Freshman Year

My first year of college is just about wrapped up. I can honestly say that it was not at all what I expected, but I think that’s a good thing. I am the first of my siblings to go to college so I went in not really knowing what to expect. All I really knew was what friends and family told me, but they definitely made it seem like something else. First semester really overwhelmed me at first. It seemed like I was trying to balance so much all at once, and I wasn’t sure I could handle it. I even started to question whether Lewis was the right decision. However, I soon figured it out and got it together.

Although it wasn’t what I expected, I feel good about my freshman year. I was definitely challenged academically, and I now know how much I can handle and what works best for me when it comes to school and studying. Besides academics, I also changed a lot personally throughout the year, but it was definitely for the better. I’m leaving my freshman year feeling confident that Lewis was the right school choice and excited for the rest of my years here.

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College Writing 2

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This post is basically going to be a short summary of my ePortfolio, but I wanted to share my experience in this class. To start, I want to say that College Writing 2 really did challenge me. I was being assigned assignments that were nothing like papers or essays I had written before, and I wasn't so sure I was going to be able to have any success with them. It was a little bit daunting at first because I didn't think I would be able to keep up.

However, I did keep up, and I was successful in the class. Of course, this is thanks to the help of my peers and Dr. Kyburz. College Writing 2 pushed me to become a better writer and helped me develop skills that will be helpful in many of the future courses I'll be taking here at Lewis. It's a class that I really did enjoy, and I feel more prepared after having taken it.

Where am I as a writer?

Summer

The semester is ending, and summer is almost here. Although it isn't my favorite season, I can't wait to have some time off from what seems to be endless schoolwork. I'm looking forward to spending time with family and catching up with the friends that are coming home from college. I especially can't wait to finally be able to go to the beach, whether that be here or on vacation.

Most importantly, I'm happy that I will finally have much needed time to myself so I can figure out a few things. Although I'm happy with where I'm at right now, there is still a lot I've been avoiding and need to get sorted out. Summer is always a time to regroup and refocus for me. Without the responsibilities of school, I have more time to focus on the other important parts of my life that I might've neglected during the busy school year. It's something that is really needed.

I have a feeling that this summer is going to be a good one (or at least I hope it is).

A sunrise from my family's trip last summer.

FIFA World Cup 2018

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The World Cup is this summer, and my family could not be more excited. My cousins play soccer, my siblings play soccer, and even I played soccer for a few years. Those in my family who don’t play  soccer still closely follow it. I have to admit that I don’t follow it too closely, but my brother definitely does. So, this summer is such a big deal that we are even planning our family vacation around the World Cup because he does not want to miss a second of it.

It may seem like a lot to some people, but I absolutely love the intense love that my family has for soccer, especially when it comes to the World Cup. I am looking forward to spending the summer visiting all my family members so we can all watch the games. It’s the best feeling to see everyone get excited about a team winning and to just be able to feel the passion they have for soccer. I’m always happy to spend time with my loved ones, and the World Cup will ensure that there will be a lot of family time this summer.

Where am I?

I was inspired by the multimodal we had to do for class, so I decided to do another one based on where I am with myself and with my life now that it's the end of my freshman year.

Complaining

There are about two weeks left in the semester, and stress levels are at their highest for most students. I've found myself seeming to have less time than ever and little motivation to do anything, which just adds to the stress I'm feeling. The end of the semester always brings countless of things that need to be done with little motivation to get these things done. I often find myself complaining about everything I need to do instead of actually working on those things.

When this is the case, which is often, I try and remind myself of a quote I saw on Instagram a couple of months ago. "Encourage instead of complain." It really is that simple. Instead of focusing on all of the things I need to do but don't necessarily want to do, I should be encouraging myself to get these things done and out of the way. Complaining isn't getting me anywhere. It's actually just leaving me with less and less time to do the things I need to do. So, here's to complaining a little less and trying to encourage myself to put my all into these last two weeks of the semester.

Friends that are Family

I could not have made it through the school year without the people I'm picturing below. As a commuter, I found it a little bit harder to make friends and get involved on campus than I had expected it to be. This is probably because I'll go to my classes and then come home. I try and go to different campus events, but I live so far that sometimes I don't think it's worth the drive. Don't get me wrong, I've made some amazing friends this school year, but I really cannot thank the friends that stood with me when I was struggling to do so enough.

