, I had it all planned out. Meet my teachers, they'd give me some papers and tell us how school would go, and then I'd move on to the next class. I've done this game of school for eleven years. I knew exactly what to expect. Or so I thought. What I never expected was to have the teacher shake my hand and introduce himself to me before I even walked inside. I never expected him to give us a choice and to trust us so quickly and completely. He started out by telling us what Open Source Learning was, and explaining why it was a different way of learning that we should try. Then he said he wanted us to make a choice about whether we wanted to do the normal English class stuff, or try something new. Then he just walked out of the class. I sat there in my seat, shocked. I leaned over and asked the girl next to me if he was serious. She just laughed and said that he did it every year. We decided to do OSL, and we got on with the class. The girl I tu...

Today, I wanted to talk to my English teacher to see what my grade was, and what I needed to do to improve it. When I walk in, Dr. Preston and another teacher were discussing the book Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky. The other teacher had not read it and I said, "You should read it. It's a good book." The look of shock on his face when I told him was hilarious. I don't think either of them believed that a high school student had read it. I think that most adults think that kids don't read or actually do educational stuff outside of what we're forced to do. This isn't the first time I've had this reaction towards me. It happens a lot actually, and only from adults. I hate when people have that kind of reaction to me. To anyone I know. Not every high school student only cares about their electronics and Social Media. I certainly don't, and I know that people are unfairly judging todays youth. Stop stereotyping teenagers, because then y...

1/11/58 - 12/8/19 Hortencia Hernandez  Osorio.  A sixty year old woman with a mean attitude and a big heart. She didn't speak any English, so it was often hard to talk to her, but we managed. She was a mean and fierce old lady, but she loved her family. If you asked her what her favorite color was, she'd say Cheetah Print. She wore it on everything. She loved those antique dolls that star in creepy movies, and she loved her family. She has three kids, two sons and a daughter, and four grandkids. I am one of those grandkids. Recently, her heart has been really bad and she has been having a bunch of health issues. We knew that sometime soon, it would be her time to pass from this life to the next, but its still hard when you love that person. On Friday, her heart stopped, and the doctors spent twenty minutes trying to bring her back, and finally her heart started beating again. The only problem was, her body was alive, but her mind was not. So they put her on Life Support ...

Today I had an interview in English. I was shaking the whole time, some of my answers were wacky, and I was nervous. I feel like I honestly could have done a little better, but ultimately, I am proud of myself. I wonder how you guys think I did. Please comment to this post so I know how you think I did today.                                                                                                                                                                 ~Wa do

This morning when I walked into my English class, I wanted to see how many page views my blog has. I had thought that maybe there would be a couple hundred, no big deal, but when I saw the number, it scared me. Right now, at precisely 10:05, the number of pageviews is 1,001. I am shocked, yet pleasantly surprised, that so many people have looked at my blog. To those who read and follow my blog: thank you!   I never thought that when I started this blog that I would have many people looking at it. I had hoped that someone would see it, and like what I put on it, but never in my wildest dreams did I think that it would be seen by so many people. I hope that you readers like what I have to say, and please feel free to comment on anything you like.                                                                   ...

"To be or not to be, that is the question" -William Shakespeare. To be or not to be. To do or not to do. We all struggle with making this one small choice that could change the rest of our lives, the one that sets the stage for our future endeavors, and may alter the course of our lives forever. Ralph Waldo Emerson says that you should be. You should be yourself no matter the repercussions, the trouble, or the hardships it may cause. You are you, and nobody will live your life fo you. You need to always express what's on your mind, because you never know if what you are thinking could be utterly genius. In his essay, On Self-Reliance , Emerson references Moses, Plato, and Milton, because they weren't afraid to speak what they thought. They always spoke their truths, and look where it got them.  I think that maybe I should follow what Emerson says, and start speaking out. I believe that we should all listen to what Emerson has to say.

The essay, On Self-Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson, begins with the line: "Ne te quaesiveris extra". It means don't look outside yourself. Emerson starts with Latin to try to get us to really understand and pay attention to what he is saying, and he writes with a formal, ancient, and often philosophical tone. Even though this essay was written many years ago, the main topics somehow still manage to connect to todays society. Emerson says that actions speak louder than words, excellence is a habit, and that we all fear rejection. Does any of that sound familiar? If it doesn't, well then it should. These are things that many people have a hard time either believing in or getting past. If any of these issues apply to you, I highly recommend reading this essay.

The Pedestrian by Ray Bradbury. It starts out seeming like a normal, boring, story about a guy going for a walk. Its not. I mean, yeah he really does go for a walk, talks to a cop, and gets in his car. Doesn't sound very interesting, does it? That's not the point of this story though. The action that occurs in this story, actually happened to Ray Bradbury. He went for a walk and got harassed by a police officer. He was so distraught about what had happened that he went home and wrote a story about it. A very powerful one. A man, Leonard Mead, goes for a walk at eight at night on a cold November evening in 2053. As he walks, he notices that there is not a person in sight. Strange isn't it? Bradbury felt so alone in that moment, the loneliness caused by technology. Technology affects everyone, in time of Bradbury's life and in the time of ours. In Bradbury's life, there were cars and phones that seperated people and led to a decrease in human contact. In ou...

I call this beautiful chaos. I am here at the Santa Maria FFA annual Drive Thru BBQ, taking a quiet break in the corner. It’s crazy in here. Over a hundred students all trying to make this fundraiser go as smoothly as possible, and it’s insane. Twenty are putting beans and salsa in a bag, twenty more are taking the bags out to get meat in them, and even more students are then taking those bags out to where people get their food. I tried to sign in, and found that the five sign in sheet were already filled. So many people, all working towards one goal. It’s interesting, to say the least. Sometimes it surprises me to see how much work and people it takes to do something that seems so simple. It truly is beautiful. So many people, so many orders, so much to do. And now, the meat just got off the grill. Got to get back to work!

There are some strange words that have come up in my English class, ones that I've never even heard of. So, I decided, when my teacher assigned us to pick ten words from our vocab list and define them, that I would pick the hardest ones. Abjure: to solemnly renounce Ambiguity: the quality of being more open to more than one interpretation Epistemic: relating to knowledge or to the degree of its validation Hullabaloo: a commotion or a fuss Indubitably: impossible to doubt Insubordinate: defiant of authority or disobedient to orders Introspect: to examine one's own thoughts or feelings Mnemonics: the study and development of systems for improving and assisting the memory Schema: a representation of a plan or theory in the form of an outline or model Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious: extraordinarily good or wonderful

Edgar Allen Poe's poem, A Dream Within A Dream, is startlingly true. How are we really supposed to know the difference between dreaming and waking? A quote from one of my favorite books, Frostbite , by Richelle Mead,  really reminds me of this poem. "Dreams, dreams. I walk them; I live them. I delude myself with them. Its a wonder I can spot reality anymore." This line is said by a nineteen year old character that is a little crazy, but still very smart for a person his age. In a later book in the same series as Frostbite, Blood Promise, the same character also says this: “If your eyes weren't open, you wouldn't know the difference between dreaming and waking.” Sometimes, I have dreams that come true, and it is really scary. Other times, I have a dream that seems so real, that it is hard to wake up and know that it wasn't. 

I recently read a story, Young Goodman Brown, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, and my teacher wanted me to write a thesis on it. So here goes: I don't believe that Young Goodman Brown actually met with anyone in the forest. I think that he got so scared, as soon as he got into the forest, that his mind started hallucinating things, and all the devilish things he encountered were only made up in his mind.

We have spent weeks trying to perfect these stunts. Never did it. One of them is pretty good, but the rest, well, can't say the same about them.