This group of friends means the absolute world to me. It seems as if they are always, always there the second I need them. They also never fail to make me laugh, and they're always up for adventures, no matter what time of day it is. I am very grateful for them and consider myself lucky to have such a supportive group of people in my life. I cannot wait to add to our adventures and create more memories with them this summer.

Traveling

A picture I took from the plane on my way to Mexico last summer.

I absolutely love traveling. Seeing different places and escaping home is my favorite thing to do. Although the only other country I've been to is Mexico, I think the greatest thing is being able to experience a different culture. I've found that most people don't ever really understand a culture until they experience. For example, I belong to a very proud Mexican family, and our culture is everything to us. My parents constantly tell my siblings and I about the places in which they grew up and the experiences they had. I've always been intrigued by their stories and love hearing them again and again, but I didn't fully understand them until the first time I visited Mexico that I was at an age where I could remember it. Visiting the places in which my parents spent a big part of their lives is incredible, and I honestly prefer it over visiting a touristy place like Cancun. I've been to both and love doing both, but visiting regular little towns in Mexico feels so much more real.

I'm hoping to be doing some more traveling this summer. My family usually takes a trip to Mexico every summer, but this year there has been talk of maybe visiting Europe. It's something we have always talked about doing, but we never get around to actually planning it. There's still no set plans because we are trying to work around some other events we have here at home, but hopefully we'll go somewhere.

Hispanic Ministry at Saint Michael Parish Orland Park

As mentioned in a previous post, I do a lot of volunteer work. I do all of this work through the Hispanic Ministry at Saint Michael Parish in Orland Park. Saint Michael’s Hispanic Ministry had only been around for a couple of years when I first started attending this parish. They established it because of the growing population of Spanish speaking parishioners who wanted to be able to attend masses and church events in the language they fully understood and were comfortable with. So, as this population continued to grow, the Hispanic Ministry did too. Now, we are a really well established group that participates in any and all things that occur at Saint Michael’s.

One of our biggest goals as a group is to celebrate our culture. We do this through countless of events like the Celebration of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Las Posadas, tamale fundraisers, and so much more. Each year the events we host are attended by more and more people. So, each year our events are bigger and better, and I could not be more proud. I love that the Spanish speaking community at Saint Michael’s is proud to participate in the celebrations and traditions of our cultures and that the non-Spanish speakers are more than happy to join us too. I think Saint Michael’s is doing a great job at making sure its parishioners all feel comfortable and welcome, and I am proud to be doing what I can to help make this happen. I am proud to help keep our culture alive.

"Las Mañanitas" for Our Lady of Guadalupe on December 12th

Much Needed Time Away

I spent the days of March 22nd to 24th with some friends at a house in Indiana. It was for a little retreat that a priest from our parish and a friend's mom organized for us. Going into this retreat, my friends and I thought it was going to be super religious and frankly kind of boring, but that was not the case whatsoever. Although there were some religious aspects incorporated into the retreat, it was mostly time for my friends and I to get away from our busy lives back home, relax, and enjoy our time together. The house we stayed at is built up high off of the side of the road and faces the lake. It is absolutely beautiful. We were able to enjoy sunsets, sunrises, walks along the shore, and various good meals. Most importantly, we were able to just spend time together playing board games, watching movies, and having late night talks. My favorite thing was that we all waited for everyone to be up for breakfast before anyone could eat, and it was usually the same rule for every meal. I thought that this was the best way for us to begin our day. We would all sit at the breakfast table and talk about the plans for the day or just whatever was on our minds. I think I enjoyed this part of my day so much because at home I oftentimes don't have the chance to start my day with my whole family because everyone is always so busy, but I loved that I was able to have a couple of breakfasts like this with my friends. Anyways, these couple of days were very needed. It was nice to get a little break from the business of my everyday life. It was also nice that we were all a little less attached to our phones during these days, and it wasn't just because there wasn't very good reception. As I write this, I'm wishing every weekend was like that weekend, but clearly that isn't possible. However, my friends and I made it clear that we are going to try and have days like these a little more often.

Volunteer Work

The little free time that I have I usually spend volunteering at my parish. I first started volunteering the summer before my freshman year of high school simply because it was required that I complete a certain number of service hours every year. I'll be honest and say that I didn't necessarily like it at first. I thought there were better things I could be doing with my time and that there was no reason for us to need to do so many hours of volunteer work. I didn't find it to be any fun. However, after helping out in a few events at my parish, I started to meet more and more people who were really passionate about the service work we were doing. Slowly but surely, I also started to find a purpose behind the work I did and started to do way more hours than the requirement for that year. 

Fast forward almost five years, and I'm now a part of the Hispanic Ministry Committee at my parish. Now, I volunteer for pretty much anything and everything I have time for. I've helped plan and run fundraisers, aided in religious education classes, been part of a teen leaders group for a retreat, have helped direct the yearly Passion play, and so much more. My friends and family often question me on why I spend so much time doing service work, especially now that I don't have it as a requirement. My answer is that I truly enjoy spending my time doing things that will benefit the community that surrounds me. Volunteering has also brought so many incredible people and great opportunities into my life that it's impossible to not enjoy it. So, I plan to continue this service work as long as I possibly can.

Time

As the end of the school year approaches, I find myself looking back on my first year of college. It feels as if it has flown by, but at the same time it cannot seem to go any slower. My brother is currently a senior in high school so this is an exciting time for him. He's looking forward to the last of his high school events like school assemblies and prom. Most importantly, he's looking forward to graduating. He will also be attending Lewis and cannot wait to see what college has in store. I know it's only been about a year since I was the one who was excited for prom and ready to graduate, but sometimes it feels like it has been longer. I don't know if it's because I always seem to be so busy, or if it's because he's my little brother and it's seems as if he's growing up, even though I'm not that much older than him.

Recently, I've found myself getting caught up on things that really don't matter instead of focusing on what's important. I've also found this to be very annoying because it's so easy to miss what's important when my focus is on something insignificant. Stressing about insignificant things only ends up making days seem like they're eternities. This is why I've decided that I'm going to try and stress about minor things a little less. In the end, it doesn't do me any good to worry about something that is not in my control. All it does is cause me to miss the things I wish I would've paid more attention to.

So, I'm excited for my brother, and I'm excited to see him graduate. This is something I'm going to make sure I'm fully there for without the distraction of other unimportant things. He's seems to really be enjoying the last few months he has left of high school and is ready for the next chapter of his life. Although we didn't plan on attending the same college, I'm happy he'll be at Lewis. 

Spring Break

With spring break just a day away, I cannot contain my excitement for this time off. Although I do still have things I need to do and catch up on, I am determined to make this week off of school as least stressful as possible. Most of my close friends aren't on spring break for another week or two, but I'm hoping to be able to find time to visit some of them at their schools. I also really want to spend more time with my family. I do live at home so I see them everyday, but it seems as if I only get to spend a few minutes with them each day because of the busy schedules we all have. I seem to always be running out the door trying to not be late to one thing or another, and there just never seems to be time to catch up with my parents or siblings. However, I'm hoping I can really take this week to step away from the neverending stress that seems to follow me and take the time to unwind. I'm going to take this week to focus on the important things in my life that I often forget to acknowledge because of the endless list of things I always seem to need to do.

Have a great Spring Break!

Nike Ad

As I first started to watch this Nike ad, I was feeling very insulted and kind of mad. It seemed as if it was going to be an ad that solely showed women who were bringing themselves down for not achieving what they wanted to achieve. However, as I continued watching I noticed that although these women were saying things like "I can't," they never stopped what they were doing. The women in the ad never stopped or gave up, but instead they fought through it until they accomplished what they intended to.

The ad appeals to pathos by showing the women comparing themselves to the women who surround them. Most women can relate to the feeling of not being "pretty enough" or "good enough" in comparison to another. The women appear to be close to giving up on what they are doing, but they all power through to the end, which leaves them with a sense of satisfaction and pride.

This appeals to ethos because it shows the women succeeding at the end of the ad. One of the women is shown thinking "I did it. Let's go again." This serves as a sense of motivation for the females watching this ad because although the women seemed to be doubting themselves and struggling to do what they were doing, they ended up accomplishing their goals. They were also immediately willing to achieve their next goal.

Florida Shooting

I find it shocking on how often I seem to find myself reading about horrible events like the shooting at the school in Parkland, Florida. I am sure most of you, if not all of you, have been seeing the coverage around the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, but here is some basic information. A nineteen year old male opened fire at the high school on Wednesday. He killed seventeen people with an AR-15, a semi-automatic weapon.

This morning in my cultural diversity class, our topic of discussion surrounded the shooting and gun control in the United States. I realize that there are a lot of controversies and issues surrounding this topic, and I am not going to take any specific side in this post. I simply wanted to share some of what we talked about in class.

My professor had only planned for the discussion to take about ten minutes or so, but, to her surprise, the discussion took thirty minutes and would have gone the whole class time if she had not had us move on to today's activity. The students had all kinds of different views on gun control. Some were completely for it and could not be swayed to see the other side of the discussion. Others were completely against it and did not see any benefit in guns being so available to people. Some were somewhere in between the two views. The discussion began to get pretty heated among the class, but at the end of it all the questions that remained were: when do tragedies like the Parkland shooting stop? and should weapons of a military level be available to people outside of the military? No one could provide the right answer.

The discussion left me thinking. I learned that since the start of 2018 there have been eighteen school shootings in the U.S. alone. It is truly tragic. Last night, the principal at the high school I attended and the one my siblings currently attend sent out an email to all of the families. He said that he sadly is not able to promise that something like the shooting in Florida will not happen at this high school or in the surrounding community. It is scary to think like this but that is the world we seem to live in. I don't know what needs to happen for this to stop being the case, but I know we can always hope for a safer future.

Maze Runner: The Death Cure

Since the first movie of the Maze Runner series premiered in 2014, this series of films has been one of my favorites. It became a tradition to go watch each film with my sister and three of my cousins as soon as it premiered in theaters. We would wait for months for the announcement of the premiere date for the next film and make plans to go see it as soon as it was announced. After having watched the second movie, we waited in anticipation for the third and final film. There was so much that still needed to be answered and revealed. However, this third film took the longest time to be released because of an accident one of the actors suffered on set, but it finally premiered on January 26, 2018, over two years after the premiere of the second film in the series.

I had the chance to see Maze Runner: The Death Cure on Saturday, January 27. I walked into the theater full of excitement and walked out with watery eyes. The movie was nothing like I expected it to be, but it did answer almost all of the questions I still had. I would say it was a lot better than what I had expected because it ended very unexpectedly. The movie was about two and a half hours long and filled with action and suspense. Although the plot took some turns that I didn't see coming ( and didn't necessarily like), I thought it was very well done and worth the wait.

If you are fan of the Maze Runner series, or are looking for movies to watch, I highly recommend this movie and the rest of the series. It is a fantasy/science fiction series with a story line that had me wanting to keep watching. I'll leave the trailer to the final film below.

Documentary Reflection: After Innocence

1. A specific scene that got to me was when Vincent Moto, a man who was wrongly convicted for ten years, was talking about how he could not be a father in prison because he had nothing to give to his child. He explained that he could only be a dad who talked about his kid, but he could not actually do anything to better the life of his child. The scene made me feel really angry because this man was an innocent man who was paying for another person's crime, and his child was paying for it too because they took her father from her. I was mad that a mistake in the criminal justice system was affecting the life of a child who needed to have her father to care for her and to guide her as she grew up and experienced life. Instead, she went years without the presence of her father.

It was made clear that cases like these affect the family of the person who is wrongly convicted just as much as the person who is convicted. Families will spend years without their loved one because of mistakes made in the criminal justice system. I cannot imagine what it must feel like to know a loved one is innocent and not be able to do much to prove their innocence. It is sad to know both the families and the wrongly imprisoned lost years and years of valuable time together.

2. Something that surprised me in the film was the case of Wilton Dedge. In this case, DNA evidence had already proven him innocent, but the criminal justice system basically ignored this fact for over three years. It was very clear that this man was innocent, but they still took more years from his life, in addition to the many years they had already taken from him, before they set him free.

The people that were fighting to prove Dedge's innocence worked so hard to make a case, but it was just pushed aside and argued against. It shocks me that people were perfectly fine with continuing to convict a man who had done nothing in order to not admit that they made a mistake. I do not know how someone could continue to live life without feeling guilt for imprisoning an innocent man.

3. After viewing the film, I still wonder how much of a change these men have managed to make in regards to fighting for those who are wrongly imprisoned and if the criminal justice system has done anything to prevent more cases like those of these men. I am still a little shocked as to finding out how many people are wrongly imprisoned in the United States because I never imagined it to be such a high number.

I would like to continue to research cases of others who are wrongly imprisoned. I found this to be a very interesting subject that turns out to be more common than I imagined it to be. I would like to research more current statistics, facts, and cases of the wrongly imprisoned today and what is being done to help their cases.